Free Republic

In a bombshell ruling, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has shut down the “nerve center” of federal government-led speech policing, correcting a critical error in its prior jurisprudence and striking a major blow for the First Amendment and against deep-state election interference. The court’s opinion comes in the landmark free speech case in the digital era, Missouri v. Biden. Before the litigation landed in appellate court, Louisiana District Judge Terry A. Doughty declared in a fitting Independence Day ruling that federal authorities from the Biden White House to the FBI and CDC had likely engaged in “the most...

Free speech is on trial at the Supreme Court, but Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson is no fan of the First Amendment. The Constitution, you see, limits the government. But leftists want unlimited government — which is why they hate the Constitution. During Monday’s oral arguments for Murthy v. Missouri, formerly known as Biden v. Missouri, Jackson claimed to oppose any ruling in favor of Americans’ constitutional right to free speech if it limited the government’s ability to censor that speech via Big Tech. “My biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways...

The keynote speaker of the World Economic Forum’s 2024 annual conference in Davos was Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission President. She stated the top global risk for the EU is disinformation and misinformation, declaring disinformation destroys trust and limits the ability to “tackle the big global challenges.” In plain English, trust can only be restored by censoring inconvenient facts and evidence. Below is a short clip (1:39) highlighting her disinformation sermon. The top risk in the WEF’s 2024 Global Risk Report is disinformation. If not controlled, societies will be polarized, elections will be disrupted, and there will be mistrust...

'To our clients' horror, each was told by armed guards to take off their religious apparel or leave'... It's a victory for students who were ejected by the National Archives and Records Administration from a Washington, D.C., museum for wearing T-shirts with pro-life messages. A report from the American Center for Law and Justice confirms the organization was assured such a situation would not be allowed to develop again. The ACLJ reported, "As we told you, at the start of mediation, our clients’ objective was to find out who was responsible for the targeting, how and why it happened, and...

Susan Rice's bizarre Inauguration Day email about that meeting helps explain the campaign of leaks, lies, and obstruction that followed. Information released in the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the case it brought against Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn confirms the significance of a January 5, 2017, meeting at the Obama White House. It was at this meeting that Obama gave guidance to key officials who would be tasked with protecting his administration’s utilization of secretly funded Clinton campaign research, which alleged Trump was involved in a treasonous plot to collude with Russia, from being discovered or stopped by the incoming...

Author and journalist Michael Shellenberger has said that “U.S. and U.K. military contractors” have used “sophisticated psychological operations and disinformation tactics… against the American people” in sworn testimony in the U.S. House of Representatives. In a hearing of the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government chaired by Jim Jordan (R-OH) on suppression of free speech by the government, Shellenberger presented the information he received from a whistleblower about the origins of the so-called “Censorship Industrial complex.” Shellenberger, one of the “Twitter Files” authors, coined the phrase “Censorship Industrial Complex” to describe the network of government and private entities...

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.

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...

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....

The State Department is steering over $37,000 to a Bolivian nonprofit group to launch a "campaign against disinformation" training program for journalists in the South American country, funding documents show. Thwarting alleged "disinformation" has remained a top priority of the Biden administration, which has come under fire from Republicans for bankrolling left-leaning entities taking aim at conservative websites over their advertising revenue. President Joe Biden's State Department is now in the process of granting taxpayer dollars until April 2024 to Fundacion para el Periodismo, which translates to Foundation for Journalism, so the Bolivian entity can create a "network of 150...

The new Foreign Malign Influence Center oversees efforts that span U.S. military, law enforcement, intelligence, and diplomatic agencies. WITHIN THE FEDERAL government, offices dedicated to fighting foreign disinformation are springing up like daisies, from the Pentagon’s new Influence and Perception Management Office to at least four organizations inside the Department of Homeland Security alone, as well as ones inside the FBI and State Department. To oversee the growing efforts — which arose in response to concerns about the impact of Russian meddling in the 2016 election but have now expanded — the director of national intelligence has created a new...

… He still hasn’t identified the source code, the proverbial ghost in the machine, buried deep in the algorithmic code; however, Twitter owner Elon Musk has finally identified the agency within the U.S. government who spearheaded the creation. The “Global Engagement Center” (GEC) of the State Dept. The GEC mission is described as, “To direct, lead, synchronize, integrate, and coordinate U.S. Federal Government efforts to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States, its allies, and partner nations,” (link). However, when...

Below is my column in the Hill on the first hearings this week to be held by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. It could be one of the most consequential investigations for free speech in decades if it pulls back the curtain on government censorship programs. After the historic release of the Twitter Files by Elon Musk, questions remain on any similar coordination with other social media companies with federal agencies like the FBI to target views considered “disinformation” or “misinformation.” Here is the column: This coming week a new House select subcommittee will hold...

Tucker Carlson revealed on Monday night that his Fox News show obtained subpoenas that were sent from Biden's Department of Justice to Trump allies and supporters, seeking personal communications. (snip) "The subpoena," Carlson said, "claims to be investigating 'any claim that the Vice President and/or the President of the Senate had the authority to rehect or choose not to count presidential electors.'""Now keep in mind," Carlson said, "that any claim you make, as an American citizen, about electors, any claim you make about American politics period, is protected explicitly under the first amendment.

The man accused of stabbing author Salman Rushdie held a fake driver's license bearing the surname of an infamous Hezbollah commander, it has been claimed. That driver's license, which was was found on 24-year-old Hadi Mater bore the name Hassan Mughniyah. Both the first and second names are linked to infamous terrorist organization Hezbollah. The group's current leader is named Hassan Nasrallah. While one of the group's most notorious figures was Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed in a CIA-linked assassination in Syria in 2008. NBC New York reports that Mater's social media accounts showed that he was sympathetic to Shia...

(CP) Finnish lawmaker Päivi Räsänen, prosecuted for voicing her traditional Christian beliefs about marriage and sexuality, believes that a "heavy hatred for Christian values" in Western society will cause many Christians to censor themselves for social acceptance. The former interior minister who has served in Finnish Parliament for nearly three decades was one of several global political figures to speak at the annual International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington, D.C., this week. The event aims to increase "the public awareness and political strength for the international religious freedom movement. The summit is led by former Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom...

Energy Sec. Jennifer Granholm indicated that President Biden has considered using the Defense Production Act to help mitigate the record-high gas prices, but stressed that it is just "one" of the tools at the president’s disposal. "President Biden, like all other leaders around the world, are grappling with this for their citizens," Granholm said Wednesday at a White House press briefing. "And the president is doing everything he can to reduce prices for American families." The price for gas nationwide has exceeded $5 a gallon for the first time since AAA started recording prices in 2000. The average price jumped...