The following is an edited transcript of an interview on an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/exclusive-babylon-bee-sues-california-over-deepfake-laws" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Exclusive edition of Morning Wire</a>. Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley sits down with CEO, president, and general counsel of Alliance Defending Freedom, Kristen Waggoner, and Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon about a new lawsuit over censorship.
Earlier this month, California’s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/democrats-set-out-to-ban-memes-to-protect-their-power" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gavin Newsom signed</a> first-in-the-nation “deepfake” laws – a move that came just weeks after he said a Kamala Harris online parody video should be “illegal.” While the Democrat governor’s office is celebrating the laws as a “safeguard” against the use of “deceptive” digital content, conservatives say this is a massive violation of free speech.
* * *
JOHN: Joining us now to discuss for the first time the lawsuit they have just filed today against the state of California is Seth Dillon, CEO of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/babylon-bee">Babylon Bee</a>, and Kristen Waggoner, president of the Alliance Defending Freedom. Seth and Kristen, thank you so much for joining us. Now you’ve partnered to sue over these new laws just recently signed by Governor Newsom. First, Seth, I’d like to ask you, why did you feel compelled to bring this lawsuit?
SETH: Well, I guess a number of things. We started out the Bee as a comedy site that&#8217;s mission was just to tell jokes on the internet. And over the course of the last several years – you know, the Bee’s been around for eight years now, if you can believe that – and for most of that time for the last six years, we&#8217;ve been battling either big state, big tech censorship or state laws that clamp down on speech with either rules against misinformation, rules against hate speech, laws now that we see popping up trying to prevent parody, the use of deep fakes, memes, things of that nature. And so we&#8217;re concerned about freedom of speech first and foremost, but we&#8217;re also concerned about our business, and when you&#8217;re doing satire, when you&#8217;re parodying people, you&#8217;re adopting their voice, you&#8217;re adopting their likeness. Satirical articles are meant to look like real articles and that&#8217;s the hook that pulls you in and then you hit them with a punchline. So, Babylon Bee&#8217;s content requires that we engage in this satire, where we&#8217;re adopting a voice and a viewpoint and using that to mock and ridicule a subject. And this law in particular – well, there are a couple of laws in play here – but one of them affects content creators, specifically satirists and people doing parody by requiring them to put disclaimers to let you know that this is parody that you&#8217;re reading right now – which completely stifles and kills the joke. It disrupts our ability to do what we do the way that we do it, in the voice we do it in. And so that&#8217;s very problematic for us. If we&#8217;re unable to publish satire without putting disclaimers all over it, and we&#8217;re going to face potentially penalties if we don&#8217;t do that, then that&#8217;s a very serious issue too. So we&#8217;re fighting back in every way we can against laws that clamp down on speech. So this is just one more, this is just the latest example of an effort where the state is now basically turning these social platforms into an arm of their censorship apparatus and coming after satirists like us very aggressively. So, we see that as an important thing that needs to be pushed back on.
JOHN: Right – and this brings us to the legal arguments here. Kristen, can you lay out the legal case that you&#8217;re bringing against California?
KRISTEN: I can. These laws that were passed in California target core political speech. These laws were passed by politicians to protect politicians from speech that they don&#8217;t like. I&#8217;ll point to two in particular. The first law is used to punish speakers for posting political commentary online that the government doesn&#8217;t like, decides is materially deceptive content, and it is targeting that content that affects candidates or election officials and what they say might harm their chances of getting elected. It also allows anybody to file a lawsuit if they want to file a lawsuit regarding a post. So in addition to what Seth talked about with regard to these disclaimers that actually defeat the whole point of the joke, they also subject all kinds of people – me and you – to saying, ”Well, should I repost this or not? Because what if it gets me sued?” It&#8217;s deeply disturbing and sets a roadmap for widespread censorship across the nation.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/exclusive-babylon-bee-sues-california-over-deepfake-laws">LISTEN: Catch the full interview with Seth Dillon and Kristen Waggoner on Morning Wire</a></h3>
JOHN: So this isn&#8217;t just for companies. This is for individuals. This applies to individuals posting any content online, even reposting content. Is that correct?
KRISTEN: Yes, that&#8217;s correct.
JOHN: So this really opens the floodgates legally. Have we seen anything similar to this in any other states?
KRISTEN: We&#8217;ve seen censorship writ large in Western democracies now outside of the United States. And I think it&#8217;s important for Americans to understand that the United States is the last country in the Western world, among Western democracies, to protect free speech, to protect core political speech. The last people who should be doing the fact-checking are the political candidates and Gavin Newsom – and that&#8217;s what these laws do. They&#8217;re incompatible with self-government and democracy.
JOHN: How much of a burden is this to the platforms – this is a threat to the platforms as well if the state decides they&#8217;re not properly policing content, correct? 
KRISTEN: It&#8217;s absolutely a threat. It is a roadmap to widespread censorship. There&#8217;s no question about it, and there is no law that has gone this far. If we want to maintain a free society, if we want self-government, if we want democracy, then we can&#8217;t allow Gavin Newsom to tell us what we can post and what we can&#8217;t post.
JOHN: Elon Musk’s platform X is obviously fighting against censorship laws. Are any other platforms pushing back on these new laws? 
KRISTEN: Yes, I believe there will be more platforms that will push back on it. One of the problems with this law is that it&#8217;s so vague. In certain parts, it&#8217;s even hard to know what it says. And if the lawyers are having trouble explaining it, imagine what the average person is going to have to do to be able to repost something and feel like they won&#8217;t get sued for it. So there is one lawsuit that&#8217;s pending right now related to a post, and this is the second lawsuit. And I expect you&#8217;ll see more. I hope you will see more.
JOHN: Now you brought up fact-checking. I know this is something that Seth has talked about a lot, and here at The Daily Wire, obviously, we&#8217;ve dealt with this firsthand. We have a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-judge-slaps-down-biden-administrations-attempt-to-dismiss-daily-wire-censorship-lawsuit" target="_blank" rel="noopener">current lawsuit</a> related to the Biden administration’s collusion with fact-checking groups. Central to this is the idea that the state can actually identify what is true or not true, and that they are the arbiters of that. What is the legal case against that kind of suppression via “fact-checking”?
