Zuckerberg’s Twitter Clone Continues to Crash in Popularity: Report

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter rival Threads has plummeted in popularity for a second consecutive week, according to market intelligence company Sensor Tower, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The so-called “Twitter Killer” has experienced a substantial fall in engagement, down to 13 million daily active users, which is a 70% drop from July 7, according to Sensor Tower estimates, the WSJ reported. Meanwhile, billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Twitter steadily maintains around 200 million active daily users, who spend an average of 30 minutes on the platform.

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As White House Limits Access to Press Briefings, Daily Signal Reporter Loses Credentials

Two weeks from now, The Daily Signal’s chief news correspondent, Fred Lucas, will lose his White House press credentials. It’s the latest—and perhaps most brazen—attempt by President Joe Biden to limit media access to what he regularly calls “the People’s House.”

The White House Press Office will implement new rules July 31, when all “hard passes” expire. Lucas, holder of a hard pass since 2009, no longer will be able to easily attend White House press briefings or access the sprawling Pennsylvania Avenue campus—as he has done for the past 14 years.

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Commentary: The Way AI Fits into Broadly Rising Anti-Humanism

The future of humanity is becoming ever less human. The astounding capabilities of ChatGPT and other forms of artificial intelligence have triggered fears about the coming age of machines leaving little place for human creativity or employment. Even the architects of this brave new world are sounding the alarm. Sam Altman, chairman and CEO of OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT, recently warned that artificial intelligence poses an “existential risk” to humanity and warned Congress that artificial intelligence “can go quite wrong.”  

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House Judiciary Committee Questions Zuckerberg on Potential Censorship on Threads

The House Judiciary Committee on Monday sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerburg asking questions about possible censorship occurring on Threads, Meta’s latest social media platform.

“Given that Meta has censored First Amendment-protected speech as a result of government agencies’ requests and demands in the past, the Committee is concerned about potential First Amendment violations that have occurred or will occur on the Threads platform,” Committee chairman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, wrote in the letter.

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Commentary: Don’t Believe the Leftist Media Narrative About the State of the 2024 Race

To the surprise of no one, the leftist corporate media’s coverage of the 2024 presidential race has been abysmal. Predictably, their reporting is full of omissions, half truths, and wishful thinking. Once again, they only report their preferred narratives, in a desperate attempt to persuade stupid people and gullible news outlets into believing them, including Conservative Inc.

As usual the leftist coastal elites are attempting to shape their perceptions into reality.

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Children’s Hospital Agreed to Pay Employee to Give ‘Drag Performance’ to School Kids

A Chicago children’s hospital agreed to pay one of its employees to give a drag performance at a public school event for students, according to documents obtained through a public records request by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago paid Chicago Public Schools (CPS) $500 to cover the cost of a drag performance by one of their health educators at a school resource fair, according to documents obtained by the DCNF. The funds covered a drag performance by Jose Dominguez Magdaleno at the school district’s May “Galaxy Summit.” The summit featured art, workshops and performances in an effort to create “affirming spaces to celebrate and learn about the diversity of [the] CPS community.”

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Angel Studios Celebrates ‘Over 450 New Theaters Added’ for ‘Sound of Freedom’

The platform and studio that distributes the popular crowdfunded thriller Sound of Freedom has announced that “over 450 new theaters have been added for the film’s upcoming weekend” showings despite “rumors” spread on social media that claim AMC theaters are making it difficult for fans to see the film in their local theaters.

“We understand there are rumors—predominantly in social media—that AMC theaters have made it difficult for fans to see Sound of Freedom in local AMC theaters, and we want to make it clear these rumors are not accurate,” Brandon Purdie, head of Angel Theatrical Distribution, said in a press statement Thursday. “AMC has been an outstanding partner for Angel Studios, and in fact, as a result of the movie’s performance and consumer demand, AMC has agreed to add additional screens for Sound of Freedom this weekend.”

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Minnesota Secretary of State: Election Officials Within Their Rights to Work with Big Tech to Fight ‘Outright Disinformation’

Fresh off a legislative session where Steve Simon was able to check off nearly every item on his election reform “wish list,” the recently re-elected Minnesota secretary of state took some time to speak to both national and local media about how he views the landscape of the upcoming 2024 election, and as he calls it the “democracy business.”

