Free Republic

On Monday, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters that federal agencies such as the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) restarted discussions with Big Tech platforms. According to NextGov/FCW, this coordination will focus on “removing disinformation on their sites as the November presidential election nears.” Warner claimed these talks resumed in March, around the same time oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri — which centers on the feds’ censorship efforts — were heard before the U.S. Supreme Court. When pressed on the validity of Warner’s remarks, an FBI representative confirmed to...

Misinformation professor who alerted Twitter to "conspiracy theory," that vaccines mandates were coming, coauthors papers with CDC scientists for publisher caught hiding Wuhan funder's conflict of interest. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention repeatedly warned the public to reject purported misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines even after contradicting its then-director's certainty that the rushed-through therapeutics stop infection and transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Rochelle Walensky kept promoting the claim, which she knew was false just a month after emergency use authorization, as late as April 2023, several months after former White House COVID adviser Deborah Birx said she "knew" the vaccines...

A government-funded database, led by the University of Maryland and ostensibly established to track “radicalization,” is targeting a major pro-life group as “terrorists.” Students for Life of America (SFLA), which has 1,400 chapters at campuses across the country, “appears under a ‘Terrorist Group’ label in the raw dataset,” according to a Monday article in The College Fix. The database, called the “Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States” (PIRUS), was funded in part by grants from the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security’s Center for the Study of Terrorism and Behavior (CSTAB). According to the project’s...

The United States' top intelligence agency wants to ban its spies from using "biased language," including the terms "radical Islamists" and "jihadist," saying these words "are hurtful to Muslim-Americans and detrimentally impact our efforts as they bolster extremist rhetoric," according to a language guide published internally. FreeBeacon The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which is responsible for handling the country's spy apparatus, seeks to ban a range of common terms because it says they offend Muslims and foment racism against employees. In addition to terms describing Islamic terrorists, ODNI instructs employees to avoid phrases such as "blacklisted,"...

In the wake of the riot on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021, a groundswell built in Washington to rein in the onslaught of lies that had fueled the assault on the peaceful transfer of power. Social media companies suspended Donald Trump, then the president, and many of his allies from the platforms they had used to spread misinformation about his defeat and whip up the attempt to overturn it. President Joe Biden’s administration, Democrats in Congress and even some Republicans sought to do more to hold the companies accountable. Academic researchers wrestled with how to strengthen efforts to monitor...

the appeals panel agreed that several federal offices and agencies, including the White House .. violated the First Amendment by coercing the platforms’ content moderation decisions. ... A federal appeals court ... finding that several agencies likely violated the First Amendment. ... The original case was brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, who alleged that federal officials unduly pressured social media firms to limit speech on their platforms, as they communicated concerns about posts related to the Covid pandemic or elections. ... The decision had an immediate impact. Following the district court’s order in July, the State...

The Department of Homeland Security has guided over 130,000 illegal immigrants from gang-ravaged Haiti into dozens of unidentified American cities, but it won’t say where. Many of the 133,000 arrived in just one city that the Biden administration won’t identify, according to a federal report reviewed by the Center for Immigration Studies. The Washington-based CIS, which backs ending illegal immigration, said that many immigrants flew themselves to the unidentified cities, while others arrived through land ports only to be released to wherever they wanted to go. The report followed on another from a week ago that revealed how the administration...

Two extremist groups financed by billionaire George Soros have been named in the emerging scandal involving federal law enforcement colluding with financial institutions to spy on Americans’ private transactions. Part of this Orwellian collusion involved federal law enforcement circulating documents to private financial institutions to jawbone them into giving up sensitive customer data, without them necessarily having to be suspected of committing any crimes. One of the scariest examples involved federal law enforcement passing around a 2020 “hate groups” blacklist to financial institutions that included “conservative” and faith-based organizations, according to The Washington Times. The circulated list was drafted in...

Dominion Voting Systems is entitled to review personal communications and text messages of Newsmax Media journalists in its defamation suit against the conservative media company, a Delaware judge ruled last week.

DHS Media Literacy Has Little To Do With Media or Literacy. It is a K-12 Surveillance Program With The Goal Of Training Teachers and Students to Identify and Report On Alleged “Disinformation” and Alleged “Violent Extremism”.