KRISTEN: The legal case is that the free speech clause of the First Amendment in the United States Constitution — as well as a number of state constitutions — protects our right as Americans to be able to decide what is true, what is false, what is worthy of being said in the public square. We necessarily understand that if you allow the government to decide what speech is worthy of being given voice to, you are not only impairing the right to self-government and to impose a check on government officials, but you&#8217;re also impairing the pursuit of truth and social progress. We know in particular satire and parody have been used since the days of Voltaire and George Washington and Aristotle. Political satire has been used to reveal truth, to shock people into considering things in a new way. It serves a vibrant purpose, particularly in public debate.
JOHN: Now the argument presented by advocates of these censorship laws often focuses on “misinformation” – that “misinformation” is dangerous for the public. We saw a lot of this during the COVID era. But you see this really highlighted in satirical content, in particular. The Babylon Bee has really led the way on this issue, highlighting the fact that this distinction between satire and straight news is not made – often in a very disingenuous way by the people that have the authority to block content on social media platforms. Seth, how have you seen this play out writ large in the last few years?
SETH: Well, it&#8217;s funny you mentioned COVID. That whole scenario seemed like satire to me as I was watching it, and then watching the excuses they were making for the censorship. You remember they were telling you what you were and weren&#8217;t allowed to say based on whatever the prevailing narrative was. Whatever the CDC says you&#8217;re allowed to say or whatever Fauci says you&#8217;re allowed to say, that&#8217;s permitted, but you can&#8217;t challenge that. Then, later on, as the facts changed and people realized some of the things that they were saying were wrong— it was actually the case that many people had been speaking the truth and had been censored. And it just really highlights the fundamental problem with trying to decide up front what the truth is. Kristen mentioned a moment ago the utility of being able to speak freely. Part of that is truth seeking. You have to be able to debate ideas and challenge ideas rather than just arbitrarily deciding at any given moment in time what&#8217;s true. If knowledge changes over time, then it may turn out that you&#8217;re censoring people who are speaking the truth today. And that&#8217;s exactly what we saw with COVID. That is actually a knockdown argument against censorship for what they were doing with COVID and the way that the facts actually played out and disrupted some of those narratives. And so with “misinformation,” we&#8217;ve seen our jokes fact-checked so many times and we&#8217;ve been threatened with de-platforming and demonetization so many times by a number of these different platforms.There are state laws that are trying to clamp down on the spread of misinformation or on hate speech. And so, on the one hand we want to just kind of mock and make fun of that stuff, and on the other, we have to take it very seriously and push back with legal challenges when necessary.
JOHN: ADF is really leading the charge on those challenges. Kristen, what other kinds of cases are related to this that your team has been a part of? 
KRISTEN: Well, we&#8217;ve seen government censorship play out here in the United States. First of all, in cases like Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cake Shop, where laws have been weaponized to force people to say things that they don&#8217;t believe and to face severe punishment in some states, even jail time for declining to speak messages about marriage and other topics. Then, we have moved to instances where pregnancy resource centers, for example, are facing assaults right now to have to refer to abortion — or to essentially express speech that violates their pro-life beliefs. We have a case right now at the US Supreme Court that we&#8217;re asking the Court to hear involving the right of a young boy in school who simply wants to say that there are two genders on his T-shirt when all of his colleagues are wearing things that suggest otherwise. So we are seeing this across the spectrum. We litigate more cases in this area than anyone else. But I also want to highlight the international perspective right now, because we have cases on five continents. We have congressmen in Mexico we&#8217;re defending; someone on death row in Nigeria. We had a trial this week in the UK for someone who engaged in silent prayer. Peru just had a criminal conviction, a case that we won this last week. So this is an all out assault by government officials. The World Economic Forum right now says its greatest threat is “misinformation” and “disinformation.” And when the public hears those words, they should understand what that means is government censorship. Someone who wants control will first take away the right to speak freely, and our First Amendment says that it&#8217;s up to the American people to decide and to think for themselves in the context, particularly of political debates. And we need to make sure that stays the same way and that those laws are upheld, despite what California&#8217;s trying to do here. One last thing on this that we haven&#8217;t even touched on is that this California law actually sets up social media platforms to be snitches on people. A second law actually requires these platforms to accept complaints and then to censor speech, even when they don&#8217;t want to censor speech. So it is Orwellian in nature.
JOHN: So this California law turns Americans against each other, sort of weaponizing them with this “misinformation” clause. Now this case focuses on satire. Is this an original case in some ways? How much has satire played into the legal history of censorship laws?
KRISTEN: We have not seen any law like this in the United States. Now perhaps there&#8217;s some that I&#8217;m unaware of, but we&#8217;ve seen no similar law where it has been targeted in this way through a state law. And frankly, in terms of the Western democracy and the laws that we&#8217;re seeing, they&#8217;re far more draconian. We can look at Brazil right now, where we have a petition before the Inter-American Commission — they&#8217;re just simply taking X down altogether. But this is the way it starts. These are code words that allow government officials and political opponents to sue over speech that they just don&#8217;t like.
SETH: Yes.What she said a minute ago was right on point. It&#8217;s when they use words like trying to crack down on “misinformation” and “hate speech,” these attempts at content moderation, they are euphemisms for censorship. What they&#8217;re trying to do is guard certain narratives, not the truth. And they often end up guarding those narratives at the expense of the truth.
JOHN: Final question, to return to California. What&#8217;s next for this case? And do you think these laws have any chance of standing up in court?
KRISTEN: We will be filing the case that will go up through the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. We will be asking the trial court for a preliminary injunction and then a permanent injunction to stop these laws from going into effect. It&#8217;s difficult to say what will happen in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals up through the federal system in California, but I do believe, I am optimistic that the United States Supreme Court will stand up for free speech. But time will tell. It takes a lot of time, a lot of resources, and courage by groups and people like Seth and the Babylon Bee to stand up, because again, under this law, you and I can get sued for posting a parody or a satire, some type of joke – and that&#8217;s chilling.
JOHN: Well, we certainly will be tracking your lawsuit, as its outcome impacts, well, all of us. Seth and Kristen, thank you so much for joining us. 
SETH: Thank you for having us.
KRISTEN: Thank you.
JOHN: That was Seth Dillon, CEO of the Babylon Bee, and Kristen Waggoner, president of Alliance Defending Freedom – and this has been an Exclusive edition of Morning Wire. 
***
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/exclusive-babylon-bee-sues-california-over-deepfake-laws">LISTEN: Catch the full interview with Seth Dillon and Kristen Waggoner on Morning Wire</a></h4>

