Trump Rescinds Offshore Drilling Ban, Pulls Out Of Paris Accords

January 21st, 2025

There’s such a tidal wave of winning spewing down the pipe now that Donald Trump’s rightful place in the White House has been restored that it’s hard to pick one thing to write about that everyone else hasn’t already talked about, but let’s cover Trump lifting the offshore oil and gas ban Biden put in place just before he left office, as well as withdrawing from the never-ratified Paris Accords as part of a much more energy-friendly approach.

“Declaring a National Energy Emergency”

Purpose: “The integrity and expansion of our Nation’s energy infrastructure — from coast to coast — is an immediate and pressing priority for the protection of the United States’ national and economic security. It is imperative that the Federal government puts the physical and economic wellbeing of the American people first.”

Summary:

  • Directs agency heads to explore and enact any existing executive authority that will enable them “to facilitate the identification, leasing, siting, production, transportation, refining, and generation of domestic energy resources, including, but not limited to, on Federal lands.”
  • Tasks the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head to approve emergency waivers for the 365-day sale of gasoline anywhere its supply is currently limited.
  • Expedites the permitting, construction, and completion of energy infrastructure projects, such as the Keystone XL pipeline, that have received previous approval.
  • Restricts the application of the Endangered Species Act in areas deemed to be unnecessarily burdening energy-related projects.
  • Creates an Endangered Species Act Committee tasked with reviewing designations under the law.

    • “Unleashing American Energy”

    Purpose: “It is thus in the national interest to unleash America’s affordable and reliable energy and natural resources. This will restore American prosperity — including for those men and women who have been forgotten by our economy in recent years. It will also rebuild our Nation’s economic and military security, which will deliver peace through strength.”

    Summary:

  • Details the official American energy policy, which includes energy exploration on federal lands and waters; ramping up production of rare-earth minerals; grounding all related regulations in law; nixing the electric vehicle mandate and bans on certain kinds of consumer goods; and ensuring adequate public comment periods on energy-related regulations.
  • Withdraws the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords and eliminates the Green New Deal; terminates the American Climate Corps and the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases; and rescinds a multitude of President Biden’s climate-related executive orders, including the drilling ban on federal lands and waters and the application of regulations under the National Environmental Policy Act.
  • Prioritizes permitting for liquefied natural gas exporting projects, such as on the Gulf Coast in Texas and Louisiana.
  • Requires agency heads to remove regulatory barriers to the mining of mineral resources across the country.

    • “Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements”

    Purpose: “It is the policy of my Administration to put the interests of the United States and the American people first in the development and negotiation of any international agreements with the potential to damage or stifle the American economy. These agreements must not unduly or unfairly burden the United States.”

    Summary:

  • The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. will immediately notify the international organization that it will withdraw from the Paris Agreement.
  • Any financial grants given to the U.N. in conjunction with the Paris Agreement will be ceased.
  • Reports on the withdrawal and all the actions thereto shall be compiled to provide updates.
  • Any future agreements related to energy shall “prioritize economic efficiency, the promotion of American prosperity, consumer choice, and fiscal restraint in all foreign engagements that concern energy policy.”

    • “Temporary Withdrawal of All Areas on the Outer Continental Shelf from Offshore Wind Leasing and Review of the Federal Government’s Leasing and Permitting Practices for Wind Projects”

    Purpose: “This withdrawal temporarily prevents consideration of any area in the OCS for any new or renewed wind energy leasing for the purposes of generation of electricity or any other such use derived from the use of wind. This withdrawal does not apply to leasing related to any other purposes such as, but not limited to, oil, gas, minerals, and environmental conservation.”

    Summary:

  • Approval of new leases for offshore wind power operations will be halted — similar to Biden’s directive on offshore oil drilling — and the current practices will be reviewed.
  • Agencies will assess the “environmental impact and cost … of defunct and idle windmills.”
  • Existing leases are not affected.

    • Trump is doing his level best to hit the ground running and clean up four years of Biden’s war on American consumer and energy producers via executive fiat in the name of pie-in-the-sky environmentalism in a single week.

    This is how you carry out campaign promises.

    Godspeed, Mr. President.

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    Posted in Global Warming, Texas | 1 Comment »

    Paxton Files One Last Lawsuit Against Biden For The Road

    January 20th, 2025

    As Joe Biden and his ruling cabal slunk out of the White House, Ken Paxton filed a final lawsuit against the regime’s executive regulatory ovrereach:

    Attorney General Ken Paxton has joined a legal challenge against the Biden administration’s recent regulation targeting gas-powered water heaters.