According to Simon, those who intend to suppress the vote with election-related “disinformation” or intimidation may be tripped up by new election-reform laws recently passed by the Democrat trifecta in the Minnesota Legislature. But he told the Washington Post in an interview this week that he doesn’t believe those new voter protections in Minnesota will necessarily deter disinformation efforts come 2024.

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Gender Clinic Doctors Use Genital Surgery Robot to Crank Out ‘High Volume’ of Sex Changes

Surgeons at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) are using a medical robot to assist with vaginoplasties, or the surgical construction of a vulva and vagina, according to various posts on the organization’s website.

OHSU’s gender program, urological program and reconstructive urology referral center all boast of a high volume of clients on their respective web pages, and Dr. Blair Peters, a surgeon leading the gender program, boasted that the gender surgery clinic had “the highest volume on the West Coast” and could operate two robot-assisted vaginoplasties daily, according to a recent report from the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. In addition to vaginoplasty, OHSU offers phalloplasty (the surgical construction of a penis), non-binary genital “nullification” surgeries and mastectomies.

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Federal Judge Denies Biden Admin’s Request to Keep Coordinating with Big Tech to Censor Americans

A federal judge denied the Biden administration’s attempt to pause an injunction that bars federal officials from communicating with social media companies for the purposes of censoring protected speech on Monday.

The Biden administration appealed Western District of Louisiana Judge Terry A. Doughty’s July 4 injunction on Wednesday, also requesting an emergency order to pause the injunction while the appeal is pending on Thursday night. Doughty denied the administration’s emergency order Monday, finding that plaintiffs would likely succeed in proving the government colluded with social media companies “to engage in viewpoint-based suppression of protected free speech.”

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Missouri U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt Calls on Biden’s Cybersecurity Chief to Resign over Censorship Campaign

Republican Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt called on a top cybersecurity official to resign Wednesday following a preliminary injunction preventing government coordination with social media platforms to censor protected speech.

Schmitt urged the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Jennifer Easterly to step down in an interview with journalist Michael Shellenberger on Wednesday. A federal judge had issued an injunction Tuesday preventing the Biden administration from coordinating with social media companies to censor content after finding that officials likely violated the First Amendment.

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Mark Levin: Target Refuses to Sell Book Critical of Democrats

Mark Levin, author and host of “Life, Liberty & Levin” on Fox News, claimed in a Wednesday tweet that Target told him it will not carry his new book because customers may be offended by the title.

Target reportedly informed Levin’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, that the retail giant will not carry his new book, “The Democrat Party Hates America,” which is set to be released on Sept. 19, because the title may offend customers, Levin said on Twitter. Target has been the center of several recent controversies that include selling LGBTQ merchandise for children during Pride Month and funding an anti-militarization group.

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Google Erodes User Privacy to ‘Train AI Models’ in Quiet Policy Update: Report

Google quietly updated its privacy policy over the long July 4 holiday weekend to expand what it can do with user data, namely improve its artificial-intelligence abilities, according to tech blog Gizmodo.

The new policy replaced the word “language” with “AI” in a section referring to the “publicly available information” that Google uses to train its “models” for the benefit of users, Gizmodo says, citing the publicly recorded change log.

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Drag Queen ‘Peaches Christ’ Blames ‘Bigoted Christians’ at Google for Tech Company’s Removal of Performance from ‘Pride’ Events

A drag queen who uses the name “Peaches Christ” lashed out against ‘bigoted Christians” in a social media post after Google removed its affiliation from his previously scheduled performance during the company’s “pride” events.

As CNBC reported, Google appeared to distance itself from its original plans to sponsor drag queen Joshua Grannell’s performance at a San Francisco LGBTQ bar as part of its “pride” month events after a petition circulating among the tech giant’s employees expressed opposition to its anti-Christian theme.

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Study Finds Use of Contraceptive Pill from Young Age Increases Risk of Depression in Women by up to 130 Percent

A study from the UK finds women who began using the combined contraceptive pill as teenagers increased their risk of depression by 130 percent, while those who began to use the contraceptive in their 20s or older showed a 92 percent increased risk of depressive symptoms.

