A hot air balloon accident in Brazil has claimed the lives of at least eight people.
Twenty-one people boarded the balloon on Saturday morning in the city of Praia Grande, according to the governor of Santa Catarina, Jorginho Mello.
&#8220;21 people on board &#8211; 8 fatalities, 13 survivors,&#8221; Mello posted to X on Saturday. &#8220;Our teams continue to provide all necessary support to families and victims.&#8221;
&#8220;We are all shocked by the accident,&#8221; the governor said. &#8220;We continue to monitor the situation.&#8221;
Praia Grande is in southern Santa Catarina, which is a popular tourist destination, the BBC <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c17w04wxwpxo">noted</a>.
Video of the tragic accident was posted by an aviation news account, showing a fiery crash to the ground.
It&#8217;s unclear what caused the accident.
WATCH:
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At least eight people have died in a hot air balloon accident in Brazil, a state governor has said.
There were 21 people on board the balloon in the city of Praia Grande on Saturday morning, Governor of Santa Catarina Jorginho Mello said in a post on X.
Mello said 13 people… <a href="https://t.co/NwHWQImBvI">pic.twitter.com/NwHWQImBvI</a>
— Breaking Aviation News &amp; Videos (@aviationbrk) <a href="https://twitter.com/aviationbrk/status/1936428260365128019?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 21, 2025</a></blockquote>

Preparing Hot Air Balloons To Fly over Cappadocia

Horrifying Video Shows Hot Air Balloon Accident That Left 8 Dead

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Pop singer Lady Gaga set the record for biggest attendance for a female performer during a free performance in Rio de Janeiro over the weekend.
The 39-year-old singer attracted a crowd estimated to be 2.5 million people strong for her Saturday night show at Copacabana Beach. The concert was sponsored by the local government in an effort to help stimulate the local economy.
During her performance, Gaga told the crowd, “Your spirit may be heard around the world tonight. Two and a half million people,” per <a href="https://variety.com/2025/music/news/lady-gaga-free-concert-rio-copacabana-beach-draws-record-breaking-2-5-million-people-1236386386/">Variety</a>. “Tonight, we’re making history,” she added. “Thank you for making history with me… The people of Brazil are the reason why I can shine.”
The outlet noted that the “Bad Romance” singer last performed in Rio 12 years ago. Fans stood in line for hours hoping to get a good spot.
During Saturday’s show, Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, performed older songs like “Poker Face,” “Bloody Mary,” and “Alejandro” along with songs from her newly released album, “Mayhem.”
The record for most concert attendees for a single female performer was previously held by Madonna, who played for a crowd of 1.6 million at the same location in May 2024, also during a free concert.
While free concert attendance is only based on estimates and is therefore impossible to determine for sure, it’s believed that the <a href="https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/73085-largest-free-rock-concert-attendance">most attended concerts</a> overall were those of French composer Jean-Michel Jarre in Moscow 1997 and Rod Stewart&#8217;s concert in Copacabana in 1994, which are both believed to have attracted audiences of about 3.5 million people.
Lady Gaga’s latest show is also making headlines due to two suspected terror attacks, which were never carried out. Per <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/04/americas/brazil-lady-gaga-bomb-plot-rio-intl-latam">CNN</a>, two people were arrested for attempting to “recruit” people to deploy explosives and Molotov cocktails on the crowd. Per the Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro, these individuals were targeting LGBT revelers and wanted to “[gain] notoriety on social media.”
Another person planning to perform a “satanist ritual by killing a child or a baby” during the show was arrested and charged with terrorism offenses, the outlet noted.
In a post on Instagram, Lady Gaga thanked fans, saying, “nothing could prepare me for the feeling I had during last night’s show – the absolute pride and joy I felt singing for the people of Brazil.”
The singer wrote that “the sight of the crowd during my opening songs took my breath away. Your heart shines so bright, your culture is so vibrant and special, I hope you know how grateful I am to have shared this historical moment with you.”

Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga Breaks Crowd Size Record With Massive Brazil Show

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President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/donald-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Donald Trump</a> name-dropped a movie featuring Oscar-winning actor Nicolas Cage while defending the use of handcuffs to restrain illegal aliens aboard deportation flights out of the United States.
Trump referenced Cage&#8217;s 1997 action-movie &#8220;Con-Air&#8221; — in which a handful of convicts take over control of a plane that was supposed to be used to transport them to a new facility — and then argued that by keeping detainees handcuffed, federal immigration authorities were essentially attempting to prevent a similar scenario from playing out on their watch.
Responding to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/brazil-slams-trump-admin-for-shipping-illegals-back-in-handcuffs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">complaints</a> from Brazilian officials about the fact that detainees had been handcuffed for their deportation flights — a practice that was also standard during former President Joe Biden&#8217;s administration — Trump made it clear that he was not planning to make any changes.
&#8220;We were being scolded because we had them in shackles in an airplane,&#8221; Trump said of the Brazilian official. &#8220;And he said, ‘This is no way to treat people.’ Now, you gotta understand these are murderers, drug lords, gang members, just the toughest people you’ve ever met or seen.&#8221;
WATCH:
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🚨 WATCH: <a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a> just compared to the Mass Deportation flights to Con Air 🤣 <a href="https://t.co/MYyZrrCZAl">pic.twitter.com/MYyZrrCZAl</a>
&mdash; Steak for Breakfast (@SteakforPodcast) <a href="https://twitter.com/SteakforPodcast/status/1884016972268200343?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 27, 2025</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;How would you like to be the pilot of a plane? You got two pilots up there and you got 300 people sitting in a plane — every one of them either a murderer, a drug lord, a kingpin of some kind, the head of the mob, or a gang member — and you’re flying that plane,&#8221; Trump continued, predicting, &#8220;It’s not gonna end well.&#8221;
&#8220;You ever see the movie &#8216;Con-Air&#8217;? That&#8217;s what — yeah &#8230; Except here’s the difference: the people in &#8216;Con-Air&#8217; were actors. They weren’t nearly as tough as these guys,&#8221; the president said. &#8220;I would say that that plane would be gone before it ever left. Those pilots would be gone before it ever left. So, they don’t want us to shackle them. I don’t want to be in that plane.&#8221;

Nicolas Cage In ‘Con Air’

Trump Name-Drops Nic Cage Movie To Defend Handcuffing Illegals During Deportation Flights