    On December 26, 2024, the Department of Energy issued a final rule that would prohibit the sale of non-condensing instantaneous natural gas water heaters. Paxton and a coalition of attorneys general from multiple states contest the move is unlawful.

    The lawsuit, led by Georgia, Kansas, and Tennessee, argues that this regulation disproportionately affects seniors and low-income households by limiting market options and potentially forcing consumers to use products that may require more energy for the same performance.

    Paxton strongly criticized the rule, stating, “It makes no sense to ban better performing instantaneous water heaters in the name of ‘green energy’ and force consumers to purchase more expensive and less efficient models. Beyond being ridiculous, it is an unlawful abuse of power.”

    He has vowed to continue opposing overreach by the Biden administration, adding, “Until the final second of Biden’s tenure in Washington, I will defend Texas from the chronic lawlessness of his Administration.”

    With President-elect Trump set to take office in a few days, it remains to be seen how these ongoing legal challenges and regulatory disputes will be resolved.

    Fellow states joining Texas in the suit are Georgia, Kansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia.

    Plus a bunch of natural gas associations.

    Hopefully today marks the end of federal regulatory overreach in the service of unlawful, pie-in-the-sky environmentalism and the beginning of an administration that actually cares about ordinary Americans.

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    Posted in Democrats, Regulation, Texas | 7 Comments »

    Jellyfish Machine Gun 12, Greenpeace Hippies 0

    January 19th, 2025

    Here’s a heart-warming, feel good story about a bunch of Greenpeace hippies that thought it was a swell idea to land on a United States Navy submarine, and the submariners who quickly taught them the errors of their ways.

    I’m not going to excerpt this, because it’s reasonably short, and the way it unfolds is a lot of fun…

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    Posted in Military, video | 4 Comments »

    Chinese Malware Infects 4,000+ U.S. Computers

    January 18th, 2025

    Communist China never rests in its quest to infect American computers with spy and malware, as in this story.

    The threat of cyberattack is never far away, be that by Amazon ransomware actors with an impossible-to-recover-from threat, or Windows zero-day exploits and even the hacking of the iPhone USB-C port. Luckily, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is also never far away when it comes to warnings about such attacks and hacker threats. But eyebrows will surely be raised just a little as the FBI and Department of Justice have confirmed that thousands of U.S. computers and networks were accessed to remove malware files remotely. Here’s what you need to know.

    The U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI have confirmed that a court-authorized operation allowed the remote removal of malware files from 4,258 U.S.-based computers. The operation, targeting the PlugX malware variant as used by what are said to be China-backed threat actors, was, the Jan. 14 statement said, designed to take down a version of PlugX used by the group known as Mustang Panda or Twill Typhoon, capable of controlling infected computers to steal information.

    According to court documents, the DoJ said, the People’s Republic of China government “paid the Mustang Panda group to develop this specific version of PlugX,” which has been in use since 2014 and infiltrated thousands of computer systems in campaigns targeting U.S. victims.

    “The FBI acted to protect U.S. computers from further compromise by PRC state-sponsored hackers,”Assistant Director Bryan Vorndran of the FBI’s Cyber Division, said, adding that the announcement “reaffirms the FBI’s dedication to protecting the American people by using its full range of legal authorities and technical expertise to counter nation-state cyber threats.”

    Thousands of U.S. computers and networks, estimated at 4,258 by the DoJ, were identified by the FBI in the technical operation to detect and delete the malware threat remotely. The first of nine warrants was obtained in August 2024 in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania authorizing the deletion of PlugX from U.S.-based computers, the last expired on Jan. 3. “The FBI tested the commands, confirmed their effectiveness, and determined that they did not otherwise impact the legitimate functions of, or collect content information from, infected computers,” the statement said.

    “This wide-ranging hack and long-term infection of thousands of Windows-based computers, including many home computers in the United States, demonstrates the recklessness and aggressiveness of PRC state-sponsored hackers,” said U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Romero for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. “The Department of Justice’s court-authorized operation to delete PlugX malware proves its commitment to a ‘whole-of-society’ approach to protecting U.S. cybersecurity.”

    Upon reading this story, I was worried that the FBI had (and courts were authorizing use of) a tool that can break in and control random Windows PCs. While I wouldn’t put it past the FBI these days, the Forbes story left out one important technical detail:

    After researchers found out that thousands of infected machines reported to one specific IP address, they managed to seize control over the IP address that served as a Command & Control (C2) server.

