As the United States prepares to mark 25 years since the September 11 terrorist attacks, a major press release distribution service rejected an announcement for a campaign devoted to victims of jihadist terrorism, warning organizers that the initiative could be viewed as inflammatory or prejudicial toward Muslims.
PR Newswire, which is owned by the communications company Cision, refused to distribute the announcement for a campaign called “<a href="https://infidelawareness.com">Infidel Awareness Month,</a>” according to an email obtained by The Daily Wire. It is scheduled to run from September 11 through October 7, using the anniversaries of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Hamas&#8217;s 2023 attack on Israel as bookends for a month of films, testimony, interviews, research, and daily discussions about Islamic extremism and its victims. 
But before the observance even began, the campaign encountered a controversy of its own. Cision, the parent company of PR Newswire, rejected the group’s press release announcing the initiative, telling organizers that the release could be interpreted as inflammatory or prejudicial toward a religious group.
“After review of your release with the headline &#8216;‘Infidel Awareness Month’ launches on the 25th Anniversary of 9/11,&#8217; we have determined that this release will not be an appropriate fit for Cision’s distribution network,” the company told organizers in an email obtained by The Daily Wire.
“Our concern is primarily that the nature of the initiative can reasonably be construed as being inflammatory and inciteful against a group of people,” Cision continued. “Per our guidelines, Cision will not knowingly transmit content that reads — or could reasonably be interpreted to read — as abusive or threatening speech, or writing that expresses prejudice against a particular group, especially on the basis of race, religion, or sexual orientation.”
“For this reason, the release has been canceled out of our system,” the company concluded. 
The rejection is notable because the organization’s own statement explicitly distinguishes its opposition to jihadist ideology from hostility toward Muslims. 
“Hatred of Muslims as people, bigotry, discrimination, and violence directed at men and women because they are Muslim, is real, and it is as abhorrent as every other form of bigotry,” the organization says. “We condemn it without reservation.”
“Muslims are entitled to exactly the dignity, safety, and equal standing that everyone else is owed,” the statement continues. The group says its target is not Muslims as a people, but what it describes as a “supremacist current within Islam” that has inspired terrorism and political violence. “No to supremacist Islam. Yes to Muslims who live as our neighbors,” the organization says.
Historian Richard Landes founded the initiative, which includes former Muslims, scholars, philosophers, filmmakers, Jews, and Christians. Its inaugural observance, billed as “27 Days of Truth,” will focus on victims of jihadist violence.
The campaign is organized around three themes: “A Record,” documenting and remembering victims; “A Reckoning,” examining what organizers say are euphemisms and institutional failures surrounding jihadist ideology; and “A Warning,” arguing that jihadist movements remain a threat even after the territorial defeat of ISIS and the death of Osama bin Laden.
“Infidel Awareness Month is about remembering, understanding, and speaking plainly,” Landes said in the group&#8217;s announcement. “We cannot defend a free society if we are afraid to name the ideology that has repeatedly declared us its enemy.”
Danny Burmawi, a former Muslim from Jordan who is now founder and CEO of the Ideological Defense Institute, a partner in the project, shared his transformation from celebrating the September 11 attacks as a child to opposing jihadist ideology. 
“Twenty-five years ago, as a boy in Amman, I cheered when the towers fell. Today I am a proud infidel,” Burmawi <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/twenty-five-years-ago-i-celebrated-9-11-today-i-celebrate-america-as-a-proud-infidel">said</a>. “The Month is about confronting the threat of an ideology that demands submission and seeks to impose Sharia law across society.” 
Burmawi also emphasized that the initiative is not intended as a campaign against Muslims. 
“Muslims are this ideology&#8217;s first victims, and some of its bravest opponents are those, like me, who left it,” he said.
In a July <a href="https://icsa.substack.com/p/by-richard-landes-infidel-awareness">essay announcing the initiative</a>, Landes proposed making Infidel Awareness Month an annual observance through 2076.
Cision&#8217;s PR Newswire says its distribution network includes more than 82,000 media and syndication outlets and more than 300,000 journalists and influencers. 
The Daily Wire asked Cision what specific language violated its standards and whether the company had considered the initiative&#8217;s explicit condemnation of anti-Muslim bigotry.
Cision did not provide a response by publication.

YEMEN-CONFLICT-RELIGION-ISLAM-SHIITE-ASHURA

Anti-Jihad Campaign’s 9/11 Launch Deemed Too ‘Inflammatory’