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The Brazilian government, led by its socialist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is demanding answers after 88 of its citizens were deported from the United States in handcuffs on Friday.
The U.S. representative in Brazil, Gabriel Escobar, was summoned by the Brazilian government on Monday to provide clarifications about the treatment of the illegal immigrants, <a href="https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2025/01/27/itamaraty-chama-encarregado-de-negocios-dos-eua-para-falar-sobre-deportados.ghtml?UTM_SOURCE=copiar-url&amp;UTM_MEDIUM=share-bar-app&amp;UTM_CAMPAIGN=materias">reported Brazilian media</a>. Escobar assumed his position as Charge d’Affaires following the inauguration of President Donald Trump and is likely to remain in his role until an Ambassador to Brazil is appointed.
Handcuffing illegal immigrants on deportation flights has been standard practice by the U.S. government, including under the Biden administration, in order to ensure the safety for pilots and agents on flights. According to Brazilian media, the practice usually includes the handcuffs removal prior to landing in Brazil.
Some Brazilian leaders described the handcuffing during the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement flight as “degrading.” The Brazilian government accused the U.S. of violating treaties by using handcuffs during the flight.
“The indiscriminate use of handcuffs and chains violates the terms of the agreement with the US, which provides for the dignified, respectful and humane treatment of repatriates,” said Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Brazilian Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski said that “respect for the dignity of people and for fundamental human rights are values that must guide relations between civilized nations, especially in situations when vulnerable groups are involved.”
The flight reportedly had to make unscheduled landings in Panama and Manaus, Brazil, due to maintenance issues and was not given authorization to continue on its journey. Instead, the illegal immigrants boarded a Brazilian Air Force flight, which transported them to Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
The illegal immigrants also complained about a lack of air conditioning on the plane and allegedly harsh treatment. 
Carlos Vinicius de Jesus, 29, <a href="https://archive.is/o/TC5Ue/https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mundo/2025/01/medo-de-morrer-tratado-igual-cachorro-o-que-dizem-os-brasileiros-deportados.shtml">alleged in an interview</a> with Folha de S.Paulo that he heard threats.
“They beat us, told us they’d crash the plane, that our government wasn’t worth a thing, that if we rebelled, we’d be killed,” Carlos Vinicius de Jesus, 29, said <a href="https://archive.is/o/TC5Ue/https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mundo/2025/01/medo-de-morrer-tratado-igual-cachorro-o-que-dizem-os-brasileiros-deportados.shtml">in an interview</a> with a Brazilian outlet. Vinicius’s claims have not been verified.
The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States plans to hold an emergency session over the deportations, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/01/27/brazil-migrants-deportations-trump-lula/">the Washington Post reported</a>.
The deportations come as the Trump administration delivers on a campaign promise to deport illegal immigrants. So far, ICE <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/homan-ice-has-made-1300-arrests-including-pedophiles-gang-members-and-at-least-1-terrorist">has deported</a> thousands of illegal immigrants including pedophiles, gang members and terrorists.
On Monday, the White House shared that Brazilian citizen Vitor De Sousa-Lima, who was convicted of vehicular manslaughter, was arrested by ICE Boston. 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN: Vitor De Sousa-Lima, a Brazilian national convicted of vehicular manslaughter, was arrested by ICE Boston on January 25, 2025. <a href="https://t.co/sqt8NZb8IP">pic.twitter.com/sqt8NZb8IP</a>
&mdash; The White House (@WhiteHouse) <a href="https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1883594154133086483?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 26, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Expectations for a warm relationship between Lula and Trump are low, given the Brazilian president’s <a href="https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/world/2024/11/possible-return-of-trump-to-the-white-house-leaves-brazil-apprehensive.shtml">aggressive statements towards</a> Trump. Lula has openly stated that he was rooting for Kamala Harris during the U.S. election and has pointed to Trump’s actions at the end of his first term as evidence of “fascism and Nazism coming back with a different face.”
Lula’s rival, former president Jair Bolsonaro, who has been nicknamed ‘Trump of the Tropics,’ was barred from attending Trump’s inauguration by the left-wing Brazilian Supreme Court that has been on a ruthless rampage to silence right-wing voices in Brazil.
The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/prominent-brazilian-conservative-imprisoned-by-left-wing-supreme-court-for-u-s-border-patrol-making-immigration-record-error">previously reported</a> on the persecution of a senior aide to Bolsonaro, Filipe Martins, who was imprisoned for six months without trial by Brazilian Supreme Court Minister Alexandre de Moraes. Although Martins has since been released and has not faced trial or been convicted, he remains under draconian restrictions that forbid him from social media and interviews and place him under house arrest.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Photo courtesy of The White House

Brazil Slams Trump Admin For Shipping Illegals Back In Handcuffs

Brazil Demands Answers Over Illegal Immigrants Being Handcuffed During Deportation Flight

In a world of mounting censorship, it’s never been more important to protect every person’s right to speak. Freedom of speech is indispensable to a free society—there’s little meaning to an electoral system if we can’t speak our mind to one another and to our representatives. It’s also a fundamental human right, guaranteed by the First Amendment and every major human rights treaty around the world.
Responding to this rising threat, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), where I serve as legal counsel, recently launched a new litigation team, the <a href="https://adflegal.org/article/introducing-the-adf-center-for-free-speech/?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped">Center for Free Speech</a>. ADF’s mission in creating this dedicated team of attorneys is to defend every person’s right to free speech and to hold the government and powerful corporations accountable when they unlawfully censor or punish speech.
This new era of censorship calls for innovative strategies. A complex international web of shadowy government actors, nonprofit groups, and for-profit corporations are colluding to stop speech they don’t like, invoking buzzwords like “misinformation” and “disinformation” as their pretext for viewpoint-based restrictions. We will stop unlawful censorship while preserving the fundamental rights of individuals and organizations.
My team’s efforts will include suing private-sector censors who are working with the government or abusing their power to suppress or deplatform disfavored speech. There must be consequences for governments and government proxies that participate in the corrupt Censorship Industrial Complex (CIC).
The coordinated push of government, universities, think tanks, NGOs, and private businesses bleeds into almost every major industry and part of life. When entities or people are deplatformed, debanked, blacklisted, or refused business for their speech because the government has enlisted private sector participation in engaging in unlawful censorship, that is government corruption and must be stopped.
In Brazil, a justice on the country’s Supreme Court <a href="https://adflegal.org/article/brazil-elon-musk-x-and-censorship-what-you-need-know/?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">suspended the social media platform X</a> across the country after the company declined to censor certain voices. The justice’s order spoke of the “real danger” posed by X of influencing the electorate with “massive misinformation.” Once a government begins using such vague criteria to censor messages, it opens the door to widespread suppression of speech.
But it’s not just happening in Brazil. The U.S. Department of Justice <a href="https://adflegal.org/press-release/adf-scotus-govt-cant-coerce-social-media-companies-act-speech-police/?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pressured</a> Facebook, Twitter, and Google into silencing dissenting voices on a wide range of hot-button cultural issues, including climate change, abortion, economic policy, gender identity, and COVID-19 policies. Big tech companies collude with the government to censor viewpoints they don’t like.
We’ve already begun to litigate several cases under the umbrella of the Center for Free Speech including a pair of cases where we’re suing the state of California.
In <a href="https://adflegal.org/article/humor-trial-babylon-bee-challenges-california-laws-censoring-political-satire/?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Babylon Bee v. Bonta</a> and <a href="https://adflegal.org/article/rumble-joins-the-babylon-bee-in-challenging-californias-censorship/?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rumble v. Bonta</a>, ADF represents popular satire website The Babylon Bee, attorney and blogger Kelly Chang Rickert, and video platform Rumble. One of the laws our clients are challenging is AB 2655, passed by the California legislature earlier this year. The law requires large online platforms to become state censors by sometimes labeling and other times taking down posts with “materially deceptive content” about elections.
And in <a href="https://adflegal.org/case/studnicki-v-sage-publications/?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Studnicki v. Sage Publications</a>, we represent several doctors who published multiple papers in a peer-reviewed medical journal on the dangers of abortion drugs. After the publisher received complaints about the authors’ pro-life affiliations, Sage retracted these articles and even removed one of the authors from the journal’s board of directors.
Defending free speech is nothing new to ADF. We’ve won landmark free speech victories before the U.S. Supreme Court and have been especially prolific on public university campuses as its Center for Academic Freedom has <a href="https://adflegal.org/issues/free-speech/?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">secured</a> more than 400 victories protecting students’ free speech rights.
Government agencies and powerful private actors – or worse yet, a combination of the two – are using vague buzzwords as an excuse for censorship. The outgoing administration spent the past four years relentlessly attacking our constitutionally protected freedoms and unlawfully extending executive power.
But we cannot expect the entrenched censorship apparatus to unilaterally disarm. And we must insist that the new administration dismantle the CIC instead of trying to wield it for its own purposes.
That means calling balls and strikes, especially when President-elect Trump hangs a curve with a nominee like <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14154833/donald-trump-surgeon-general-dr-janette-nesheiwat-maga-fury-covid.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Janette Nesheiwat for Surgeon General</a>, who previously “commend[ed] Mark Zuckerberg for taking action” against so-called vaccine misinformation on Facebook.
It’s critical that the Republican party keeps its avowed commitment to free speech. The new administration has a great opportunity to lead the defense of our First Amendment rights. If the majority of current nominees do what they claim they want to do, there is reason to be hopeful.
Through pioneering legal strategy, ADF will tear down the Censorship Industrial Complex and preserve free speech in the new frontier of our digital age. We will ensure that ordinary people worldwide have full clarity on their free speech rights and are empowered, without fear, to expose any government or its agents attempting to undermine them.
* * *
Logan Spena serves as legal counsel at <a href="http://www.adflegal.org/?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped">Alliance Defending Freedom</a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/ADFLegal">@ADFLegal</a>).
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Censorship vs Free speech