    In close cooperation with the French authorities, the FBI and Justice Department used this IP address to “sinkhole” the botnet. Sinkholing in this context means that the redirection of traffic from its original destination to one specified by the sinkhole owners. The altered destination is known as the sinkhole.

    With control of the sinkhole, a specially configured DNS server can simply route the requests of the bots to a fake C2 server. This provides the controller of the sinkhole with valuable information about the affected systems and an opportunity to send commands to delete the PlugX version from the connecting devices.

    OK, that means the FBI only seized control of one specific computer that was already compromised by the exploit. That doesn’t mean the FBI doesn’t have a turnkey computer intrusion tool (logical fallacy alert), but it does mean they didn’t necessarily use such a tool here rather than a single white hat hacking instance to seize control of a single already-compromised PC.

    Still, it’s always good to check that your security tools and settings have been updated to catch the latest malware and exploits, foreign or domestic…

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

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    Posted in Communism, Crime | No Comments »

    Nine Months And GM Can’t Supply A Bumper

    January 16th, 2025

    We already touched on it being impossible to get parts for a 2016 Dodge Hellcat. But here’s a story about a man who can’t even get a bumper for a Cadillac EV he bought less than two years ago:

    In December 2023, Levan Azrumelashvili bought a Cadillac EV Lyriq, an all-electric vehicle that cost nearly $86,000. It would be the heart of his brand-new limousine business.

    He invested in livery plates and limousine insurance, which is more costly than insurance for a personal car.

    The Fair Lawn man’s new venture was off to a solid start. But in April, he had what appeared to be a relatively minor accident — Azrumelashvili said his insurance company agreed it was not his fault — but the damage was more than cosmetic.

    The car couldn’t be driven.

    And now, nine months later — that’s 279 days as of Sunday since the accident — the vehicle remains at the body shop. Cadillac and its parent company General Motors (GM) haven’t been able to get one of the parts needed for the repairs — a bumper — despite multiple promises.

    “At this point, my business is destroyed, I have not been able to drive my limousine for nine months, and I am told by GM that they can’t get my parts, yet they continue to build the cars, which obviously contain the parts my car needs,” Azrumelashvili said, noting that he’s still paying $1,100 a month for insurance and $1,437 a month on the vehicle loan.

    “It seems unconscionable that a company would sell cars for which they cannot get parts within the first year,” he said.

    His $86K car was his lifeblood. He’s been waiting to get a part for 275 days. Why?

    After the accident, Azrumelashvili took the car to a Cadillac dealer, which sent it to a body shop, where it’s been sitting all this time.

    At first, he said, he was patient.

    “For the first five months, I received phone calls from the dealer just about weekly, saying that the needed part would arrive in about a month,” Azrumelashvili said.

    Then he received an email on Aug. 19 that said the part would arrive in October.

    Frustrated, his wife posted what was happening on social media, and it got the attention of a representative from GM’s “Executive Resolution Department.”

    Azrumelashvili said the representative recommended he go to the dealer to discuss getting a replacement vehicle.

    “The dealer said that in order to get a replacement car, I would have to give them a new, additional down payment,” Azrumelashvili said he was told at the September visit. “They did not offer me any compensation for the car they could not fix and were holding.”

    Unsatisfied, he wrote his first of two letters to Mary Barra, GM’s chief executive, and several other higher-ups at the company. He asked for some kind of resolution.

    Because that’s just the kind of hairball I am, I plugged Mary Barra’s name into Open Secrets, expecting that (like most CEOs) she would have donated to both Democrats and Republicans. And she has. But one of the first names to pop-up was Joe Straus (or the cabal), who she gave $1,000 to in 2016. Funny that, a Michigan CEO giving a grand to a Texas state rep (and, not coincidentally, then Speaker of the Texas House).

    “Given all of this, your company is costing me well over $10,000 a month, and that is a low estimation, given the money I usually make, not even mentioning the depreciation of the car or the loss of time,” the letter said. “My limousine certification needs to be renewed every year, and I cannot provide `Black Car’ services with a vehicle older than five years. I have already lost half a year.”

    In early October, the promised part didn’t arrive, but he received a check from GM for $3,593.47. The unsigned letter said it was a “good will adjustment.”

    “I did not cash it, as it was a ridiculous offer after six months of losses, with no end in sight,” he said, and he called his contact at GM.

    The representative explained the check represented half of his monthly car payment, and Azrumelashvili could choose between continuing to get monthly payments or asking GM’s “repurchase department” to buy back the vehicle.