The population-based cohort study that utilized data from more than 250,000 UK Biobank women was published in Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences and online by Cambridge University Press.

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China Implements Export Controls on Key Metals Used for Chips

by Jason Cohen   China has implemented export limits on two metals utilized in the manufacturing of computer chips and other valuable technological devices, according to an announcement by the country’s Ministry of Commerce on Monday. The export restrictions on gallium, germanium and their corresponding chemical compounds will officially take effect at the beginning of August, according to the announcement.  The controls may increase expenses for hardware producers and exacerbate geopolitical tensions surrounding the competition for groundbreaking computing technology, according to Bloomberg. In addition to computer chips, manufacturers use gallium and germanium for a vast array of devices including solar panels, lasers and night vision goggles, according to Bloomberg. China is the primary producer of these metals based on its portion of worldwide mining and exporters will require a license to export them, according to the announcement. The U.S. also relies on China for medical supply chains and the CEO of U.S. defense contractor Raytheon technologies told the Financial Times it would be impossible to break all ties with China. President Joe Biden’s administration is weighing limits on U.S. exports of artificial intelligence chips to China, The Wall Street Journal reported. Similarly, they would require exporters to have a license. This move would follow measures the Biden administration implemented in October to curb U.S. chip sales to…

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TikTok’s CCP-Linked Parent Company Is Trying to Break into a Whole New Industry

ByteDance, the CCP-linked parent company of popular shortform video platform TikTok, is trying to enter the book publishing industry, The New York Times reported Saturday.

The company filed in late April for a U.S. trademark for a publishing firm, 8th Note Press, and has already begun reaching out to some independent authors for the rights to sell their books, the NYT reported. TikTok has helped some books become bestsellers in the past several years, posts using the #Booktok hashtag have been viewed more than 91 billion times and the combined sales of 100 authors with large BookTok followings eclipsed $760 million in 2022, a 60% surge from the year prior.

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Tucker Carlson Mocks Rachel ‘Rick’ Levine in Latest ‘Tucker on Twitter’ Monologue

In the eighth episode of his newest production, “Tucker on Twitter,” former Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson took aim at Admiral Rachel L. Levine, who currently serves as the 17th Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

During his five-minute monologue released Friday afternoon, Carlson mocked Levine, who identifies as a woman, and asserted Levine’s “personal journey” is about becoming more powerful instead of empowering others.

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Commentary: Mainstream Media Has Convinced Even Republicans to Believe Hunter’s Business Is No Big Deal

After reading my commentary about my self-inflicted ordeal of listening to NPR for a month, a friend noted this station’s “reports” bear no resemblance to “objective reality.” Can so many Americans, asked my correspondent, believe that the U.S. is full of oppressed transgendered who must take up arms to protect themselves against “anti-trans rhetoric?” Do NPR listeners really think American blacks are suffering from “systemic white racism,” and that only increased government control can protect them from being shot on the streets by white racists?

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Pornhub Blocks Its Access in Virginia Due to State’s New Age Verification Law

Pornhub, the adult-content website, has blocked users from the state of Virginia due to its new age verification law that will take effect July 1. 

The law, titled SB 1515 and proposed by Republican state Sen. William M. Stanley Jr., will require sites with pornographic content to verify users in Virginia are at least 18 years old before they allow them to view the content on the website.

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YouTube Repeatedly Censors RFK Jr. as Democratic Leaders Demand Reinstatement of 2020 Censorship

The disputed 2020 election now appears in the rearview mirror for YouTube, which is now determining what users can see relevant to the next election.

The Alphabet-owned, video-sharing site and Google sibling has censored at least two videos, and may be throttling a third, featuring Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shortly after ending a two-and-a-half-year ban on questioning the “integrity” of the last presidential election, saying it accomplished little relative to the potential harm it caused.

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Study Finds Abortion in First Pregnancy Linked to Increased Risk of Later Mental Health Problems

While a common abortion industry narrative claims restrictions on abortion cause mental health harms to women, a new study has found that abortion during a first pregnancy is associated with a greater incidence of mental health problems after the procedure than giving birth.