President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is drafting plans that would include a “mass release” of illegal aliens currently in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody into the United States, a new report reveals. According to the Washington Post, DHS is considering having ICE release thousands of illegal aliens in the agency’s custody into American cities and towns as the Biden administration claims they need billions from Congress to avoid carrying out the plan in a seemingly quasi-extortion scheme. RJ Hauman of the National Immigration Center for Enforcement (NICE) suggested that Biden’s DHS is not spending funds as...

Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 could soon be possible on an industrial scale — thanks to AI tools being built with funding from his father’s administration, a report from Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee claimed Tuesday. The report reveals how the Biden administration is spending millions on artificial intelligence research designed to make anti “misinformation” tools which could then be passed to social media giants. And it discloses how researchers who got funding for the plan — known as “Track F” — emailed each other to say that Americans could not tell fact from...

A trio of senators on Sunday released a bipartisan immigration agreement with the White House that would give the president far-reaching powers to clamp down on unlawful border crossings, including the authority to turn away migrants without allowing them to request asylum. The President always had the power. That’s the first lie. Saying the President pivoted is the next lie. It’s an appearance of a pivot to get funding for foreign nations while giving very little to the USA. It’s also throwing a lifeline to Joe Biden to help him get elected. CBS claims it restricts the asylum system. It...

The Department of Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency knew that mass mail-in voting during the 2020 election contained risks but continued to flag social media posts raising such concerns as disinformation, according to new documents obtained by America First Legal in its lawsuit against the agency. The CISA documents appear to show that in September 2020, officials knew that mail-in voting came with election security risks and that there was no evidence to support the claim that in-person voting would “increase the spread of COVID-19.” Officials also were reportedly aware that mass mail-in efforts presented challenges...

Senate negotiators have agreed to empower the US to significantly restrict illegal migrant crossings at the southern border, according to sources familiar with the matter, a move aimed at ending the migrant surge that has overrun federal authorities over the past several months. The Senate deal, which is expected to be unveiled as soon as next week, would also speed up the asylum process to consider cases within six months – compared with the current system, under which it could take up to 10 years for asylum seekers. The details provide a new window into high-profile negotiations that have been...

When they're not siccing the FBI on Catholic Churches or dragging upset fathers from school board meetings, there's a new and equally monstrous plan to shut up conservatives terrorists before the 2024 election. It is sponsored by your friendly Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Careful guys, don't trip on your jackboots. The Media Research Center (MRC) has uncovered a Biden Administration plot — yes, plot — to silence conservatives before the 2024 election with a "media literacy" program that targets conservatives, Christians, gun owners, and the GOP in the name of fighting terrorism. The program uses federal taxpayer funds to...

A strongly worded letter from the Department of Homeland Security to the State of Texas demands access to the U.S.-Mexico border on land seized by the State in Eagle Pass. DHS officials ordered the State to cease and desist its efforts to block Border Patrol’s access in and around Shelby Park “and remove all barriers to access” by the end of the day on January 17.

Biden administration warns it will take action if Texas does not stop blocking federal agents from U.S. border area. ... If the Texas National Guard does not heed the Biden administration's demand and cease its efforts to block Border Patrol's access to a public park in the border town of Eagle Pass, the Department of Homeland Security will refer the matter to the Justice Department and explore other options, Jonathan Meyer, the top lawyer at DHS, warned in his letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

I completely missed this when it was published at the end of last month. Fortunately, Jesse Singal did a great write-up about it which I noticed today. As you may know, Bill Adair is the founder of Politifact, a site which has generate a lot of content for this blog over the years. Last month, Adair was asked to share his predictions for 2024 and he wrote a piece titled “Fact-checking needs a reboot.” Part of that reboot would be pressuring social media companies to “suppress misinformation” more often.After I founded PolitiFact in 2007, I often said that our goal...

During last Thursday’s Congressional hearing on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Democratic members of Congress insisted that censorship efforts of groups like the Cyber Threat Intelligence League (CTIL), the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), and the Virality Project (VP) were benign and not a violation of the First Amendment. “It's not the First Amendment!” said Rep. Dan Goldman, “It's the [social media platforms’] Terms of Service.... And they are flagging it for the social media companies to make their own decisions. That is not the First Amendment. That is the Terms of Service.” But the CTIL Files, a trove of...