    “But he had no information about how I could reach such a person or department — except to contact the dealer,” he said.

    That wouldn’t help, Azrumelashvili said he explained, because the dealer already said it wanted a new down payment.

    Come December, instead of the part, Azrumelashvili received a baffling message. He had apparently been approved by GM for a buyback back on Sept. 3 — though he was never before told he was approved or given details or a contact person — but the offer was inexplicably rescinded on Nov. 14.

    “It is my hope that GM will take back this car and reimburse me for my total losses, including all car payments, livery insurance payments and lost income,” he said.

    Snip.

    We reviewed Azrumelashvili’s paperwork and asked General Motors to review the case. A spokeswoman said GM was “aware of the situation and will continue to work with the customer directly.”

    Then Azrumelashvili received an ironic email from Cadillac.

    It congratulated him on a year of ownership for the Lyriq.

    That was followed by a call from GM. A representative said they had the part.

    “I told her right away that I obviously don’t believe this or can’t even tell if they’re being authentic or not after all I’ve faced,” he said. “I told her I wanted them to offer a buyback service and she told me she had to check something.”

    A few days later, Azrumelashvili received an email from GM saying there were no new updates about the repair, but it would stay in touch with the dealer.

    A few days after that, he called the dealer.

    “I got information that GM is pushing that they can fix the car as soon as possible, but I was told the part was recalled,” he said.

    We asked GM about it on Dec. 20. A spokeswoman said she couldn’t “speak to the recall” but she got confirmation that the part arrived.

    A few days after that, Azrumelashvili received yet another message from GM. Once again, it said there were no new updates and the body shop told him it was waiting for parts.

    After the holidays, we asked GM if it would reconsider the buyback, or something to make it right for this customer if the part was not available.

    The company did not respond.

    “I’m at a sheer loss situation and my car has lost a year of its value. I was unable to work and provide for my family this year and we faced many hardships,” Azrumelashvili said. “Ultimately, I’m very disappointed I chose Cadillac to only face what I did. I feel as if I was taken advantage of and thrown to the curb.”

    Now, it’s tempting to think this is yet another result of the Flu Manchu supply chain disruption. And it might be. But something else is at play here: The drive to make new cars “smarter” (and thus more expensive). The Lyriq uses “multiple ultrasonic sensors located on your front and rear bumpers.” The more smart components the car has, the more fragile the supply chain and the easier to break.

    But even beyond that, the shifting kaleidoscope of excuses indicates a company that’s either badly dropped the ball on customer service, or is simply lying its ass off for reasons not readily apparent.

    And really, it’s yet another reason why you should be extra cautious when buying an electric car…

    (Hat tip: Steve Lehto.)

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    Posted in Democrats | 9 Comments »

    “We’ve Been Through A North Korean Brainwashing Experiment”

    January 15th, 2025

    Eric Weinstein sat down with the Triggernometry guys (Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster) to talk about the 2024 election and the Democrat Party’s radical diversion from “Democracy.”

  • Eric Weinstein: “A certain kind of base reality is too difficult to deny.”
  • Konstantin Kisin: “Well, if you keep losing elections, it’s too difficult to deny.”
  • EW: “They’ve lost one just now, but this is going to be a very consequential one. First of all, it puts JD Vance, who I consider a friend, on deck. Man is that guy smart and good, combines all sorts of aspects of progressivism. I think he ran a campaign with Donald Trump as a loyal number two, but JD is a powerhouse in and of himself.”
  • EW: “I think he could run a campaign that would just be irresistible to all sorts of people.”
  • EW: “I would like to just point out that you could easily have 12 years coming off of this election, and you could have a Supreme Court that was completely dominated by Donald Trump and JD Vance, and it will transform the country. So this is a very consequential election to have screwed up.”
  • EW: “Obama doesn’t matter.”
  • EW: “The Clintons are highly degraded.” I think he means as a political force, but the other way works as well.
  • EW: “This was such a bad story that no one knew how to defend it, and I also think that Kamla Harris’s apparent drop in IQ is due to the fact that nobody can explain the Democratic Party. It’s a series of horse trades and intellectual half measures. It doesn’t have any coherence.”
  • EW: “Are you the party of sweetness and light? Are you the party of the working class? Or are you really the party of the transgendered and financial billionaires worried about the carried interest exemption? It just didn’t make any sense, and there was no way to defend it and still got close to 50% of the popular [vote] because so many people are dependent on these narratives.”
  • Francis Foster: “To me the Democrat Party [is] divorced from reality in so many different ways. They talk about being Democratic, but Kamala Harris didn’t go through any primary. They just appointed her.”
  • EW: “You can’t say democracy is on the ballot. There’s no primary.”
  • EW: “The thing that inspires us, that gets us to put our right hand over our heart, is the idea of a government by, of, and for the people not perishing from this Earth.”
  • EW: [The idea] “it’s perfectly legal, perfectly permissible, to just select a candidate [is] an abomination.”
  • EW: “You’ve installed a candidate who was the worst candidate available, until she became America’s sweetheart, and the whiplash from that period of time just forced the Machinery to to reveal itself.”
  • FF: “And it seems like that’s one of the logical fallacies within the Democrat Party, but it’s just one after another after another.”
  • EW: “We’ve been through, like, a North Korean brainwashing experiment, and we can’t believe that this happened. It’s just so bad, and every single person of any kind of originality of thought or independence of mind rejects it.”
  • Weinstein notes that creative people in the trades (electricians, truckers, etc.) were never sucked into the woke mindset, because their jobs require them to be based in unforgiving reality. It was only among academics, PhDs and corporate workplaces that the woke virus spread. “That’s what’s going to have to collapse.”

