This past weekend Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered X to block a number of popular accounts. Almost immediately after, Elon Musk said that free speech principles matter more than profits. And he announced plans to defy the court&#8217;s order and lift all speech restrictions in the country once his employees are in a “safe place” where they are not at risk of being arrested. Musk says he expects he will ultimately be forced to shut down X’s office in Brazil and will lose all revenue there.
On April 7, shortly after Musk’s announcement, de Moraes issued a <a href="https://www.migalhas.com.br/quentes/404983/moraes-inclui-elon-musk-no-inquerito-das-milicias-digitais">decision</a> adding Musk to a broader investigation. In this new inquiry, the judge accused Musk of obstruction of justice and incitement to crime. “The flagrant conduct of obstruction of Brazilian Justice, incitement to crime, public threat of disobedience to court orders and future lack of cooperation by the platform are facts that disrespect Brazil&#8217;s sovereignty and reinforce the connection of the intentional criminal instrumentalization of the activities of the former Twitter,” he wrote. Many now expect the Brazilian Supreme Court to shut off access to X at any moment.
Nor is X the only American social media company being targeted by president Lula da Silva’s government. Facebook, Google, and others have faced investigations for what the same court called “abusive practices.” Though it appears those platforms have complied with speech restrictions to some degree, Musk is the only big tech executive to have engaged in a public fight with the court.
<div id="attachment_720967" style="width: 876px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-720967" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-720967" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/04/GettyImages-2144473733-866x576.jpg" alt="President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Minister of the Environment and Climate Change Marina Silva are participating in the launch of the Union with Municipalities Program to Reduce Deforestation and Forest Fires in the Amazon on Tuesday, April 9, 2024. (Photo by Ton Molina/NurPhoto via Getty Images)" width="866" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/04/GettyImages-2144473733-866x576.jpg 866w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/04/GettyImages-2144473733-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/04/GettyImages-2144473733-768x511.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/04/GettyImages-2144473733.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 866px) 100vw, 866px" />Ton Molina/NurPhoto via Getty Images</div>
Brazil’s government has leaned heavily on lawfare in its attempt to squeeze American social media platforms into compliance. Before presiding over Musk&#8217;s case, de Moraes ordered investigations into big tech executives at other companies after they lobbied against a proposal to regulate Brazil’s internet. If passed, the Law on Freedom, Responsibility, and Transparency on the Internet, colloquially known as the “Fake News Bill,” will levy large fines against the tech companies if they fail to identify and report illegal content.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/trump-s-fundraiser-haul-brazilian-online-censorship-4-8-24" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LISTEN: Catch the full story on Morning Wire</a></h4>
Due to such legislation, the definition of illegal speech in Brazil has been rapidly expanding to potentially include anything labeled “misinformation” by the government. Independent journalist Michael Shellenberger, who is in Brazil and broke parts of this story, said it’s not an exaggeration to say that Brazil is “on the brink of dictatorship.” He <a href="https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1776776372351836642/video/1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lambasted</a> a number of big tech companies for giving in to the demands of Brazilian authorities, saying, “I know censorship when I see it.”
“The Twitter files revealed also that Google, Facebook, Uber, WhatsApp and Instagram betrayed the people of Brazil,” Shellenberger said. “If this evidence is proven and admitted to, the executives of those companies behaved like cowards. They provided the Brazilian government with personal registration data and telephone numbers without a court order. Therefore, they violated the Brazilian laws.”
Musk has said he plans to publish on X everything the Brazilian judge has ordered, and these posts will explain how the court’s demands violate Brazilian law. “This judge has brazenly and repeatedly betrayed the constitution and people of Brazil. He should resign or be impeached,” Musk posted.
But Musk may face opposition not only from the Brazilian government, but also from the U.S. State Department, who some former officials are accusing of helping to engineer Brazil’s censorship efforts.
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Communications and Information Policy Mike Benz said the CIA and other U.S. foreign policy divisions fear rising populism in countries like Brazil. <a href="https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/1776826555328549308" target="_blank" rel="noopener">According to Benz</a>, these State Department divisions and associated NGO’s helped President Lula da Silva secure power over his populist rival Jair Bolsonaro by funding censorship groups to suppress so-called election “misinformation.”
“When I was looking into what was behind censorship in Brazil, it turned out what was driving it appeared to be a gaggle of US State Department funded NGOs,” Benz said in a video posted to X. “National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, and the National Endowment for Democracy [were] funding a bunch of domestic censorship groups in Brazil. This actually goes right back to the beginning of Bolsonaro his tenure in 2019.”
Benz added that the State Department doesn’t want to see Brazilian citizens openly criticizing their country’s government on social media any more than Da Silva does.
On April 7, after Musk promised to publish all records pertaining to Brazil’s crackdown on X, Brazil&#8217;s Attorney General Jorge Messias called for &#8220;urgent regulation&#8221; of all social media networks, saying, &#8220;We cannot live in a society in which billionaires domiciled abroad have control of social networks&#8230;”

