Free Republic

Elon Musk and the Trump administration are pitching cuts in one of the most politically dangerous arenas in America — the Social Security Administration. Musk has cast the idea as one that’s primarily about immigration, falsely claiming that undocumented immigrants are fraudulently accessing hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of entitlements, including Social Security, Medicaid and disability programs, as part of a Democratic scheme for votes. “By using entitlements fraud, the Democrats have been able to attract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants,” Musk, the billionaire tech CEO behind the Department of Government Efficiency, said Monday on Sen. Ted...

An Open Doors spokesperson warns that misleading reports online of a ‘slaughter of Christians’ in Syria could leave Syrian believers in danger. Open Doors supporters are among many around the world who are steadfastly praying for Syria, in the wake of recent violence. More than 1,500 people were killed in recent hostilities in Syria’s coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus, which began last Thursday (6 March). Most of those killed are civilians. The church in Syria is asking for urgent prayer as the country faces further turmoil. There have been reports on social media that Christians are particularly targeted in...

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) said Sunday there is an “actual ecosystem” of conservative media and online influencers that spreads disinformation on behalf of the Republican Party. “There’s an actual ecosystem that pumps out this disinformation consistently on behalf of them,” she said on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” adding that Democrats in Congress need to figure out how best to communicate with the public. “We’ve got to settle into that and recognize that not everyone is going to sit on a podcast. Not everyone’s going to be social media savvy. But they are going to have to find their communication...

CNN - President Donald Trump keeps lying not only about the 2020 election he lost but the 2024 election he won. In a Saturday speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump correctly noted that he earned 77 million votes in 2024 — then falsely said his vote total was “actually much more than that,” since unspecified people “cheated like hell.” There’s no basis for this claim. Trump’s official vote total is his actual vote total, and there is no evidence of unsuccessful cheating by vote counters or by his Democratic foes. Trump made various other false claims at CPAC,...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky responded to President Trump’s latest rebuke, calling out Trump for living in a Russian “disinformation space.” “Unfortunately, President Trump, I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for, the American people who always support us, unfortunately lives in this disinformation space,” Zelensky told reporters early Wednesday. His claim follows Trump’s news conference from his Mar-a-Lago resort Tuesday evening, where he criticized the Ukrainian leader and claimed his approval ratings were low. Zelensky also pressed Trump and U.S. officials to “be more truthful.” The request follows a high-stakes...

New York -- When a suspicious video of ballots being ripped up in Pennsylvania gained attention on social media last October, federal agencies responded quickly and called it out as Russian disinformation. On Election Day in November, bomb threats to polling places in numerous states caused relatively few disruptions to voting. It’s one of the many scenarios covered by the nation’s cybersecurity agency in its outreach to state and local officials.The Trump administration’s downsizing and disbanding of federal agencies has hit efforts that improve election security and monitor foreign influence. That could create gaps for America’s enemies to exploit the...

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to controversial political operatives through their charity, according to documents reviewed by The Post. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been spending big on high level Democrat party aligned sources, according to public records, including hiring a ‘disinformation expert’ who worked at a company involved in every high-profile US election since the 90s. The move could further widen the divide between Harry and his family, after brother Prince William recently met with President Donald Trump. King Charles is also said by the British press to have maintained...

Washington could impose tougher sanctions on Moscow and send U.S. troops to Ukraine if Russian President Vladimir Putin fails to negotiate a Ukraine peace deal in good faith, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published Friday. “There are economic tools of leverage, there are of course military tools of leverage,” Vance was quoted as saying. “I think there is a deal that is going to come out of this that’s going to shock a lot of people.”

Vice President J.D. Vance delivered his first major speech in Europe on Friday speaking at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.During his speech VP Vance did not hold back – just like his boss! Vice President Vance lectured Europe on the continent’s moves to eradicate free speech and free expression in the formerly free societies.Vice President Vance also spoke about ending the Ukraine-Russia War. J.d. Vance told the European crowd that there are certainly military tools and economic tools the West could use to pressure Vladimir Putin from reengaging Russian military operations in Ukraine.The Wall Street Journal immediately took the...