Combating The Rising Threat Of Censorship In 2025

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)

Censorship

Federal Government

First Amendment

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There was an attempt at a military dictatorship in South Korea in which the president of South Korea issued a command for martial law. It was reversed hours later, but what exactly was going on there? 
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is a member of a party that controls the presidency but is in the minority in the actual parliament of the country. He claimed the majority in the parliament (a party called the Democratic Party in South Korea) is basically a tool of the North Koreans, citing them to be crypto-communists preventing the functioning of the government. 
Essentially, the Democratic Party of South Korea, which represents a large majority in the National Assembly, has been threatening and attempting to impeach the state prosecutors who are looking into the Democratic Party leadership. The prosecutors were supposed to be looking into the family of the president of South Korea, and they had apparently decided to exonerate the president’s wife. Meanwhile, the same prosecutors were additionally looking into the leadership of the Democratic Party regarding corruption charges. In turn, the Democratic Party attempted to impeach these prosecutors. 
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2097-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
So, the South Korean president looked at the opposition party (which controls the National Assembly) and contended they were attempting to clean out the prosecutorial part of the government in order to protect themselves or weaponize it against him. Therefore, he would declare martial law. 
The South Korean parliament voted unanimously to defy the country&#8217;s president and lift his martial law declaration.  
But there’s something deeper happening here. 
This sort of constitutional crisis is now taking place in a variety of countries. It’s happening in Israel, where there are fights between the prosecutorial wing of the government and the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. It&#8217;s happening in Hungary, where they&#8217;ve been fighting over state prosecutors. It&#8217;s happening in Brazil, where Lula da Silva, the authoritarian Left-wing leader of the country, is now attempting to militarize the justice system against Jair Bolsonaro, his predecessor. And, of course, there are shades of this in the United States. 
Why, exactly, is all this happening right now? 
To understand that, we must understand the role of the prosecutorial system in democratic republics, because that has changed over time. And this has implications, by the way, for everything, up to and including the Hunter Biden pardon and the Biden DOJ weaponizing itself against Donald Trump.
Democratic republics typically rely on checks and balances to prevent the government from engaging in authoritarianism; that is the basis of the United States Constitution. The House and the Senate check one another. Both are checked by the presidency, and all three of those bodies are checked by the judiciary and vice versa. 
Traditionally, one of the checks and balances to avoid tyranny was impeachment. If you didn&#8217;t like members of the government or you suspected that members of the government were corrupt, a bipartisan majority would work to oust those corrupt officials. 
This is obviously problematic when it comes to getting rid of corrupt officials because if the corrupt official happens to be a member of your party, then you are very unlikely to vote for their impeachment. 
In Democratic republics, the question of how to police corruption is a very real question if there is a corrupt public official. The United States Constitution says that person is impeached in the House, and then there is a full trial in the Senate. 
When the Constitution was designed, Alexander Hamilton and the rest of the Founding Fathers believed the Senate would be the most objective body. United States senators were not appointed by party or by public approval. They were appointed by the state legislatures, and they served six-year terms. The goal was for them to be more independent of the public passions than the House.
The judiciary could not do it because the judiciary could be hijacked. But the Senate was sort of half political: answerable but also indirectly answerable to the public — and thus more insulated from public pressure.
Hamilton pointed out that setting up a separate impeachment court (which we might now call the DOJ) wouldn&#8217;t actually solve the problem because that, too, could be politicized.
The problem is that over time, in a wide variety of countries, as democratic republics and their checks and balances have transitioned into administrative bureaucracies in which enormous power is centralized in the executive branch, checks and balances have atrophied until Donald Trump was impeached twice. The impeachment power was almost never used by the Congress of the United States, for example.
We made a decision at the outset of the 20th century that was echoed in other burgeoning democracies that law enforcement checking corruption was not to be done by the elected bodies of government. Instead, it was outsourced to so-called independent branches of government.
In the United States, that is the Department of Justice; in South Korea, it is the state prosecutor&#8217;s office; in Brazil, the prosecutors, the police, the judiciary; in Israel, the attorney general, and so forth.
There is a problem that happens here, and this is a problem with the administrative state. The problem is that state prosecutors can also be corrupted by politics, as we have seen in the United States. And then the solution isn&#8217;t to change the people in government anymore, because these are independent branches, and they&#8217;re unelected. It&#8217;s not a matter of replacing some people with other people.
If you fire some people, that&#8217;s considered interference with the magical “objective branch.” If you leave people in place and they target your political opponents, it&#8217;s weaponization.
That&#8217;s what leads to constitutional crises. Once the job of policing corruption from the elected branches of government — like the Senate of the United States or the National Assembly in South Korea — is outsourced to state prosecutors, sooner or later, state prosecutors will attempt to go after the wrong people, the legislature after state prosecutors, or the president after state prosecutors, in order to prevent weaponization.
This is the problem with sending up fake “objective legal enforcement” bodies. It creates constitutional crises because the only solution to a politicized law enforcement branch is to either overthrow the government for interfering with the system, which is what the president of South Korea attempted to do, or to call for the overthrow of the government for weaponizing the system.
Constitutional crises are the result of supposedly untouchable, nonpartisan institutions that can either be weaponized or interfered with.
This is happening across the West. It&#8217;s a major, major problem. It&#8217;s the problem with administrative governments. It&#8217;s a major problem in regards to the idea that it is the job of impartial legal bodies to police corruption.
So democracies are throwing themselves into crisis, specifically over this.
Let&#8217;s say that you are in the United States and you are really, really angry that Donald Trump became president in 2016. What do you do? You could try to impeach him, but it will probably fail if you don&#8217;t have the votes because it&#8217;ll break down along strictly partisan lines. 
What do you do instead? You rely on the DOJ; you rely on the FBI. You weaponize those institutions against Trump. And that prompts Trump, if he becomes president, to clean out those institutions, in which case he will be accused of weaponizing those institutions. And so the constitutional crisis just continues to roll on, all because this sort of bipartisan consensus around impeaching presidents who are guilty of crimes has gone away in the United States. 
You could say it died during the Clinton era. And the United States is now feeling the aftereffects. 
The same is true in Israel. In Israel, the attorney general&#8217;s office has put Benjamin Netanyahu under three separate prosecutions; all of them appear to be somewhat specious. The goal is obviously political. Netanyahu has been in power for some 14 of the last 15 years in Israel. He&#8217;s a masterful Machiavellian politician, just in pure, raw talent terms. And so the attorney general&#8217;s office has been weaponized against him, as claims Netanyahu, which I think is largely correct in a wide variety of cases. 
But every time he tries to mess with the prosecution, he&#8217;s accused of tampering with democracy.
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Once these institutions are set up as the final arbiter of guilt and innocence, then anyone who tampers with them on either side is then considered a threat to democracy, even if the person who is actually militarizing law enforcement is the person who is in power.
In Brazil, the law enforcement mechanisms have been weaponized by Lula da Silva against Jair Bolsonaro. That means as Lula is cleaning out the judiciary institutions, he&#8217;s being lauded as someone upholding the norms of democracy while he, at the same time, engages in widespread censorship. Instead of corruption being seen as a political issue to be answered by the political branches and eventually the people, because it&#8217;s been outsourced to law enforcement, the law enforcement branch can be routinely corrupted.
Not all that long ago Lula himself had been banned from running because of his own corruption convictions. Then, in 2021, a Left-wing Supreme Court judge annulled his corruption convictions and allowed him to run again. After he ran and won, the Brazilian police formally accused former President Bolsonaro and his aides of an alleged 2022 coup attempt. That happened just last week.
Bolsonaro has said he would fight the case. Meanwhile, Lula is openly consolidating power in the executive branch in wildly anti-democratic ways. But he has been praised by many members of the media as an anti-authoritarian politician. Yet the reality is that Lula has been a close ally of Venezuela&#8217;s Nicolas Maduro, who&#8217;s been a close ally of the Cuban regime. In fact, it&#8217;s rare to find some sort of authoritarian regime that Lula doesn&#8217;t like. From China to Nicaragua, from Iran to Russia, he has cozied up to authoritarians everywhere. But because he&#8217;s a Left-wing authoritarian, the perception is that he&#8217;s not really an authoritarian, even if he engages in widespread censorship.
This is what happens when democratic republics delegate the power to check political opposition to a supposedly objective, nonpartisan branch of government. It&#8217;s not real. It doesn&#8217;t work. Administrative states do not work for precisely this reason because they&#8217;re never dispassionate, ever.
It&#8217;s true in a wide variety of countries, from South Korea to Israel to Hungary to Brazil.
It&#8217;s always a problem.
Again, all of this breakdown is happening because so many people across so many Westernized countries have decided they no longer trust the mechanisms of checks and balances of the democratic republic and, instead, are going to delegate all power to these impartial institutions.
Then, those institutions break down.
And then, the entire country starts to break down.