9/11

censorship

cision

islamic terrorism

richard landes

“On September 11th, 2001, 19 Islamist extremists hijacked four airplanes and flew two of them directly into the World Trade Center at the instruction of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, killing nearly 3,000 Americans.”
That&#8217;s an example of a sentence that could get you banned or penalized on TikTok.
Over the last few weeks, I — along with countless other political content creators — have been censored, throttled, and threatened with bans on the Chinese-owned app for simply stating basic facts about Islam, political leaders who practice the faith, and/or terrorism happening in our country and around the world.
I&#8217;ve always dealt with some censorship on TikTok. I have to appeal at least 30% of my videos after they&#8217;re abruptly taken down upon posting, with no explanation beyond the red banner reading &#8220;you&#8217;ve violated community guidelines&#8221; (translation: something might have offended someone). But something has changed in the last month.
It started with a <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Db8LXwnJ5NP/">video</a> about Hasan Piker and the New Left. The entire video consisted of me quoting the Twitch streamer, his friend Abdul El-Sayed, and Francesca Hong. I noted that Piker has said he believes America deserved 9/11, that he wants more immigrants to come into your countries and “f*ck” &#8220;your&#8221; sisters and daughters, and that he&#8217;s expressed a desire to see the white race and white middle class destroyed. I pointed out that Abdul El-Sayed campaigned at a mosque whose imam has openly called for the killing of &#8220;infidels,&#8221; and that former Wisconsin Senate candidate Francesca Hong has said she hates Thanksgiving.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-1172257" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6414.jpg" alt="" width="490" height="574" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6414.jpg 1320w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6414-256x300.jpg 256w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6414-491x576.jpg 491w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6414-768x900.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6414-1311x1536.jpg 1311w" sizes=" (max-width: 490px) 100vw, 490px" /></div>
The video was blocked immediately. Why should I be punished for simply relaying the heinous things our new political Left is screaming into the ether?
My next video, a recap summarizing the week&#8217;s insanities, was also flagged within minutes. Likely because I mentioned Islamic foot-washing stations at Dallas airports, and the fact that two conservatives dressed as Muslims exposed how easy it is to register non-citizens to vote in Minneapolis.
Then, of course, my video about Abdul El-Sayed’s sister, an America-hating, Columbia professor, professional POS, was also quickly removed.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1172247" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6413.jpg" alt="" width="1320" height="728" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6413.jpg 1320w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6413-300x165.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6413-1024x565.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6413-768x424.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1320px) 100vw, 1320px" /></div>
Infuriating is an understatement.
I have 243,900 followers on TikTok, where viewership translates directly into revenue. When a video gets removed, and if the Chinese communist overlords put it back up on my page, it’s often days or weeks later, and my viewership is abysmal.
To avoid this, I started whispering or mouthing certain &#8220;trigger&#8221; words — Muslim, Islam, rape, sexual assault — so as not to set off Big Brother. The result is often a video where I&#8217;m mouthing half my sentences while trying to explain current events, which would be funny if it weren&#8217;t so ridiculously absurd.
For instance, TikTok did not like my video discussing the U.K. pamphlet fiasco, in which the government was forced to put out a nine-page PDF for foreigners, outlining how to act like a civilized human in their once-civilized country. I can’t help that they had to spell out, in print, dozens of times, that it’s not okay to rape, touch, or advance upon girls under the age of 16. But clearly that has to be said.
My mouthing tactics didn&#8217;t work the first two times I posted that video. On the third try (after muting several more words and phrases), TikTok finally let it stay up. It got about 10,000 views. For reference, the same video got 1.1 million views on Instagram.
The next day, my “understanding womanhood in 2026” video, where I discussed the insanity surrounding the Lindsay Clancy case and articulately laid out why it was all happening, also failed their Orwellian &#8220;community guidelines.” The appeal took days, during which my TikTok viewership stalled. While on Instagram, the same video had already been seen and shared by over five million people.
Last week I posted a &#8220;positive political news&#8221; video honoring Dolly Parton, and it still hasn&#8217;t cleared the appeal process, likely because…well, I have no idea why.
I could not hate the algorithm developers more.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-1172251" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6415.jpg" alt="" width="422" height="817" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6415.jpg 1057w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6415-155x300.jpg 155w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6415-297x576.jpg 297w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6415-768x1487.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6415-793x1536.jpg 793w" sizes=" (max-width: 422px) 100vw, 422px" /></div>
And, of course, my two most recent videos about Islam were taken down, because apparently even mentioning the word holds racist and bigoted connotations.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-1172253" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6416-scaled.jpg" alt="" width="317" height="689" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6416-scaled.jpg 1178w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6416-138x300.jpg 138w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6416-265x576.jpg 265w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6416-768x1669.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6416-707x1536.jpg 707w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6416-943x2048.jpg 943w" sizes=" (max-width: 317px) 100vw, 317px" /></div>
This isn&#8217;t just happening to me. It&#8217;s happening to nearly every conservative creator on the app. Nate Friedman, an independent journalist who made a video exposing the &#8220;Islamic takeover of New York,&#8221; had his documentary banned and was stripped of the earnings that came with it. Xavier DuRousseau, a conservative commentator, was suspended from posting after multiple videos were removed and was forced to complete &#8220;educational training&#8221; about violent and hateful organizations.
This isn&#8217;t a Brave New World. It&#8217;s a frightening one.
The app is withholding millions of dollars from conservative creators, or anyone who points out the detriment of radical Islam or any other politically “untouchable” topics, while liberal creators are free to blabber on about anti-Christian propaganda, anti-Republican trash, and anything that melts the brain and misleads society.
One viral TikTok video could cover half my rent. Instead, they block me, dish out strikes, and never explain why.
But beyond the financial shackles they’ve bound us to, this utilitarian, dictatorial blackout is unbelievably dangerous because it creates a feedback loop where young people see only one side of the story.
Why do we think it is that a third of young voters like communism, an ideology that’s killed hundreds of millions of people? Why is it that young people have a growing affinity for political violence, Islam, and socialism?
Because young people are on TikTok.
Sixty-three percent of adults under 30 use the platform. So do 68% of teens ages 13 to 17. Gen Z users up to age 26 spend nearly three hours a day on this digital drug. And instead of seeing a variety of viewpoints and opinions, they’re getting gorged with videos by middle-aged white women explaining, for instance, that Christian Nationalism is the same as the Taliban.
We’ve literally never been more retarded in all of human history.
Which is the entire goal of our enemies. To dumb us down, neuter our brains, and keep us ignorant of their predation.
ByteDance, a Chinese company, still owns TikTok, even though U.S. operations are technically run through a majority-American joint venture, and ByteDance still controls the underlying algorithm. Weakening America&#8217;s resistance to communism serves their interests directly, and Islam is being used as one vehicle for that erosion. Which is part of why, a few years ago, it became a trend on the app to read bin Laden&#8217;s &#8220;Letter to America&#8221; and say he had a point.
Fast forward to today, we have a terror-sympathizing, communist-loving, sharia-pushing freak running for Senate in Michigan. We have a radical, anti-capitalist, anti-oil Democrat running for Senate in Texas, who <a href="https://x.com/LoneStar_PAC/status/2094167411662446629/video/1">play-preaches</a> by reciting Islamic poems in front of a pride flag. We have a political party whose number one most prominent influencer is on tape saying that he wants to wipe his *ss with the Constitution and that Hamas is “a thousand times better” than Israel.
And we have no way to communicate this to the youth on their most utilized platform.
Here in the West, Americans often believe we are untouchable. Physical war hasn&#8217;t reached our doorstep in a long time, and most of us are insulated from attacks happening elsewhere. But that doesn’t mean our adversaries have quit. They’re still chipping away at us, eroding our freedoms, and meddling in our elections by hindering our access to certain information.
This is an information war waged through an algorithm still designed and built by a Chinese company, and it disproportionately targets conservatives because we&#8217;re the ones fighting back. By shrinking our reach and amplifying the other, the Left wins. A Left that normalizes political violence, foreign interference, open borders, and blatant hostility toward constitutional norms.
A divided, historically illiterate, and increasingly radicalized generation is not a threat to Beijing, or any of our enemies who wish us dead. It’s a gift.
They’re conquering the feed so as not to have to conquer the soil. If we keep pretending this is just “content moderation,” we will lose the argument, then the election, then the country.
If we’re going to keep TikTok alive in the United States, at least don’t let it kill half the creators who use it.