USAID has pushed nearly half a billion dollars ($472.6m) through a secretive US government financed NGO, "Internews Network" (IN), which has “worked with” 4,291 media outlets, producing in one year 4,799 hours of broadcasts reaching up to 778 million people and "training” over 9000 journalists (2023 figures). IN has also supported social media censorship initiatives. More at 17 min Youtube Video above link

The Department of Homeland Security confirmed on Tuesday that some Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) employees who worked on "mis-, dis-, and malinformation" were put on administrative leave. In a statement to Scripps News, DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin wrote CISA needs to "refocus on its mission," starting with election security. "The agency is undertaking an evaluation of how it has executed its election security mission with a particular focus on any work related to mis-, dis-, and malinformation," according to the statement. As first reported by Fox News Digital, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testified in April 2022...

The Trump administration has moved to push out a swathe of federal workers previously involved in combating election-related disinformation, according to three people familiar with the matter, amid allegations from congressional Republicans that their work unfairly targeted conservative speech online. Roughly half a dozen employees from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who once worked in its Election Security and Resilience division were notified Thursday night they were being put on administrative leave, said the three people, who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters.

Intelligence firm Graphika said a Beijing-linked campaign known as "Spamouflage" spread disinformation about Spain's deadly floods last year. A Chinese online influence operation impersonated a human rights group in Spain to spread calls on social media for the Spanish government to be overthrown following deadly floods in Valencia last year, according to research by intelligence firm Graphika. The Chinese state-linked campaign — dubbed "Spamouflage" by analysts — posed as the Spain-based NGO Safeguard Defenders on social media platforms including Facebook, TikTok and X to circulate content criticising the government's response to the floods that killed at least 225 people last...

he Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency outsourced its "censorship operation" to a nonprofit it funded following a First Amendment lawsuit by Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general, "implicitly admitting that its censorship activities are unconstitutional," according to an interim staff report by House Judiciary Committee Republicans shared with Just the News. CISA also wanted to use the Center for Internet Security, which operates the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) and Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC), as its "mouthpiece" to obfuscate its own role in censorship, the report says. It cites spring 2022...

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a former member of the Jan. 6 committee, sought to distinguish between the pardon he received from former President Biden compared to those President Trump gave to those who stormed the Capitol. Just hours apart, both Biden and Trump issued a number of pardons. An order from Biden gave a preemptive pardon to all nine members of the panel that investigated the attack on the Capitol, while Trump, through a series of pardons and commutations, cleared the slate for the more than 1,500 people being prosecuted for the attack. “Look, the people who were pardoned the...

CNN's Jake Tapper warned on Monday that the country was about to enter an "era of deepfakes and all sorts of disinformation" under President Trump, while discussing the Big Tech presence at his inauguration. "We‘re about to enter an era of deepfakes, and all sorts of misinformation and the degree to which those five gentlemen play a role or do not play a role, will be pivotal in terms of where the American people are four years from now, in terms of understanding what is true and what is false," Tapper said before Trump took the oath of office. Meta...

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday launched a page on his campaign website he says is to combat "misinformation and disinformation" being spread online and by political leaders regarding the ongoing wildfires in Southern California. He says the site will "continue to update and provide valuable, fact-based information to the public around policies, budget allocations, personnel on the ground and more.." The webpage is notably located on Newsom's campaign website funded by Newsom for California, and not on an official government site. “There is an astonishing amount of mis- and dis-information being spread online -- much of it by so-called leaders...

As quickly as the Sunset fire started charring through Runyon Canyon in the Hollywood Hills on Wednesday evening, an AI-generated photo of the Hollywood sign ablaze was rapidly circulating on social media. It was just one example of misinformation surrounding the Los Angeles-area fires spreading on social media, and experts warn that false information during natural disaster events disrupts recovery efforts and harms community trust. ** Misinformation can emotionally exploit a situation, hijack conversations from emergency information and, in some cases, lead to financial scams, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ** Unfortunately, there’s no way to avoid...

Trump and his MAGA allies are already targeting the four major pillars of resistance to Trump during his first term. As we prepare for Trump’s second regime — which promises to be far worse than the first — it’s important to do what we can to protect and fortify these four centers of opposition. 1. Universities University faculties are dedicated to finding and exposing the truth — which has often meant calling out Trump’s lies. But Trump has warned that he’ll change the criteria for university accrediting in order to force university faculties into line...... 2. Nonprofits America’s nonprofits have...

With all the ballots counted and all the races decided, in today’s post, I want to unpack what we already know about how Trump “won” the popular vote.1 I use quotes around the word “won” for two reasons. First, to keep in full view what I wrote earlier in “Is This What Democracy Looks Like?” – that Trump’s candidacy was only viable because the justices he appointed to the Supreme Court: (1) disabled the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment (which should otherwise have barred him from holding office again) and (2) shielded him from standing trial before the election...