Free Republic

once-robust alliance of federal agencies, tech companies, election officials and researchers that worked together to thwart foreign propaganda and disinformation has fragmented after years of sustained Republican attacks. The GOP offensive started during the 2020 election as public critiques and has since escalated into lawsuits, governmental inquiries and public relations campaigns that have succeeded in stopping almost all coordination between the government and social media platforms.

An alleged campaign finance violation could ensnare Secretary of State Antony Blinken and 51 former senior intelligence officials who asserted without evidence in 2020 that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. America First Legal, a conservative organization run by former Donald Trump White House aide Stephen Miller, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission in late October, alleging a "coordinated communication" and an unreported in-kind contribution to the Joe Biden presidential campaign and related entities, in violation of federal law. "[The] evidence suggests that the respondents failed to disclose coordinated expenditures constituting in-kind donations with respect to the...

Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Brendan Carr is calling the Biden administration's "digital equity" plan for all internet services and infrastructure an "unlawful power grab." Biden’s plan hands the Administrative State effective control of all Internet services and infrastructure in the country. Never before, in the roughly 40-year history of the public Internet, has the FCC (or any federal agency for that matter) claimed this degree of control over it. Indeed, Biden’s plan calls for the FCC to apply a far-reaching set of government controls that the agency has not applied to any technology in the modern era, including Title II...

New emails show officials at the Department of Homeland Security created a Stanford University “disinformation” group that censored Americans’ speech before the 2020 election, according to a House Judiciary Committee report exclusively obtained by The Post.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing Donald Trump’s election interference case, threw the former president a lifeline during a late Sunday filing. Newsweek reported that Chutkan turned away a request from the Department of Justice to put Trump in jail for violating a gag order she re-imposed on him. In a footnote reinstating the gag order, the judge denied federal prosecutors’ request to incorporate her order into the conditions of Trump’s release. “Even assuming that request is procedurally proper, the court concludes that granting it is not necessary to effectively enforce the order at this time,” she wrote....

Nearly 5,000 people sent in an SMS "voting" for Hillary Clinton after a man the US Office of Public Affairs characterized as a "social media influencer" promoted it as an option. According to the Department of Justice (DoJ), Douglass Mackey, who is also known as Ricky Vaughn, was this week sentenced to seven months in prison and handed a $15,000 fine for trying to trick voters into believing they could vote by text message. The Florida man (no, not that one) had faced up to 10 years for his scheme to deprive American citizens of their constitutional right to vote....

What is “collegiality,” and what do universities need to do to establish it? Radical academics and administrators in higher education are now using “lack of collegiality” as a pretext to abrogate academic freedom or fire professors, regardless of tenure. The latest examples include Matthew Garrett at Bakersfield College, Scott Gerber at Ohio Northern University, Stephen Porter at North Carolina State University, and Amy Wax at the University of Pennsylvania. National Association of Scholars president Peter Wood writes that, in each of these four cases, “the university tried (sometimes successfully) to rid itself of a faculty member not for any academic...

Brussels, Oct 11--The EU's digital chief Thierry Breton warned Elon Musk on Tuesday that his platform X, formerly Twitter, is spreading "illegal content and disinformation", in a letter seen by AFP. The letter said concerns had heightened after the Hamas attack against Israel, and demanded Musk respond to the complaint within 24 hours and contact "relevant law enforcement authorities." As the European Union's commissioner for industry and the digital economy, Breton is charged with regulating internet giants that trade within the bloc and can launch legal action. "Following the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas against Israel, we have indications...

I find the left to be just annoying,” Carville told Maher. “The western far left is habitually the most stupid, naive people you can imagine. They come up with these really goofy constructs and it’s all about feeling good about yourself.” Maher agreed and criticized progressives for demanding society cater to their feelings. “If your feelings are hurt, that’s more important than free speech,” he argued. Carville revisited his criticisms of progressive Democrats later in the program, arguing they were a burden to the party.Carville said he found them “annoying and silly” after Maher mocked the notion of “pregnant men.”

University Middle East expert Hussein Mousavian was a former Iranian official A former Iranian official who is a faculty member at Princeton University recently bragged in an interview about how his hardline government’s death threats against a former top Trump administration official had him and his family "trembling" with fear. Hussein Mousavian, a former member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team who works as a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University, said in a recent interview that the Iranian regime’s threats to murder Brian Hook, the Trump administration’s special envoy for Iran, have heavily impacted Hook’s family...

This is a way underreported story. It was Antony Blinken, the limp wristed Secretary of State who bends over for all US adversaries while calling it a success, who reached out to ex-CIA Director Mike Morrell to cobble together a group of "intelligence experts" who would sign a false statement calling the Hunter Biden laptop "Russian disinformation" so Biden could use it a hammer to pound Donald Trump in their debate. Morrell was eager to help. After all, he was motivated to do so. Financially motivated. In 2017 the thinktank Atlantic Council signed an agreement with Burisma despite knowing it...

