Amazon Locks Man Out Of Smart Home Devices Over False Racism Claims

Amazon locked a Microsoft engineer out of his smart home devices for nearly a week after a delivery driver accused him of uttering a racial slur.

According to a June 4 blog post on Medium, Brandon Jackson found himself locked out of his Amazon Echo Show on May 25. When he contacted customer service, he was given the number of an Amazon executive - which he thought was a scam.

"When I connected with the executive, they asked if I knew why my account had been locked," he wrote. "When I answered I was unsure, their tone turned somewhat accusatory. I was told that the driver who had delivered my package reported receiving racist remarks from my ‘Ring doorbell.'"

Jackson, who is black, said that the accusation was improbable, as many of the delivery drivers in his area are the same race - thus, the racial slur was "highly unlikely."

Jackson tracked down the time that the driver would have dropped off his package (May 24 at 6:05 p.m.), and compared it to footage from his home at the time of the incident - revealing that nobody was home at the time of the delivery. Instead, Jackson thinks that his Eufy automated doorbell said to the driver "Excuse me, can I help you?"

"The driver, who was walking away and wearing headphones, must have misinterpreted the message," wrote Jackson, adding that even after he shared the evidence with Amazon, his account remained locked.

"Despite numerous calls and emails, it wasn’t until Friday afternoon [on May 26] that I received confirmation that the investigation had started," he wrote, adding that it wasn't until May 31 that access was finally restored.

In a statement to NTD News, Amazon said: "we learned through our investigation that the customer did not act inappropriately, and we’re working directly with the customer to resolve their concerns while also looking at ways to prevent a similar situation from happening again."

While he was locked out of the Amazon account he typically used for his smart home devices, Jackson said he had already thought ahead about alternate ways to control his devices.

“I already had everything set up so if something did fail I have fallbacks so I wasn’t truly in the dark,” Jackson explained in a subsequent video post about the experience. “But I wrote [my blog post] from the perspective of someone who—what if they didn’t do all that.”

Jackson, who is an engineer at Microsoft and is relatively tech savvy, shared his concerns for owners of smart home devices who don’t have the same knowledge base and find themselves locked out in a similar incident.

He said the incident led him to lose trust in Amazon due to how it kept him locked out through the duration of the ordeal.

“I fully support Amazon taking measures to ensure the safety of their drivers. However, I question why my entire smart home system had to be rendered unusable during their internal investigation,” he wrote.

Jackson also argued that Amazon or other companies shouldn’t be able to block people from using the products they purchased because they expressed the wrong opinions.

“If you bought a toaster right, it doesn’t matter what you did, how bad of a person you were how good of a person you are, you still own the toaster at the end of the day right?” Jackson said. “And if you really did do something that was so horrible and bad that shouldn’t be Amazon or Google or Apple’s call to do anything about that. You know, we already have a system set up for that and that’s...

Massive number of Americans say news media ARE the enemy 'More and more people are growing impatient and distrustful of the stories'

David Muir of ABC's 'World News Tonight' tapes a TV interview with Joe Biden on Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2021, in the Cross Hall of the White House. (Official White House photo by Adam Schultz)

President Trump often has called the legacy media in America the enemy of the people.

He repeatedly was in conflict with reporters over their biased questions, implications of wrongdoing and more – all because of their questions that often took on the attitude like the infamous no-win query: "When did you stop beating your children?"

Now a poll shows he was right.

Rasmussen Reports reveals 59% of respondents to a new poll confirm they consider those publications, broadcasters and more their "enemy."

"A majority of voters don’t trust the news they’re getting about politics, and still agree with former President Donald Trump’s denunciation of the news media as 'the enemy of the people'" Rasmussen said.

Its survey found "30% of Likely U.S. voters say they trust the political news they’re getting – down from 37% in July 2021 – while 52% say they don’t trust political news, and 19% are not sure."

The survey of 1,002 U.S. Likely Voters was conducted on May 16-18, 2023 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points.

A column from Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner explained, "Maybe it’s the softball questions lofted to top administration officials. It could have been the applause and laughter from reporters that greeted President Joe Biden at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner when he bragged about ignoring them.

"Whatever it is, more and more people are growing impatient and distrustful of the stories coming out of Washington."

He explained, "One reason may be the left-wing bias they see in those stories. An equal 52% said that the media favors Democrats by more than 2-1. … The survey is similar to some that continue to ask if, as former President Donald Trump once said, the media is the enemy of the people."

The pollster said it's actually a majority of every racial category – "58% of whites, 51% of black voters and 68% of...

Epstein’s Latest Victim: The Public’s Right to Know

A free press has devolved into regime media.

Amid the oppressive, choking miasma of lies incessantly and unaccountably belched by this sock-puppet administration, which is amplified, massaged, and muted as necessary by its lapdog media, dissent is essential and must be heralded.

Therefore, one should recognize and laud the Wall Street Journal for its revelatory report, “Epstein’s Private Calendar Reveals Prominent Names, Including CIA Chief, Goldman’s Top Lawyer.” The article endeavors to resurrect interest in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking ring. Whether it can facilitate justice for the survivors (many of them minors at the time), or spark further revelations about the predator Epstein’s connections with the global elite, is perhaps unlikely. The odds are stacked against such a just outcome. (Some outlets, such as the Daily Caller, have helped further the article’s reach, and these outlets also are to be commended.)

Yet, the Journal story did accomplish one goal resoundingly. By proving the exception, it proved the rule: a free press has devolved into regime media.

The default response to the economic stresses the communication revolution’s democratization of information has placed upon traditional news outlets has been more partisanship in reporting. Confirmation bias is big business. And, yes, the bias being confirmed is almost always a liberal or leftist one, given the ideological disposition of liberal older management and woke younger reporters. Yet, because of public expectations, not even the most biased outlets can patently express their partisanship. After all, our largely for-profit media’s goal is to survive and thrive.