South Korean Lawmakers Overturn President’s Declaration Of Martial Law

WTF Just Happened In South Korea?

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South Korea

Now that our government is being run by a faceless, unelected cabal of credentialed socialist elites who are so intellectually brilliant they have passed beyond the golden realm of genius into an ethereal dumpster of complete stupidity, there is not much left for our dementia-riddled president to do except lie in his lawn chair, eat Jello and start a nuclear war with Russia.
The end of the world began as national leaders gathered at the G-20 summit in Rio de Janeiro this week, where President Biden was disappointed to learn that Peking Lame Duck did not mean that dinner was Chinese take-out but just that he had to stand behind Xi Jinping in the group photo. So as important world leaders — like whoever the president of Indonesia is — rose to give speeches promoting world peace, the dejected Biden wandered off to finish coloring the Winnie-the-Pooh-Gets-Stuck-in-a-Knothole page of his briefing book, and then give Ukraine permission to fire American-made long range missiles into a country run by a power hungry lunatic with a nuclear arsenal large enough to reduce the ruins of Great Britain to the ruins of Great Britain.
In a speech delivered to a potted plant he mistook for a little girl with great-smelling hair, Biden explained why he changed his strategy from letting the war drag on forever through maundering incompetence to getting everyone on earth killed through maundering incompetence.
The president told the adorable little plant, “Given the inexcusable aggression of Vladimir Putin’s reckless attempt to rebuild the Russian empire by invading a perfectly innocent cesspit of corruption like Ukraine, I just wanted to see the pretty streaks of light that missiles make when you fire them across the night sky. And by the way, your hair smells terrific, but I don’t think you should have dyed it green like that.”
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was ecstatic at being set free to recklessly provoke a nuclear power, and celebrated by adding yet another inexplicable ‘y’ to his last name, then goose-stepping back and forth through the rubble of a children’s hospital while spouting double-talk in a French accent in the hopes someone might mistake him for Napoleon.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Andrew Klavan Show</a></h3>
Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, responded to the attacks by lowering the Russian standard for nuclear retaliation. Whereas before, the Putin doctrine declared that a Russian nuclear attack could only be triggered as a self-defensive response to a ground invasion of the motherland, it now permits the launch of world-destroying total war as a gesture of annoyance at the crappy finale of Gilmore Girls or any other equivalently frothy-but-delightful streaming concoction. The doctrine is mitigated by the fact that nuclear launch cannot begin without the final approval of President Putin or anyone else wearing a spiked helmet and beating his bared chest while proclaiming his right to world domination.
Among political conservatives, the sudden launch of American-made missiles from Ukraine into Russia set off a round of wild speculation as to Biden’s motives. Some claimed that the president had set World War III in motion as a reaction to the recent election results, because he felt a series of bright explosions that turned the sky into a sparkling wonderland of irradiated human ash would be an appropriately spectacular way for him to celebrate the defeat of Kamala Harris after she humiliated him by forcing him to abandon a presidential campaign that he would absolutely have won had he still been alive in any meaningful sense of the word. Such theories were dismissed as implausible, however, because they depended on Biden thinking clearly enough to have a discernible motive.
As for President-elect Donald Trump, he spent the day at the Florida headquarters of Space X, where he watched Elon Musk launch a 400-foot-tall starship that would travel halfway around the globe, land gently on Vladimir Putin’s desk in his office at the Kremlin, and open to release a miniature robot Trump who would march out, slap Putin in the face, tell him to stop invading other people’s countries, then march back into the starship, which would return safely to Florida after stopping at McDonald’s to pick up a Happy Meal.
So the transition continues.
* * *
This excerpt is taken from the opening satirical monologue of “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Andrew Klavan Show</a>.”
Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. He is the bestselling author of the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fourth installment, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1613165536?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_thcv_3&amp;storeType=ebooks" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A WOMAN UNDERGROUND</a>,” is now available. Follow him on X: @andrewklavan
The views expressed in this satirical article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