image_127ff051

TikTok Is Shadowbanning Me To Protect Islam And Communists

bytedance

content moderation

islam

opinion

tiktok

It is deeply perverse to think that artificial intelligence could learn from the great literature of past times by destroying the books that contain it. It is no surprise that booksellers, collectors, and all others who are concerned about the preservation of cultural history have been angered by <a href="https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-companies-destroying-rare-books">reports</a> that AI companies are purchasing huge numbers of used books, scanning them, and then discarding the original copies. This worry is especially strong when the books in question are rare, old, or otherwise irreplaceable.
But this controversy raises a significantly more complicated question than whether AI should be allowed to read old books. Simply put, it should. If we believe that artificial intelligence is going to become one of the most important intellectual technologies of the coming century, then it is difficult to argue that we should deliberately deprive it of humanity&#8217;s greatest literature. 
An AI trained exclusively on the disposable &#8220;slop&#8221; of the modern internet would be an intellectual disaster. There is immense value in having these systems encounter Shakespeare, Austen, Dostoevsky, Dickens, Homer, Dante, and the thousands of lesser-known writers whose works have accumulated across centuries.
The problem is not that AI wants to learn from the past. The problem is that we have become so careless about possessing the past that we are willing to destroy its physical record to make a digital copy.
The Italian Futurists understood the danger of treating cultural inheritance as something that exists merely to be worshiped. Filippo Marinetti, in his famous 1909 “<a href="https://designmanifestos.org/f-t-marinetti-manifesto-of-futurism/">Futurist Manifesto</a>,” declared, “Museums: cemeteries!” He raged that the Italian obsession with preserving the past was a kind of cultural paralysis, arguing that art existed to propel humanity forward rather than leave it permanently staring backward. 
Marinetti was right: Culture is not alive just because it has been preserved in an untouched, physical state. A book sitting on a shelf, unread, is technically being preserved. But if nobody ever reads it, learns from it, argues with it, writes in response to it, or carries its ideas into the future, then preservation has become little more than embalming. The book is dead and useless, no matter how old or rare it is. We should not want museums that are mausoleums. We should want living libraries.
That is why there is something almost fitting about artificial intelligence becoming one of the newest readers of humanity&#8217;s oldest books. The machine does not need to replace the reader, but it should become another reader. It can expose forgotten works to people who otherwise would never encounter them. It can help translate, search, compare, and contextualize texts that have spent decades or centuries inaccessible to anyone who did not know where to look.
But that possibility makes the physical destruction of books more troubling, not less. A digital copy is not the same thing as the original, and history has given us plenty of reasons to be suspicious of the idea that digitization automatically means preservation. Once information exists primarily as a digital file, someone has to control that file.
We have already seen what happens when cultural works are revised to accommodate the sensibilities of a later generation. In 2023, Steven Spielberg <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/04/26/steven-spielberg-blasts-revising-old-films-for-modern-audiences/">acknowledged</a> that he made a mistake when he altered the 2002 re-release of “E.T.,” replacing the guns carried by federal agents with walkie-talkies. Spielberg eventually came to regret changing his own film, admitting that “E.T.” was a product of its era and that he should never have “messed with the archives” of his own work.
Roald Dahl&#8217;s books provide another, more <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/02/21/1158347261/roald-dahl-books-changed-offensive-words">insidious example</a>. New editions altered the language from the original texts to make them conform more closely to contemporary sensibilities. Words were changed, descriptions were softened, and new language was inserted, long after Dahl had passed.
The point is not that every digital archive is necessarily untrustworthy, but that a physical copy gives us something a digital copy cannot: an independently existing record. If you own an original edition of a book, nobody can push an update to it. Nobody can change a word while you sleep or aren’t looking. Nobody can alter the file on a server, revoke your access, remove it from a digital storefront or decide that your particular copy no longer complies with the prevailing cultural consensus.
That matters enormously in an age when so much of our intellectual life is moving behind centralized digital systems.
The same principle applies to the increasingly familiar argument over “banned books.” Much of the contemporary political rhetoric surrounding book bans <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-real-book-ban-no-one-talks-about">obscures</a> the distinction between restricting access to a book in a particular institution and making a book literally unavailable. But the technological future presents a much more serious version of the latter possibility.
If a book exists only as a digital file controlled by somebody else, its availability is ultimately conditional. It can be deleted, it can be locked, it can be altered, and it can be disappeared. A physical copy sitting in someone&#8217;s private library is much harder to erase — barring the future envisioned in &#8220;Fahrenheit 451” coming to pass.
This is why the response to AI-driven book scanning should not be an anti-technology crusade. It should be a renewed appreciation for private ownership. We need people to own books. Not merely institutions, corporations, or governments. People.
Private collections, family libraries, used bookstores, church libraries, university archives, historical societies, and collectors all provide redundant repositories of cultural memory. The more copies exist in the hands of ordinary people, the harder it becomes for anyone to erase a work from existence.
That does not mean every book needs to be locked behind glass; quite the opposite, the best form of preservation is use. Read the books, give them to your children, loan them to your friends, and write in the margins. Argue with the great ideas.
The Internet Archive offers a useful model. As outlined last week in <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/heres-a-balm-if-the-idea-of-destroying-books-to-train-ai-breaks-your-heart/">Ars Technica</a>, its scanners have deliberately favored slower, more careful processes for fragile and rare books because the purpose of digitization is preservation, not merely extraction. The goal is to create the digital copy without sacrificing the physical one. That process is less efficient, but it is more civilized.
AI companies are engaged in a technological race, and nobody should be surprised that they are looking for the fastest and cheapest ways to acquire the enormous quantities of high-quality text required to train increasingly sophisticated models. But there are some things for which efficiency is not the only relevant metric. A 500-year-old book is not merely a container of tokens. It is an artifact.
Destroying that object in the name of preserving its contents digitally is not necessarily immoral. Sometimes the trade-off may be justified, but it should never be regarded as inconsequential.
There is also a larger lesson here for those of us who are enthusiastic about the future. Futurism does not have to mean amnesia. We can embrace AI, industrialization, automation, and every other technology that makes the future stronger and more capable while simultaneously becoming more serious about preserving the things worth carrying into that future. Indeed, the two projects should reinforce one another.
Let the machines read the classics. Let them help us discover forgotten authors. Let them translate ancient works, compare texts across centuries, and make the world&#8217;s accumulated knowledge accessible to the people.
But while the machines are reading, let us keep the books, not as museum pieces, not as sacred objects that nobody is allowed to touch. As living things. The purpose of preserving a book is not ultimately to ensure that a particular physical object survives for another thousand years. The purpose is to ensure that what is inside it survives, and the only way to guarantee that the past actually has a future is to keep reading it.
***
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