Leave it to the Left to justify its departure from objective reporting into ideological proselytization. Welcome to the skewed world of “accountability journalism,” which is neither accountable nor journalism. As previously explained in American Greatness, accountability journalism

allows the Left to ignore any claim of objectivity in their reporting, in order to serve a ‘higher truth’ and ‘greater good’—specifically, the leftist agenda. It assumes one’s leftist ideology is the only acceptable one; and, ergo, its premises and conclusions are infallible. Any challenge to their personal partisan premises and conclusions are ipso facto erroneous—i.e., ‘disinformation.’

Accountability journalism is the seminal deceit in the Left’s effort to preserve its “fiefdom of the press.”

Oblivious to the irony of a morally relative ideology purporting to identify “the truth” (or is it “a truth,” or “my truth”?) when ideologically necessary to advance a political “narrative,” accountability journalism reaps what it purports to stanch: the erosion of public trust in the media.

This lack of public trust stems from a second factor: the media’s transmogrification from objective journalism to “accountability journalism.” The latter is merely a pretext for leftist...

Prescription For Parents: Vet Your Child’s Doctors. They No Longer Deserve Your Trust

Parents need to find out now, before a crisis point is reached, what their pediatrician or family doctor’s views are on abortion, contraception, transgenderism, and more.

Let me introduce you to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Like other powerful health authorities, they refuse to inform women of the lifelong increased risk of breast cancer for anyone who has ever taken the pill. It seems that the “benefits” of barrenness trump even the power of pink ribbons. That’s not all: America’s most powerful pediatric voice is also refusing to inform young women of the mental health risks of hormonal contraception, even as we are living through an unprecedented teen mental health crisis, with depression and suicides rising.

The link between hormonal contraception and depression — and even a threefold higher suicide rate — is not new to The Federalist’s readers, nor to countless women around the world, nor to anyone familiar with the massive European studies involved. Do the nation’s pediatricians counsel their families that starting birth control might contribute to depression and even suicide? No. The AAP’s contraception “explainer,” aimed at parents and children, highlights “improved acne” but does not include a word about depression. Similarly, the AAP’s official policy statement on contraception, designed to help guide clinical practice, stays mum on mental health — though does once again highlight that acne-fighting power!

Interestingly, elsewhere in the AAP’s work, the focus on depression seems almost parodically exaggerated. Last year’s policy statement on “The Adolescent’s Right to Confidential Care When Considering Abortion” reveals that the official stance of America’s pediatricians is to advocate for early access to abortion in order to reduce depression — and, what’s more, to keep those abortions secret because informing parents may pose “psychological harm” to the teenager. The statement puts the AAP firmly in the mainstream of modern medical practice, where it is commonplace to argue that we must increase abortion in order to prevent suicide.

Abortion policy is not the only sphere the AAP uses to selectively trumpet a concern over teen mental health. Just this month, in its article on “Health Equity and the Impact of Racism on Adolescent Health,” the AAP’s flagship journal sounds the alarm about the immigration debate: “Structural racism in federal antiimmigrant policies in the last 5 years has skyrocketed rates of anxiety and depression among Latine AYA [adolescents and young adults].” The AAP goes out of its way to link debates over border policy to mental health, yet keeps oddly quiet when faced with far stronger evidence of the psychiatric risks of birth control.

While the AAP claims that avoiding suicide is reason enough to broaden abortion access, it seems to take trans suicide in its stride. We know that trans identification dramatically increases the risk of suicide, according to pro-trans organizations themselves, and yet the AAP enthusiastically embraces and affirms trans ideology.

Let’s recap some potential suicide prevention strategies, as seen through the eyes of our medical community:

Open borders? Yes, please!

Kill your unborn child? You go girl — and it’ll stay our little secret!

Ban chemical castration and genital mutilation? Whoa now, don’t embrace hate!

Just say no to mood-altering hormonal contraception? *Crickets*

Theme of Depopulation

Aside from the nakedly partisan political bent of their activism, there is a clear pattern of supporting any intervention that either kills babies or causes sterility. The medical profession, with the help of Big Pharma, has long been engaged in a war on childhood — but this is something new, a war on fertility itself.

The sad truth is that the medical community is now staunchly, openly anti-life. They are not going to inform your child about the mental health dangers inherent in hormonal contraception or in the denial of biological sex. They are far too busy, as these leading Harvard Medical School professors put it last year in the AAP’s flagship publication, sounding “a national call to action for pediatric residency programs to formalize training in reproductive health and justice.”

Doctors Must Speak Up

Doctors, if you believe in biblical truth, or at least oppose killing or sterilizing children, it is time for you to speak up. If not for yourselves and your own consciences, then for the millions of families out there looking for a medical voice to trust. These families need medical care, and if they can’t rely on a corrupt, woke medical establishment to deliver it, where are they going to get it?

I suspect there are more of us than we know, but even if we’re a small minority, we have an obligation not to politely hold our tongues about Moloch but to affirmatively proclaim our clinics a safe space for...

Tucker Carlson’s Ability To Break Through Calcified Conservatism With Fresh Ideas Is Indispensable

One of the most understated yet important aspects of Tucker Carlson’s tenure at Fox News was his unique ability to bridge a seemingly unbridgeable generational divide. Whether he was exploring more complicated topics via long-form documentaries, interviewing the world’s wealthiest man, or simply telling the Republican Party to get its act together, people of all ages tuned in. Grandparents and grandkids alike genuinely love him.

And perhaps this, in part, is why he was able to so easily mainstream the thoughts, theories, and brands of pseudonymous Twitter users who historically have been relegated to the dark corners of the internet with the rest of the weirdos. If a voice has utility, he gives it a platform; people trust him to discern who is worth listening to.

Tucker routinely used his platform to amplify people like Chaya Raichik (Libs of TikTok), which undeniably helped her gain traction and expose more people to the insanity of leftism. And to be sure, this was great, but people would likely be able to understand that sort of thing for themselves, even if they hadn’t encountered LibsofTikTok. We instinctively know when something is out of sync with the natural law and metaphysically disordered, as leftism inherently is.