MixCollage-30-Sep-2024-08-55-AM-7648

Babylon Bee CEO Lays Out His Lawsuit Against California: Parody Restrictions Are ‘Censorship’

Babylon Bee CEO Lays Out His Lawsuit Against California: Parody Restrictions Are 'Censorship'

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)

Babylon Bee

Bill of Rights

California

Censorship

Constitution

Free Speech

Gavin Newsom

interview

Morning Wire

Satire

The Babylon Bee filed a lawsuit against the state of California on Monday after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a series of “deepfake” laws that target outlets that publish satire and parody.
The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and shared exclusively with The Daily Wire, begins by noting that in July of this year, Newsom <a href="https://x.com/GavinNewsom/status/1817768956754788440" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tweeted</a> that a parody video of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris should be “illegal.” “The legislature heard the call and passed two laws that forbid political expression under the label of ‘materially deceptive content,’” the lawsuit asserts.
The complaint explains that one of California’s new laws will require social media platforms to become “state snitches” and force them “to field reports about user posts with ‘materially deceptive content’ and then remove or label them.”
Newsom defended the state’s new laws, saying they focus on AI-generated content that could “undermine the public’s trust through disinformation.” But <a href="https://digitaldemocracy.calmatters.org/bills/ca_202320240ab2655" target="_blank" rel="noopener">buried</a> in one of the new laws is a requirement for satire and parody content to either be clearly labeled or removed.
In his first public statement on the lawsuit, Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon told Daily Wire news podcast “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/exclusive-babylon-bee-sues-california-over-deepfake-laws" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Morning Wire</a>” that one of the new California laws especially targets satirists, such as the writers at his company, “by requiring them to put disclaimers to let you know that this is parody that you&#8217;re reading right now – which completely stifles and kills the joke.”
“If we&#8217;re unable to publish satire without putting disclaimers all over it, and we&#8217;re going to face potential penalties if we don&#8217;t do that, then that&#8217;s a very serious issue too,” Dillon told Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley in an interview with “Morning Wire” released Monday. “So we&#8217;re fighting back in every way that we can against laws that clamp down on speech.”
The Bee’s suit against California is joined by California attorney Kelly Chang Rickert and was filed with the help of Alliance Defending Freedom, whose president, Kristen Waggoner, warned that the leftist state’s new laws “target core political speech.”
“These laws were passed by politicians to protect politicians from speech that they don&#8217;t like,” Waggoner told “Morning Wire.”
The lawsuit is filed against California Attorney General Rob Bonta, California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, and Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Soto.
The Bee’s popularity has skyrocketed under Dillon’s leadership after the satire site, which started by mainly writing about Christian topics, began focusing more on politics. The site’s content is regularly shared on social media by personalities with massive followings, including X owner Elon Musk.
California’s new laws are also being challenged by a conservative social media user, @MrReaganUSA, who recently posted a parody of a Kamala Harris campaign ad. The Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, which filed a lawsuit against California on behalf of the social media user, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/newsoms-deepfake-election-laws-already-being-challenged-federal-court" target="_blank" rel="noopener">argues</a> that California is “chill[ing] free speech, particularly for political commentators like Mr. Reagan, who use satire to critique public figures and rely on social media viewership for their livelihood.”
The Bee’s complaint against California argues that satire and parody are protected speech under the First Amendment “because it trusts the American people to be able to think and decide for themselves in the context of debating political candidates and issues.”
The Bee’s new lawsuit adds to the growing list of complaints directed at government entities related to the censorship of conservative content. Late last year, The Daily Wire, along with The Federalist and the state of Texas, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daily-wire-and-the-federalist-sue-biden-state-department-over-censorship-effort" target="_blank" rel="noopener">filed a lawsuit</a> against the Biden administration. The suit alleges that the U.S. State Department is funding censorship technology that targets opposing political opinions, especially those expressed in conservative media outlets.
<iframe style="width: 100%; max-width: 660px; overflow: hidden; border-radius: 10px;" src="https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/exclusive-babylon-bee-sues-california-over-deepfake-laws/id1576594336?i=1000671302573" height="175" frameborder="0" sandbox="allow-forms allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-storage-access-by-user-activation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation"></iframe>