SpaceX And T-Mobile Hold Joint Event In Texas

Brazilian Supreme Court Takes On Elon Musk And X In Social Media Crackdown

Brazil

Elon Musk

Facebook

Google

Readers Pass

Social Media

Twitter

Twitter Files

According to a new report from the Media Research Center, Google has allegedly been engaging in election interference for at least 16 years. The media watchdog group has been studying how Google’s search algorithms are used for censorship. Daily Wire reporter Megan Basham spoke with Morning Wire’s Georgia Howe about the allegations. Catch the full interview on <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/texas-law-scotus-ruling-google-s-alleged-election-interference-3-20-24" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Morning Wire</a>.
Georgia: So Megan, if these claims are true, we’re talking about four presidential cycles and another four midterms, right?
Megan: Yes, that’s a lot of elections, Georgia. The report just released by <a href="https://newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/gabriela-pariseau/2024/03/18/41-times-google-has-interfered-us-elections-2008" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MRC’s Free Speech America</a> arm says Google interfered in US elections 41 times since 2008. And when you take a look at Google’s donations to political parties in just the 2018 midterm elections, for example, you can see just how aligned the company is with one side of the political aisle. 96% of its employee’s political donations went to Democrats. So according to the MRC, the company, “utilized its power to help push to electoral victory the most liberal candidates … while targeting their opponents for censorship.”
In 2012, for instance, it allowed users to engage in a practice called a “Google Bomb” to target Republican Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum. It’s kind of complicated, but it’s basically a way to smear a candidate. Google users manipulate the algorithms by associating his name with undesirable search terms on various web pages. So when you would search Santorum’s name, disparaging and even obscene results would come up.
When the practice impacted the White House’s webpage for Obama, Google fixed it. But, the platform refused to resolve the issue when Santorum’s team complained. In some instances, Google’s interference backed one Democrat over another, leaning towards the more progressive candidate, though interestingly, not in the case of Bernie Sanders vs Clinton. In 2008, Google suspended the accounts of some pro-Hillary Clinton blogs who were critical of Barack Obama. Several of those blogs were listed at justsaynodeal.com.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/texas-law-scotus-ruling-google-s-alleged-election-interference-3-20-24" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LISTEN: Catch the full interview on Morning Wire</a></h4>
Georgia: I’m guessing when it came time for the Clinton — Trump election, they leaned in favor of Clinton.
Megan: Definitely. Turns out the Alphabet company is also pretty good with numbers. According to data scientist and research psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein, who testified before Congress by the way, the impact of Google’s search algorithm was to “shift at least 2.6 million votes” to Clinton in 2016, though of course she still lost to Trump. But according to this it would have been by a wider margin without the Google effect.
What they are essentially alleging is Google manipulated search results to convince voters to pull the lever for Clinton. For example, everyone has used Google’s search bar before, and when you start to type in some text, Google begins to autofill suggestions. During the 2016 election, it would exclude potentially harmful autofill results for Hillary Clinton and would instead suggest things like “Hillary Clinton crime reform” or “Hillary Clinton India”. On the flip side, it would not filter results for Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders.
Google has repeatedly claimed these allegations are false. But when you to listen closely to this Project Veritas undercover recording from 2019 of Jen Gennai, the then Head of Responsible Innovation for Google, you hear a different story:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
#11 In 2019, Project Veritas released footage of Google executive, Jen Gennai, discussing “preventing the next Donald Trump situation.”
She remarked, “We’re also training our algorithms, like, if 2016 happened again, would we have, would the outcome be different?” <a href="https://t.co/4SnvqnyIx3">pic.twitter.com/4SnvqnyIx3</a>
&mdash; KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) <a href="https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1620195679674179585?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 30, 2023</a></blockquote>
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Irish accent aside, she said, “We’re also training our algorithms if 2016 happened again, would we have, would the outcome be different?” So suggesting they had already begun refining their results to alter election outcomes.
She went on to say: “Elizabeth Warren is saying that we should break up Google. And like, I love her, but she’s very misguided, like that will not make it better. It will make it worse, because now all these smaller companies who don’t have the same resources that we do will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation. It’s like a small company cannot do that.”
So again, a top Google executive saying Congress should not interfere with Google’s almost total dominance of the search engine industry because only Google can prevent someone like Donald Trump from being elected.
Georgia: So what is Google saying about this?
Megan: They haven’t responded at all yet. But some well known names in the tech world are backing MRC’s findings though. Elon Musk, for instance, posted on his platform, X: ““Google interferes to help Democrats thousands of times every election season!” Musk wrote on X. “This is to be expected when their censorship (aka ‘Trust &amp; Safety’) teams have far Left political views.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
This article understates the magnitude of the problem – Google interferes to help Democrats thousands of times every election season!
This is to be expected when their censorship (aka “Trust &amp; Safety”) teams are have far left political views. <a href="https://t.co/y36yzdzIUQ">https://t.co/y36yzdzIUQ</a>
&mdash; Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1769771195035984073?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 18, 2024</a></blockquote>
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And of course Google’s new AI tool came under fire recently for producing extremely biased results.
It&#8217;s also worth noting that a few weeks ago, another media analysis company, AllSides, studied Google’s news aggregator and found that <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/02/23/business/google-news-bias-skewed-even-further-left-in-2023-63-from-liberal-media-sources-only-6-from-the-right-analysis/">63 percent</a> of the news it recommended came from Left-leaning outlets and only 6 percent from right leaning outlets. And only 16 percent from outlets rated “center.”
Georgia: One of my first “wakeup moments” that caused me to be interested in politics was in 2015 or 2016 when I noticed how positive the suggested searches were for Clinton compared to Trump. Thanks, Megan.
Megan: Any time.

New Report Alleges Election Interference By Google Over A 16 Year Period

2016 Election

2020 Election

Conservative Media

Donald Trump

Hillary Clinton

Morning Wire

Social Media Bias

As soon as <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/elon-musk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Elon Musk</a> made himself an enemy of &#8220;democracy&#8221; by supporting free speech on social media, (we know, that makes no sense) he put a target on his back from the Biden administration. In fact, the president even telegraphed that his goons in the government would come after Musk after he bought Twitter — but it wasn&#8217;t clear what exactly he meant.
On Thursday, Americans got their answer: President Joe Biden&#8217;s Department of Justice <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-spacex-discriminating-against-asylees-and-refugees-hiring" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> a lawsuit Thursday against Elon Musk&#8217;s SpaceX for “allegedly discriminating against asylees and refugees in hiring.” The DOJ <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-spacex-discriminating-against-asylees-and-refugees-hiring" target="_blank" rel="noopener">alleges</a> that SpaceX violated the Immigration and Nationality Act by discouraging asylees and refugees from applying and refusing to hire them. The Justice Department claims SpaceX instead chose to hire U.S. citizens and legal residents.
Yes, that&#8217;s right — Musk is being investigated for putting Americans first.
So, how did we know that some sort of federal action would come down the pike against Musk? Well, last November, Biden was asked point blank if he thought that Musk was a &#8220;national security threat&#8221; and whether or not Twitter (now known as X) should be investigated.
Biden refused to answer whether Musk threatened national security, but said that his purchase of the platform was &#8220;worth being looked at.&#8221; 
When asked how he would go about doing that, Biden chuckled, &#8220;There&#8217;s a lot of ways.&#8221; It was ominous then, and seems even more sinister now.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
BIDEN: I think that Elon Musk&#39;s cooperation and or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at. Whether or not he is doing anything inappropriate — I&#39;m not suggesting that — I&#39;m suggesting that it&#39;s worth being looked at. But that&#39;s all I&#39;ll say. <a href="https://t.co/I11l87M5FQ">pic.twitter.com/I11l87M5FQ</a>
&mdash; JM Rieger (@RiegerReport) <a href="https://twitter.com/RiegerReport/status/1590469847640526849?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 9, 2022</a></blockquote>
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From the outside, it looks like Biden&#8217;s response was effectively a sign to the powers that be to go after Musk. This isn&#8217;t the first time something like this has happened.
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP</a>
Consider that the president, and other Democrats, have made it a habit in recent years to make vague statements about the power of the U.S. government against their enemies &#8212; only for events to happen as they predict.
For example, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) warned Trump in January 2017, &#8220;You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways till Sunday at getting at you. So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he&#8217;s being real dumb to do this.&#8221;
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Schumer Warns Trump: Intel Community Has Many Ways to &#039;Get Back at You&#039; (FLASHBACK)" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6OYyXv2l4-I?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
And what happened? Well, Russiagate, the Ukrainian impeachment, and Hunter Biden&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/congrats-to-the-u-s-intelligence-community-back-to-back-u-s-presidential-election-interference-champs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">laptop</a> are just a few of the examples of the intelligence community &#8220;getting back&#8221; at Trump.
Then, Biden forecasted that if Russia invaded Ukraine, the Nordstream Pipeline 2 would &#8220;no longer&#8221; be there. How would that happen, he was asked. Biden responded,  &#8220;We, will uh&#8230;I promise you will be able to do that.&#8221;
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Biden says he&#039;ll shut down Nord Stream 2 pipeline if Russia further invades Ukraine" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FVbEoZXhCrM?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
He was right. A portion of the pipeline was blown to smithereens. When it first happened, the intelligence community blamed Russia. Now, sources say that Ukrainian special forces did it and that the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/06/nord-stream-pipeline-explosion-ukraine-russia/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">U.S. knew it was going to happen months in advance</a>.
The Biden administration, and Democrats at large, find a way to get back at their political enemies. Just ask the pro-life father of seven Mark Houck, Catholics, parents, and former President Donald J. Trump how the Left is unafraid to wield government force to punish their opponents.
Musk is an opponent of the Left. So it makes sense that Biden&#8217;s DOJ is coming after him. GOP Ohio Senate candidate Bernie Moreno summarized the situation nicely.
&#8220;Instead of punishing @elonmusk for hiring American citizens over non-citizens, we should be celebrating him for putting our people first. This is all really just about the Dem thugs in the Biden DOJ being furious that Elon ended the censorship and brought Freedom of Speech to @X.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Instead of punishing <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@elonmusk</a> for hiring American citizens over non-citizens, we should be celebrating him for putting our people first. This is all really just about the Dem thugs in the Biden DOJ being furious that Elon ended the censorship and brought Freedom of Speech to <a href="https://twitter.com/X?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@X</a>. <a href="https://t.co/3SKixKHQcY">https://t.co/3SKixKHQcY</a>
&mdash; Bernie Moreno (@berniemoreno) <a href="https://twitter.com/berniemoreno/status/1694776348332396793?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 24, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Indeed, that&#8217;s the best explanation thus far.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Joe Biden, Elon Musk

We All Knew Biden’s Goons Would Target Elon Musk. The President Telegraphed It Last November.