Arguably some of his finest moments as a communicator were when he embraced the more esoteric, if you will, thoughts being grappled with in the nuanced essays of people like Peachy Keenan and translated them into modern English so the masses, who likely don’t have time to ponder these things on a regular basis, can also participate in the intellectual exercise.

Take, for instance, Tucker’s opening monologue from three weeks ago, in which he described the state of New York as existing in a state of anarcho-tyranny. He explained how this is a framework of “state-sponsored anarchy accompanied by political tyranny” and described how Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Donald Trump and general apathy toward crime embodies it. Anarcho-tyranny, being introduced into the lexicon of paleoconservatives several decades ago, is not a term many people would be familiar with despite being uncomfortably familiar with the concept. Nevertheless, Tucker brought them up to speed.

Or take an example from July 2021, when he read a tweet thread from Darryl Cooper (MartyrMade) providing great insight and clarity as to why conservatives remain skeptical about the outcome of the 2020 election and no longer have faith in institutions like the corporate media or national intelligence apparatus.

But he didn’t only highlight academics. Sometimes he highlighted skeptics for the sake of highlighting skepticism and to prove to us that the “experts” are idiots — as was the case in this past fall’s “The End of Men.” The documentary takes the food and health industries to task and explores the, frankly, dual existential crisis of plummeting male fertility and lack of nutritional sustenance. The documentary features a man by the name of “Raw Egg Nationalist” — a sworn enemy of soy globalism and an advocate for maximizing nutritional intake by slonking raw eggs — and another individual who goes by “Benjamin Braddock” and who believes the key to boosting testosterone is exposing his crotch to redlight.

Similar to how Rush Limbaugh mainstreamed...

That Kaiser Gun Study The Media Love Is Garbage

It’s become virtually impossible to find reliable data or polling on gun violence these days. A new Kaiser Family Foundation report being shared by virtually every major media outlet this week offers us a good example of why. The headlines report that “1 in 5 adults” in the United States claim that a “family member” has been “killed” by a gun. And, let’s just say, that’s a highly dubious claim.

There are 333 million people living in the United States, and somewhere around 259 million of them are over the age of 18. Twenty percent of those adults equals nearly 52 million people. There were more than 40,000 gun deaths in 2022, and around 20,000 of them were homicides — a slight dip from a Covid-year historic high that followed decades of lows. So, according to Kaiser’s polling, every victim of gun violence in the past few years had hundreds, if not thousands, of “family members.”

Now, to be fair, we can’t really run the numbers because Kaiser doesn’t define its terms or parameters. For example, what constitutes a “family member”? Is your second cousin a family member? Because if so, that creates quite the nexus of people. What about your stepbrother’s second cousin? Or how about your uncle who died in Iraq? Or how about that grandfather you never met who committed suicide in 1968? Kaiser could have asked people about their “immediate” relatives. The opacity is the point.

Then again, you can always spot a misleading firearms study by checking if the authors conflate suicides and murders. Kaiser does. The underlying problems leading to a homicide or a suicide are typically very different. So are the solutions. There are numerous countries with virtually no private gun ownership that have persistently high suicide rates. There isn’t any other societal problem in which Kaiser wouldn’t stress the distinction between criminality and mental health struggles.

But even if we count suicides, the claim is fantastical. As are many of the others. If we trust this poll, we would have to accept that around 50 million Americans were personally threatened with a gun. And that 54 percent of American adults — which can be extrapolated to mean 140 million adults — have personally or have a family member who has witnessed a shooting, been threatened by a gun, or been injured or killed by one. (Another 28 percent, or 72 million people, contend they have carried a gun in self-defense — which is also exceedingly unlikely.)

Kaiser’s “key findings” highlight many issues tied to anti-gun activist talking points. In the middle of polling, Kaiser conveniently switches up the definition of an “adult” from 18 and older to over 19, so it can regurgitate the claim that firearms are the leading cause of death among children. Kaiser wonders if your “health care provider” has talked to you about guns or gun safety. Did you know, Kaiser asks, that 6 in 10 parents with guns in their households say a gun is stored in the same location as ammunition?

What Kaiser doesn’t mention in its press-friendly “key findings” — and no media piece I’ve read mentions — is that 82 percent of those polled feel “very” or “somewhat safe” from gun violence in their own neighborhoods. Only 18 percent of Americans say they worry about gun violence on a daily or almost daily basis, while 43 percent say they worry about it “rarely” or “never.” So, you’re telling me, half of American adults have personally experienced gun violence themselves or toward someone in their family, but less than 20 percent worry about it often?

There are numerous other problems with Kaiser’s findings. Perhaps the most important, though, is...

A Spring of Leaks

Judge Aileen Cannon knew the Justice Department’s recent history of bad behavior related to all things Donald Trump would repeat itself. How right she was.

Judge Aileen Cannon was right.

In her controversial order authorizing the appointment of a neutral third-party to review the classification status of documents seized during the FBI’s pillage of Mar-A-Lago last summer, Cannon cited as a main concern the Justice Department’s chronic habit of leaking to the news media. Leaks hinting at what FBI investigators allegedly found, including perhaps nuclear secrets, were reported by reliable media apparatchiks just a few days after the FBI’s unprecedented raid of a former president’s home.

Clearly aware that federal prosecutors already were collaborating with the media to spin the raid as legitimate amid a public outcry, Cannon granted Trump’s request for a special master to “ensur[e] the integrity of an orderly process amidst swirling allegations of bias and media leaks,” she wrote in her September 5 ruling. A proper investigation, she continued, “does not demand unquestioning trust in the determinations of the Department of Justice.”

Cannon, a Trump-appointed district court judge in Florida, at one point confronted prosecutors about the illicit leaks. “Government’s counsel stated that he had no knowledge of any leaks stemming from his team but candidly acknowledged the unfortunate existence of leaks to the press.”