Seth Dillon/Gavin Newsom

EXCLUSIVE: Babylon Bee Sues California Over Unprecedented Crackdown On Satire, Parody

First Amendment

Democrat <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/john-kerry" target="_blank" rel="noopener">John Kerry</a>, who served as President Joe Biden&#8217;s U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, said last week that the First Amendment was in the way of Democrats&#8217; desire to fight &#8220;disinformation.&#8221;
Kerry made the extreme remarks during a discussion with the World Economic Forum on Green Energy when asked by an audience member what could be done to fight online disinformation.
&#8220;You know there&#8217;s a lot of discussion now about how you curb those entities in order to guarantee that you&#8217;re going to have some accountability on facts, etc.,&#8221; he said. &#8220;But look, if people only go to one source, and the source they go to is sick, and, you know, has an agenda, and they&#8217;re putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence.&#8221;
&#8220;So what we need is to win the ground, win the right to govern, by hopefully winning enough votes that you&#8217;re free to be able to implement change,&#8221; he added.
He said that the problem was unique to democracies because there was an &#8220;absence of a sort of truth arbiter, and there’s no one who defines what facts really are.&#8221;
<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amiracist.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1726313279401000&amp;usg=AOvVaw115_qPFFEePDP86-Fvo-Vd">Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here!</a>
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
&#8220;Our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to hammer [disinformation] out of existence. What we need is to win&#8230;the right to govern by hopefully winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change.&#8221;
No thanks.<a href="https://t.co/SLGHOLVjCr">pic.twitter.com/SLGHOLVjCr</a>
— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) <a href="https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/status/1840231811554664541?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 29, 2024</a></blockquote>

COP28 UNFCCC Climate Conference: High-Level Segment Day Two

John Kerry: If Democrats ‘Win,’ We Can ‘Change’ First Amendment To Fight ‘Disinformation’

Elections

John Kerry

Misinformation

Politics

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/joe-rogan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Joe Rogan</a> warned this week that if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the presidential election, the First Amendment will be under serious threat because of how extreme she and running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) are.
Rogan made the remarks on his show &#8220;The Joe Rogan Experience&#8221; this week while talking with former U.S. Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan.
&#8220;I don&#8217;t think it turns around if Kamala Harris gets into office, I think they clamp down more,&#8221; Rogan said of the political Left&#8217;s desire to censor speech. &#8220;I think the same stuff that they were trying to do with Twitter, they&#8217;ll try to do with something else and with other things &#8212; they&#8217;ve already openly discussed it.&#8221;
&#8220;You know, she&#8217;s openly discussed that the same rules have to apply to Facebook, they have to apply to Twitter, and that Elon Musk could lose his privileges,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;There are so many wild things that they&#8217;re saying. Tim Walz said that the First Amendment doesn&#8217;t apply to misinformation or hate speech.&#8221;
He noted that the First Amendment is about protecting speech, even speech that is factually wrong, and that he was alarmed by how government officials used the COVID-19 pandemic to censor people who spoke out against the government&#8217;s tyrannical abuse of power.
<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amiracist.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1726313279401000&amp;usg=AOvVaw115_qPFFEePDP86-Fvo-Vd">Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here!</a>
&#8220;How about masks don&#8217;t work? You would get screamed at for saying masks don&#8217;t work. Well, guess what? They don&#8217;t work. They don&#8217;t work,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Fauci said masks don&#8217;t work. Remember that interview before the pandemic, before they knew how big it was gonna be? He was like, you don&#8217;t have to wear a mask. Then it was wear two, then it was put two face diapers on. It&#8217;s bananas how easily people fell in line. That scared me the most.&#8221;
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
NEW: <a href="https://twitter.com/joerogan?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@joerogan</a> warns that the First Amendment is in danger if Kamala Harris and Tim Walz win.
&#8220;I don&#8217;t think it [censorship] turns around if Kamala Harris gets into office. I think they clamp down more.&#8221;
&#8220;She openly discussed the need for the same rules to apply to Facebook and… <a href="https://t.co/0gw4u0l5DI">pic.twitter.com/0gw4u0l5DI</a>
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) <a href="https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1839472626139541714?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 27, 2024</a></blockquote>