GettyImages-1496431966

AI Should Read The Classics. We Should Keep Them Too.

artificial intelligence training data

book bans

internet archive

National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya stopped CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan cold during a Sunday morning interview, refusing to let her steer the conversation away from what he says was his censorship by former President Joe Biden&#8217;s administration.
Midway through the interview, Brennan turned to Bhattacharya&#8217;s trip to Atlanta that week, marking one year since the shooting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters that killed DeKalb County police officer David Rose — a Marine combat veteran and father of three who had graduated from the police academy five months earlier. Brennan asked whether enough was being done to counter that kind of &#8220;misinformation,&#8221; noting that the shooter&#8217;s father said his son had been &#8220;brainwashed&#8221; about the vaccine and thought it &#8220;was making him suicidal.&#8221;
Bhattacharya, the acting CDC director, pushed back, reminding Brennan that not everyone agreed on what constituted &#8220;misinformation&#8221; — and that had been weaponized to great effect during Biden&#8217;s administration.
&#8220;I think the key thing is there&#8217;s a loss of public trust in public health that happened in part because a lot of — frankly, even on this network and on other networks — there was a particular single point of view put across during the COVID pandemic that led to things that really did cause harm to people,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The school closures are probably the number one thing that the —&#8221;
Brennan interrupted, attempting to redirect the conversation: &#8220;This is not a productive line of claims. We covered COVID in depth on this program like no other Sunday show did.&#8221;
&#8220;I&#8217;m not blaming you specifically,&#8221; Bhattacharya replied. &#8220;What I&#8217;m saying is that you want to talk about misinformation — the kinds of decisions and the public, sort of the face of public health during the pandemic led to many people losing trust in public health.&#8221;
&#8220;The Trump administration officials,&#8221; Brennan interjected.
&#8220;No, I mean like Biden. So Biden, for instance, censored me,&#8221; Bhattacharya said.
&#8220;The pandemic began under the Trump administration, and we put those officials on our air,&#8221; Brennan said.
&#8220;Just so we&#8217;re clear, the Biden administration censored me,&#8221; he said. &#8220;They sent out direct attacks on people who disagreed on whether the COVID vaccine stopped — &#8221;
Brennan cut in to note that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had called the COVID vaccine &#8220;the deadliest vaccine ever made.&#8221;
&#8220;That is misinformation, and we&#8217;re not being clear about that,&#8221; she said. &#8220;And I think that is dangerous. Wouldn&#8217;t you agree?&#8221;
&#8220;People lost their jobs, Margaret, because the Biden administration censored people and said, &#8216;Look, you can&#8217;t even talk about COVID vaccine harms,&#8221; Bhattacharya responded.
&#8220;We&#8217;re talking about a shooting,&#8221; Brennan said.
&#8220;Yeah, and I&#8217;m talking about why you have the kind of distrust that&#8217;s led to the kind of problems that we were talking about earlier in public health,&#8221; Bhattacharya replied. &#8220;That distrust was not caused by President Trump, it wasn&#8217;t caused by Bobby.&#8221;

Jay Bhattacharya

NIH Director Reveals What Got Him ‘Censored’ By Biden Admin During COVID

NIH Director Stops Margaret Brennan Cold: 'The Biden Administration Censored Me'

covid19 vaccine

jay bhattacharya

joe biden

margaret brennan

national institutes of health

Coca-Cola is facing backlash for allowing customers to order Coca-Cola cans with personalized messages, including &#8220;Allah Is King&#8221; and &#8220;Satan Is King,&#8221; but when customers try to write &#8220;Jesus Is King,&#8221; they are rejected.
A video shows customers are able to order bottles with custom phrases through the Coca-Cola website which allows slogans like &#8220;Allah Is King&#8221; and &#8220;Satan Is King&#8221; to advance to the company’s review, but &#8220;Jesus Is King&#8221; is immediately declined. The Coca-Cola website also did not allow users to create cans with Christian names such as &#8220;Holy Trinity,&#8221; &#8220;Virgin Mary,&#8221; or &#8220;Holy Spirit.&#8221;
The website cited restrictions on religious figures for why it wouldn’t create the can with Jesus&#8217; name on it. It did, however, allow users to generate the messages &#8220;Jesus is bad&#8221; and &#8220;Jesus is evil.&#8221;
Coca-Cola has not issued an official statement in response to the backlash but has made changes to its website so that all online submissions undergo review for compliance with its content guidelines.
Coca-Cola did not immediately respond to The Daily Wire’s request for comment. 
The controversy is not the first time Coca-Cola has faced public criticism from conservatives. In 2021, the company’s former CEO James Quincey slammed new voting laws in Georgia, where the company’s headquarters is located, after Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp signed voter ID requirements into law. Quincey stepped down from his CEO position in December of 2025. 
The company that sometimes ventures into politically charged topics and conversations has also faced backlash from the other side of the aisle when the far-Left group, “The Latino Freeze Moment,” <a href="https://www.newsnationnow.com/business/coca-cola-boycott-explained/">called</a> for boycotting the beverage company after it scaled back its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts last year. 
“Latinos and Latinas stop spending money. Hold the line. We can all collectively make a big impact by simply holding and not spending our money,” the Latino Freeze Movement said on its website.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola Said No To Jesus But Yes To Satan

boycott

christianity

coca cola

corporate diversity policies

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. laid into CNN anchor Dana Bash during a Sunday morning interview, arguing that her network — and media across the board — had been complicit in efforts to silence anyone who raised questions about the COVID-19 pandemic orthodoxy.
Kennedy began by pointing out just how quickly Constitutional rights had been trampled as people who spoke out or refused the COVID-19 vaccines faced cancellation, getting fired from their jobs, or worse — and Bash immediately tried to move the conversation in a different direction.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
This was a long-overdue moment on CNN.
RFK Jr. called out the network on air for helping to silence dissent during COVID.
Dana Bash was getting visibly irritated, after she repeatedly tried to move the conversation away from censorship.
Then he aimed his fire at Dana Bash… <a href="https://t.co/yHmIxjgz25">pic.twitter.com/yHmIxjgz25</a>
— Overton (@overton_news) <a href="https://x.com/overton_news/status/2083918836999332300?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 2, 2026</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;We need to protect our constitutional rights. That is the primary obligation in our country,” Kennedy began.
&#8220;What does that mean?&#8221; Bash asked.
&#8220;Well, during COVID, we completely dismantled our constitutional rights. We began censoring people in violation of the First Amendment,&#8221; he explained, but Bash interrupted.
&#8220;You’re saying what not to do, I’m asking what to do,&#8221; she protested.
Kennedy pushed back: &#8220;Well, that’s something to do. That is the number one priority: we protect the Constitution.&#8221;
&#8220;Forgive me, but you’re talking about rights and I’m asking about a potential public health crisis that is coming. But I do want to … let’s …&#8221; Bash tried to redirect him.
&#8220;And one of the mistakes we made last time was suppressing those rights. So people weren’t being heard. Doctors who were saying, ‘You’re doing it wrong,’ were being marginalized and vilified,&#8221; Kennedy made it clear that he was not going to be deterred.
Bash tried once more, saying, &#8220;Again, I really want to move on …”
&#8220;Yeah, of course you want to move on because you were part of the problem!&#8221; Kennedy shot back.
&#8220;No! I wasn’t part of the problem!&#8221; Bash objected.
&#8220;There was absolute press malpractice. Your job is to have a fierce skepticism toward authority, and you weren’t doing that,&#8221; Kennedy continued, arguing that many in media were to blame for doing the same. &#8220;You were beating up on people who were dissenting!&#8221;

HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr Testifies At Senate Finance Hearing

RFK Jr. Unloads On CNN Anchor Over COVID: ‘You Were Part Of The Problem!’

RFK Jr. Unloads On CNN Anchor Over COVID: 'You Were Part Of The Problem!'

covid19 pandemic

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A book questioning the benefits of mass immigration is shooting to the top of the Amazon bestseller list after going viral when it was yanked from the site April 17.
All the leftists who shriek about book bans were notably silent when “The Camp of the Saints,” a 1973 dystopian novel written by French author Jean Raspail, became unavailable at the largest bookseller in the world. 
The work of fiction depicts the collapse of Western civilization after a horde of third-world migrants overtakes the country. The book’s publisher, Vauban Books, released a statement following the book being removed from Amazon on April 17.
An X post from Vauban Books on April 20 said, “On Friday, April 17th, Amazon US removed the paperback listing for our edition of Jean Raspail’s The Camp of the Saints (at this writing, the book remains available for purchase in Kindle and audiobook formats).” 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Our statement on Amazon&#8217;s suppression of The Camp of the Saints in the United States: <a href="https://t.co/JDTE5i4XbH">pic.twitter.com/JDTE5i4XbH</a>
— Vauban Books (@VaubanBooks) <a href="https://twitter.com/VaubanBooks/status/2046262858904641889?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 20, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
“We have since been informed by Amazon that the book is in violation of the company’s ‘offensive content’ policy,” the statement continued. “Amazon has supplied no information as to which portions of the book are offensive nor to whom.”
Vauban Books also noted that the book had been selling well after first being listed on Amazon in July 2025. “In the eight months since, Amazon has sold roughly 20,000 paperback copies of it.”
“The Camp of the Saints” was also said to have been “extensively reviewed in the American and international press” and found that its reviewers &#8220;have been unanimous in their assessment of its abiding importance and relevance to contemporary debates.”
“While we cannot say for certain has taken this extraordinary step, it may be no coincidence that the listing was removed one day after New York Magazine published a critical article on Vice President Vance that referenced the book.”
Following public outcry, Amazon reportedly <a href="https://x.com/VaubanBooks/status/2046621879574688215">shared a response</a> with Vauban Books courtesy of their media contact, stating, “We’ve resolved an error that briefly affected the availability of a paperback listing of The Camp of the Saints, and the title is now restored.'&#8221; 
The publisher said that Amazon &#8220;appears to be in damage control mode,&#8221; and again confirmed that the book was originally taken off the website due to their &#8220;offensive content policy.&#8221;

Amazon

Amazon Yanks Anti-Immigration Novel, Accidentally Sends It Rocketing Up The Charts

anti-immigration

Books

conservatism

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Amazon Germany Services GmbH

The Return Of Wokeness? Amazon Banning Books Is Just The Start

amazon

illegal immigration

Leftists

Matt Walsh

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
A patient recently stopped midsentence during a session. He was describing a routine disagreement at work — a minor conflict over scheduling and communication — when he suddenly froze, backtracked, and added an unnecessary disclaimer: “I know I’m saying this as a white guy…” The comment had nothing to do with race. But in his mind, race had already entered the room.
That moment reflects something I’m seeing more and more among successful adults, especially white professionals in elite settings. Ordinary conversations that should feel routine are now approached like potential danger zones. Before they even know whether what they’re about to say is remotely controversial, people are editing themselves, adding disclaimers, and mentally preparing for how they might need to explain or retreat. What they think is heightened social awareness is often something closer to chronic anxiety.
Race has become a psychological minefield. Therapeutic language and anxiety-driven habits have moved beyond the consulting room into everyday life, reshaping how people think, speak, and relate to one another.
The problem isn’t empathy, reflection, or a sincere desire to get it right. Those are healthy. The problem is when reflection turns into constant self-monitoring, when people overanalyze ordinary phrasing and start treating basic exchanges like potential liabilities. At that point, it’s no longer sensitivity. It’s anxiety.
In therapy, this is a familiar pattern. People rehearse conversations before they happen, over-monitor their wording in real time, and replay exchanges afterward searching for signs they crossed a line. In workplaces, schools, and social circles, race discourse now trains people into that same habit. The reality is, people aren’t becoming more honest. They’re becoming more afraid.
The clearest example shows up among white professionals who feel the need to preface even basic observations with disclaimers about identity or privilege. But it doesn’t stop there. Teachers start second-guessing harmless classroom discussions. Parents tense up talking about race in front of their children’s friends. Executives over-script routine feedback conversations. Friends replay things they said at dinner, wondering whether a phrase landed the wrong way. The pattern is the same: Ordinary speech starts to feel loaded before the conversation even begins. Silence becomes the coping mechanism.
That’s where this stops being just cultural and becomes psychological. Once people begin avoiding ordinary conversations because the fear of social consequences, avoidance itself becomes the habit. And once that habit takes hold, the anxiety only deepens.
What’s especially concerning to me as a therapist is how familiar the pattern is. Someone feels a spike of fear, adds a disclaimer, softens the phrase, or avoids the comment altogether, and immediately feels a sense of relief. That teaches the brain the wrong lesson: that the danger was real and that self-censorship is what prevented the fallout. So the next time a similar conversation comes up, the anxiety shows up faster and hits harder because the brain has started to associate silence and over-editing with safety.
Over time, people become so afraid of saying the wrong thing that ordinary conversation starts to feel risky. They check every sentence for possible offense, replay exchanges long after they’re over, and fall into habits such as disclaimers, over-prefacing, and moral throat-clearing, all meant to signal innocence before anyone has even accused them of anything. The irony is that the very habits meant to calm the fear only make race feel more dangerous to discuss honestly.
That is how a culture meant to encourage dialogue slowly trains people to avoid honest conversation.
Elite institutions have made this worse. In workplaces, schools, and media, people are trained to second-guess ordinary language and over-explain even basic observations. The result is a constant habit of second-guessing. People become so focused on how every word might land that real conversation disappears, and exchange gives way to performance. This doesn’t improve dialogue. It shuts it down.
Good therapy helps people tolerate discomfort, reality-test their fears, and speak honestly without assuming the worst. A healthy culture should do the same. It should make room for candid discussion, curiosity, and disagreement without teaching adults to treat ordinary language like danger.
What much of elite race discourse now produces instead is self-censorship, guilt, and a widening culture of silence. That may spare people short-term discomfort, but it’s also normalizing the same fear patterns we usually associate with anxiety. That is far from social progress. It’s a culture teaching healthy adults to think like anxious patients.
***
Jonathan Alpert is a psychotherapist in New York City and Washington, D.C., and author of the forthcoming book “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Therapy-Nation-America-Anxious-Divided/dp/1335000658" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Therapy Nation</a>.” Find him on X <a href="https://x.com/JonathanAlpert" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@JonathanAlpert</a>.