A pile-on ensued against Cannon; the Justice Department appealed her order and prevailed in the appellate court. But Cannon foresaw exactly what has unfolded in the press over the past seven months. And as Trump prepares to fight his very first indictment handed down by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, leaks are springing up all over the corporate media to bolster the appearance of Trump’s criminality.

A lengthy piece in the Washington Post over the weekend gave a detailed account of the obstruction side of the classified documents investigation now led by Jack Smith, the special prosecutor appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland last year to give the false impression of investigative impartiality. If the Post’s reporting is accurate, the obstruction inquiry seems as weak as the original case; recall of the 13,000 items of evidence stolen by FBI agents during the lengthy raid, the government later claimed only about 100 papers contained classified markings.

“The additional evidence comes as investigators have used emails and text messages from a former Trump aide to help understand key moments last year, said the people, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation,” Post reporters Devlin Barrett, Josh Dawsey, and Perry Stein wrote.

The reporters specifically named Molly Michael, a former White House assistant who followed Trump to Florida after his term ended, as the aide whose communications are under scrutiny. Investigators also have “witness statements, security camera footage, and other documentary evidence” that purportedly proves Trump was involved in inspecting boxes of materials after receiving a subpoena last May to produce more classified records, the Post further disclosed.

It is highly unlikely those specifics were leaked to the Post by Team Trump—particularly since the carefully timed leak worked in the government’s favor.

The usual suspects quickly surmised that this really must be the end for Trump. Disgraced former FBI agent Peter Strzok concluded on Twitter that Trump’s actions based on the Post report “Feels obstruction-y.” Disgraced former Justice Department prosecutor Andrew Weissmann insisted the obstruction case “could be a rock crusher game over,” perhaps the thousandth time Weissmann made such an unrealized prediction. (Weissmann, by the way, was an outspoken critic of...

FBI Whistleblower Claims FBI Is Now a 'Weaponized Apparatchik' of the Biden Administration

There’s a growing divide between the rank-and-file officers of the FBI and upper management, according to FBI agent-turned-whistleblower Steve Friend, and it’s those at the top who are pushing a political agenda…

“There are a lot of agents that sort of share that sentiment and just want to drive the mission forward. Unfortunately, there’s a big disconnect between the rank-and-file and the management class…

“I think there’s an argument to be made that the FBI has now just become a weaponized apparatchik of the presidential administration,” he added, holding that public trust in the agency has diminished largely as a result of the perception of political bias.”


As I have previously documented, it’s incontrovertibly true that the national security apparatus, including the FBI, is now politicized and weaponized against what the intelligence community terms “domestic extremists.”

This amorphic designation — “domestic extremist” — refers to the populist right, anti-establishment grassroots activists who oppose the silent coup that the Deep State has waged against the American people for several decades. It simply means opposition to the growing technocratic tyranny but, of course, is couched in post-9/11 language of “terrorism” and its alleged threat to “national security.”

Where Friend may be wrong is that the intelligence community does not ultimately serve the Biden administration. Biden is a disposable puppet who will be disposed of in due time when it becomes convenient. His current usefulness is his pliability and directability. He does not make decisions of consequence.

The true usurpers of power occupy the next level above even the elected portion of the executive branch — the proverbial “men behind the curtain,” which includes the likes of George Soros, Bill Gates, and their ilk. They operate across borders and are in the process of rendering the nation-state obsolete.

Let’s look, for example, at the curious case of current Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer invoking the Deep State to threaten the sitting president of the United States (Donald Trump at the time) into cooperating with the program.

Or, of course, one could point as well to the JFK assassination and the likely involvement of the CIA.

The picture this paints is of a national security state that answers not to any single president but to a higher authority. That “higher authority” is not “God,” as is usually the referent object in such a case, but to a shadowy cabal that, although comprised of mortals, is nonetheless beyond the control of...

Republicans Say Air Force Released Their ‘Sensitive Data’ To Dem Operative

The Air Force improperly released the service records of Republican Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska and Zach Nunn of Iowa to a Democratic Party operative, the two lawmakers say.

A researcher for the consulting firm Due Diligence Group requested Bacon’s service records, saying he needed them for “employment and benefits.” The Air Force does not believe that any Air Force employee acted with “malicious intent,” Major General Troy Dunn wrote in a Feb. 7 letter to Bacon. The Air Force began investigating the alleged leaks after the branch improperly released the service records of GOP candidate and veteran Jennifer-Ruth Green to the Due Diligence Group, Politico reported Tuesday.

“I understand the evidence has been turned over to the Department of Justice and I expect those who break the law to be prosecuted,” Bacon told Politico. “This was more than just ‘dirty tricks’ by Democrat operatives, but likely violations of the law.” 

“The recent targeting of Members of Congress’s personnel military records [and] the breach of sensitive data … taken by political hacks isn’t only a violation of public trust — it’s criminal,” Nunn added.

The Air Force’s letter to Bacon named Abraham Payton, an analyst with the Due Diligence Group, as the individual who improperly requested Bacon’s information. Payton had access to Bacon’s Social Security number, according to the letter, and the branch subsequently released information to him that should have been protected by the Privacy Act of 1974.

Twelve Air Force veterans, including Bacon and Nunn, currently serve in the House of Representatives. The Air Force did not respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment on whether or not the eight unnamed individuals whose records were released ran for the House during the 2022 midterms. Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek told Politico that “virtually all” of the records were released to...

Biden’s Supersized IRS Will Spread Out More Audits For White People, Incoming Commissioner Promises

The only way to balance out this supposed injustice is for IRS agents to consciously target more non-blacks for audits.

Good news, everyone: Joe Biden’s nominee to head the IRS has promised to make tax audits more racially “equitable”! In other words, get ready for more shakedowns from the government, white people.

Hooray!

It was bad enough that Biden just infused nearly $100 billion into an agency despised by anyone trying to make an honest living — we’re the ones most likely to be harassed by it — but now it comes with the added insult of “equity,” a term that should be greeted like a real pandemic. Draw the blinds, close the shutters, and lock the doors.