2013 Syfy Upfront

Joe Rogan Warns That Kamala Harris Will Attack First Amendment If Elected

2024 Election

Donald Trump

Joe Rogan

Kamala Harris

Media

U.S.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) called for more &#8220;media literacy&#8221; in a recent video posted to social media — but when she elaborated on the topic, it sounded as though what she was really calling for was censorship.
The congresswoman said that she had been in conversation with other members about the steps they might need to take to &#8220;rein in&#8221; media in order to prevent them from spreading &#8220;disinformation and misinformation.&#8221;
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
AOC advocates for more censorship
“We&#39;re going to have to figure out how we reign in the media” <a href="https://t.co/ljKac1vdf7">pic.twitter.com/ljKac1vdf7</a>
&mdash; HOT SPOT (@HotSpotHotSpot) <a href="https://twitter.com/HotSpotHotSpot/status/1837955814457262178?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 22, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;You know, I do think that — several members of Congress in some of my discussions have brought up media literacy because that is a part of what happened here,&#8221; she said. &#8220;And we’re going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so that you can’t just spew disinformation &amp; misinformation.&#8221;
&#8220;It’s one thing to have differing opinions, but it’s another thing entirely to just say things that are false,&#8221; she added. &#8220;And so that&#8217;s something that we&#8217;re looking into.&#8221;
<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amiracist.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1726313279401000&amp;usg=AOvVaw115_qPFFEePDP86-Fvo-Vd">Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here!</a>
Critics were quick to point out that there was no carveout for lying or &#8220;disinformation&#8221; in the First Amendment, meaning that the government had neither the responsibility — as Ocasio-Cortez suggested — nor the right to tell the people what they could and could not say.
One social media user noted the roots of the term &#8220;disinformation&#8221; in the Communist Soviet Union, arguing that what Ocasio-Cortez was pushing was simply a means for the government to control who could speak and what they could say.
&#8220;The term &#8216;dezinformatsiya&#8217; was coined by Josef Stalin in the 1920s as the name of the section of the KGB tasked with deceiving enemies and influencing public opinion. And here we have AOC telling us that &#8216;&#8230; you (the people) can&#8217;t just spew disinformation and misinformation. That&#8217;s something WE are looking into,'&#8221; the post read. &#8220;Who decides what is disinformation, AOC? Who decides what is false. If it is Government that decides, then maybe, just maybe, government will use this to stop dissent, stop debate, and keep control. (A bit like Stalin&#8230;) In the past, when government controlled the media, it did not end well.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
The term &quot;dezinformatsiya&quot; was coined by Josef Stalin in the 1920s as the name of the section of the KGB tasked with deceiving enemies and influencing public opinion.
And here we have AOC telling us that &quot;.. you (the people) can&#39;t just spew disinformation and misinformation.… <a href="https://t.co/DorcmB72Df">https://t.co/DorcmB72Df</a>
&mdash; RefugeOfSinners (ROS) (@RefugeOfSinner5) <a href="https://twitter.com/RefugeOfSinner5/status/1838168404865478932?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 23, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;If they control what you&#8217;re allowed to say, they control what you&#8217;re allowed to think. Authoritarians like @AOC also think they&#8217;re the only ones who can discern truth from falsehood,&#8221; another added.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
If they control what you&#39;re allowed to say, they control what you&#39;re allowed to think.
Authoritarians like <a href="https://twitter.com/AOC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AOC</a> also think they&#39;re the only ones who can discern truth from falsehood. <a href="https://t.co/Htp69n9P2M">https://t.co/Htp69n9P2M</a>
&mdash; Phineas Fahrquar (@irishspy) <a href="https://twitter.com/irishspy/status/1838005527852560591?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 23, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Sept 12