We All Knew Biden's Goons Would Target Elon Musk. The President Telegraphed It Last November.

Executive

Joe Biden

U.S.

An FBI agent made “completely false” statements during a congressional deposition about the agency’s role in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story on social media platforms, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said on Monday in his fourth edition of the &#8220;Facebook Files.&#8221;
Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said internal Facebook communications reveal San Francisco-based FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan was “the main conduit” between the bureau’s Foreign Influence Task Force and big tech companies to suppress the scandalous story involving alleged foreign business deals with then-presidential candidate Joe Biden just weeks before the 2020 election.
Chan told lawmakers during testimony the FBI had not communicated with Facebook outside of a meeting that occurred the same day the New York Post published the Biden laptop article on October 14, 2020. But according to the Jordan, Chan was involved in a “secret ‘follow up’ call” with the social media giant the next day, allegedly contradicting a claim he made during a November 2022 deposition in the government censorship case Missouri v. Biden
The federal agent also spoke with a Facebook employee that same day, who said, “Chan advised that he was up to speed on the current state of the matter within the FBI.” Chan also told the social media platform that “there was no current evidence to suggest any foreign connection &#8230; of the leaks,&#8221; according to the documents released by Jordan.
“Of course, there was ‘no evidence’ of ‘any foreign connection.’ The laptop was real, and the FBI knew it,” Jordan said. “Is there any wonder why the Biden DOJ has so far stonewalled the Committee’s efforts to interview Agent Chan?”
Internal documents also claimed that Chan admitted that Section Chief of the Foreign Influence Task Force Laura Dehmlow told executives to respond “no comment” when asked if the Biden laptop was real.
“Did Dehmlow know that the FBI had the laptop and it was real? Yes. Did other key members of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force know? Yes. The FBI knew the laptop was real and yet decided it would say ‘no comment,’” Jordan said.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
THE FACEBOOK FILES PART 4. FBI LIED ABOUT MEETING WITH BIG TECH REGARDING NY POST’S HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY
Internal FB docs reveal that an FBI Special Agent made false statements in testimony about the FBI’s role in the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story
🧵 Thread:
&mdash; Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) <a href="https://twitter.com/Jim_Jordan/status/1688553339624042496?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 7, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The “Twitter Files” released by Elon Musk last year revealed that Chan frequently pressed the social media company to take down posts that he thought violated the site’s terms of service, furthering the agency’s alleged content moderation tactics for private companies, The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/five-takeaways-from-twitter-fbi-agents-deposition-in-censorship-lawsuit-brought-by-conservative-states" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>.
Chan sent ten documents to former Twitter Head of Site Integrity Yoel Roth on the evening of October 13, hours before the New York Post article would be released, asserting to Roth that the documents were “not spam” and asked him to “confirm receipt.”
“Is there any wonder why the Biden DOJ has so far stonewalled the Committee’s efforts to interview Agent Chan?” Jordan said. “Our investigation remains ongoing and we will continue to update the public with our findings as we prepare and consider legislation to fight the censorship-industrial complex and protect the First Amendment.”
Jordan released his third edition of the “Facebook Files,” <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/jim-jordan-releases-new-facebook-files-highlights-how-biden-admin-sought-to-suppress-daily-wire-content" target="_blank" rel="noopener">saying</a> the Biden administration pressured the social media giant to stifle speech the White House didn’t like, including <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-admin-pressured-fb-to-suppress-daily-wire-content-push-users-to-legacy-outlets-newly-released-docs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">limiting The Daily Wire’s reach</a> on the platform and boosting the reach of legacy media outlets.
Luke Rosiak and Zach Jewell contributed to this report.

elvis-chan

Facebook Docs Reveal FBI Agent Made ‘Completely False’ Congressional Statements Involving Hunter Biden Laptop, Jordan Says

Facebook Docs Reveal FBI Agent Made 'Completely False' Congressional Statements Involving Hunter Biden Laptop

Biden Administration

Hunter Biden

Jim Jordan

U.S. House of Representatives

Dr. Jordan Peterson invited billionaire business magnate Elon Musk on Sunday to join his legal battle against the College of Psychologists of Ontario, which has threatened to remove Peterson’s clinical psychology license over his social media activity.
Peterson and the Canadian regulator have been facing off against each other since November after the government-backed college levied accusations that Peterson “may have lacked professionalism” in some of his social media posts, The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/jordan-peterson-battles-canadian-regulator-in-court-over-threat-to-strip-his-psychologist-license" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>. The regulator, which governs the psychology profession in the province, ordered Peterson to undergo “social media communications retraining,” which includes “coaching” for his commentary on X, formerly known as Twitter, or potentially have his license suspended.
But after X owner Musk <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/elon-musk-vows-to-go-to-war-against-companies-that-punish-employees-for-activity-on-x" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> on Saturday night that his company would go to bat for people punished by their employers for content previously posted on the social media platform, Peterson joined a host of other users seeking legal representation.
“The Ontario College of Psychologists @CPOntario Are also still threatening my licence and reputation As a consequence of my tweets,” Peterson said in a post. “@elonmusk It would be good to have you on board.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
The Ontario College of Psychologists <a href="https://twitter.com/CPOntario?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CPOntario</a> Are also still threatening my licence and reputation As a consequence of my tweets<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@elonmusk</a> It would be good to have you on board
&mdash; Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) <a href="https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1688307867328122880?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 6, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Musk has been advocating for freedom of speech on social media ever since he purchased the newly re-branded company for $44 billion last year, vowing to make significant changes to the platform after reports indicated U.S. officials coordinated with previous ownership to invoke censorship methods on accounts spreading so-called misinformation.
Musk previously said, “It is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence.”
“There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society,” he added.
Last week, X Corp. filed a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/x-corp-sues-non-profit-over-scare-campaign-designed-to-drive-advertisers-away-from-social-media-platform-report" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lawsuit</a> against a non-profit organization and its backers for allegedly unlawfully accessing private data and choosing specific posts to show a rise in hate speech on the social media platform under Musk’s ownership.
Musk extended legal support to platform users whose employers “unfairly treated” them for posting content on X.
“If you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill,” Musk said. “No limit. Please let us know.”
Musk later added that his company would also wage a public relations war against companies that punish their employees for what they do on X.
Musk posted, “And we won’t just sue, it will be extremely loud and we will go after the boards of directors of the companies too.”
The call for Musk to join Peterson’s legal issues comes after the best-selling author and Daily Wire+ host confronted the college in court in June over a demand that he undergo “remedial” social media training or face losing his psychologist license.
Peterson has accused the regulator of going after him repeatedly since 2017 when his public profile began to grow. His audience has grown to over 15 million followers across YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.
“I was never investigated for anything for the 20 years I practiced prior to my emergence on the public scene,” Peterson said.
Attorneys for the College of Psychologists have argued that the regulator is not “meaningfully” limiting Peterson’s freedom of expression and said the remedial training is not punitive.
“Members are required to uphold the standards and ethics of the profession and they remain subject to the regulation of their professional body for as long as they remain members,” the psychology regulator’s legal team wrote.
Mairead Elordi and Ryan Saavedra contributed to this report.