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, video | 10 Comments »

    Straus/Bonnen/Phelan Cabal Screws Republican Voters Yet Again

    January 14th, 2025

    It happened again.

    If madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, Republicans are certifiable.

    Republicans expected Republican state reps to vote like Republicans, despite two decades of evidence to the contrary, and once again, Republican voters were disappointed.

    State Rep. Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock) won the Texas House speakership after two rounds of voting on Tuesday, the first day of the 89th Legislative Session.

    Burrows, of course, is the latest catspaw of the Democrat-backed Straus/Bonnen/Phelan cabal.

    “I want to be very direct on one overriding concept: this is the people’s House,” Burrows said in an acceptance speech. “This is greater than any one person, and any one faction. This is a sacrifice, and I accept that sacrifice readily. If you voted against me, my door will be open for you.”

    The final vote broke down with 85 in favor of Burrows, 55 in favor of state Rep. David Cook (R-Mansfield), and nine registering as present-not-voting. Burrows was then sworn into office by Secretary of State Jane Nelson.

    Burrows’ effective governing coalition is 36 Republicans and 49 Democrats — and is the first time a speaker was elected in the official vote with a minority of his own party behind him in recent memory.

    In the first round of voting, Burrows was five votes shy of the 76 needed to win with Cook pulling in 56 votes and state Rep. Ana-Maria Ramos (D-Dallas) receiving 23.

    Ramos was then eliminated and the top two moved onto a runoff.

    The three candidates were nominated by their colleagues:

  • Burrows – State Reps. Charlie Geren (R-Fort Worth), Mihalea Plesa (D-Dallas), Toni Rose (D-Dallas), and Lacey Hull (R-Houston)
  • Cook – State Reps. Trent Ashby (R-Lufkin), Ellen Troxclair (R-Lakeway), James Frank (R-Wichita Falls), and Richard Raymond (D-Laredo)
  • Ramos – State Reps. Christina Morales (D-Houston), John Bryant (D-Dallas), and Jolanda Jones (D-Houston)

    • The slate of speeches had distinct themes. Ramos’ supporters showed displeasure with the GOP-controlled state, calling for a change in leadership. Cook’s were much more positively-imbued, calling for reforms to the process that put members in the driver’s seat and reduce the power of the speaker — save for Raymond’s, which blasted Burrows and former Speaker Dennis Bonnen (R-Angleton) over their past scandal that ended Bonnen’s speakership after one term as well as his current involvement behind the scenes of the legislature.

    For over two decades, Republicans have fought hard against the cabal. More recently, Attorney General Ken Paxton, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, Governor Greg Abbott, and once and future President of The United States of America Donald Trump have come out strong against the cabal. And while last year saw many of Phelan’s closest confederates knocked off, once again the cabal has thwarted the will of Texas Republican voters.

    When it comes to speaker races, the cabal remains undefeated.

    Update: People have asked for a roll call of votes, so here it is.

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    Posted in Democrats, Republicans, Texas | 13 Comments »

    Russian Mercenary Captured At Border

    January 13th, 2025

    The problem with open borders is that they’re open borders, and you have no way to vet who is coming across. We already covered the strangely high number of Chinese nationals crossing the border, and now a Russian mercenary has been captured there…with a drone.

    A former Russian mercenary was captured by U.S. Border Patrol agents near the city of Roma after he waded across the Rio Grande.