AOC Calls For More ‘Media Literacy,’ But It Sounds A Lot Like Censorship

AOC Calls For More 'Media Literacy,' But It Sounds A Lot Like Censorship

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Congress

When Rob Schneider calls you from the car, you can’t help but wonder where he’s going.
The set of Happy Gilmore 2? A Los Angeles comedy club? One of the few bars on the West Coast where they still let David Spade drink for free?
I never did learn where Schneider was headed during our conversation — we had bigger things to talk about. Things like the First Amendment, Saturday Night Live, the Khmer Rouge, vaccine mandates, Alexis de Tocqueveille, and Shane Gillis.
If you think that’s a random smattering of topics, you may not be ready for Schneider’s new book. “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/You-Can-Do-Speak-America/dp/1546007865">You Can Do It!: Speak Your Mind, America</a>,” is equal parts memoir, historical survey, and political polemic, all wrapped up in Schneider’s trademark irreverent humor. At times it feels like Schneider is trying to make the case for free speech through sheer force of will: his stream-of-consciousness narrative plows forward at a breakneck pace, flitting from childhood reminiscence to an exploration of Soviet propaganda and back to a funny Chris Farley anecdote all before you can say “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1Fk_mDem4o">makin’ copies!</a>”
That the book is funny isn’t surprising. After nearly a decade on Saturday Night Live, Schneider moved to the big screen, starring in hit films like “The Hot Chick” and “The Benchwarmers,” and making countless memorable appearances alongside his close friend and former SNL cast mate, Adam Sandler.
The humor is a given. It’s everything else that’s shocking.
Schneider is hardly the first celebrity to get political, nor the first to get in trouble for doing so. That he moved from left to right is a bit more shocking, but not without precedent. What’s truly strange about Schneider is just how seriously he’s taking his political turn. “You Can Do It!” doesn’t just have arguments — it has information. It has citations and statistics and digressions on Stanley Milgram and Mikhail Bulgakov. At times it feels more like a college lecture hall than a 30 Rock soundstage.
What made Deuce Bigelow get so serious?
“I got into show business to avoid having to do stuff like writing a book,” Schneider told The Daily Wire, adding that doing so was “a pain in the ass.” It was after witnessing the “egregious attack on our civil liberties and the attack on free speech” perpetrated by Democrats and their media allies that Schneider decided to pick up the pen. But even then, he didn’t lose his sense of humor.
“We&#8217;re kind of f***ed as a country,” Schneider said. “And so I do feel a responsibility, even though it cost me money and cost me work, I feel like it is my comedic-patriotic duty to at least bring these things to attention.”
The importance of protecting free speech may be the stated focus of “You Can Do It!” But Schneider’s understanding of this “comedic-patriotic duty” is perhaps the most essential — and certainly the most interesting — thread of the book.
“As de facto intellectuals, comedians are the cultural rearview mirrors,” Schneider writes. “Our jokes reflect the essence of a particular time, place, and attitude, to remind us of the context of where we just came from.”
This is why it felt so wrong when, following Donald Trump’s election in 2016, and then the coronavirus pandemic 2020, comedians by and large abandoned their craft and began echoing liberal talking points.
“I think the low watermark of comedy in the 21st century was late night television, with these hosts who all had interchangeable monologues,” Schneider told The Daily Wire.
“Nothing to me was more egregious than the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xP6c9UqPcU">dancing syringes</a> on Colbert&#8217;s show. That to me, it wasn&#8217;t cringe. It was Soviet bloc. It seems like something out of the Khmer Rouge.”
Schneider says the preservation of free speech in America depends in a large part on the flourishing of comedy — honest, equal-opportunity, no-holds-barred comedy.
“If you can get people to see the absurdity” of a given figure or issue, Schneider told The Daily Wire, “and mock it and laugh at it, it is the best way to move its natural path towards tyranny so that it collapses.
“When the public is comfortable laughing at the government, then they are no longer in fear of the government,” he said.
This is what makes Schneider’s activism so refreshing. Unlike many celebrities who jump in the arena, he doesn’t think his fame entitles him to serve as a moral arbiter for the rest of us. Rather, he sees himself as a member of the comedian class, a role that comes with a certain obligation to challenge authority and speak truth to power.
“I&#8217;m not saying I&#8217;m 100% right in these things,” he says, “but the fact is we need to have discourse, we need to not shout each other down.”
That humility doesn’t mean Schneider is pulling punches. He says that “the Democratic Party needs to lose this election — and maybe two or three more — so that they can regroup and become a political party that isn&#8217;t undemocratic and authoritarian.” Republicans, he tells The Daily Wire, “are going to have to put on their big boy pants and change legislation” should they win in November.
If this doesn’t happen — if Democrats keep power and continue their assault on free speech, or if Republicans win but resort to ad hominem attacks — Schneider worries about what will come next.
“Western civilization is committing suicide,” Schneider tells The Daily Wire, adding that “the United States is the last bastion of freedom in the world.”
“If we go, so goes the world,” he says. “There will be no Marines to rescue the United States from another country, there will be no food drop. There is no Marshall Plan for the United States. We are it.”
Dire as that sounds, Schneider has hope for the future of the country. His spirits are buoyed by, among other things: Mark Zuckerberg’s recent admission that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook to censor content (“I don’t think Zuckerberg’s a bad actor”); Saturday Night Live’s decision to have Shane Gillis host after firing him for politically incorrect jokes (“How great was Lorne Michaels to do that?”); and The Daily Wire’s own Matt Walsh (“The one, rightful heir to Sacha Baron Cohen. I think Matt Walsh is a genius. I really do”).
But more than anything, Schneider is optimistic because he believes in America.
“This imperfect union was founded under God with a belief that we have done something special,” he says. “It is a union deserving of our forgiveness and deserving of our thanks, deserving of our gratitude and deserving of every attempt we can [make] for its preservation.”
To do that, “we must call out injustice. But in that call…we should have a reconciliation.”
“We have to be generous, and if our fault is that we are too generous, that is the price that we must pay, that is what this great nation calls upon us now to do,” Schneider says.
Before we spoke, I was ready for Schneider to go deep on all sorts of subjects — I had read the book, after all — but I wasn’t expecting such a serious meditation on American democracy. Thoroughly impressed and hoping for a good kicker, I asked Schneider if he had any parting thoughts he wanted to share. He didn’t even hesitate.
“The book’s also pretty funny.”

