Free Republic

Governor Ron DeSantis’ campaign team released a wild culture war ad on Friday taking aim at former President Trump as Pride Month ends, using clips from “American Psycho” and “The Wolf of Wall Street” to hammer home the Florida firebrand’s leadership on issues. “To wrap up ‘Pride Month,’ let’s hear from the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate it…” the DeSantis War Room tweeted with a compilation of clips showing Trump’s ties to the LGBTQ and transgender community. The video begins with a 2016 clip of Trump telling the Republican National Convention, “I will do everything...

UBJECT: I’m DESPERATE, Mom Mom, did you see this?!? FIRST: I got a $300 traffic ticket because I forgot about alternate side parking. THEN: I saw this really cute shirt and it was $95, but that’s actually a good deal because I’m definitely going to wear it a lot.

Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Facebook, saying the company has “repeatedly and openly” violated state campaign transparency laws by selling political ads without providing legally required details of the spending. The lawsuit, filed in King County Superior Court, is the second such case against the online social media giant by Ferguson’s office. A similar lawsuit in 2018 resulted in Facebook paying $238,000 to the state in penalties and legal costs. The new lawsuit comes after the state Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) in February rejected a proposed $75,000 settlement to address continuing violations, and referred...

No media or Nancy Pelosi false narratives or phony Joe Biden campaign ad can change the truth about the real chronology of the coronavirus. The leftist national media incessantly reports that the spread of the coronavirus is, well, President Trump’s fault. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, always good for the most incendiary and least helpful comments in any difficult situation, said on Sunday, “[T]he president — his denial at the beginning was deadly.” Then in Joe Biden’s latest effort to be relevant, his campaign has released an ad attacking President Trump for not being sufficiently responsive to the threats of the...

Facebook says it will continue to allow political ads that target the social media platform's users, sticking to its position despite concerns about the potential impact on the upcoming presidential election. Federal Election Commissioner Ellen Weintraub sharply criticized the policy, saying Facebook's "weak plan suggests the company has no idea how seriously it is hurting democracy." Facebook's policy falls short of measures recently taken by other tech giants. Google says it will limit the ability of political ads to target an audience, and Twitter has banned political ads entirely. Taking aim at Facebook's policy in a series of tweets Thursday...

SAN FRANCISCO — Since the 2016 election, when Russian trolls and a tsunami of misinformation turned social media into a partisan battlefield, Facebook has wrestled with the role it played in President Donald Trump’s victory. Now, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times, a longtime Facebook executive told employees that the company had a moral duty not to tilt the scales against Trump as he seeks reelection. On Dec. 30, Andrew Bosworth, head of Facebook’s virtual and augmented reality division, wrote on his internal Facebook page that, as a liberal, he found himself wanting to use the...

Michael R. Bloomberg is trying — his way — spending millions each week in an online advertising onslaught that is guided by polling and data that he and his advisers believe provide unique insight into the president’s vulnerabilities. The effort, which is targeting seven battleground states where polls show Mr. Trump is likely to be competitive in November, is just one piece of an advertising campaign that is unrivaled in scope and scale. On Facebook and Google alone, where Mr. Bloomberg is most focused on attacking the president, he has spent $18 million on ads over the last month, according...

Thousands of UK political ads went missing from Facebook’s searchable advertising database on Tuesday, hampering researchers’ ability to track political ads two days before Britain’s general election. Facebook’s ad library, which it launched in the UK in 2018, is a public tool for users to track political advertising on the platform. The problem, first reported by Sky News, affected ads from the ruling Conservative Party, the Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats. It was not immediately clear if any Labor Party ads were affected. Facebook declined to answer what caused the issue or when it would be resolved. …

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey recently announced that the social media platform will no longer run political advertisements of any kind. Twitter is a private company and is free to adopt whatever policies it wants, but this decision is not the win for civil discourse and our “democratic infrastructure” that Dorsey claims it is. Defending his decision, Dorsey drew a Manichean dichotomy between meritoriously “earned” media and misleading paid content. That dichotomy is shallow and misleading. While he is right that, absent paid political advertising, “a political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet,” Dorsey does...