The Self-styled “Professor Against Political Correctness” Jordan Peterson Speaks To The Cambridge Union

Jordan Peterson Invites Elon Musk To Join Legal Battle Against Canadian Regulator Threatening His License

Free Speech

Jordan Peterson

The Internal Revenue Service announced Monday that it would cease sending federal agents to make unannounced visits to taxpayer homes, citing safety concerns for both the employee and the taxpayer.
&#8220;These visits created extra anxiety for taxpayers already wary of potential scam artists,&#8221; IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said in a <a href="https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-ends-unannounced-revenue-officer-visits-to-taxpayers-major-change-to-end-confusion-enhance-safety-as-part-of-larger-agency-transformation-efforts" target="_blank" rel="noopener">news release</a>. &#8220;At the same time, the uncertainty around what IRS employees faced when visiting these homes created stress for them as well.&#8221;
The federal agency began making unscheduled visits to households and businesses in the 1950s to collect unpaid taxes and resolve unfiled tax returns. But in recent years, Werfel said increased security concerns &#8220;on multiple fronts,&#8221; including frauds posing as IRS agents bombarding taxpayers, confusing local law enforcement, and hazardous situations, led to the decision to end such in-person visits.
&#8220;This is the right thing to do and the right time to end it,&#8221; he added.
IRS officials told <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/24/irs-agents-door-knocking/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Washington Post</a> that over 30 years ago, federal tax agents were assaulted hundreds of times a year, reportedly making them the most-attacked federal law enforcement officers. A spokesman called the work &#8220;some of the hardest jobs in government&#8221; and that eliminating the duty could help bring &#8220;good people&#8221; to the agency.
IRS officials said the agency immediately replaced most unannounced visits with appointment letters to schedule follow-up face-to-face meetings. Although taxpayers likely won&#8217;t ever see the taxman on their doorstep again, the IRS noted limited unscheduled visits could still occur in rare instances of service of summonses and subpoenas or sensitive enforcement activities involving the seizure of assets.
The announcement comes amid the creation of the IRS Strategic Operating Plan after lawmakers passed the Inflation Reduction Act last year, which provided the agency a decade of funding to transform the federal service and double the size of its workforce.
Earlier this year, the IRS <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/irs-seeks-to-hire-agents-with-guns-in-all-50-states" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> that the agency would hire agents qualified to wield firearms for the tax collection agency&#8217;s Criminal Unit.
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Candidates for the special agent position, the only job at the IRS where employees are permitted to carry guns, will be expected to combine their &#8220;accounting skills with law enforcement skills to investigate financial crimes,&#8221; according to a posting on the IRS website.
Adam Andrzejewski, Founder and CEO of Open the Books, an online database capturing all disclosed spending at every level of government, <a href="https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/the-militarization-of-the-irs-the" target="_blank" rel="noopener">found</a> the IRS spent $35.2 million of taxpayer money on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment in the last 20 years, including $10 million in weaponry and gear since 2020. According to Andrzejewski, the IRS purchased AR-15 style rifles, semi-automatic shotguns, and submachine guns while stockpiling 5 million rounds of ammunition in their gun locker.
&#8220;The IRS special agent is starting to look less like a desk worker or rule maker and more like a SWAT team from a Hollywood thriller. It&#8217;s the blurring of the lines between a tax agency and traditional law enforcement,&#8221; Andrzejewski said.
The agency&#8217;s move also comes off the heels of Matt Taibbi, an independent journalist who reported on collusion between government agencies and the former executives of Twitter, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/irs-agents-visited-the-home-of-twitter-files-journalist-on-the-same-day-he-testified-about-government-weaponization" target="_blank" rel="noopener">revealing</a> an IRS official visited his home on the same day he testified before Congress about the weaponization of the federal government.
The agent left a note instructing him to call the agency four days later; Taibbi was informed during the call that his 2018 and 2021 tax returns were rejected over identity theft concerns.
Republican House Judiciary lawmakers called the IRS announcement a <a href="https://twitter.com/JudiciaryGOP/status/1683515473500020753" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8220;BIG WIN!&#8221;</a> after Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) first brought the issue with Taibbi to light during a hearing earlier this year.

House Members Return To Washington, DC After Midterm Election

IRS Ends Decades-Long Practice Of Visiting Taxpayers’ Homes Unannounced

IRS Ends Decades-Long Practice Of Visiting Taxpayer Homes Unannounced Out Of Safety Concerns

House Republicans

Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

Politics

U.S. House lawmakers accused the Biden Administration in a new <a href="https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/cisa-staff-report6-26-23.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a> on Monday of conspiring with Big Tech to directly undermine American citizens&#8217; First Amendment rights by censoring free speech through government-funded third-party intermediaries.
The House Weaponization Subcommittee released an interim staff report detailing how President Joe Biden&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/department-of-homeland-security">Department of Homeland Security</a> (DHS) allegedly used the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to surveil and censor Americans&#8217; speech on social media in the run-up to the 2020 election and the 2022 midterm elections.
&#8220;CISA must be reined in, as must the Biden Administration&#8217;s &#8216;whole-of-government&#8217; approach to social media censorship,&#8221; lawmakers wrote in the report. &#8220;Every American has the right to express his or her opinion online, and to receive information from others. Government classifications of opinions as &#8216;misinformation&#8217; or &#8216;disinformation&#8217; do not nullify the First Amendment&#8217;s guarantees.&#8221;
The subcommittee report comes on the heels of the Twitter Files and other reports, which also accused the federal government of pressuring and colluding with Big Tech to censor certain viewpoints from American citizens, primarily those who questioned pandemic-related information or the authenticity of the 2020 presidential election.
Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and other lawmakers obtained non-public documents that reveal how CISA — initially intended to focus on protecting critical infrastructure and countering cybersecurity threats — allegedly began working closely with the federal government on domestic surveillance and operations to censor parties on social media.
Former President Trump created the agency after signing into law the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act of 2018. However, in the years since its creation, the subcommittee found that by 2020, CISA began &#8220;routinely&#8221; colluding with Big Tech and government-funded third parties by reporting social media posts that allegedly spread &#8220;disinformation&#8221; — further corroborating previous reports from Twitter Files journalists Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and others.
According to the report, the agency exploited its connections with Big Tech and government-funded non-profits to censor by proxy — to circumvent the First Amendment&#8217;s prohibition against government-induced censorship. Such ways included creating reporting &#8220;portals,&#8221; which the government funneled so-called misinformation reports to social media platforms.
In 2021, CISA formed a since-disbanded &#8220;mis, dis, and malformation&#8221; (MDM) team, which included University of Washington Associate Professor Kate Starbird, who co-founderd the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, as well as former Chief Legal Officer of Twitter Vijaya Gadd, and former assistant general counsel and legal adviser for the CIA Suzanne Spaulding.
The subcommittee says then-incoming President Biden transitioned the agency to focus more on the newly formed team to target domestic sources in addition to countering foreign influence. By the following year, the subcommittee accused CISA of attempting to &#8220;camouflage its activities, duplicitously claiming it serves a purely &#8216;informational&#8217; role.&#8221;
Several other allegations exposed in the DHS sub-agency were documented in the report, including the consideration of creating and deploying a physical &#8220;anti-misinformation rapid response team&#8221; nationwide to local election officials&#8217; jurisdictions who were &#8220;struggling with specific information threats.&#8221;
Geoff Hale, the director of CISA&#8217;s Election Security Initiative, called the idea &#8220;fascinating,&#8221; according to the report.
The committee, however, argued that the most damning part of CISA&#8217;s censorship efforts was its alleged cover-up of unconstitutional activities, which it conducted by removing any wrongdoing evidence and hiding it from the American public.
Between April and May 2022, the Biden Administration attempted to create the now-infamous &#8220;Disinformation Governance Board,&#8221; which quickly disbanded after severe public backlash. Shortly after the administration pulled the plug on the group, Missouri and Louisiana Attorney Generals filed a lawsuit against the president&#8217;s administration revealing direct pressure from the White House to censor vaccine-skeptical content on social media.
However, lawmakers said meeting notes from the MDM Subcommittee during that time &#8220;demonstrate that its members and CISA were fully aware of these developments and discussed how CISA could outsource its MDM-related activities to third parties so as to bypass the First Amendment and &#8216;avoid the appearance of government propaganda.'&#8221;
The report alleges that CISA&#8217;s former CIA legal advisor and MDM Subcommittee member Suzanne Spaulding agonized that it was &#8220;only a matter of time before someone realizes we exist and starts asking about our work.&#8221;
CISA outsourced to the nonprofit The Center for Internet Security (CIS), which served as a the agency&#8217;s &#8220;mouthpiece,&#8221; the report reads. The report also notes that the agency has funded CIS, spending $27 million in FY 2024 for CIS’s Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing &amp; Analysis Center.
CISA then also scrubbed its website of references to its domestic surveillance and censorship activities to avoid more public scrutiny.
The report criticized CISA&#8217;s &#8220;repeated violations of the First Amendment&#8221; and &#8220;attempts to cover up its surveillance and censorship operations will not rectify the damage inflicted on the American people by government-induced censorship&#8221;: &#8220;Neither CISA&#8217;s scrubbing of its website, nor the Biden Administration&#8217;s stalling of records requests can conceal the true nature of CISA&#8217;s work in &#8216;combating MDM,'&#8221; the report says.
&#8220;A free and democratic society is impossible under a government that acts as the ultimate arbiter of truth in political discourse,&#8221; the report adds. &#8220;To better inform legislative efforts to end government censorship on the Internet and protect Americans&#8217; rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, the Committee and Select Subcommittee will continue to investigate the extent of CISA&#8217;s and other Executive Branch agencies&#8217; interactions with social media platforms.&#8221;
CISA Executive Director Brandon Wales told The Daily Wire in an email the agency denied the House Weaponization Subcommittee&#8217;s report.
“CISA does not and has never censored speech or facilitated censorship; any such claims are patently false,&#8221; Wales said. &#8220;Every day, the men and women of CISA execute the agency’s mission of reducing risk to U.S. critical infrastructure in a way that protects Americans’ freedom of speech, civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy.&#8221;
&#8220;In response to concerns from election officials of all parties regarding foreign influence operations and disinformation that may impact the security of election infrastructure, CISA mitigates the risk of disinformation by sharing information on election literacy and election security with the public and by amplifying the trusted voices of election officials across the nation,” he added.