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Why Saying The Wrong Thing Now Feels Like A Bigger Risk Than Staying Silent

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upstream

It is easy to forget the dystopian excesses of the Covid era: business closures, shuttered schools, and mask and vaccine mandates. A new development in Missouri v. Biden, a Covid-era lawsuit, serves as an important reminder of how precarious our basic freedoms become in the face of a perceived disaster. For the past four years, a coalition of state attorneys general, courageous scientists, and First Amendment advocates waged a counterattack against the federal government’s efforts to strong-arm social media companies into silencing those espousing views contrary to the government-approved narrative. 
Last week, the plaintiffs and the federal defendants submitted a consent decree to the court for approval. The <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.477.1.pdf">proposed consent decree</a> is both a real win for free speech and a blueprint for further protections necessary to safeguard our First Amendment rights.
That need is underscored by another recent free speech victory by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/state-dept-reaches-censorship-settlement-with-daily-wire?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=undefined&amp;elementPosition=7&amp;row=3&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+News&amp;rowType=Vertical+Carousel&amp;title=Daily+Wire+Wins+Landmark+Free+Speech+Victory+In+Censorship+Lawsuit+Against+State+Department">The Daily Wire</a>, in which the State Department agreed to stop supporting efforts that targeted protected speech by American media outlets. That settlement also imposed ongoing compliance oversight, helping ensure the government cannot quietly return to the same tactics.
The core allegation in Missouri v. Biden was that senior officials across multiple federal agencies had engaged in an unprecedented campaign to coerce and pressure major social media platforms into censoring lawful speech. The plaintiffs argued that the Biden administration had effectively outsourced government censorship to private companies, leaning on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to suppress content related to Covid origins and treatments, the Hunter Biden laptop story, and election integrity.
<div id="attachment_869089" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-869089" class="size-large wp-image-869089" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-1915020320-864x576.jpg" alt="WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 10: Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, departs a House Oversight Committee meeting at Capitol Hill on January 10, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" />Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images</div>
For example, Rob Flaherty, the director of digital media in the Biden Administration, tried to coerce Meta into suppressing posts critical of the Covid vaccine on Facebook, accusing Meta of driving “vaccine hesitancy.” Flaherty even demanded that Meta explain what it would do to suppress anti-vaccine content on WhatsApp, a private messaging application. Flaherty made clear he was not speaking just for himself, but rather for, “the highest — and I mean the highest — levels of the White House.&#8221;
The case bounced between trial and appellate courts, including a stop at the Supreme Court, as judges evaluated the nuances of the thorny, at times novel, claims at issue in the case. With the change in presidential administrations, however, the federal government no longer was the adversary, though it was still the nominal defendant. 
On his first day back in office, President Trump signed an Executive Order entitled, “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,” which condemned the types of censorship the plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden had filed suit regarding. With a sympathetic administration in office, the plaintiffs were able to negotiate a consent decree rather than spend many more years embroiled in litigation.
The consent decree is focused on preventing the type of coercion, known as jawboning, that the federal government had used to do indirectly during Covid what it could not do directly: prevent Americans from speaking out in public about the major issues of the day. The parties agreed that the government would no longer take actions designed to bully social media companies into removing or suppressing content containing free speech. The consent decree further prohibits the government from directing or vetoing social media companies’ content moderation policies.
A critical limit in the consent decree, however, exposes the clear need for the government to take protective measures outside the confines of the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit. For technical legal reasons related to standing and jurisdiction, the consent decree is focused on the parties to the case. Rather than enjoin the federal government as a whole, the consent decree binds the Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which engaged in some of the most blatant jawboning efforts during the Covid period. The consent decree further protects only the plaintiffs in the case, that is, the states and individuals who sued the government. (In a bit of poetic justice, two of the plaintiffs, Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, withdrew from the case after accepting senior posts in the Trump administration.)
The Missouri v. Biden plaintiffs are not the only litigants who have prevailed in challenges to Biden-era free speech violations. As The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/state-dept-reaches-censorship-settlement-with-daily-wire">reported</a>, this week, a federal judge issued a consent decree in a challenge to the Biden-era State Department’s practice of partnering with outside organizations to label various outlets — including this one and the Federalist — as disinformation. The State Department agreed that it would no longer engage in efforts to suppress, censor, demonetize, or downgrade the constitutionally protected speech of Americans and domestic news outlets. 
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/state-dept-reaches-censorship-settlement-with-daily-wire?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=undefined&amp;elementPosition=7&amp;row=3&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+News&amp;rowType=Vertical+Carousel&amp;title=Daily+Wire+Wins+Landmark+Free+Speech+Victory+In+Censorship+Lawsuit+Against+State+Department"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-1070109 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/dw_vs._state_dept_16x9_720.png" alt="" width="720" height="405" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/dw_vs._state_dept_16x9_720.png 720w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/dw_vs._state_dept_16x9_720-300x169.png 300w" sizes=" (max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px" /></a>
While these consent decrees are real victories for the plaintiffs who had the courage to take on the federal government in court, they will not stop a future administration from engaging in similar tactics that we saw during Covid, in the wake of the 2020 election, and throughout the Biden Administration. Americans as a whole deserve the robust protections the Missouri v. Biden plaintiffs earned in that litigation. 
Congressional action of any sort is admittedly a difficult feat. But there are few bedrock principles more important than those embodied in the First Amendment. If Congress wants to protect Americans’ free speech rights, the proposed consent decree in Missouri v. Biden is a useful roadmap. All federal agencies and officials, not just the select handful named in the proposed consent decree, should be prohibited from trying to control speech by telling social media companies what content is and is not allowed. And all Americans should be able to speak on social media with the assurance that the government cannot tell social media platforms to silence them.
The plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden and their attorneys should be praised for bringing a landmark lawsuit in the face of tremendous government overreach and achieving a real victory in the process. Congress should follow suit by extending those protections to everyone else.
* * *
Jesse Franklin-Murdock is the Miles Visiting Fellow at the Center for American Liberty, and he is a partner at Sweigart Murdock, LLP in San Francisco, where he specializes in First Amendment and defamation law, political law, and civil rights.

TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-BIDEN-ARRIVAL

After Daily Wire Legal Win, Americans Shouldn’t Wonder Who’s Silencing Them Online

biden administration

COVID

daily wire

donald trump

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Social Media Censorship

The Federalist

The White House turns green today as Ireland’s prime minister (Taoiseach) Micheál Martin arrives for his annual St. Patrick’s Day meeting with the president. Every March, Americans put aside political differences and raise a pint of Guinness to the ballads, jigs and reels, and the rolling hills of their common ancestral homeland. In Chicago, the river turns green. In New York, the city shuts down for the largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the world. And in Boston – well, Boston is Irish all year round.
The last time the American media reported on Irishmen in Washington was only last month. Free speech expert Lorcán Price and comedian Graham Linehan <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-europe-plans-to-strangle-american-free-speech?author=Lorcan+Price&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=How+Europe+Plans+To+Strangle+American+Free+Speech">testified</a> before the House Judiciary Committee on the mass censorship regime sweeping Europe through its big tech hub in Dublin, Ireland. The American nostalgia of St. Patrick’s Day remembers a wholesome, Christian, culturally rich country that is now close to extinction. Ireland today is a left-wing, globalist hub and it offers a warning about the direction left-wing policies will lead the United States if the American Left regains control in Washington. Ireland’s fall from grace demonstrates how unelected bureaucracies and mass-immigration can reshape a nation.
<div id="attachment_1060857" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1060857" class="size-large wp-image-1060857" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2245192920-864x576.jpg" alt="DUBLIN, IRELAND - OCTOBER 31: The sun shines on a pint of Guninness that is being poured as people enjoy a drink in a bar in the city centre on October 31, 2025 in Dublin, Ireland. The city of Dublin, the capital of the Republic of Ireland, is located on Ireland’s east coast at the mouth of the River Liffey and is a popular destination for domestic tourists and with international visitors. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2245192920-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2245192920-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2245192920-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2245192920.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Matt Cardy/Getty Images</div>
While Elon Musk’s DOGE made some headway last year in exposing and trimming some of the worst excesses of America’s deep state, Ireland’s deep state is firmly embedded. There are <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/2024/10/19/why-so-many-charities-and-ngos/">32,000 NGOs</a> in Ireland — that’s one for every 155 people in the country. Despite the label “non-governmental,” this sector receives $7 billion (€6 billion) every year, not including additional funds from the European Union, USAID, and other governmental bodies around the world.
These organizations, for the most part, implement policies created by the European Union — another unelected bureaucracy — that are passed with little-to-no real scrutiny by the Irish parliament. In fact, according to an Irish member of European Parliament, <a href="https://gript.ie/fine-gael-mep-70-of-legislation-comes-from-europe/#:~:text=Many%20people%20in%20Ireland%20today,what's%20decided%2C%E2%80%9D%20he%20said.">70% of Ireland’s legislation</a> is created in this way.
The American Left would love to see that level of unaccountable NGO rule in the United States. The House DOGE Subcommittee <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/release/doge-subcommittee-chairwoman-greene-opens-hearing-on-ngos-use-of-federal-funds-to-advance-radical-agenda">found last year</a> that the Biden-Harris EPA had directed $20 billion to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. This provided taxpayer funds to NGOs to implement the Green New Deal. If Republicans lose in 2026, we can expect Democrats to push even larger sums of taxpayer dollars through similar programs with little oversight.
In Ireland, the government openly advertises that it reserves special benefits for <a href="https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/moving-country/asylum-seekers-and-refugees/services-for-asylum-seekers-in-ireland/direct-provision/#:~:text=Direct%20provision%20is%20the%20name,protection%20and%20are%20waiting%20for:">illegal immigrants who come to its shores</a>. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Ireland announced it would take in every Ukrainian refugee that arrived at Dublin Airport, with no upper limit. The government still provides housing and a weekly stipend many times larger than any other European country, but refuses to run any background checks on these alleged refugees. Dr. Eoin Lenihan explains in his book, Vandalising Ireland, that between 2022 and 2023, 8,975 individuals arrived in Ireland to seek asylum with no valid identification. Only one was prosecuted.
In 2022, a 23-year-old Irish schoolteacher, Ashling Murphy, was brutally stabbed 11 times in the neck while out for a run. Her murderer, Jozef Puska, was unemployed and receiving funds from a social welfare program. As an EU citizen (Puska moved from Slovakia in 2013), he had an automatic right to live in Ireland, despite being unemployed. Puska was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment, but he remains in the country without a deportation order. Ashling’s boyfriend, Ryan Casey, was accused of “incitement to hatred” by the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yg0ee65eqo">BBC</a> for raising concern about the unmitigated immigration regime that led to her murder. To date, the system has not been reformed to prevent similar tragedies.
<div id="attachment_1060839" style="width: 875px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1060839" class="size-large wp-image-1060839" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1237802580-865x576.jpg" alt="TULLAMORE, IRELAND - JANUARY 18: Pupils from Ashling Murphy's class hold photographs of her and red roses ahead of her funeral at St. Brigid’s Church, County Offaly on January 18, 2022 in Tullamore, Ireland. The murder of the beloved 23 year old school teacher has caused widespread anger and shock in Ireland, with tens of thousands of people attending vigils in recent days. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)" width="865" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1237802580-865x576.jpg 865w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1237802580-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1237802580-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-1237802580.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 865px) 100vw, 865px" />Charles McQuillan/Getty Images</div>
The United States has seen similar tragedies as a result of the disastrous Biden-era immigration regime. Young girls like Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, and Kayla Hamilton bore the brunt of this policy. A new Democratic administration will certainly re-open the border and cause more pain and suffering, precisely because open borders — not the safety of young women — has become a defining policy priority of the Left.
Ireland’s Christian heritage has been politicized and defeated in a woke crusade. The last decade brought with it a wave of referendums that ripped Ireland’s conservative safeguards out of the constitution. Ireland voted in large numbers to create constitutional rights for same-sex “marriage” and abortion (with no restrictions). In 2024, the ruling parties put forward a vote to remove the word “woman” from the constitution and define “family” as any “durable relationship.” Only in a last-minute polling turnaround that indicated the Irish people are finally waking up to the destruction of their culture, did the government lose the vote. The star of that 2024 campaign, Maria Steen, was unceremoniously <a href="https://lawliberty.org/ireland-at-rock-bottom/">blocked from running for President</a> last year.
A nation’s politics necessarily impact its culture. The Irish culture Americans celebrate every March is deteriorating rapidly. The Gaelic language is confined to rural villages, and less than <a href="https://www.cso.ie/en/csolatestnews/pressreleases/2023pressreleases/pressstatementcensus2022resultsprofile8-theirishlanguageandeducation">2% of the population</a> speak it on a weekly basis. This year, the government perverted the celebration of the Irish Catholic St. Brigid by <a href="https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/ireland-is-playing-with-holy-fire/">casting her as a pagan goddess</a>. In the aftermath of the George Floyd debacle in Minnesota, Ireland eagerly joined the cancellation spree. Trinity College Dublin “denamed” (renamed) its Berkeley Library, previously named after a significant Irish-born philosopher, due to alleged ties to slavery.
While the United States has never passed a popular vote to create constitutional rights out of thin air, it repeatedly elects politicians who seek to protect made-up rights, misuse the law, and sell out their Christian faith. The last administration attempted to codify Roe v. Wade. It succeeded in codifying parts of Obergefell v. Hodges with bipartisan support in the “Respect for Marriage Act.” Thirty-four felony convictions nearly blocked Donald Trump from the ballot in 2024. In the United States, Christian faith is becoming increasingly politicized. Daily Wire’s Megan Basham has catalogued this bastardization of Christianity in the United States in her book, &#8220;Shepherds for Sale.&#8221; Renaming libraries and toppling statues has also become common under Democrat governance.
Ireland’s transformation did not happen overnight. It happened through bureaucrats, state-funded NGOs, and cultural elites who slowly replaced national identity with global ideology. Americans celebrating St. Patrick’s Day should remember: the country they toast tonight is not the one that exists today. Ireland shows what happens when elites, bureaucracies, and ideology override national identity. As Americans celebrate 250 years of independence, they should reflect on their own national identity as they head to the ballot box this year. After all, Ireland is the future the American Left wants.
* * *
Roger Berkeley works with mission-driven organizations to develop their political and communications strategies. Now based in Washington, DC, Berkeley has been politically active in his native Ireland since 2016, driving change on free speech and life issues.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Aerial view of St. Anne’s Church of Ireland in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, surrounded by cemetery and lush countryside, Traditional rural church architecture and Irish cultural landscape for editorial and travel use