    According to KVEO, Timur Praliev was reportedly carrying two passports—one from Russia and one from Kazakhstan—as well as $4,000 in U.S. cash and 60,000 Mexican pesos. Following a search of his backpack, Border Patrol agents discovered that he was also transporting a drone.

    Nothing suspicious about that at all…

    Praliev claimed to have previously worked for the Wagner Group, which is a Russian-backed paramilitary organization.

    According to the criminal complaint against him, Praliev is a Kazakhstani national who was encountered by Border Patrol on January 4. He appeared in a McAllen courthouse on January 7.

    Praliev pleaded guilty to the crime of illegally entering the country. U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Scott Hacker sentenced him to time served and imposed a fine.

    Supposedly he’s still being held by the feds, but there’s nothing in the judge’s original order calling for his deportation.

    More: Just last month this same mercenary was evidently honored by Russia.

    A self-confessed veteran of Russia’s Wagner paramilitary group arrested for crossing into the United States from Mexico was honored as a combat veteran weeks earlier by an organization established by Russian President Valdimir Putin, RFE/RL has found.

    Timur Praliev, 31, was detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents on January 4 near the border town of Roma, Texas, after crossing the Rio Grande River into the United States and told the agents he was a citizen of Kazakhstan, U.S. federal court records show.

    Snip.

    Online records reviewed by RFE/RL show that less than a month before his detention, a man of the same name had been honored at an event held by an official government veterans’ organization in Russia’s Bashkortostan region.

    An account of the December 12, 2024, event was published on Russian social media by the Bashkortostan branch of Defenders Of The Fatherland Foundation. The group was established by Putin in April 2023 to support combat veterans of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

    You would think that Russian mercenaries coming across America’s southern border with military surveillance equipment would be of greater concern to the federal government, but here in the waning days of the Biden Administration, that would not appear to be the case.

    I’d really like to know what sort of drone this theoretically Ex-Wagner mercenary was carrying…

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    Posted in Border Control, Military | 12 Comments »

    Lefties Mourn End To Facebook Censorship

    January 12th, 2025

    As when Elon Musk dismantled the censorship apparatus at Twitter, leftists are bemoaning Meta/Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg ending “fact checking” at Facebook as though it was the end of some sort of golden age. What they are actually bemoaning is that they will no longer be able to suppress political opinions they disagree with.

    Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan to spell out just how the Biden Administration’s censorship regime worked.

    I don’t necessarily trust Zuckerberg’s assertions that Facebook’s original intentions were pure as the driven snow when he started putting fact checkers in place (and that’s one reason I’m not editing out things like “um,” “like,” and “you knows,” as these may be verbal tells when he’s glossing over or eliding information rather than just verbal throat clearing), but I think his depiction of how government pressure for censorship came down is probably accurate.

  • Mark Zuckerberg: “We’re just going to have the system where these these third party fact checkers and they can check the worst of the worst stuff right, so, um, things that are very clear hoaxes…so so that was sort of the original intent we put in place the system, and it just sort of veered from
    there.”