The study, conducted by Dr. James Studnicki, vice president and director of data analytics at the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI), and his colleagues, was published at the International Journal of Women’s Health.

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Commentary: Ohio Constitutional Amendment Would Abolish Parental Consent

Broad, sweeping language can easily mislead those caught up in its charm, especially in discussions about abortion “rights.” A deceptively worded constitutional amendment that pretends to protect the “right” to abortion in the Buckeye State would, in fact, abolish the need for parental consent laws for abortion, should it be placed on the ballot this fall and approved by voters.

Abortion activists are proposing an extreme amendment to the Ohio constitution that would go as far as denying loving parents the ability to consult with their own daughters about their abortion decision. Such a dangerous change to the 172-year-old constitution would do nothing but threaten young women for years to come.

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Google Backs Down from Pride’ Drag Show After Employees Claim Discrimination Against Christians

Tech giant Google has reportedly distanced itself from a ‘pride month’ drag performance it had planned to sponsor in San Francisco after several hundred employees signed a petition expressing opposition to the event, arguing it discriminates against the Christian faith.

According to a report Tuesday at CNBC, a drag queen known as “Peaches Christ” was scheduled to perform at Beaux, an LGBTQ bar in San Francisco, at a “pride” event sponsored by Google.

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Homeland Agency Expanded Authority to Wage ‘Domestic Surveillance and Censorship,’ House Report Says

Secret documents obtained by the House Judiciary Committee show that a Department of Homeland Security agency “expanded its mission to surveil Americans’ speech on social media, colluded with Big Tech and government-funded third parties to censor by proxy, and tried to hide its plainly unconstitutional activities from the public,” according to an interim staff report released Monday night.

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Former U.S. Attorney Braden Boucek: Leak of Audio Recording Used as Evidence in Trump Indictment Creates Potential Problems for DOJ Prosecution

Former U.S. Assistant Attorney and current Director of Litigation for the Southeastern Legal Foundation Braden Boucek joined The Tennessee Star Report’s Michael Patrick Leahy in studio Tuesday to discuss the how the widely-broadcast recording of former President Donald Trump made it’s way from Mar-a-Lago into the hands of the Department of Justice and then CNN.

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Endocrinologist Warns America on Wrong Track with Pushing Transgender Lifestyle on Children

Endocrinologist Dr. Roy Eappen warns that while other nations have already urged caution in the use of transgender hormone drugs for children and teens, America is “standing still, or, perhaps, going backward.”

In a recent op-ed at the Daily Herald in Chicago, the senior fellow at Do No Harm, an organization of physicians, other healthcare professionals, and policymakers seeking to “protect patients, physicians, and healthcare itself from radical, divisive ideology,” urged Americans to be aware that “European countries are rapidly pulling back” from transgender drug treatments, “based on growing evidence that children are suffering.”

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UN Takes Cues from Organizations That Seek to Censor Conservatives

by James Cohen   A United Nations (U.N.) policy proposal that outlines how to combat online “mis- and disinformation and hate speech,” including through demonetization, is informed by work from groups that actively push to censor conservative speech online. The policy brief, titled “Information Integrity on Digital Platforms,” is intended to help develop an online “code of conduct” that the U.N. plans to unveil during its Summit of the Future in 2024, calls for demonetization and suppressing the spread of what it considers “mis- and disinformation and hate speech.” As examples of effective strategies, the policy proposal routinely cites organizations that have explicitly worked to censor conservatives or have advocated for the censoring of conservative viewpoints.  “The American public should be skeptical of any attempt by the U.N. to monitor, regulate, or control speech,” Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the Public’s Trust, a government watchdog that among other things monitors state-directed censorship efforts, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “It is not surprising that the organization that elevates the likes of Iran, North Korea, China, and other oppressive regimes would reference or partner with entities that participate in efforts to suppress speech that does not fit approved narratives.” The global organization’s brief…

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Tucker Carlson Discusses RFK Jr’s Campaign in Episode Six of ‘Tucker on Twitter’

In the sixth episode of his newest production, “Tucker on Twitter,” former Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson discussed his thoughts on why the media “hates” Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Jr.