Daniel Werfel, who is likely to be the next IRS commissioner, made the commitment during his congressional testimony on Wednesday after Stanford University published a study claiming that black taxpayers are disproportionately hit with audits. As with every other law or policy that supposedly “disproportionately impacts communities of color” (ie. rules meant to keep everyone safe and everything fair from ne’er-do-wells), this is B.S.

It’s true that black filers receive audit notices at a higher rate than non-black filers. But that’s because black taxpayers claim certain lower-income tax credits, like the earned income tax credit or credits for single parents, at a higher rate. That often means a filer receives money from the government that he never paid into it. “When someone claims one of these tax credits, which are part of our country’s social safety net,” the study said, “they receive a refund amount even if they didn’t pay any taxes.” (The term “refund” here is inaccurate for money that was never given by a taxpayer.) These credits are most likely to instigate an audit purely based on an IRS algorithm.

The authors wrote that black filers made up 21 percent of earned income tax credit (EITC) claims. Single black men with dependents — unmarried fathers — also make up the largest group of EITC claims. In other words, blacks only make up about 13 percent of the population but are more likely to file claims that are most likely to trigger an audit, even as the IRS has no idea what race any given filer is. (There is no race box to check off when submitting the paper work.)

The only way to balance out this supposed injustice — equity! — is for IRS agents to consciously target more non-blacks for audits. And trust me, it won’t be the filers with...

'Free Speech for Whom?': Former Twitter Executive Makes Chilling Admission on the 'Nuanced' Standard Used For Censorship

Yesterday’s hearing of the House Oversight Committee featured three former Twitter executives who are at the center of the growing censorship scandal involving the company: Twitter’s former chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, former deputy general counsel James Baker and former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth. However, it was the testimony of the only witness called by the Democrats that proved the most enlightening and chilling. Former Twitter executive Anika Collier Navaroli testified on what she repeatedly called the “nuanced” standard used by her and her staff on censorship.

Toward the end of the hearing, she was asked about that standard by Rep. Melanie Ann Stansbury (D., NM). Her answer captured precisely why Twitter’s censorship system proved a nightmare for free expression. Stansbury’s agreement with her take on censorship only magnified the concerns over the protection of free speech on social media.

Even before Stansbury’s question, the hearing had troubling moments. Ranking Member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md) opened up the hearing insisting that Twitter has not censored enough material and suggesting that it was still fueling violence by allowing disinformation to be posted on the platform.

Navaroli then testified how she felt that there should have been much more censorship and how she fought with the company to remove more material that she and her staff considered “dog whistles” and “coded” messaging.

Rep. Stansbury asked what Twitter has done and is doing to combat hate speech on its platform. Navaroli correctly declined to address current policies since she has not been at the company for some time. However, she then said that they balanced free speech against safety and explained that they sought a different approach:
Instead of asking just free speech versus safety to say free speech for whom and public safety for whom. So whose free expression are we protecting at the expense of whose safety and whose safety are we willing to allow to go the winds so that people can speak freely.Rep. Stansbury responded by saying “Exactly.”

The statement was reminiscent to the statement of the former CEO Parag Agrawal. After taking over as CEO, Agrawal pledged to regulate content as “reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation.” Agrawal said the company would “focus less on thinking about free speech” because “speech is easy on the internet. Most people can speak. Where our role is particularly emphasized is who can be heard.”

Navaroli was saying that it is not enough to simply balance free speech against public safety (a standard that most free speech advocates would oppose as ill-defined and fluid). Instead, Navaroli and her staff would decide “free speech for whom and public safety for whom.”

The suggestion is that free speech protections would differ with the speakers or who was deemed at risk from the exercise of free speech. It takes a subjective balancing test and makes it even more ambiguous and...

Righteous Tyrants

No, they’re not cutting off food supplies or building labor camps but these modern-day tyrants seek the same ends: crush the opposition and control the masses.

They sure don’t make tyrants like they used to.

Tyrants once rose to power the old-fashioned way: defeating the opposition on the battlefield or at the faux ballot box. Despite their atrocities, these despots at least had some swagger—perhaps a way with the ladies, a good sense of humor, strong persuasive abilities, commanding verbal skills, pride in their appearance.

Not so with modern-day martinets. Our 21st-century tyrants possess nothing more than useless degrees from woke institutions and deep contempt for at least half the country, likely born out of a lifetime of social isolation. History, after all, shows that outcasts often seek revenge against their childhood tormentors later in life.

Such appears to be the case with the former Twitter executives who testified before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday. Unimpressive by every measure—looks, personality, intellect, persuasiveness, grasp of the facts—the Twitter Four should serve as a reminder of what the defenders of freedom are up against. Thankfully, our enemies, while powerful for now, have the mental, physical, and emotional appeal of overcooked spaghetti.

James Baker, Vijaya Gadde, Yoel Roth, and Anika Collier Navaroli took the quasi-stand this week at a House Oversight Committee hearing to explain their roles in colluding with the government to suppress free speech during an election year, particularly related to the New York Post’s coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020. Baker, the former general counsel for the FBI when the bureau used fabricated political opposition research to defraud a secret federal court and obtain a warrant to spy on Donald Trump, was fired by Elon Musk as Twitter’s general counsel after it was discovered Baker was vetting company files made available to independent journalists.

Roth, Gadde, and Navaroli were considered the “custodians of the internet,” Roth boasted in a New York Times opinion column published in November, shortly after he resigned. “The work of online sanitation is unrelenting and contentious,” Twitter’s former head of “trust and safety” lamented. Roth then outlined a series of steps the government, private companies, and Big Tech oligarchs should pursue to rein in Musk.

“In the longer term,” Roth warned, “the moderating influences of advertisers, regulators and, most critically of all, app stores may be welcome for those of us hoping to avoid an escalation in the volume of dangerous speech online.”

That sort of hubris was on full display this week as the Twitter Four defended their crusade to censor users on the Right, including the suspension of Trump in January 2021. In the process, these self-proclaimed warriors of truth and integrity revealed themselves to be nothing short of petulant foot-stompers unfit for employment anywhere outside of Silicon Valley or the government. Further, all four were clearly guided by their hatred for Trump and his supporters, contrary to their solemn assurances that decisions were based on unbiased considerations to protect the site from insidious content.