  • MZ: “I think to some degree it’s because some of the people whose job is to do factchecking, a lot of their industry is focused on political factchecking so they’re just kind of veered in that direction.” Left unsaid is that everywhere in the MSM, that “fact checking” is slanted to the left and has been for a long time.
  • MZ: “I think people just felt like the fact checkers were too biased. Not necessarily even so much in what they ruled, although sometimes I think people would disagree with that a lot of the time, it was just what types of things they chose to even go in fact check in the first time, in the first place.”
  • MZ: “After having gone through that whole exercise, it, um, I don’t know, it’s something out of, like, you know, Nineteen Eighty-Four. One of these books where it’s just, like, it really is a slippery slope, and it just got to a point where it’s just ‘OK, this is destroying so much trust, especially in the United States, to have this program.” Maybe it’s just me, but I kind of feel that when the guy forced to institute the censorship regime compares the censorship regime instituted under his watch to Nineteen Eighty-Four, maybe we ought to consider taking him at his word and not automatically write it off as hyperbole.
  • MZ: “Covid was the other big one, where that was, that was also very tricky, because you know at the beginning it was, you know, it’s like a legitimate public health crisis.”
  • MZ: “We didn’t know at the time how dangerous it was going to be, so at the beginning it kind of seemed like, OK, we should give a little bit of deference to the government and the health authorities on how we should play this.”
  • MZ: “But when it went from, you know, two weeks to flatten the curve to, um, you know, in…like in the beginning, it was, like, OK, there aren’t enough masks, masks aren’t that important to then it’s like oh no you have to wear a mask and, you know, all, the like, everything was shifting around.”
  • MZ: “It just become very difficult to kind of follow, and this really hit the most extreme, I’d say, during the Biden Administration, when they were trying to roll out um the vaccine program.”
  • MZ: “I’m generally pretty pro rolling out vaccines. I think, on balance, the vaccines are more positive than negative. But I think that while they’re trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone who was basically arguing against it, and they pushed us super hard, um, to take down things that were honestly were true.”
  • MZ: “They basically pushed us and said, you know, anything that says that vaccines might have side effects you basically need to take down.”
  • Joe Rogan: “Who’s ‘they?’ Who’s telling you to take down things that talk about vaccine side effects?”
  • MZ: “It was people in the in the Biden Administration.”
  • Rogan talks about the difficulty of moderating at scale. Zuckerberg says one-third to one-half of the planet use one of Meta’s services on a daily basis.
  • Zuckerberg says that he wasn’t directly involved in these discussions, or in moderation (again, grains of salt here), but that a lot of the Biden Administration censorship demands are “documented. I mean, because, uh, you know, Jim Jordan and the the house had this whole investigation and committee into into the the kind of government censorship around stuff like this, and we produced all these documents, and it’s all in the public domain.”
  • MZ: “They wanted us to take down this meme of Leonardo DiCaprio looking at a TV, talking about how 10 years from now or something, um, you know, you’re going to see an ad that says OK, if you took a Covid vaccine, you’re eligible [for] this kind of payment, like this sort of like class
    action lawsuit type meme. And they’re like ‘No you have to take that down.’ We just said no, we’re not we’re not going to take down humor and satire. We’re not going to take down things that are that are true.”

  • MZ: “It flipped a bit. Biden, when he was, he gave some statement at some point, I don’t know if it was a press conference or to some journalist, where he basically was like these guys are killing people and, and um, and I don’t know. Then, like, all these different agencies and branches of government basically just like started investigating and coming after our company it was it was brutal it was brutal.”
  • Rogan slamming government supressing basic disease recovery mechanisms to boost the vaccine snipped. That “red-pilled a lot of people.”
  • MZ: “Trust in media has fallen off a cliff.”

    • Should we trust Zuckerberg? To quote Omar Little from The Wire, “I trust his fear.” As I noted in Friday’s LinkSwarm, the MAGA winds must be blowing very strong indeed for Zuckerberg to flip so quickly and completely. Zuckerberg probably had misgivings while these things were going on, but unlike Musk, would never have voiced them so openly had Trump not won.

    Also, as Tim Pool noted, “Facebook built a portal for Feds to log into their system to flag ‘misinformation.’ For more than a decade, the federal government, the FBI, the CIA, I think the NSA, had backdoor access to Facebook as well as other companies.”

    Time for an update to this old classic

    The Jim Jordan report Zuckerberg references is the final committee report on the weaponization of the American government to censor opposing political viewpoints. The report is not only hard to find online (it’s not in the first page of Google results), it is so large (17,014 pages) that it seems to be literally unreadabe in Firefox, as whatever Acrobat window thing they have wants to jump back when you scroll to the second page. As a partial remedy, I have (with a bit of difficulty) captured the introduction and posted it here, though the paragraph breaks may not be exact.

    The founding documents of the United States articulate the ideals of the American republic and guarantee to all American citizens fundamental rights and liberties. For too long, however, the American people have faced a two-tiered system of government—one of favorable treatment for the politically-favored class, and one of intimidation and unfairness for the rest of American citizens. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, the contrast between these two tiers has become even more stark.

    To stand up for the American people, the House of Representatives authorized the creation of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government within the Committee on the Judiciary. During the 118th Congress, the Select Subcommittee worked to “bring abuses by the Federal Government into the light for the American people and ensure that Congress, as their elected representatives, can take appropriate action to remedy them.”2 The mission of the Select Subcommittee has been to protect and strengthen the fundamental rights of the American people.

    By investigating, uncovering, and documenting executive branch misconduct, the Select Subcommittee has taken important steps to ensure that the federal government no longer works against the American people. This work is not complete, but it is a necessary first step to stop the weaponization of the federal government. From its inception, the Select Subcommittee sought to protect free speech and expand upon the constitutional protections of the First Amendment. Throughout the Biden-Harris Administration, multiple federal agencies, including the White House, have engaged in a vast censorship campaign against so-called mis-, dis-, or malinformation.