During his 18-minute monologue released Thursday afternoon, Carlson said “there’s never been a candidate for president the media hated more than [RFK] Jr,” adding that even former President Donald Trump got a “gentle scalp massage” in regards to media coverage when compared to what RFJ Jr. has been receiving ever since he announced his candidacy.

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BlackRock Recruiter Says $10k ‘Can Buy a Senator,’ Calls Ukraine War ‘Good for Business’: Video

A recruiter for BlackRock said that the asset management firm is able to “buy a senator” for $10,000 and that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is “good for business,” according to a video recorded by an undercover journalist.

“You could buy your candidates. First, there is the senators. These guys are f***ing cheap. Got 10 grand? You can buy a senator. I’ll give you 500k right now. It doesn’t matter who wins, they’re in my pocket,” BlackRock Recruiter Serge Varlay said in a video published Tuesday by the O’Keefe Media Group, which was founded by guerilla journalist James O’Keefe.

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Mayo Clinic Professor Michael Joyner Suspended after Saying Testosterone Improves Athletic Performance

A Mayo Clinic College of Medicine professor was recently suspended — and remains under the threat of termination — after he told a news outlet his stance on trans-athletes in women’s sports and plasma treatments for COVID-19.

Administrators suspended Professor Michael Joyner without pay for a week, citing his “use of idiomatic language” and comments he made in a June 2022 New York Times article as justification for the disciplinary actions, according to a March 5 disciplinary letter that recently came to light.

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Commentary: Recent Headlines Claiming Sucralose ‘Damages DNA’ Are Scary, But What Does the Study Really Say?

When I went back to the U.S. for the first time in several years last year, I made an incredible discovery. It’s called Sparkling Ice and is sold separately or in 12-packs of 17 ounces (curious size) and has a ton of flavors that mostly taste alike but taste very good. Sparkling ice contains the artificial sweetener sucralose and is also lightly carbonated (low carbon footprint!) so that I didn’t drink it like water; I essentially drank it instead of water.

But lo! Newsweek headline: “America’s Most Popular Artificial Sweetener Damages Our DNA, Scientists Say.” You know, like atomic bomb victims. The alleged result is a leaky gut, and you don’t have to know exactly what that means to know it’s probably not good. Except it may not even be real; but we’ll get to that.

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Asa Hutchinson: GOP Should ‘Back Off’ Accusations of DOJ ‘Weaponization’

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is running in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, said Republicans should “back off” of “accusations” of the “weaponization of the Justice Department.”

Hutchinson told ABC on Sunday that while he disagrees with some of the DOJ’s decisions, he believes Republicans are incorrect to label the department’s indictment of former president Donald Trump as “weaponization.”

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Study Finding Facebook Does Not Censor Conservatives Is ‘Deeply Flawed,’ ‘Laughable,’ Experts Say

Media Matters for America published a study recently concluding that Facebook does not censor conservatives, but experts told the DCNF the study is not credible because it did not properly measure the suppression of right-leaning pages.

Right-leaning Facebook pages typically got more total interactions than politically nonaligned and left-leaning pages on Facebook, according to the study. However, experts say this does not mean that there was no censorship of right-leaning Facebook pages, as the only example of suppression the Media Matters study cites is Donald Trump’s Facebook ban.

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Meta Scraps Censorship Policies for COVID ‘Misinformation’

Facebook parent company Meta is officially terminating its COVID-19 censorship policies in the U.S., the tech giant told The Washington Post.

Meta has repeatedly tamped down on COVID-19 “misinformation” in the U.S. and even faced pressure from the White House to engage in content suppression. Although the tech giant is done moderating this content in the U.S., it will continue restricting content “in countries that have a Covid-19 public health emergency declaration” due to “the risk of imminent physical harm,” Meta told the Post.

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Today’s Youth List TikTok, Instagram Influencers as Most Trusted Sources of News

A new report reveals that the youngest generations of today are more likely to trust news they receive from social media influencers rather than from actual news outlets and reporters.

As Fox News reports, the study was conducted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism out of the University of Oxford. The survey found that 55 percent of TikTok users get their news from “personalities” on the platform, with another 52 percent of respondents saying the same thing for Instagram influencers.

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