For example, Gadde retweeted a Nicholas Kristof piece in 2016, emphasizing Kristof’s conclusion that he had “never met a national politician in the U.S. who is so ill informed, evasive, puerile and deceptive as Trump.” She, like 98 percent of people working in Silicon Valley, is a generous contributor to Democratic Party officials and candidates.

She reportedly cried when she learned Musk had acquired the company.

But Gadde’s attempts to hide her partisan stripes failed this week. In a nonsensical explanation only an Ivy Leaguer could love, Gadde told committee members about the inner workings of the social media giant.

“Defending free expression and maintaining the health of the platform required difficult judgment calls,” claimed Gadde, who was largely responsible for the decision to ban Trump’s account after January 6, 2021. “Most applications of Twitter rules were fact-intensive, subject to internal debate, and needed to be made very quickly. We recognized that after applying those rules, we might learn that some of them did not work as we had imagined and that we would need to update them. At times, we also reversed course.”

Coincidentally, just like occurrences in the traditional media, those rules and course reversals only affected one side: the Right. But when challenged to explain the imbalance, Gadde played dumb. She said she could only “make a guess” as to the application of a “search blacklist,” a tool that was frequently used by Twitter to hide the accounts of conservative influencers.

Vaccine-injured Representative Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) angrily confronted Gadde about Twitter’s censorship of contrary views on COVID-19, especially vaccine efficacy. After forcing Gadde to admit she did not graduate from medical school, Mace presented tweets with CDC data on vaccine side effects that...

The fact that the federal bureaucracy and Big Tech collaborated to usurp a democratically elected president should terrify Americans.

In recent days, Matt Taibbi’s reporting exposed the bipartisan political operation known as Hamilton 68 that promulgated and perpetuated the myth of Russian control of American politics. Hamilton 68 was a collection of almost completely non-Russian Twitter users deceptively selected and then fed to reporters and members of Congress as data proving Russian influence in U.S. elections.

The uncovering of this op makes institutional rot in the United States more apparent than ever before. After all, Big Tech collaborated with this disinformation operation to delegitimize a democratically elected president while federal agencies — notably, the U.S. State Department — weaponized this disinformation against the American people.

These institutions are not independent, sentient monoliths whose politically motivated goals serendipitously overlap. The fact that the world’s most advanced federal bureaucracy and the most powerful corporate entities to ever exist collaborated to usurp a democratically elected president should, indeed, terrify every American citizen.

But there is a darker truth beneath the surface: the people behind Hamilton 68 — members of the managerial elite — are trying to permanently reshape the American political and legal systems to do away with the remaining mechanisms of our democratic republic so permanently entrenched government and corporate bureaucrats can call the shots.

The goal of these people is to permanently alter the American system of governance to sideline the U.S. Constitution. No longer will democratically elected officials hold power, pass laws, or govern. Instead, the bureaucratic leviathan will become — and largely already is — an all-encompassing administrative apparatus, an unlimited regulatory state that passes law via rubber stamp instead of votes by duly elected representatives.

This managerial class further seeks a political system akin to “direct democracy” in which the national “popular vote” determines the outcome of all presidential elections. This would nullify the Constitution’s Electoral College and strike a crucial blow to federalism, allowing an unavoidably leftist chief executive to further embolden the bureaucrats of the managerial class as they are largely consolidated within executive agencies.

The constitution will remain, but it will simply serve as a window dressing that gives the new order the same legitimacy as the old order. It will be little more than an aesthetic disguise through which people — like those behind Hamilton 68 — can use to appoint themselves the heirs of the Founding Fathers.

Hamilton 68 likely draws its name from the American founding for this very reason. The 68th Federalist Paper was authored by Alexander Hamilton and is titled “The Mode of Electing the President.” In it, Hamilton presents a defense of the Electoral College and argues it would insulate the presidency from the chaotic whims of an uninformed populace while still allowing said populace’s voice to be heard.

Hamilton wrote: “It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided. This end will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any preestablished body, but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose, and at the particular conjuncture.”

He continued:

MTG Goes Nuclear Against Former Twitter Exec For Banning Conservatives While Allowing Child Porn

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) tore into three former Twitter executives during a House Oversight and Reform hearing on Wednesday, telling them that she was glad they were fired from the platform.

Twitter’s former chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, former deputy general counsel James Baker and former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth, appeared before the committee hearing titled “Protecting Speech from Government Interference and Social Media Bias, Part 1: Twitter’s Role in Suppressing the Biden Laptop Story.”

The former executives are among several top Twitter officials who left the company or were fired after Elon Musk bought the platform.

Greene, who spent all of her allotted time speaking, rather than asking questions, sounded like she had a personal score to settle, tearing into Roth especially for allowing child porn to flourish on the platform, while conservatives like her were banned.

“You can consider your speech cancelled during my time because you cancelled mine,” Greene told the former Twitter execs, before calling them out for banning her personal campaign account during an election year.

“January 2, 20[2]2, you permanently banned my Twitter account. This is the account where I would put my campaign ads on, raise money on, fight back when attacked with lies, and be able to talk with my voters in my district. But you banned it,” MTG declared.

She noted later, “you didn’t ban or shadowban my opponent. No, you did that to me,” and that was wrong, and it was against the law.”

MTG accused the trio of coordinating with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FBI, CIA, and other outside groups to censor conservatives by permanently banning or shadowbanning their accounts.

“You were censoring and wrongfully violating our First Amendment free speech rights,” MTG said. “Guess what? None of you hold security clearances. None of you are elected. And none of you represent 750,000 people like I do.”

Greene went on to blast the former execs for censoring doctors who were trying to tell the truth about COVID treatments, parents trying to blow the whistle on radical school LGBTQ or CRT policies, and people who questioned the legitimacy of...