    The Select Subcommittee revealed the extent of the “censorship-industrial complex,” detailing how the federal government and law enforcement coordinated with academics, nonprofits, and other private entities to censor speech online. The Select Subcommittee also revealed how the Stanford Internet Observatory’s Election Integrity Partnership—created “at the request of” the Department of Homeland Security3—urged Big Tech to censor Americans online.

    The Select Subcommittee’s oversight has had a real effect in expanding the First Amendment. In a Supreme Court dissent, three justices noted how the Select Subcommittee’s investigation revealed “that valuable speech was . . . suppressed.”4 In a letter to the Committee and Select Subcommittee, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the Biden-Harris Administration “pressured” Facebook to censor Americans.5 Facebook gave in to this pressure, demoting posts and content that was highly relevant to political discourse in the United States. In response to the Select Subcommittee’s oversight, universities and other groups shut down their “disinformation” research and federal agencies slowed their communications with Big Tech.

    Pursuant to its mission, the Select Subcommittee also examined the weaponization of federal law-enforcement resources. Many FBI whistleblowers have disclosed to the Select Subcommittee examples of waste, fraud, and abuse at the FBI. When these whistleblowers came forward, the Bureau brutally retaliated against many of them for breaking ranks—suspending them without pay, preventing them for seeking outside employment, and even purging suspected disloyal employees. Through its oversight, the Select Subcommittee revealed how the FBI abused its security clearance adjudication process to target whistleblowers, with the FBI even admitting its error and reinstating the security clearance of one decorated FBI employee.

    The Select Subcommittee also investigated the executive branch’s actions in intruding on and interfering with Americans’ constitutionally protected activity. The Select Subcommittee revealed and stopped the FBI’s effort to target Catholic Americans because of their religious views, detailed the Justice Department’s directives to target parents at school board meetings, stopped the Internal Revenue Service from making unannounced visits to American taxpayers’ homes, caused the Justice Department to change its internal policies to respect the separation of powers and limit subpoenas for Legislative Branch employees, and highlighted the vast warrantless financial surveillance of Americans by federal law enforcement.

    The Select Subcommittee has examined the federal government’s efforts to interfere in our elections, highlighting the FBI’s fervent efforts to “prebunk” a story about the Biden family’s influence peddling scheme in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election. The Select Subcommittee’s work also demonstrated how the Biden campaign colluded with the intelligence community to falsely discredit this story as “Russian disinformation.”

    This report accumulates and presents the findings of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government during the 118th Congress. The federal government must work for all Americans, not just the favored few. As the country moves forward from the disastrous policies of the Biden-Harris Administration, it is important that policymakers ensure that the federal government can no longer be weaponized against American citizens. “Freedom is fragile thing,” Ronald Reagan warned in 1967, “it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.”6 The Select Subcommittee’s work in the 118th Congress has been a start to a long and difficult process to better protect Americans’ fundamental freedoms. But our work is not the end. More must be done to ensure that our fundamental liberties and cherished rights continue for Americans to come.

    1 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE para.
    2 (U.S. 1776). 2169 CONG. REC. H130 (daily ed. Jan. 10, 2023) (statement of Rep. Tom Cole).
    3 STAFF OF SELECT SUBCOMM. ON THE WEAPONIZATION OF THE FED. GOV’T OF THE H. COMM. ON THE JUDICIARY, 118TH CONG., THE WEAPONIZATION OF ‘DISINFORMATION’ PSEUDO-EXPERTS AND BUREAUCRATS: HOW THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PARTNERED WITH UNIVERSITIES TO CENSOR AMERICANS’ POLITICAL SPEECH (Comm. Print Nov. 6, 2023) [hereinafter “NOV. 6 REPORT”].
    4 Murthy v. Missouri, 603 U.S. 43, 78 (2024) (Alito, J., dissenting).
    5 Letter from Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Exec. Officer, Meta, to Rep. Jim Jordan, Chairman, H. Comm. on the Judiciary (Aug. 26, 2024).
    6 Governor Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address (Jan. 5, 1967).

    And remember this was all part of a coordinated international censorship regime. The recently shut down Center for Global Engagement, started under Obama, was a a key proponent of this censorship regime.

    When lefties bemoan the change in Facebook, this is what they’re lamenting: The ability to censor the free speech of fellow Americans under the direct mandate of federal government agencies working on behalf of the Democrat Party to suppress the speech of their ideological opponents.

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    Posted in Democrats, Social Justice Warriors, video | 12 Comments »

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