Ireland Is The Future The American Left Wants

europe

Globalization

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St. Patrick's Day

X announced Friday that it is challenging a $140 million fine imposed by the European Commission under what critics call the bloc&#8217;s digital “censorship” law. 
The social media company was hit with a fine in December 2025 for alleged non-compliance with the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), a sweeping speech-regulation law that allows authorities to penalize companies for failing to remove so-called misinformation or other content deemed illegal. X filed an appeal on Monday in the E.U.&#8217;s General Court, arguing it was denied due process and faced a biased enforcement process. 
“This EU Decision resulted from an incomplete and superficial investigation, grave procedural errors, a tortured interpretation of the obligations under the DSA, and systematic breaches of rights of defence and basic due process requirements suggesting prosecutorial bias,” X’s Global Government Affairs team <a href="https://x.com/GlobalAffairs/status/2024803983093629298">said</a>. “X remains committed to user safety and transparency while defending our users&#8217; access to the only global town square.”
X&#8217;s move marks the first legal challenge to the Digital Services Act, which critics say enables political censorship and punishment of disfavored viewpoints. The law allows the European Commission to impose significant financial penalties on tech companies it claims are not doing enough to combat so-called disinformation.
The act relies on non-governmental organizations that advise regulators on whether online content may be deemed illegal for violating E.U. standards. It places significant reporting and compliance burdens on tech companies. In certain cases, American tech companies may be fined up to 6% of their global revenue if they violate specific conditions. 
The legal challenge is being supported by Alliance Defending Freedom International, which has spoken out extensively against the Digital Services Act. 
“X is where millions of people go to freely express their views. This is a crackdown on X by authorities who view a free speech platform as a serious threat to their total control of online narratives,” said Adina Portaru, a senior European counsel for ADF International. “By targeting X, they are targeting the free speech of individuals across the world who simply want to share ideas online free from censorship.”
Portaru said the legal challenge confronts what she described as the enormous power the European Commission wields to define the content moderation rules, launch investigations, and levy fines.
“If the Commission’s concentration of power goes unchallenged, it will further cement a highly problematic standard for speech control across the EU and beyond,” she said. 
In October, ADF International led a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/for-thursday-exclusive-free-speech-advocates-challenge-eu-over-pan-european-censorship-regime">letter</a> signed by more than 100 free speech advocates urging the European Commission to reconsider the law. In a November review, the commission claimed that the act was content-neutral. 
X owner Elon Musk called the fine against his company “bullsh*t” and, one day after it was issued, <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1997279325876367719">said</a> the European Union should be &#8220;abolished.&#8221;
Both the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have voiced opposition to the law.
“Look, Europe has to be very careful,” Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/europe-has-to-be-very-careful-trump-issues-stern-warning-after-eu-fines-elon-musks-x">said</a> while commenting on the fine back in December. “They’re doing a lot of things. … Europe is going in some bad directions. It’s very bad for the people.”
Last week, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bill-would-give-american-victims-of-foreign-censorship-power-to-sue?author=Leif+Le+Mahieu&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Bill+Would+Give+American+Victims+Of+Foreign+Censorship+Power+To+Sue">said</a> lawmakers are exploring legislation to protect American companies from penalties under foreign laws that regulate speech. The committee has released documents it says show the European Union pressured tech companies to create guidelines defining acceptable speech on topics ranging from mass migration to men competing in women’s sports.

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