House Judiciary Subcommittee On The Weaponization Of The Federal Government Holds A Hearing

Biden Administration ‘Colluded’ With Big Tech To Censor Americans, House Lawmakers Report Says

House Weaponization Report Says Biden Administration 'Colluded' With Big Tech, Third-Party Groups To Censor Americans

Weaponization

Virgin Islands Democrat Rep. Stacey Plaskett threatened independent journalist Matt Taibbi with up to five years of prison for an alleged perjury charge over his &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/twitter" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter Files</a>&#8221; testimony in front of Congress last month, citing an error in a tweet that he has since deleted.
&#8220;While these inaccuracies may seem minor to you, they could lead Congress to rely on inaccurate testimony in considering and/or passing new legislation which would impact all Americans,&#8221; Plaskett said in her <a href="https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2023-04-13_sep_to_taibbi_redacted.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">letter</a> to Taibbi.
Taibbi testified in a hearing on March 9 held by House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH), whose subcommittee on the weaponization of government is looking into the Federal Trade Commission&#8217;s treatment of Twitter. Plaskett, a non-voting member of the House and the panel&#8217;s ranking member, pressed Taibbi and author Michael Schellenberger about how they vetted internal Twitter emails and instant messages, which revealed how the social media platform allegedly worked with government agencies, including the FBI, to suppress conservatives on the platform.
During the hearing, Taibbi told Congressman Chris Stewart (R-UT) that he and Schellenberger witnessed in the Twitter Files that Twitter executives did not distinguish between specific government agencies, including the Cybersecurity &amp; Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP).
&#8220;For instance, we would see a communication that said, From CISA escalated by EIP,&#8221; Taibbi said. &#8220;So they were essentially identical in the eyes of the company. … So, yes, we have come to the realization that this bright line that we imagine that exists between, say, the FBI or the DHS or the GEC and these private companies is illusory and that what&#8217;s more important is this constellation of kind of quasi-private organizations that do this work.&#8221;
Plaskett accused Taibbi of misleading the public and members of Congress for a specific tweet the independent journalist posted the morning of the hearing, which alleged that the EIP worked with the CISA to ask social media companies to eliminate millions of tweets of so-called disinformation on their platforms.
The tweet Plaskett referenced shows an error from Taibbi, where he mistakenly used an incorrect acronym involving two groups accused of relaying information to Twitter about content moderation. Instead of writing &#8220;CISA,&#8221; referring to the federal government&#8217;s Cybersecurity &amp; Infrastructure Security Agency, Taibbi used &#8220;CIS,&#8221; which is short for the non-profit group Center for Internet Security.
Plaskett said that Taibbi contradicted his response in an April 6 televised interview with Mehdi Hasan on MSNBC, who attempted to raise inconsistencies or errors from Taibbi by referencing his tweet, which added a parenthetical [A] to the acronym &#8220;CIS.&#8221;
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Taibbi acknowledged the error during his interview with MSNBC, saying he had &#8220;gotten one thing wrong or a few things wrong.&#8221;
&#8220;When presented with this misinformation, you acknowledged that you had made &#8216;an error&#8217; by intentionally altering the acronym CIS and you subsequently deleted your erroneous tweet,&#8221; Plaskett said.
Plaskett further called Taibbi&#8217;s reporting on the Twitter Files &#8220;rife with numerous other false and misleading claims,&#8221; which included an inaccurate total of tweets labeled as disinformation from the EIP, omitting pertinent dates about taxpayer-funded organizations that flagged tweets as disinformation, and that the EIP was founded in response to the government pausing the operations of the Disinformation Governance Board.
&#8220;These instances raise serious questions about other potential inaccuracies in the testimony provided to Congress,&#8221; Plaskett said in a <a href="https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=5137" target="_blank" rel="noopener">news release</a>.
Although it appears Taibbi conceded he unknowingly made a mistake without intentionally trying to mislead the committee, Plaskett writes in her letter to the witness that he understood &#8220;[k]knowingly providing material false information to this committee/subcommittee, or knowingly concealing material information from this committee/subcommittee, is a crime . . . up to five years imprisonment.&#8221;
In her attempt to prove that the federal government isn&#8217;t weaponized against Americans in the committee hearing, Plaskett sent a letter to Taibbi threatening jail time for misspeaking about the subject.
Plaskett said Taibbi could have an opportunity to correct the hearing record to ensure accuracy in a congressional hearing by answering a series of questions by April 21.
Taibbi said in a <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1648466182037733381">tweet</a> on Tuesday that he would &#8220;have to weigh in on this eventually, since the controversy revolves around a serious (but grossly incorrect) accusation leveled at me.&#8221;
The Daily Wire contacted Taibbi for comment, but has not received a response.