G20 Summit Rio de Janeiro 2024 – Day One

Confused Biden Wanders Off And Starts World War III

Andrew Klavan

China

Humor

Joe Biden

Nuclear war

Satire

South America

Ukraine-Russia War

When a group of world leaders gathered for a &#8220;Family Picture&#8221; with Rio de Janeiro&#8217;s Sugarloaf Mountain in the background at the G-20 summit in Brazil on Monday, President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/joe-biden" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Joe Biden</a> was nowhere to be found.
Video <a href="https://x.com/cspan/status/1858587430485434702" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posted</a> to X by C-SPAN showed the world leaders posing for a photo on a platform for the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty. As the leaders began to depart, someone could be heard in the video noting how there were shouts for them to wait for Biden, but they kept walking away.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
President Biden and other world leaders miss the &#8220;Family Picture&#8221; at <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/G20Summit?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#G20Summit</a>. <a href="https://t.co/wqA0zaLuC3">pic.twitter.com/wqA0zaLuC3</a>
— CSPAN (@cspan) <a href="https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1858587430485434702?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 18, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Mockery on social media ensued as clips of Biden missing the photo went viral.
&#8220;His entire term in a post,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/DLoesch/status/1858598469742850056" target="_blank" rel="noopener">quipped</a> radio host Dana Loesch. &#8220;He walked off into the Amazon yesterday and never returned,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/redsteeze/status/1858599004147196143" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> political commentator Stephen L. Miller, who was referencing how Biden <a href="https://x.com/RNCResearch/status/1858236747571765745" target="_blank" rel="noopener">departed</a> into the Amazon rainforest after delivering remarks on Sunday.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Biden, who just authorized Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied long-range missiles, takes no questions and retreats back into the Amazon rainforest <a href="https://t.co/xy7xr6qYPZ">pic.twitter.com/xy7xr6qYPZ</a>
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) <a href="https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1858236747571765745?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 17, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Those who did pose for the picture included Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was there instead of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🌎 Today (18), after the launch of the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty and the G20 Leaders&#8217;Summit first session in Rio de Janeiro, G20 representatives gather for the official Global Alliance photo. <a href="https://t.co/CTFzFtEVD4">pic.twitter.com/CTFzFtEVD4</a>
— G20 Brasil (@g20org) <a href="https://twitter.com/g20org/status/1858604328271155244?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 18, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
USA Today correspondent Francesca Chambers, who was doing the White House press pool report for the event, reported that Biden had arrived late and that he was chatting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as the other leaders were departing.
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&#8220;Due to logistical issues, they took the photo early before all the leaders arrived,&#8221; a senior official said, according to Chambers. She also reported that this official, who was not identified, claimed Biden&#8217;s absence was not about avoiding a photo with Lavrov.
Bloomberg <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-18/where-was-biden-the-g-20-photo-shows-him-out-of-the-picture" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> that Trudeau and Meloni missed the photo in addition to Biden. The outlet also noted that a U.S. official &#8220;blamed&#8221; logistics and said the photo was taken early while Brazilian organizers insisted the absent leaders were late.
The 81-year-old Biden is wrapping up his time in the White House after his vice president, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/kamala-harris" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kamala Harris</a>, lost to President-elect Donald Trump in the 2024 election earlier this month. Biden had been running for a second term but dropped out in July after a fumbling debate performance against Trump while facing pressure from allies who raised concerns about his age, mental acuity, and electability.

President Joe Biden

‘His Entire Term In A Post’: Biden Misses G-20 Picture With Other World Leaders

White House

A group of high-profile free speech advocates including government officials, journalists, and academics have signed a letter to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/brazil" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Brazil</a> condemning the government&#8217;s censorship of X, formerly Twitter.
Last month, Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/brazilian-judge-orders-suspension-of-x-social-media-platform-responds" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ordered</a> that X be suspended in Brazil after the social media platform resisted demands to censor certain political accounts.
The judge&#8217;s decision banned Brazilians from using the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
X responded to the judge&#8217;s decision in a statement, accusing the judge of illegally ordering the social media platform to &#8220;censor his political opponents,&#8221; including &#8220;a duly elected Senator and a 16-year-old girl.&#8221;
&#8220;Unlike other social media and technology platforms, we will not comply in secret with illegal orders,&#8221; X Global Government Affairs <a href="https://x.com/GlobalAffairs/status/1829296715989414281" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>.
Brazilians using a VPN to access X can be fined nearly $9,000 a day.
In their letter, which was spearheaded by Alliance Defending Freedom, a prominent free speech law firm, the free speech advocates condemned Brazil for &#8220;judicial overreach&#8221; and &#8220;stifling free discourse and violating Brazil’s own constitution, which prohibits &#8216;[a]ny and all censorship of a political, ideological, and artistic nature.'&#8221;
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The open letter to Brazil&#8217;s Parliament was <a href="https://adfinternational.org/news/brazil-open-letter" target="_blank" rel="noopener">signed</a> by five U.S. Attorneys General, former British Prime Minister Liz Truss, Princeton academic Dr. Robert George, author Rod Dreher, and Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon.
Also signing the letter were podcaster Tammy Peterson, who is psychologist Jordan Peterson&#8217;s wife, “Twitter Files” journalist Michael Shellenberger, and former Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, among dozens of conservative influencers and other international advocates for free speech.
&#8220;If this censorship in Brazil is allowed to persist, it could set a dangerous precedent that quickly spreads,&#8221; the letter reads. &#8220;Recently, other world leaders have expressed pro-censorship sentiments, and there is no quicker path to the demise of democracy than the erosion of free speech.&#8221;
The letter urges the Brazilian government to &#8220;restore the free flow of information, and respect the rights of its citizens to express their views without fear of retribution.&#8221;
&#8220;The courts should immediately lift the ban on the use of X within Brazil,&#8221; Jeremy Tedesco, Alliance Defending Freedom&#8217;s senior vice president of corporate engagement, said in a statement to The Daily Wire.
&#8220;This is unlawful and deprives Brazil’s citizens of their freedoms under their own Constitution,&#8221; Tedesco said. &#8220;This letter shows that prominent leaders are taking this issue seriously, as this is a dangerous global precedent to set. Freedom of expression is not negotiable, nor is it a privilege — it is the cornerstone of every democratic society. We must defend it whenever it is under threat, whether in Brazil or anywhere else in the world.&#8221;
The letter is now <a href="https://adfinternational.org/our-focus/end-global-censorship" target="_blank" rel="noopener">open</a> to the public for signing and had more than 1,600 signatures as of Thursday while rapidly gaining more.