President Trump's 2020 reelection campaign slammed Twitter on Wednesday over the company's decision to stop running political ads on its platform. “Twitter just walked away from hundreds of millions of dollars of potential revenue, a very dumb decision for their stockholders," Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement. "Will Twitter also be stopping ads from biased liberal media outlets who will now run unchecked as they buy obvious political content meant to attack Republicans?" he added. The Trump campaign accused the social media platform of "yet another attempt to silence conservatives, since Twitter knows President Trump has the...

Hillary Clinton doubled down on her earlier criticism of Facebook on Wednesday after rival social media giant Twitter announced that it would ban paid political advertising from its platform. In a tweet Wednesday afternoon, Clinton appeared to dare Facebook executives to follow suit after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced the changes to Twitter's platform minutes earlier. "This is the right thing to do for democracy in America and all over the world," she tweeted. "What say you, @Facebook?" SNIP

Twitter is banning all political ads globally, starting November 22nd, according to tweets by the company’s CEO Jack Dorsey on Wednesday. The changes will affect both candidate ads and issue ads, although ads encouraging voter registration will still be allowed, along with other exceptions. Dorsey said a full policy will be made available to the public on November 15th. “Some might argue our actions today could favor incumbents,” Dorsey said. “But we have witnessed many social movements reach massive scale without any political advertising.” SNIP

Elections come and go, but the season for political advertising sometimes seems to never end. Facebook users in California, for example, may have noticed ads in recent months showing a woman with duct tape over her mouth and text that warns: “Legislators are leaving sexual assault survivors from public universities out to dry.” The ads urge readers to sign a petition seeking to add public universities to legislation that would give students at private universities more time to sue their schools over sexual assaults. […] Now, California legislators are considering a proposal by Assemblyman Kevin Mullin that would require groups...

Internet giants are pushing back against tougher election advertising regulations, asking the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to allow for some flexibility in how they disclose funding sources for political ads. In a filing submitted Tuesday, the Internet Association (IA), a trade group representing the biggest web-based technology companies, said that the same disclosure requirements imposed on television and radio ads don’t work well for the internet. “IA’s recommended approach is to allow for more flexibility given the variety of ways that internet content is consumed and to preserve the ability of the IA’s members to innovate and to allow users...

You tube video supporting pro life in West Virginia

Legislation floated by two Democratic senators would enhance transparency for online political ads, requiring social media companies like Facebook and Twitter to keep a public file of them. […] In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, the two (Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota) say the legislation would also require companies to “make reasonable efforts” to ensure that election ads are not purchased directly or indirectly by foreign nationals. …

Donald Trump’s campaign released a new television ad on Friday titled, “Donald Trump’s Argument for America.” The two-minute ad will run on prime time national news and entertainment channels, including NFL, NASCAR, and NCAA programs. It’s a $4 million ad purchase aimed at major markets in key battleground states including: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, North Carolina ,and New Mexico, according to the Trump campaign press release. “This is Mr. Trump’s positive closing message to American voters, and it comes at a time when Secretary Clinton has abandoned any positive message of her own. We believe voters...

Trump has three advantages that are just kicking in that each could give Trump a lasting bump that can put him over the top. If they all materialize, it is hard to see how Trump loses. (1) King NeverTrump Surrenders Ted Cruz endorsed Trump when the race was already tied. Cruz had a hardcore following around the country, and his steadfast opposition no doubt persuaded some of his supporters to also withhold support. It will not persuade the establishment holdouts to change their minds, but they really just don't seem to matter much this time around.  Hillary has already consolidated...

Donald Trump's unconventional campaign is about to feel the heat of political organization. Hillary Clinton and her Democratic allies have invested at least $41 million in commercials in crucial states such as Ohio, Florida and Nevada over the next six weeks, a series of summer broadsides against her Republican opponent. Those messages will be echoed by hundreds of Clinton workers in those same states and amplified by President Barack Obama and other top Democrats. Trump has made few preparations for contending with that sort of well-oiled political machine. His campaign has no advertising plans and is just now hiring employees...

I know, I know… you’d be shocked beyond belief if I told you that a trusted and esteemed government organization like the Environment Protection Agency was in the news for having done something bad. But amazing as the news may be, the New York Times is reporting that a government audit found the EPA may have broken the law with their endless politicking in support of the administration’s changes to the clean water rules. And this isn’t a minor charge, either. The Environmental Protection Agency engaged in "covert propaganda" and violated federal law when it blitzed social media to...