Matt Taibbi

Democrat Rep. Threatens Independent Journalist Matt Taibbi With Jail Time Over ‘Twitter Files’ Testimony

Democrat Rep. Threatens Matt Taibbi With Jail Time Over 'Twitter Files' Testimony

Big Tech

Democratic Party

In 1980, the book &#8220;Friendly Fascism&#8221; warned that <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=fascism+dailywire&amp;rlz=1C5GCEM_enUS998US998&amp;oq=fascism+dailywire&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60l2.2899j0j9&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Big Government and Big Business</a> would align and join forces in America, suppressing the common man, while ushering in a new era of tyranny wrapped in a false sense of patriotism while being served with a &#8220;smile.&#8221;
Now, newly uncovered emails suggest that the Biden White House pressured Big Tech into a similar form of &#8220;Friendly Fascism&#8221; even more than previously known by targeting private speech under the guise of COVID-19 precautions.
While the U.S. government was apparently coordinating with Big Tech on public-facing social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, there has been scant reporting on how the executive branch wanted personal and encrypted messages censored — until now.
On Friday, investigative journalist David Zweig <a href="https://davidzweig.substack.com/p/biden-white-house-pressured-meta?sd=pf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> that he obtained White House emails thanks to the court case Missouri v Biden which showed that only six days into the Biden administration, key high-ranking staffers were already pestering Facebook&#8217;s parent company, Meta, to take action to limit COVID vaccine &#8220;disinformation&#8221; across its platforms — including Meta&#8217;s private messaging app, WhatsApp.
Based on that article, in late March of 2021, Rob Flaherty, Biden&#8217;s White House Director of Digital Strategy, sent Meta an email demanding answers to what the company was doing to prevent certain messages that cast doubt on the COVID vaccine from proliferating on WhatsApp.
&#8220;Flaherty wanted to know what they were doing to reduce harm on the messaging app,&#8221; Zweig reported. &#8220;Seemingly dissatisfied with earlier explanations, on March 22, 2021, he wrote, &#8216;If you can’t see the message, I’m genuinely curious—how do you know what kinds of messages you’ve cut down on?'&#8221;
Unlike Facebook, WhatsApp contains no public-facing aspect of its platform. It is used solely for users to have an encrypted way of communicating with each other. Ninety percent of groups have less than 10 individuals in each group, according to the emails obtained by Zweig.
During the White House&#8217;s email exchanges with the company, Flaherty sent a series of questions, seemingly all related to making sure that Meta could be trusted to limit free speech.
At one point, the WhatsApp representative tried to politely explain to Flaherty how WhatsApp is different from other social media sites, thus negating the need for most moderation efforts as found on other sites.
Flaherty responded he was &#8220;Very aware ☺️&#8221; — replete with a smile emoji, unlike that grin warned about in that 43-year-old book — how the app worked as he tried to bully Big Tech into joining forces with Big Government.
WhatsApp, according to Zweig, had chosen instead to send certain pieces of information to its users to counteract any potentially harmful speech. They also argued that because no &#8220;virality&#8221; was impossible on the application, then they were limiting the spread of unapproved speech that the White House was trying to limit.
By April 2021, the emails indicate that Flaherty was still fed up with Meta for not properly answering his questions.
&#8220;I care mostly about what actions and changes you’re making to ensure you’re not making our country’s vaccine hesitancy problem worse,&#8221; he emailed to Meta at the time. &#8220;I still don’t have a good, empirical answer on how effective you’ve been at reducing the spread of vaccine-skeptical content and misinformation to vaccine fence sitters.&#8221;
Now, why is this important given everything we know from the Twitter Files, the nixed-Government Disinformation Board, and other &#8220;misinformation&#8221; efforts?
For years, Democrats have argued that the ability for lies that could damage the nation to go viral necessitates a close relationship between the government and Big Tech, working hand-in-hand to protect the American public.
WhatsApp, however, is effectively no different than a phone call, email, or a chat at the bar with your friends. What is being said in those messages is none of the government&#8217;s business — so long as it is not encouraging or part of a crime.
Zweig&#8217;s report raises new questions about how far the Biden White House was — or is — willing to go to block speech that it does not approve of. Worse, it seems they&#8217;ll try to trample on private citizens through Big Tech with a smile on their faces — or in their own emails.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

TOPSHOT – In this photo illustration taken on July 21, 2022 in Washington, DC, a video tweet from US President Joe Biden is seen on a cell phone, juxtaposed on a computer screen in the background, with a breaking news alert that the President has tested positive for the coronavirus, – The short video clip filmed on a White House balcony, says: “I really appreciate all your inquiries and concern, but I am doing well… it’s going to be OK.” Announcing Biden’s diagnosis, the White House stressed that the president was fully vaccinated and twice boosted, and said he was “experiencing very mild symptoms.”

‘Friendly Fascism’: Biden White House Wanted To Censor Even Private Speech Over COVID Vax

Censorship

COVID

Democrats repeatedly attempted to bully independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger into giving up their #TwitterFiles sources — and the answer, every time, was a resounding and emphatic &#8220;NO.&#8221;
<a href="https://dailywire.com/news/twitter-files-journalist-matt-taibbi-confirms-platforms-supreme-court-had-ben-shapiro-in-its-sights/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Taibbi</a> and Shellenberger appeared before Congress for a Thursday morning hearing with the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government — and in addition to badgering them for information on their sources, the <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/03/09/democrats-attack-so-called-in-twitter-files-hearing/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Democrats on the committee</a> verbally attacked them, calling them Twitter owner Elon Musk&#8217;s &#8220;personal scribes.&#8221;
The committee&#8217;s ranking member, Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-USVI), began the attack in her opening statement, referring to Taibbi and Shellenberger as &#8220;so-called journalists&#8221; before they&#8217;d even been called on to answer the first question.
Plaskett then claimed that &#8220;all the so-called ‘Twitter Files’ really showed was a discussion on content moderation,&#8221; arguing that the two journalists were only there because their work on the Twitter Files was seen as politically advantageous to Republicans.
&#8220;Ranking Member Plaskett, I’m not a so-called journalist,&#8221; Taibbi objected, adding, &#8220;I’ve won the National Magazine Award, the I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and I’ve written 10 books, including four New York Times bestsellers.&#8221;
Plaskett then repeatedly attempted to get the pair to reveal their sources.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
BREAKING: Democrats Attempt to Force Taibbi to name his sources in open hearing. He REFUSES <a href="https://t.co/pHLnT2UxYY">pic.twitter.com/pHLnT2UxYY</a>
&mdash; Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) <a href="https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1633882519400775680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 9, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;Who was the individual that gave you permission to access the emails?&#8221; Plaskett asked.
&#8220;The attribution for my story is &#8216;sources at Twitter&#8217; and that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m going to refer to,&#8221; Taibbi replied.
&#8220;Okay, did Mr. Musk contact you?&#8221; Plaskett tried a different tack.
&#8220;Again, the attribution for my story is &#8216;sources at Twitter,'&#8221; Taibbi repeated.
Plaskett pivoted to Shellenberger with the same question: &#8220;Did Mr. Musk contact you?&#8221;
Shellenberger said no, that he had been brought in to help with the story by his friend and fellow Twitter Files journalist Bari Weiss.
&#8220;Mr. Taibbi, have you had conversations with Elon Musk?&#8221; Plaskett tried again, and when Taibbi conceded that he had, she pressed harder: &#8220;Did Mr. Musk place any conditions on the use of the emails —&#8221;
At that point, Committee Chairman Jim Jordan interrupted, asking Plaskett directly whether she was attempting to get a journalist to reveal a source.
&#8220;No, I&#8217;m not,&#8221; she insisted, but Jordan shot back, &#8220;Well, it sure sounds like it.&#8221;
Later in the hearing, Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia (D-TX) tried a different approach to get to the source information.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Rep. Garcia: &quot;So you&#39;re not gonna tell us Musk first approached you?&quot;
Matt Taibbi: &quot;You&#39;re asking a journalist to reveal his sources.&quot;
Garcia: &quot;So you consider Musk to be the direct source of all this?&quot;
Matt Taibbi: &quot;Now you&#39;re trying to get me to say he&#39;s the source.&quot;… <a href="https://t.co/JmY0IUClz4">https://t.co/JmY0IUClz4</a> <a href="https://t.co/JLjm6MIQ4F">pic.twitter.com/JLjm6MIQ4F</a>
&mdash; Real Mac Report (@RealMacReport) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealMacReport/status/1633877784748752897?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 9, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Garcia began by asking when Musk had approached Taibbi about writing the Twitter Files — and he refused to answer, saying it went to the issue of sourcing and that he was not going to divulge that information.
&#8220;When was the first time that Mr. Musk approached you about writing the Twitter Files?&#8221; she asked. &#8220;I just need a date, Sir.&#8221;
&#8220;Again, Congresswoman, that would be — but I can&#8217;t give it to you, unfortunately, because this is a question of sourcing, and I don&#8217;t give up — I&#8217;m a journalist, I don&#8217;t reveal my sources,&#8221; he replied.
Garcia insisted that it was not a question of sourcing so much as timing — but Taibbi remained firm in his position and did not answer. She then pivoted to ask him about Musk directly, prompting Jordan to <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/3892219-weaponization-subcommittee-members-spar-over-twitter-files/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">interrupt again</a> and chastise her for repeated attempts to force him to reveal his source.
&#8220;What he has said is he is not going to reveal his source, and the fact that the Democrats are pressuring him to do so is such a violation of the First Amendment,&#8221; Jordan said.
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Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/03/09/democrats-attack-so-called-in-twitter-files-hearing/">used</a> her time to attempt to first discredit Taibbi himself — claiming that simply agreeing to be a witness before a Republican-led committee undermined his objectivity as a journalist — and then to discredit the story by suggesting the sources had &#8220;motives.&#8221;
&#8220;Every reported story that I’ve ever done across three decades involves sources who have motives,&#8221; Taibbi shot back.
Wasserman Schultz responded by asserting that Taibbi had leveraged his work on the Twitter Files for personal profit.
His reply: &#8220;I think it’s probably a wash, honestly.&#8221;