Concerts In Your Car’s David Spade And Rob Schneider Live

When It Comes to Free Speech, Rob Schneider Isn’t Joking

COVID

Matt Walsh

Rob Schneider

Vaccine Mandate

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced this week that Missouri would move to obtain merits discovery in its lawsuit targeting the Biden-Harris administration for allegedly working with social media giants such as Meta, Twitter, and YouTube to censor and suppress free speech.
A motion for discovery requests the court to compel the opponent to relinquish information; thus, information the Biden-Harris administration may have wanted to conceal would be brought to light.
The lawsuit was originally filed by former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry in 2022. Schmitt was elected to the United States Senate in 2023.
“We are moving to obtain merits discovery in Missouri v. Biden to DISMANTLE the Biden-Harris censorship regime once and for all,” Bailey announced on X. “ This lawsuit is for every American who has been censored by our own government. The fight for free speech is just beginning.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
🚨BREAKING: We are moving to obtain merits discovery in Missouri v. Biden to DISMANTLE the Biden-Harris censorship regime once and for all. 
This lawsuit is for every American who has been censored by our own government. 
The fight for free speech is just beginning. <a href="https://t.co/IuUSvizxZl">pic.twitter.com/IuUSvizxZl</a>
&mdash; Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) <a href="https://twitter.com/AGAndrewBailey/status/1836171542914294032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 17, 2024</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Great!
&mdash; Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1836270021452140674?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 18, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The 2022 <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/lawsuit-filed-against-biden-top-officials-colluding-big-tech-censor-speech-hunter-covid">lawsuit</a> mentioned three instances, among others, where truthful information was censored by the social media companies, including the Hunter Biden laptop story, the lab leak theory that the COVID-19 virus could have been leaked accidentally from a biotech lab in Wuhan, China, and the efficacy of masks, as both Senator Rand Paul and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis were censored by YouTube for questioning the efficacy of masks.
“In direct contravention to the First Amendment and freedom of speech, the Biden Administration has been engaged in a pernicious campaign to both pressure social media giants to censor and suppress speech and work directly with those platforms to achieve that censorship in a misguided and Orwellian campaign against ‘misinformation,’” Schmitt said when he filed the lawsuit. “In the lawsuit that Missouri and Louisiana filed today, we allege that government officials in the Biden Administration, including President Biden, Press Secretary Jen Psaki, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and others colluded with social media companies like Meta, Twitter, and Youtube to remove truthful information related to the lab-leak theory, the efficacy of masks, election integrity, and more. I will not stand idly by while the Biden Administration attempts to trample on the First Amendment rights of Missourians and Americans.”
&#8220;Big Tech has become an extension of Biden’s Big Government, and neither are protecting the freedoms of Americans; rather, they are suppressing truth and demonizing those who think differently,” Landry added. “Ripped from the playbook of Stalin and his ilk, Biden has been colluding with Big Tech to censor free speech and propagandize the masses. We are fighting back to ensure the rule of law and prevent the government from unconstitutional banning, chilling, and stifling of speech.”

New York City Marks 23rd Anniversary Of September 11, 2001 Attacks

LOOK OUT: Missouri Asks Court For Discovery In Lawsuit Alleging Collusion Between Feds, Social Media

Biden-Harris administration

Missouri

Social Media

The morning of the presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice-President Kamala Harris, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. released a video in which he urged his supporters to vote for Trump while warning that electing Harris would lead to a totalitarian state.
Kennedy began by dissuading his supporters from casting their votes for him, saying, “A lot of people are asking me if they live in a red state or a blue state, should they still be voting for me? What about swing states?”
“The answer is easy,” he declared. “No.”
“No matter what state you live in you should be voting for Donald Trump,” he stated. “ And let me tell you why. That’s the only way that we can get me and everything I stand for into Washington, D.C., and fulfill the mission that motivated my campaign.”
“Right now, free speech is under withering and relentless attack in America and across the globe,” he asserted. “But at least we still have enough of it here that you can watch this video. We can still run an opposition political campaign. Well, in a lot of countries, you can’t do that anymore because the state now controls the media. The state censors the Internet. Brazil just banned Twitter because Elon Musk refused to censor users’ speech. Kamala Harris says that Musk better behave himself or he will ‘lose his privileges.’”
The video showed Harris telling CNN’s Jake Tapper, “They are directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation and that has to stop.”
<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amiracist.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1724361346607000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1ZhyOQfEkxcMH_D1Ago3CQ">Tickets for “Am I Racist?” are on sale NOW! Buy here for a theater near you.</a>
“She thinks and the Democratic establishment thinks, that free speech is a privilege,” Kennedy noted. “You know and I know that it’s a right, and if Kamala Harris is elected, the powers behind her will quash that right. They’re already halfway there. It will be too late by 2028. Once we’re in the grips of totalitarianism, we’re not going to be able to vote our way out of it. This is our last chance to stop them.”
Kennedy spoke of meeting with Trump, his team, and his family, continuing, “I know that he is fully convinced of this priority. He sees the censorship machine for what it is. Remember, he was kicked off Twitter back in 2021 and he has experienced directly how government agencies are being weaponized to destroy the government’s political opponents. He’s going to be relying on me to help clean up that corruption and that’s why I’m relying on my supporters like you to help him return to the White House.”
Then Kennedy warned that every vote for Trump was vital, saying, “As you know, this could be a very close election. A disputed election result would be a disaster for our divided nation. President Trump needs to win in a landslide both in the electoral college and in the popular vote. He can’t do that unless my supporters join him.”
He concluded:
<blockquote>
So look at the big picture. We have to unify. We have to overthrow the entrenched elites who are now ruining our country. So let’s get Donald Trump elected on November 5 so that we can restore our Constitution, so that we can revive the middle class, so that we can rescue our democracy, end censorship and surveillance, unravel the war machine, protect children’s health, and make America healthy again.
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Bottom line: No matter what state you live in, VOTE TRUMP. A Trump victory is a Kennedy victory. <a href="https://t.co/GBn2p2RLnX">pic.twitter.com/GBn2p2RLnX</a>
&mdash; Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) <a href="https://twitter.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/1833495327040803288?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2024</a></blockquote>
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Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump Holds Rally In Glendale, Arizona

‘It Will Be Too Late By 2028’: RFK Jr. Warns Of ‘Totalitarianism’ If Kamala Is Elected