UK Daily Life 2023

Free Speech Advocates Sign Letter Condemning Brazil Government’s Censorship Of X

Free Speech Advocates Sign Letter Condemning Brazil Government's Censorship Of X

Elon Musk

Global Politics

Twitter

One of the main lines of attack against Jair Bolsonaro, who served as president of Brazil until 2022, was one that we&#8217;re all very familiar with at this point. Liberals claimed that Bolsonaro was an &#8220;enemy of democracy.&#8221; Media outlets — both in the United States and Brazil — claimed that Bolsonaro was an autocrat who wanted to suspend the rule of law and use the force of government to punish his political enemies. This message resonated with Brazilians because some very prominent figures promoted it — including a former prosecutor-turned Supreme Court judge named Alexandre de Moraes. Among the Brazilian Left, de Moraes was something of a hero for taking on Bolsonaro. Most notably, the judge presided over a tribunal that banned Bolsonaro from running for office for 8 years.
Why? Bolsonaro allegedly spread &#8220;lies about voting machines,&#8221; which supposedly inspired a mob to ransack Congress, the presidential palace and other government buildings. It was basically Brazil&#8217;s January 6. So in the name of protecting democracy, the judge prevented people from voting for Bolsonaro for the better part of a decade.
He did to Bolsonaro exactly what the Left wanted to do to Donald Trump.
So what are the &#8220;defenders of democracy&#8221; up to in Brazil, just two years later? How are these crusaders for democratic norms faring in 2024?
As you may have heard, de Moraes just issued maybe the single most undemocratic and authoritarian court decision in the modern history of Brazil. He has unilaterally ordered a total ban on Elon Musk&#8217;s social media platform, X. No one in Brazil — a country where more than 20 million people used X — is legally allowed to use the platform. Anyone caught using a VPN to bypass this restriction can be fined roughly $9,000 per day, which is about 6 times the average Brazilian&#8217;s monthly salary. Additionally, de Moraes has fined X more than $3 million.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1437-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h4>
He&#8217;s also frozen the assets of Elon Musk&#8217;s company Starlink, which provides internet access to hundreds of thousands of Brazilians living in remote areas. The point was to compel Starlink, an independent internet provider, to ban X as well. And on top of that, the Brazilian court system is now pressuring SpaceX, even though they have nothing whatsoever to do with the company. So SpaceX now has to pull employees out of Brazil.
The judge has gone to war with X for a very simple reason: The company refused to block certain accounts that, in the eyes of the Brazilian government, &#8220;harmed democratic institutions in Brazil.&#8221; And then, X refused to appoint an in-person local legal representative in Brazil, because the judge had threatened to arrest the representative to extract concessions from X. So in order to &#8220;protect democratic institutions&#8221; supposedly, tens of millions of Brazilians can no longer access the single most popular news app in the country. They have to turn to the corporate press to learn what they&#8217;re allowed to hear. Only approved narratives are allowed in Brazil right now.
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For Elon Musk, the showdown in Brazil is obviously a major test. He&#8217;s long maintained that he&#8217;ll obey the laws of whatever countries his companies are operating in. But he maintains that Brazil&#8217;s judges are violating Brazil&#8217;s constitution, which isn&#8217;t exactly a hard case to make at this point. This week The Economist took a closer look at the judge who issued this order against X and Starlink. <a href="https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2024/09/03/the-all-powerful-judge-taking-on-elon-musk">Here&#8217;s</a> what they found:
<blockquote>Mr Moraes also has form: he is a man who likes and understands power. He has extensive contacts in the federal police, military and intelligence services. &#8230; Other decisions have made the court look authoritarian. In 2019 Mr Moraes was put in charge of investigating misinformation about the Supreme Court and threats against the court’s members and their relatives. These had spiked after the election of Mr Bolsonaro. The &#8216;fake-news&#8217; inquiry was contentious from the start. Normally investigations are opened by the public prosecutor or the police. By giving itself the power to initiate investigations the Supreme Court became victim, prosecutor and judge all at once. No time limit was set, there is no legal definition for disinformation in Brazil and Mr Moraes has not made public which accounts he has ordered shut and why.</blockquote>
This is a violation of one of the most basic principles of every functioning legal system, which is that courts are only supposed to resolve legal disputes that are brought to them. That is their one and only job. Some party — whether it&#8217;s a citizen or the government or some other entity — needs to bring a case to the courts. And then the courts rule on it.
Once the courts have the authority to generate cases on their own, and make up arbitrary rules to enforce, then they&#8217;re not really courts anymore. Instead of judges, you have de facto dictators. And that&#8217;s what&#8217;s happening right now to Elon Musk and his companies in Brazil.
You&#8217;d hope that an incident like this would trigger immediate condemnations from the State Department. After all, the Biden administration claims to care very deeply about democracy. It&#8217;s essentially all they ever talk about. But there has been no condemnation from the mainstream Left in this country. In fact, if you listen to the corporate press, you&#8217;ll find a handful of reports essentially blaming Elon Musk for objecting to what the courts in Brazil are doing. 
Here for example is the BBC, which for some reason is pretending Taylor Lorenz — who openly hates Elon Musk — is an impartial expert on this topic. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Brazil suspends social media platform X | BBC News" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/J1jcDq0ywIg?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&#8220;He could have prevented the ban, but he chose not to.&#8221; Notice how the Brazilian government — which just shut down an entire social media app for millions of people — has no agency in Taylor Lorenz&#8217;s analysis. A private company refused to do the bidding of the Brazilian government. And therefore, it&#8217;s the private company&#8217;s fault that they got shut down. That&#8217;s how Taylor Lorenz, who works for The Washington Post, is selling this decision by the Brazilian Supreme Court. It&#8217;s how the BBC is presenting the news.
It&#8217;s not hard to see what&#8217;s going on here. Brazil is the template for mass censorship in the United States. If they can pull it off in Brazil, they&#8217;re going to try to pull it off here. That&#8217;s why the corporate press is presenting Elon Musk as the villain in this scenario. The media has a vested interest in shutting down X because it&#8217;s one of their biggest competitors. Random posts on X get more viewers than CNN&#8217;s entire primetime lineup. So in order to lay the groundwork for shutting down X in this country, they&#8217;re saying Elon Musk had it coming in Brazil. 
And it&#8217;s not just the media that&#8217;s trying to send this message. Senior figures in the Democrat Party are doing it too. For example, Keith Ellison is the attorney general of the State of Minnesota. He&#8217;s the chief legal officer of a major state. He&#8217;s also closely aligned with Kamala Harris&#8217; campaign. He just spoke at the DNC a few weeks ago. Here&#8217;s what Keith Ellison says about what&#8217;s happening to Elon Musk&#8217;s companies in Brazil.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
obrigado Brasil!
&mdash; Keith Ellison (@keithellison) <a href="https://twitter.com/keithellison/status/1830720700019028109?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 2, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;obrigado Brasil,&#8221; which translates to &#8220;Thank you, Brazil.&#8221; 
Again, Keith Ellison is not some backbench politician from a no-name congressional district. He&#8217;s the chief law officer of Minnesota. And he&#8217;s endorsing the total shutdown of a major social media platform because it wouldn&#8217;t censor the political opponents of the government.
Politicians like Keith Ellison crave censorship because they&#8217;re corrupt. They only care about power. And they&#8217;re willing to lie in order to get it. Remember what Keith Ellison did during the George Floyd riots. Ellison&#8217;s office hid bodycam footage showing that George Floyd said, &#8220;I can&#8217;t breathe,&#8221; several times, while he was struggling with cops in the backseat of a police cruiser — long before he was on the ground with a knee near his neck. That was obviously relevant information because it suggested that Floyd was having a fatal overdose, and that he couldn&#8217;t breathe because he had taken a lethal quantity of fentanyl. So Keith Ellison&#8217;s office suppressed the footage.
Democrats like Keith Ellison want total control of social media platforms like X so that they can suppress information like that even more often, and even more easily. They want to be able to shut down any information or opinions that contradict their preferred narrative. That&#8217;s why they&#8217;re thrilled with what&#8217;s happening in Brazil. 
It&#8217;s also why they have no problem with what the Biden administration is doing to Tusli Gabbard. Gabbard has emerged as one of the most effective critics of the modern Democrat Party. She has what no prominent Democrat has, which is integrity. She was on the fast-track to be a senior official in the Democrat Party, even serving as vice chair of the DNC. But she threw all of that away because she wanted to follow her principles — particularly concerning foreign affairs — instead of seeking power. So, Tulsi Gabbard can&#8217;t be controlled by party elites. What&#8217;s their solution? They put her on a terror watch list. Watch:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Kamala says she believes in freedom, but I was put on a secret terror watch list after I publicly criticized her. No one will be safe from political retaliation under a Harris administration. I put my life on the line for this country. Now the government calls me a terror threat. <a href="https://t.co/3xjgjmrLhD">pic.twitter.com/3xjgjmrLhD</a>
&mdash; Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) <a href="https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1831346487969698259?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 4, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
This should be leading every nightly newscast in the United States. There is no reason for a political figure like Tusli Gabbard to be placed on any kind of terror watch list, or to receive 30 minutes of extra screening every time she tries to fly. The only conceivable explanation is that this is a federal program intended to harass and intimidate her. She&#8217;s not following the party line, so this is what she gets.
But she&#8217;s able to speak freely about what&#8217;s happening to her on X, at least for now. That&#8217;s the platform where Tulsi Gabbard posted that video I just showed you. It&#8217;s where she — and many other political dissidents in many other countries — can speak their minds, for the most part. At the very least, it&#8217;s a freer platform than any of the alternatives. That&#8217;s why the government, in both this country and Brazil, wants to shut X down. It&#8217;s also why France is trying to shut Telegram down and jail its founder. We are in the middle of a historic war on the freedom of speech, in countries where it would&#8217;ve been unthinkable just a few years ago.
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If they&#8217;re allowed to succeed in places like Brazil and France, it won&#8217;t be long until they try the same thing here. Our Constitution won&#8217;t protect us. Brazil and France have constitutions that supposedly protect the freedom of speech, and it&#8217;s not working out so well for them. The only solution is to do exactly what Elon Musk and Tusli Gabbard are doing, which is to respond to censorship and intimidation with more speech — call out what they&#8217;re doing. And in November, do everything you can to prevent these tyrants from seizing any more power than they already have.

Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice Alexandre De Moraes

Brazil Bans Free Speech In The Name Of Democracy. Are We Next?

Keith Ellison

Taylor Lorenz

Tulsi Gabbard

“With great power comes great responsibility.” Long before Uncle Ben imparted this sage advice to Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, in comics and movies, it was an accepted maxim in Western civilization known as “noblesse oblige.” Those with wealth, privilege, or position have an obligation to use the advantages of their birth to benefit those not similarly situated. As Americans, we are blessed with the greatest protection of individual rights known to man, none more important than the Constitution’s First Amendment, which lays freedom of speech, religion, press, and assembly as the bedrock upon which our republic rests. For nearly two and half centuries our nation has been a beacon and today, perhaps more than ever, that light must be shown to Brazil.
On Friday, Justice Alexandre de Moraes of the Brazilian Supreme Court ordered the “immediate, complete and total suspension of X’s operations” in the country after the social media platform refused to comply with government orders to shut down accounts which it had singled out for censorship.
The decision imposes a daily fine of R$50,000 (£6,800/almost $9,000) on individuals and companies that attempt to continue using X via a virtual private network.
The same justice has also issued an order to freeze the assets of the company Starlink, a satellite internet provider, following X’s refusal to comply with the censorship orders. Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX, an entirely different company in which <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/8789d9b8-a466-45c9-94b0-8e409683bb1e" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Elon Musk</a> is a 40% minority shareholder with 79% voting rights.
Monday, the Brazilian Supreme Court upheld the decision to ban X nationwide, further curtailing the right to free speech online.
Appealing to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to uphold freedom of expression, lawyers from free speech-supporting legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom International petitioned the body – which has jurisdiction over Brazil under the American Convention on Human Rights – to intervene in the dire situation.
The orders to censor online content are supposedly based on combatting disinformation and fake news. But the state has targeted conservative voices for censorship, including blocking pro-life messages during the 2022 election campaign, which contained a message contrary to the pro-abortion position held by then-candidate Lula da Silva.
Other targeted speech included repudiations of the Nicaraguan government’s suppression of religious freedom and the concern it could happen in Brazil, and criticism of Lula’s promotion of sexually explicit content in school curricula.
Various journalists and public figures, including journalist Paulo Figueiredo and bestselling American author Michael Shellenberger, have already been targeted with secret criminal investigations for reporting on the authoritarian drift of the Brazilian courts and their censorship efforts.
Of course, America’s moral authority to lead the world against the rising global tide of censorship is only as strong as our commitment to uphold these fundamental human rights in our own country. Facebook/Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg recently <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/zuckerberg-says-biden-administration-pressured-meta-censor-covid-19-content-2024-08-27/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sent a letter</a> to Congress admitting that his platform had censored important news stories under pressure from the Biden-Harris administration.
Last year, the U.S. House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government <a href="https://adfmedia.org/press-release/adf-testify-us-house-subcommittee-weaponization-federal-government?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">revealed</a> that the U.S. Treasury Department conspired with major banks to monitor transactions of ordinary citizens making purchases at Dick’s Sporting Goods, Bass Pro Shops, and Cabela’s, and buying  “religious texts” like Bibles under the guise of identifying potential “domestic terrorists.” The federal government also flagged mainstream conservative organizations, and faith-based non-profit advocacy organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom, as potential “domestic terrorist” threats for surveillance by major banks.
Unfortunately, government suppression of disfavored viewpoints in America isn’t limited to big government in Washington, D.C., As a seventh grader, <a href="https://adflegal.org/press-release/adf-likely-appeal-there-are-only-two-genders-t-shirt-case?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Liam Morrison</a> wore a T-shirt to Nichols Middle School in Middleborough, Massachusetts, that read, “There are only two genders.” The principal of the school, along with a school counselor, pulled Liam out of class and ordered him to remove his shirt. After Liam politely declined, school officials said that he must remove the shirt, or he could not return to class. Attorneys from Alliance Defending Freedom are representing Liam in court to defend his, and every student’s, right to free speech.
The rising tide of censorship abroad has reached our shores; when it comes to protecting free speech from the authoritarian impulses of government officials, we now must stand resolute on both fronts. And whether it is in the halls of power in Brazil, Washington, D.C., the local city hall or school district, we cannot give an inch. It has been said that all the darkness in the world cannot withstand the light of a single candle. America must stoke the flame of liberty at home so that it might shine brightly for the world to see.
* * *
Lathan Watts is vice president of public affairs at <a href="https://adflegal.org/?utm_source=dailywire&amp;utm_medium=oped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Alliance Defending Freedom</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Brazil’s Ban On X Is Yet Another Gut Punch To Global Free Speech