Build Presents Alex Gibney, Blair Foster & Matt Taibbi Discussing “Rolling Stone: Stories from the Edge”

WATCH: House Dems Try To Bully Twitter Files Journos Into Revealing Sources, Fail Miserably

Congress

This article is adapted from today’s Morning Wire Afternoon Update. To listen to the podcast version, click <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.
Extreme Weather Hits California
Extreme weather continues to hit California. Forecasters predict the Golden State will be pummeled yet again by heavy rains, thunderstorms, and up to eight feet of snow – in higher elevations such as the Sierra Nevada.
The ominous weather also threatens to flood as the mountain’s snowpack begins to melt. The state has been hit by numerous storms in the past few months, which have killed at least 30 people.
In related weather news, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday that the weather phenomenon known as “La Nina” has ended after three years. La Nina is known for increasing hurricane activity on the Atlantic and worsening drought conditions in the west.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell Hospitalized
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mcconnell-team-gives-update-on-senior-lawmakers-status-after-hospitalization" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rushed to the hospital</a> on Wednesday evening after falling during a dinner. Daily Wire researcher Michael Whittaker joined Morning Wire&#8217;s &#8220;Afternoon Update&#8221; for more:
<blockquote>&#8220;A spokesperson said Senator McConnell suffered a concussion during the fall and will remain hospitalized &#8216;for a few days of observation and treatment.&#8217;
McConnell was attending a private dinner for the Senate Leadership Fund when he tripped and fell. The 81-year-old senator is a polio survivor, and he suffered another fall in 2019 during which he fractured his shoulder.&#8221;</blockquote>
Twitter Files Hearing
On Thursday, Congress held its first Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing on the “Twitter Files.” In the hearing, independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified on their release of emails allegedly showing collusion between the social media platform and the government to censor or silence some viewpoints.
Multiple Democratic representatives pressed the two journalists to reveal their sources behind the Twitter leaks, among other questions. Here’s one exchange involving Taibbi, Texas Democratic congresswoman Sylvia Garcia and Republican Committee Chair Jim Jordan:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Rep. Garcia: &quot;So you&#39;re not gonna tell us Musk first approached you?&quot;
Matt Taibbi: &quot;You&#39;re asking a journalist to reveal his sources.&quot;
Garcia: &quot;So you consider Musk to be the direct source of all this?&quot;
Matt Taibbi: &quot;Now you&#39;re trying to get me to say he&#39;s the source.&quot;… <a href="https://t.co/JmY0IUClz4">https://t.co/JmY0IUClz4</a> <a href="https://t.co/JLjm6MIQ4F">pic.twitter.com/JLjm6MIQ4F</a>
&mdash; Real Mac Report (@RealMacReport) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealMacReport/status/1633877784748752897?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 9, 2023</a></blockquote>
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Taibbi also explained what he thinks The Twitter files helped reveal:
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Matt Taibbi discusses how our own federal government is being turned into an instrument of censorship and social control: &quot;Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation requests from every corner of government, from the FBI,… <a href="https://t.co/i1Xr2MEspf">https://t.co/i1Xr2MEspf</a> <a href="https://t.co/Y0pv3SIQBs">pic.twitter.com/Y0pv3SIQBs</a>
&mdash; Becker News (@NewsBecker) <a href="https://twitter.com/NewsBecker/status/1633865626421952513?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 9, 2023</a></blockquote>
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&nbsp;
FBI Christopher Wray&#8217;s Stunning Claim About TikTok
FBI Director Chris Wray stunned U.S. senators during a Wednesday hearing when he revealed that the Chinese Communist Party has the ability to take control of “millions” of Americans’ phones through the wildly popular TikTok app.
&#8220;If you look at the Chinese government’s gobbling up of information and data, and then the use of AI and other tools, ultimately supercomputing, things like that, to marshal all that data to conduct targeting for espionage, targeting for IP theft, targeting for the all the things that I and others on this panel have been calling out about the Chinese government,&#8221; Wray said. &#8220;Data is the coin of the realm, those who have the best information have the power and that’s what that enables them to do.&#8221;
Wray’s comments come as Congress could authorize President Biden to outright ban the app in the United States.
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Russia&#8217;s Unprecedented Blitz On Ukraine
And, this morning, Russia launched an aerial assault on Ukraine.  The Daily Wire managing editor Greg Wilson told Afternoon Update:
<blockquote>&#8220;The wee-hour skies of Ukraine were lit up Thursday by what is being described as an unprecedented blitz on major cities including Kyiv and Lviv. The barrage of 81 missiles included six hypersonic weapons capable of penetrating the capital’s air defenses. Critical infrastructure and residential buildings in 10 regions across the country were bombarded, according to Ukrainian officials. At least six deaths and numerous casualties have been reported so far. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky called it a &#8216;difficult night&#8217; in a Facebook post, but vowed to make the Russians pay for their quote &#8216;miserable tactics.'&#8221;</blockquote>
Update On Kidnapped Americans In Mexico
And, the drug cartel behind the kidnapping of four Americans in Matamoros, Mexico has turned over the men they say were behind the deadly kidnapping. The five men were tied and dumped on the street along with a letter from the Scorpion faction of the Gulf cartel apologizing to the families of those killed and the citizens of Tamaulipas.
To listen to the audio version of this podcast, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/morning-wire/id1576594336" target="_blank" rel="noopener">click here</a>. And for more in-depth discussion of the biggest stories of the day, listen to the latest full episode of Morning Wire every morning.