ANALYSIS: We Need a Total and Complete Shutdown of Rich White Liberals Having Children

Until we can figure out what the hell is going on

What do we want? A total and complete shutdown of rich white liberals having children until we can figure out what the hell is going on.

When do we want it? Now.

Why do we want it? To protect our fellow Americans from violence at the hands of spoiled youths corrupted by extremist ideology.

For example: Linwood Kaine, the adult son of Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.), was arrested in May 2017—less than a year after his father lost the presidential election as Hillary Clinton's running mate—for disrupting a pro-Trump rally in Minnesota by lighting fireworks inside the state Capitol.

Background: Riley Dowell, the 23-year-old "nonbinary" daughter/son of Rep. Katherine Clark (D., Mass.), was arrested in Boston over the weekend for allegedly assaulting a police officer and vandalizing public property by spray-painting "ACAB" (All Cops Are Bastards) on a historic landmark.

(Context: Clark, who has expressed support for the controversial "defund the police" movement, is the second-highest ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives. She described her child's alleged domestic terrorism as "a very difficult time in the cycle of joy and pain in parenting.")

The leading Democrat's wayward offspring was arrested on the same day that hundreds of left-wing radicals rioted in Atlanta. "If you build it, we will burn it," the masked hooligans chanted as they destroyed property and set fire to police cars.

Atlanta police arrested several individuals for engaging in domestic terrorism. The New York Post examined their backgrounds, and found that nearly all of them are white children of privilege who traveled from out of state:

• Madeleine "Henri" Feola—trans activist from Happy Valley, Oregon (median income $132,000); graduate of Oberlin College (Lena Dunham's alma mater)

• Ivan J. Ferguson—award-winning professional clarinetist who studied at the prestigious San Francisco Conservatory of Music

• Francis Carroll—trust fund kid from Kennebunkport, Maine (95% white, median income $82,000); the wealthy vacation enclave is home to the Bush family's summer estate

• Emily Kathryn Murphy—radical activist involved with Al Gore's Climate Reality Project; hails from Grosse Ile Township, Michigan (94% white, median income $114,000)

Bottom line: Rich white liberals, a demographic that includes most Democratic politicians and professional journalists, are a bunch of hysterical doomsayers who nod in agreement when Nikole Hannah-Jones denounces the United States as "one of the most unequal societies in the history of the world."

According to them, the world is on the brink of destruction due to climate change, our democracy is on the brink of destruction due to white supremacists pushing "Jim Crow on steroids," and expressing an opinion they don't like is literally an act of violence. All cops are bastards. All men are pigs. All white people, including "white Hispanics" and black people concerned about crime, are irredeemable racists.

They might not actually believe the things they say, but they shouldn't be surprised when others, including their own children, take these ideas seriously and...

The Russian Twitter Bots Story Is A Study In Media’s ‘Lie, Set The Narrative, Then Quietly Backtrack’ Playbook

The three-step process is regime media’s MO: spread a false claim, crush dissent, then admit the truth once the news cycle achieves its purpose.

he Washington Post admitted Monday that “Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters” — years after the Post and other corporate media water-carriers pushed the false story that former President Donald Trump’s election was illegitimate, due in part to Russian interference via bots on Twitter targeting U.S. social media users. The admission cites a New York University study that found “there was no relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior.”

Media treatment of the non-story followed a predictable, three-step process that’s become the propaganda press’s MO: Spread a false claim, control the narrative while crushing dissent with bogus “fact checks,” and then admit the truth only after the news cycle has achieved its intended purpose.

How the Russian Bots Story Followed the Playbook

In 2016, then-Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook launched the conspiracy theory that then-candidate Trump was in cahoots with Russia and colluding together to steal the 2016 election. One dossier full of bunk allegations commissioned by the Clinton campaign later, the entire media establishment, in tandem with a politicized intelligence community, was running with the Russia collusion hoax.

One of the many conspiracy theories thrown at the wall was that Russia was influencing U.S. voters via social media, including through armies of “bot” accounts. As my colleague Joy Pullmann has noted, U.S. intelligence agencies propelled that claim with an “intelligence community assessment” on Jan. 6, 2017, “signed off publicly by the FBI, National Security Agency, and CIA concluding that Trump’s election was boosted by Russian social media content farms.”

Regime media ran with it the same narrative before and after that assessment that turned out to be false:

The Washington Post: “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say,” November 2016.

Politico Magazine: “How Russia Wins an Election” (spoiler: “the Kremlin’s troll army swarmed the web to spread disinformation and undermine trust in the electoral system,” the piece says), December 2016.

NPR: “How Russian Twitter Bots Pumped Out Fake News During The 2016 Election,” April 2017.

New York Times: “The Fake Americans Russia Created to Influence the Election,” September 2017.

Mother Jones: “Twitter Bots Distorted the 2016 Election — Including Many Likely From Russia,” October 2017.

The “Twitter Files” revealed just weeks ago that media pressure on this story, combined with threats from elected Democrats, were successful in getting Twitter to obey U.S. intelligence agency requests for information suppression, even though Twitter executives couldn’t find any evidence of coordinated Russian disinformation campaigns on...

Report: FBI Conducted Domestic Influence Operation Targeting Social and Corporate Media to Discredit Hunter Biden Laptop Story

While the FBI was supposed to be investigating foreign influence operations ahead of the 2020 election, it was engaging in a political influence operation of its own right here at home. Throughout all of 2020, the FBI repeatedly “primed” former Twitter’s Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth to dismiss accurate reports of Hunter Biden’s scandalous laptop, and to refer to it as a Russian “hack and leak” operation, according to internal Twitter documents.

Although the FBI almost certainly knew the laptop—which had been in its possession since December of 2019—was legitimate, it conducted a multi-faceted influence operation targeting multiple social media platforms and major corporate media outlets to discredit accurate reports on a major scandal that threatened to torpedo Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

Independent journalist Michael Shellenberger on Monday released the seventh edition of the “Twitter Files” onto the social media platform, revealing how the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community worked to “discredit factual information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings” in the media.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has given Shellenberger and two other independent reporters broad access to the internal communications between Twitter executives and government officials on the condition that they post the material on Twitter before they publish it anywhere else.