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Totalitarianism

Former President Donald Trump promised during a recent campaign stop to put an end to bureaucrats &#8220;colluding&#8221; to suppress free speech, saying that he planned to fire anyone who had been engaged in such activities during the Biden-Harris administration.
Trump made the comments during a Wisconsin rally over the weekend, where he also suggested that the 25th Amendment should be expanded to include the vice president in certain instances.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Trump: &#8220;I will sign an executive order banning any federal employee from colluding to limit speech and we will fire every federal bureaucrat who is engaged in domestic censorship under the Harris regime.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/TmgaidPqHK">pic.twitter.com/TmgaidPqHK</a>
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) <a href="https://twitter.com/TPostMillennial/status/1832493153569665532?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 7, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Trump was talking about the press and all the reasons that the American people have lost faith in major media outlets, when he pivoted to address the government&#8217;s role in quashing the First Amendment.
&#8220;I will sign an executive order banning any federal employee from colluding to limit speech and we will fire every federal bureaucrat who&#8217;s engaged in domestic censorship under the Harris regime,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We will do that.&#8221;
<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amiracist.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1724361346607000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1ZhyOQfEkxcMH_D1Ago3CQ">Tickets for “Am I Racist?” are on sale NOW! Buy here for a theater near you.</a>
During the same rally, Trump addressed the fact that Vice President Kamala Harris had been party to President Joe Biden&#8217;s obvious cognitive decline — and had even said publicly that she had no regrets about helping the administration to hide that from the American people.
&#8220;I will support modifying the 25th amendment to make clear that if a vice president lies or engages in a conspiracy to cover up the incapacity of the president of the United States — if you do that with a cover-up of the president of the United States, it’s grounds for impeachment immediately and removal from office because that’s what they did,&#8221; he said. &#8220;That’s what they did.&#8221;
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
PRESIDENT TRUMP: I will support modifying the 25th Amendment to make clear that if a Vice President lies or engages in a conspiracy to cover up the incapacity of the President of the United States, it is grounds for impeachment and removal from office.
*Ahem* <a href="https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@KamalaHarris</a> <a href="https://t.co/r3cFcA1cYe">pic.twitter.com/r3cFcA1cYe</a>
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) <a href="https://twitter.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1832496913624482070?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 7, 2024</a></blockquote>
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Donald Trump Speaks At The Economic Club Of New York

Trump Vows To Protect Free Speech, Fire Anyone Involved In ‘Domestic Censorship’ Under Biden-Harris

Trump Vows To Protect Free Speech, Fire Anyone Involved In 'Domestic Censorship' Under Biden-Harris

Sen. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/ted-cruz" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ted Cruz</a> (R-TX) warned this week that past remarks from Vice President Kamala Harris indicate that she would be a serious threat to America&#8217;s First Amendment rights if elected as president.
Cruz made the remarks during his &#8220;Verdict&#8221; podcast with co-host Ben Ferguson while talking about video clips that have recently gone viral that highlight remarks from Harris&#8217; 2019 presidential campaign where she advocated clamping down on free speech by going after social media companies for not censoring content.
&#8220;Kamala has a long, long history of calling for censorship, calling for silencing anyone who disagrees with her, of wanting to use government power to silence her critics,&#8221; Cruz said. &#8220;If Kamala Harris becomes president, I predict now she will try to muzzle X. She will try to ban X. She wants to follow Brazil&#8217;s path and ban X. She wants to use government power to go after big tech and force them to be her censors.&#8221;
Cruz said that Harris shows more disdain for the First Amendment than any other presidential candidate in more than two centuries.
&#8220;The last time we had a presidential candidate with this antipathy was John Adams, our second president, who had enforced the Alien and Sedition Acts and used them to persecute his political opponents,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s been two centuries since that has happened since then, and Kamala Harris displays an unprecedented willingness to use government power to silence you.&#8221;
He noted that Harris believes that free speech is &#8220;merely a privilege and a privilege that she, as the dictator, can revoke if you dare disagree with her.&#8221;
<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amiracist.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1723831707612000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0pyrv88A5nsmWM2F2Wr9As">Tickets for “Am I Racist?” are on sale NOW! Buy here for a theater near you.</a>
&#8220;It is not a privilege,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The First Amendment says Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. It&#8217;s not a privilege. It is a right protected in the Bill of Rights.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Kamala Harris pledged to weaponize the DOJ even more and use it to attack platforms for free speech like X.
Free speech is on the ballot this election. The only way to save free speech is to defeat Kamala Harris.<a href="https://t.co/vx6VDxPgIA">https://t.co/vx6VDxPgIA</a> <a href="https://t.co/B19HTHYSzr">pic.twitter.com/B19HTHYSzr</a>
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) <a href="https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1832388350713725138?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 7, 2024</a></blockquote>

Senate Republicans Hold News Conference To Discuss Debt Ceiling

Cruz: Harris Believes Free Speech Is ‘A Privilege That She Can Revoke’

Ted Cruz

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.
<h4><a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tickets for “Am I Racist?” are on sale NOW! Buy here for a theater near you.</a></h4>
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>
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&#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:
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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>
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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.
<h4><a href="http://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH THE TRAILER FOR &#8216;AM I RACIST?&#8217; — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI</a></h4>
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?

Brazil

Elon Musk

Keith Ellison

Taylor Lorenz

Tulsi Gabbard

Twitter

“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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