Thursday

Thursday Afternoon Update: California Hit By Extreme Weather, Dems Use Bully Pulpit To Attack Journalists, Alarming Claim About TikTok

California

Podcast

Russia

The <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/congress" target="_blank" rel="noopener">U.S. Congress</a> has spent all week attacking the free press in order to defend democracy or something.
First, the bipartisan affair <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/at-best-the-swamp-thinks-you-are-really-dumb" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reached mass hysteria levels</a> as Republicans, Democrats, and even supposedly neutral parties such as the Capitol Police harangued Fox News&#8217;s Tucker Carlson for daring to air never-before-seen security footage from the inside the Capitol building on January 6 alongside some of his own commentary on the topic.
We all know Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called it a &#8220;mistake,&#8221; Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called him &#8220;dangerous,&#8221; and even President Joe Biden questioned the gall of somebody to cast doubt on the government-media-complex-approved record of that day.
That demagoguery is still ongoing, but on Thursday, Congress found a new target to pick apart: the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dem-causes-hilarity-by-asking-twitter-files-authors-about-a-threesome" target="_blank" rel="noopener">trio of journalists</a> who reported &#8220;The Twitter Files&#8221; — Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and Bari Weiss.
Shellenberger and Taibbi testified before Congress Thursday to discuss their reporting that showed apparent corruption between Big Tech and Big Government, seemingly to silence some conservatives and other contrarian thinkers.
The hearing was aptly titled, &#8220;Weaponization of the Federal Government on the Twitter Files,&#8221; and it would appear some Democrats are still intent on weaponizing the federal government. The three reporters received the emails from an unknown source at Twitter. Democrats were very keen on figuring out who that was.
For example, Representative Stacey Plaskett (D-VI) <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dem-congresswoman-takes-shot-at-twitter-files-journalist-he-immediately-shreds-her" target="_blank" rel="noopener">attempted</a> to bully Taibbi into divulging his sources — particularly about Twitter CEO Elon Musk. Journalists are constitutionally protected from revealing their sources, but in the name of Democracy, she tried to do it anyway.
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&#8220;Who gave you access to these emails? Who was the individual who gave you permission to access these emails?” Plaskett demanded to know.
Taibbi refused to say. During their back-and-forth, she also tried to belittle him as a &#8220;so-called journalist.&#8221;
He quickly defended himself by pointing out his credentials.
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“Ranking Member Plaskett, I’m not a so-called journalist,&#8221; he <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dem-congresswoman-takes-shot-at-twitter-files-journalist-he-immediately-shreds-her" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. &#8220;I’ve won the National Magazine Award, the I.F. Stone Award for independent journalism, and I’ve written 10 books including four New York Times best-sellers.&#8221;
Even if he did not have those awards, he would still be entitled to First Amendment protections as a journalist — whether that be citizen or corporate.
Plaskett was not alone. Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia (D-TX) tried goading him into giving up his sources as well.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Rep. Garcia: &quot;So you&#39;re not gonna tell us Musk first approached you?&quot;
Matt Taibbi: &quot;You&#39;re asking a journalist to reveal his sources.&quot;
Garcia: &quot;So you consider Musk to be the direct source of all this?&quot;
Matt Taibbi: &quot;Now you&#39;re trying to get me to say he&#39;s the source.&quot;… <a href="https://t.co/JmY0IUClz4">https://t.co/JmY0IUClz4</a> <a href="https://t.co/JLjm6MIQ4F">pic.twitter.com/JLjm6MIQ4F</a>
&mdash; Real Mac Report (@RealMacReport) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealMacReport/status/1633877784748752897?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 9, 2023</a></blockquote>
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Florida Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz went on to berate Taibbi for &#8220;profiting&#8221; off his reporting. She ended the lecture by  implying he only released the Twitter files for &#8220;attention.&#8221;
&#8220;Eyeballs, money, prominence, attention,&#8221; she <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/politics/debbie-wasserman-schultz-trashes-matt-taibbi-as-profiteering-tool-of-elon-musk-in-explosive-twitter-hearing/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. &#8220;All of it points to problems with accuracy and credibility. And the larger point, which is social media companies are not biased against conservatives, and if anything, they ignored their own policies by allowing Trump and other MAGA extremists to post incessant lies, endangering public safety and even our democracy.&#8221;
Taibbi is not a Trump supporter, but she must have chosen to ignore that.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Rep. Wasserman-Schultz (<a href="https://twitter.com/DWStweets?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@DWStweets</a>) gets annoyed w/ Taibbi after he refuses to say he&#39;s &quot;profiting&quot; off the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TwitterFiles?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TwitterFiles</a> <a href="https://t.co/nxEWdDob1L">pic.twitter.com/nxEWdDob1L</a>
&mdash; Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) <a href="https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1633861316870799362?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 9, 2023</a></blockquote>
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The message from the full hearing was abundantly obvious: Agree with the leftist narrative, or you are a threat to America&#8217;s democracy itself. Perhaps calling opponents &#8220;racists&#8221; lost its sting, so they had to change their preferred method.
And last but not least, The Daily Wire&#8217;s very own Michael Knowles was called a full-blown &#8220;Nazi&#8221; by sitting Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) because the podcast host and best-selling author said that transgenderism should be &#8220;eradicated&#8221; from public life.
&#8220;Michael Knowles is a Nazi hellbent on keeping only white men alive and in power,&#8221; Bowman tweeted. &#8220;We cannot allow him and others to push their evil agenda and we must stand up for the transgender rights. CPAC has made one thing clear this year – they support a future run by Nazis like Knowles.&#8221;
In response, Knowles tweeted, Bowman &#8220;called me &#8216;a Nazi hellbent on keeping only white men alive and in power&#8217; because I said society should treat &#8216;transgenderism&#8217; as we did before 2015,&#8221; while adding that the New York Democrat should be &#8220;censured for these outrageous and defamatory remarks.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
A sitting Democrat congressman called me &quot;a Nazi hellbent on keeping only white men alive and in power&quot; because I said society should treat &quot;transgenderism&quot; as we did before 2015.
Bowman should be censured for these outrageous and defamatory remarks. <a href="https://twitter.com/SpeakerMcCarthy?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SpeakerMcCarthy</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/HouseGOP?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@HouseGOP</a> <a href="https://t.co/xOxOexrwxd">https://t.co/xOxOexrwxd</a>
&mdash; Michael Knowles, falsehood eradicator (@michaeljknowles) <a href="https://twitter.com/michaeljknowles/status/1633177903558008835?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 7, 2023</a></blockquote>
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All in all, it was an illuminating week for those paying attention to the &#8220;Defenders of Democracy&#8221; crowd.
Their reaction to free speech made one thing clear, if you haven&#8217;t picked up on it yet: When they say &#8220;democracy&#8221; they do not actually mean America&#8217;s Democratic Republic and its rights, customs, and traditions. &#8220;Democracy&#8221; is code for The Swamp&#8217;s agenda that strengthens government control and screws over the average citizen. Using that definition, their rhetoric this week makes a lot more sense.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/at-best-the-swamp-thinks-you-are-really-dumb" target="_blank" rel="noopener">At Best, The Swamp Thinks You Are Really Dumb</a>

WASHINGTON, DC – FEBRUARY 07: U.S. Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) (L) and Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (R) walk towards the House chamber to attend President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address at a joint meeting of Congress in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol on February 07, 2023 in Washington, DC. The speech marks Biden’s first address to the new Republican-controlled House. YONKERS, NY – JUNE 23: New York Democratic House candidate Jamaal Bowman greets supporters on June 23, 2020 in Yonkers, New York. Jamaal Bowman is running to unseat Representative Eliot Engel (D-NY) for the 16th congressional district. WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 28: Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) speaks about her experiences during a trip to Israel and Auschwitz-Birkenau as part of a bipartisan delegation from the House of Representatives on January 28, 2020 in Washington, DC. The liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27, 1945 is remembered all around the world this week on its 75th anniversary.

Congress Spends All Week Attacking The Free Press In Defense Of Democracy Or Something

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