Brazil's Ban On X Is Yet Another Gut Punch To Global Free Speech

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For Kamala Harris, the “joy” is running out.
The thrill, as they say, is gone. She feels as though she is in the mire. She feels as though she is stagnating — because she is. There&#8217;s been no movement in the polls in her favor. The state polls are not moving in her favor. She has basically flatlined at this point. The momentum is clearly no longer with her. 
Most Americans know nothing about her. How long can Harris go without the American people becoming acquainted with her? 
That suggests we are about to be subjected to a great censorship regime in the United States.
That&#8217;s precisely what happened in 2020. In 2020, there was a full-scale media lockdown on the Hunter Biden story the month before the election in an attempt to secure the election for Joe Biden. 
But now, we are at the point where there&#8217;s no information about Harris, which requires a much bigger lockdown if the goal is to get Harris through unscathed.
That’s why we are seeing an elevated level of attack on Elon Musk.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2040-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: THE BEN SHAPIRO SHOW</a>
The Left has decided it is absolutely necessary that Elon Musk&#8217;s X be punished. Many of the other social media tech pros have done what they can in favor of Democrats in order to prevent the dissemination of material that Harris wouldn’t like.
But on X, it&#8217;s freewheeling access, open for all the good and all the bad. And the Left is furious that Musk has declared he supports President Trump. None of the other social media pros have. All of them are well-known Democratic voters — or they&#8217;ve tried to stay out of it completely. 
But Musk has supported Trump.
This is why you are seeing the Left cheer along as dictatorial regimes attempt to shut down X. 
Remember what happened in Brazil? Jair Bolsonaro, the conservative Right-wing leader, narrowly lost an election in disputed circumstances, then was immediately arrested and barred from running in the future. And leftist Lula da Silva, who is treated by the media of the United States as a great liberator, turned out to be quite dictatorial, and he and the Brazilian judiciary basically rewrote the constitution in tyrannical ways. 
Now, Brazil is outlawing X. According to the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/brazils-supreme-court-upholds-x-ban-d9b4a394">Wall Street Journal</a>:
<blockquote>Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said his country should serve as an example for the rest of the world on how to deal with Elon Musk after the Supreme Court voted to uphold a ban on the billionaire’s social-media platform X. 
“The world is not obliged to put up with Musk’s far-right ideology just because he is rich,” Brazil’s leftist leader told local media late Monday.</blockquote>
You might think the world should be obliged to hear a lot of points of view they don&#8217;t like; we do it all the time here in the United States.
But apparently not. 
<blockquote>Brazil, one of the world’s largest democracies, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/brazil-bans-x-outlawing-access-to-app-for-millions-3771d4eb?mod=Searchresults_pos2&amp;page=1&amp;mod=article_inline">shut down X</a> over the weekend after Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes outlawed the social-media platform for failing to suspend accounts that he asserted contained hate speech and misinformation, as well as complying with other legal requirements.
A five-member panel of justices voted unanimously in favor of the ban Monday after de Moraes called on the court to review his decision. He and the court have been facing accusations of overstepping their mandate, both here in Brazil and far beyond. Musk has referred to de Moraes as a “dictator” on X. … the ban on X, which took effect early Saturday, is one of his most audacious moves yet, jurists say, drawing criticisms from free speech advocates and also some investors concerned about judicial overreach and the impact it might have on business. </blockquote>
Dictatorship of the Left is hunky-dory with many people on the American Left, so long as it targets their political opponents. 
X is being targeted by Brazil for not shutting down “hate speech and misinformation,” terms that have been applied to everything that disagrees with the Left-wing social agenda.
That is being celebrated by the Left in the United States.
For example, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, former Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee, <a href="https://x.com/keithellison/status/1830720700019028109">posted</a> on X, “obrigado Brasil!” — which means, “Thank you, Brazil.” 
Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1830826870146727941">replied</a>, “The Democratic Party – same one that used to defend the First Amendment –now wants to destroy the First Amendment.”
True.
Guess who used to be very much in favor of banning people from X for things she disliked? Kamala Harris, when she called for X (then Twitter), to ban Donald Trump, <a href="https://x.com/KamalaHarris/status/1179810648127152128" target="_blank" rel="noopener">declared</a> in 2019, “Look, let’s be honest. @realDonald Trump’s Twitter account should be suspended.”
Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary under Bill Clinton, penned <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/30/elon-musk-wealth-power">an article</a> titled, “Elon Musk Is Out Of Control.” Noting that Musk endorsed Trump, he suggested a boycott of Tesla, that “advertisers should boycott X,” that “regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X,” that “the Federal Trade Commission should demand that Musk take down lies that are likely to endanger individuals – and if he does not, sue him,” and that “the US should terminate its contracts with him, starting with Musk’s SpaceX.”
Am I suspicious there will be an attempt to shut down information dissemination through pressure tactics on social media before the election?
You bet I am.
I am very grateful that Elon Musk bought X in the first place because if X were in other hands, you’d be getting ready for the coercive and collusive attempt to shut down speech right before another presidential election.

Kamala Harris/Elon Musk

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2024 Election

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