The sixth installment of the Twitter Files revealed how the FBI’s relentless attempts to exercise influence over Twitter’s content, its users, and its data, made even Yoel Roth—the far-left former head of Trust and Safety—uncomfortable.

The evidence uncovered in seventh edition points to “an organized effort by representatives of the intelligence community (IC), aimed at senior executives at news and social media companies, to discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden before and after it was published,” Shellenberger wrote. “The story begins December 2019 when a Delaware computer store owner named John Paul (J.P.) Mac Isaac contacts the FBI about a laptop that Hunter Biden had left with him.”

The FBI issued a subpoena for Hunter Biden’s laptop and took possession of it on Dec 9, 2019. For the next year, the Bureau did nothing meaningful to address multiple alleged illegalities found in the laptop—but it did take action.

“At 9:22 pm ET (6:22 PT), FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan sends 10 documents to Twitter’s then-Head of Site Integrity, Yoel Roth, through Teleporter, a one-way communications channel from the FBI to Twitter,” Shellenberger wrote.


The next day, October 14, 2020, The New York Post runs its explosive story revealing the business dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. Every single fact in it was accurate.
And yet, within hours, Twitter and other social media companies censor the NY Post article, preventing it from spreading and, more importantly, undermining its credibility in the minds of many Americans.

They did the same to Facebook, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “The FBI basically came to us [and] was like, ‘Hey… you should be on high alert. We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in 2016 election. There’s about to be some kind of dump similar to that.'”

While the FBI’s warnings of a Russian hack-and-leak operation relating to Hunter Biden’s laptop was based on outdated intel, the laptop in its possession was chuck full of incriminating information about Hunter, and his father, the then-Democrat candidate for president.

“Hunter Biden earned *tens of millions* of dollars in contracts with foreign businesses, including ones linked to China’s government, for which Hunter offered no real work,” Shellenberger wrote, linking to a video of investigative journalist Peter Schweizer summing up the alleged Biden family corruption and illegalities.

The Twitter files show that the FBI had no reason to be focusing on a Russian “hack and leak” operation:

Musk Is Cutting Twitter To The Bone, And The Lamentations Of The Karens Are Glorious

Elon Musk, his bloodlust still not satiated after firing half of Twitter’s 11,000 employees, is now slicing and dicing the company’s bloated finances.

The story could begin — and end — with what Musk did when he found dead-ender execs racking up six figures worth of chartered jets right before he bought the company. But the story just keeps getting better, even after that.

So I guess that, technically, the most important snowball in the avalanche of good Twitter news is that Musk will move its headquarters out of San Francisco. He hasn’t said where the new Headquarters will be located, but given that Musk moved his Tesla Headquarters and that SpaceX is there, too, Twitter will soon call Texas home.

Best thing for the company, really. The Bay Area’s woke culture is endemic and poisonous. I assume Twitter will move to Austin, which is also quite “progressive.” But at least Austin is a blue dot in a sea of red — not like San Francisco’s blue dot in a sea of big blue blobs.

Already, according to a New York Times report, Musk has stopped paying rent on the SF Headquarters and all of its global offices, too. Prior to Musk’s buyout, the company was famous for lavish spending on amenities for its bloated (and mostly unneeded) workforce.

Twitter 2.0 is apparently gearing up for legal battles to get the company out of the ruinous leases arranged by previous management.

But wait. It gets better. Much better:

Twitter’s leaders have also discussed the consequences of denying severance payments to thousands of people who have been laid off since the takeover, two people familiar with the talks said. And Mr. Musk has threatened employees with lawsuits if they talk to the media and “act in a manner contrary to the company’s interest,” according to an internal email sent last Friday.

What happens to ex-employees when they break their NDAs? FAFO, as Musk himself has said.

The NYT article paints a picture of a company in “chaos,” to borrow a word the NYT used twice. I see a bloated social media platform getting pared to the bone if it’s going to be saved.

In terms of Twitter’s cultural health, maybe Musk’s best move was on Monday when he dissolved the so-called Trust and Safety Council. Formed in 2016 to combat “hate” or whatever, I warned at the time that the council was essentially Orwellian and would crush free speech.

I had no idea — until Twitter helped squelch the Crackhead Hunter Biden laptop story and turn an election — just how right I would turn out to be.

For the next #TwitterFiles, Musk has already promised to reveal collusion between Twitter 1.0 and celebrity medical spokesmodel Anthony “Doctor” Fauci to silence dissent about masks, the lockdowns, vaccines, and more.

Now, about those chartered flights…

Can you imagine putting a few tens of thousands of dollars on the company Amex, only to have the bill bounce right back in your lap?

It’s a thing of beauty — and that’s why the progressive Left is going ape-stuff insane.

The New Republic’s Timothy Noah warns that Musk might just the “the worst boss ever.” At the Arizona Republic, EJ Montini frets that Musk is “transforming Twitter into… Arizona!” Sane people might think that’s a good thing, but Montini, who apparently hates his state and his readers, says they’re both full of “Intolerance? Check. Prejudice? Check. Misinformation? Check. Crackpots? Check. Zealots? Check.”

But if you really want to see what a nest of angry, demented bees Musk has made the Left, look no further than famous lefty accounts on Twitter itself.

Elon Musk has turned into late-stage Howard Hughes and his jar of urine is Twitter

— Frank Lesser (@sadmonsters) December 14, 2022

That’s just one example. I won’t bore you with others, since they’re easy enough to find on your own, should you find yourself feeling particularly masochistic.

I should remind you once more that Musk’s first reform was to clear Twitter of its endemic pedophile picture-sharing subculture — and the Left has been mum.

Make of that what you will.

Unrelated, but doused with the same firehose of schadenfreude is the latest from the Washington Post. The paper shredded its own credibility during the Donald Trump years, but...