Rapper Ice Cube discussed the dangers of “cancel culture” and declared that now is the time to fight for freedom of speech during an interview with Piers Morgan on his “Uncensored” show. “People are very polarized in all kinds of ways. People are afraid to speak out because of the cancer culture — cancel; I said cancer — cancel culture that we have today,” Ice Cube said. “So I just think, you know, people are afraid, and they’re running to their corners,” he said “In a way, it is a cancer, cancel culture,” Morgan said. “It behaves like that.” “It...

This is a huge victory for free speech, though it must be kept in mind that the injunction issued by US District Court Judge Terry A. Doughty is a preliminary injunction that almost certainly will be appealed and will take a long time to be finally decided, perhaps by the Supreme Court eventually. I expect there will be fierce attacks on the ruling, and on Judge Doughty, who is a Trump appointee (thank-you, Mitch McConnell). Judge Doughty’s nomination was confirmed by a vote of 98 – 0 on March 1, 2018. The ruling by Judge Doughty is 135 pages long,...

Demonstrators threw flares at attendees trying to enter the building and lit an incendiary device outside of the venue.Violent protest against Michael Knowles and Brad Polumbo shuts down streets in Pittsburgh.Violent protests erupted in the heart of Western Pennsylvania on Tuesday evening as student activists attempted to shut down a debate at the University of Pittsburgh between political commentators Michael Knowles and Brad Polumbo concerning transgender rights.The event was hosted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and the Pitt College Republicans.Campus Reform has covered the turmoil connected to other conservative speakers at the university, including Cabot Phillips and Riley Gaines, but...

Two Antifa militants have been indicted by a federal grand jury in Pennsylvania on charges of conspiracy and obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder. Brian DiPippa, 36, and his 40-year-old wife, Krystal, allegedly carried out an explosive attack outside an event featuring the Daily Wire's Michael Knowles at the University of Pittsburgh in April. "Brian DiPippa ignited and dropped two homemade smoke bomb containers in and around a line of persons waiting to enter the O’Hara Student Center," the indictment states. It goes on to note that when Pitt Police officers tried to prevent protestors from entering the building...

House Oversight Committee Republicans are kicking off an investigation into what they they called a “taxpayer-funded censorship campaign” at the Department of Homeland Security. Since 2020, the federal agency has been under fire for working with big tech companies to censor certain viewpoints mainly related to election integrity. The GOP launched its investigation after Monday's report by The Intercept dove into how the Feds had begun pressuring tech companies on a range of issues, including COVID-19, the vaccine for it, and Ukraine. The Center Square obtained a letter from the group, led by ranking member Rep. James Comer, R-Ky. The...

Senior EU officials were furious on Friday after Twitter owner Elon Musk pulled the platform out of the bloc’s online censorship project. Elon Musk has pulled Twitter out of the EU’s “Code of Practice”, a pro-censorship project aimed at countering so-called “disinformation” online, prompting fury from those in Brussels. It comes after months of mixed messages from the billionaire, who had publicly stated that he wanted to support free speech on the platform while repeatedly insisting that he would support the European Union in its pro-censorship crusade. According to a report by POLITICO, it appears that the Big Tech entrepreneur...

...Across the tech industry...wide swaths of people tasked with protecting the internet's most-populous playgrounds are being shown the exits. The cuts come at a time of increased cyberbullying...and as the spread of misinformation and violent content collides with the exploding use of artificial intelligence....Twitter effectively disbanded its ethical AI team in November and laid off all but one of its members, along with 15% of its trust and safety department, according to reports. In February, Google cut about one-third of a unit that aims to protect society from misinformation, radicalization, toxicity and censorship. Meta reportedly ended the contracts of about...

Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration has warned Big Tech companies that they will be held “accountable” unless they enforce “zero-tolerance” policies regarding so-called “hate speech” on their platforms. The White House unveiled a strategy to “fight antisemitism” that involves cracking down on Americans’ online speech. The plan tells Congress to push social media platforms to be held “accountable” for “hate speech.” The 60-page document details four pillars of the strategy. According to the Biden admin, the plan involves raising awareness, improving safety for Jewish communities, reversing what they call the normalization of antisemitism, and countering antisemitic discrimination and hate speech....

The Democrat-controlled Senate proposed a new bill to censor and police Americans’ First Amendment rights. Brought forth by Democrat Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO), the “Digital Platform Commission Act (DPCA)” would flag misinformation and hate speech on the internet. The bill creates a federal agency to do nothing but the mandate and enforce guardrails against people who spread so-called “misinformation,” giving out consequences for information Democrats deem wrong. The bill would violate the American Constitution. “It’s past time for a thoughtful and comprehensive approach to regulating digital platforms that have amassed extraordinary power over our economy, society, and democracy,” Bennet said....