Alfredo Ortiz, president and CEO of the pro-small business group Job Creators Network, slammed the 19 Republican U.S. Senators who supported the Democrat-backed infrastructure bill as suffering from “Republican Stockholm Syndrome” and said the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill “is just table ante for Democrats’ $3.5 trillion socialist bill that will quickly follow.”
“Democrats’ $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill is more reckless spending on long-held Democratic priorities like railroads, public transit, and electric charging stations. The bill is infrastructure in name only,” Ortiz said in a statement.
“According to a new analysis by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, only one in four dollars in the bill goes to roads, bridges, and airports,” Ortiz continued. “Adding insult, the bill is partly paid for by delaying President Trump’s prescription drug rebate rule that would have significantly lowered drug prices for seniors.”
H.R. 3684, or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed on Tuesday by a margin of 69-30. Nineteen Senate Republicans voted for the infrastructure bill, handing an increasingly unpopular President Joe Biden a major policy victory. Those Senate Republicans include:
Dan Sullivan (R-AK)
Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)
Mike Crapo (R-ID)
Roy Blunt (R-MO)
Richard Burr (R-NC)
Deb Fischer (R-NE)
Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
Rob Portman (R-OH)
Thom Tillis (R-NC)
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
Jim Risch (R-ID)
Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
Kevin Cramer (R-ND)
Roger Wicker (R-MS)
Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
John Hoeven (R-ND)
Susan Collins (R-ME)
Mitt Romney (R-UT)
Nationally syndicated radio host Mark Levin, author of American Marxism, called the 19 Republican U.S. Senators who supported a Democrat-backed infrastructure bill “the Madoffs of the Republican Party” and said they chose “tyranny” by siding with Democrats to pass the bill.
Forty-six Republican senators issued a stern warning to Democrats that they will not vote for an increase in the debt ceiling, a move that could raise the risk of the U.S. Treasury defaulting on its obligations as soon as next month.
“We will not vote to increase the debt ceiling, whether that increase comes through a stand-alone bill, a continuing resolution, or any other vehicle,” the letter, dated Aug. 10, said. “Democrats, at any time, have the power through reconciliation to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling, and they should not be allowed to pretend otherwise.”
The letter is the latest maneuver in a standoff between Republicans and Democrats over how to increase the federal government’s borrowing capacity to avert any payments default.
Every political impasse over addressing the ceiling in the past ended without such a catastrophic conclusion, although a protracted battle in 2011 did sow turmoil in markets and prompted a downgrade in the sovereign U.S. credit rating.
“I cannot believe that Republicans would let the country default. It has always been bipartisan to deal with the debt ceiling,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters Wednesday. “When Trump was president I believe the Democrats joined with him to raise it three times.”
For his part, President Joe Biden, asked by a reporter Wednesday at the White House whether he was worried about the debt ceiling, said “no.” He said of Congress, “They’re not going to let us default.”
Funding Bill
Democrats declined to include language to raise the debt limit in a budget resolution adopted early Wednesday morning, meaning that the next opportunity to address the issue would likely be in a stopgap funding bill that needs to pass by Sept. 30 to avert a government shutdown.
Democrats have highlighted that much of the need to boost the debt ceiling owes to tax cuts enacted by Republicans in 2017, along with pandemic spending packages in 2020 that passed with bipartisan votes.
Raising the debt ceiling in a government-funding bill will require at least 10 GOP members to join with Democrats to agree to more forward by cutting off debate. Republicans say they can’t support the debt-limit increase because they oppose Democrats’ plans to spend up to $3.5 trillion on Biden’s economic agenda.
Only four Senate Republicans didn’t sign the letter — Susan Collins of Maine, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Richard Shelby of Alabama.
Shelby is the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee, which oversees government spending. The other three Republicans not on the letter also sit on the panel.
Republicans have signaled all summer that they are unlikely to support a debt limit suspension or increase, a move they say would be tantamount to endorsing the trillions in social spending that Democrats are pushing.
It’s not yet known how quickly Congress needs to act to avoid a potential default, which would wreak havoc on financial markets and could trigger a downgrade of government credit.
The debt limit, or the total debt the Treasury can issue to the public and other government agencies, snapped back into effect on Aug. 1 when a two-year suspension expired. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has told lawmakers that Treasury could exhaust its special measures and run out of cash “soon after Congress returns from recess” in September.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that lawmakers likely have a wider window of time — until October or November — to raise or suspend the debt limit. The public debt outstanding is currently $28.6 trillion.
Market Warning
Bond market participants warned this month that, under some scenarios, Treasury may need to execute abrupt declines in issuance of bills — a crucial component of financial markets.
The Senate has adjourned until Sept. 13, meaning the chamber will have little more than two weeks to address the issue before Sept. 30, when government funding expires. The House announced Tuesday it will return Aug. 23 to vote on the Senate-passed budget resolution, but no plans have been announced for addressing the debt ceiling.
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul reportedly blasted YouTube for censoring his speech on COVID-19 last week.
Breitbart reported that Paul was suspended for a week from YouTube for speaking on the status of the coronavirus in the United States during an interview with Newsmax. Breitbart said this is actually the second time the Big Tech has censored Paul’s account. The first time involved his commentary on the whistleblower on former President Donald Trump’s withholding of military aid for Ukraine in 2020.
“They are now banning all my speech, including speech that is given on the Senate floor. YouTube now thinks they are smart enough and godly enough that they can oversee speech, even constitutionally protected speech,” Paul said in his interview with the Washington Examineer.
YouTube informed Paul that he violated the platform’s community guidelines on COVID-19 as the reason for his suspension. The Big Tech company has not given further comments on the matter.
As per Paul, YouTube has a right to ban members considering they are a private company but pointed out that what they are doing is already contrary to free speech since they are operating as “an arm of the government without any repercussions or push back” by acting as an “arbitrator of truth.” He stressed that it would be good to use alternatives to their services to curtail their wrongdoings.
“It is really anti-free speech, anti-progress of science, which involves skepticism and argumentation to arrive at the truth. YouTube and Google, though, have become an entity so huge that they think they are the arbitrator of truth,” Paul stated.
“My hope is that maybe through competition, we’ll prove them to be wrong in their way,” he added in Facebook on Tuesday.
The 8-minute video, which is also available in Paul’s Rumble account, was removed from YouTube because he reiterated his stand on the virus coming from the Wuhan Institute of Virology through the gain-of-function research grant of the United States National Institutes of Health. Paul also repeated what he said against White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and his involvement with the coronavirus pandemic.
“We need to question whether we should be funding gain-of-function, making super viruses in the United States as well. It’s supposed to go through a special committee, but Dr. Fauci and others provide exemptions to all of these people and they have their hands in it,” Paul highlighted in the said video.
“And remember this, Dr. Fauci has said, for years, publicly, that gain-of-function research is worth it,” he stressed, “even if there were a pandemic he would say it was worth it. He was acknowledging as early as 2012 that a pandemic could occur from this research.”
Paul also mentioned what Fauci said on using cloth masks as an alternative to using medical masks. He pointed out that this is “deadly misinformation” especially for people who follow it and suggest it to others to use as well.
“Saying cloth masks work, when they don’t, actually risks lives, as someone may choose to care for a loved one with COVID while only wearing a cloth mask. This is not only bad advice but also potentially deadly misinformation.”
Paul has also uploaded a video in YouTube condemning the Big Tech company for the censorship but it, too, was removed. In that video, he raised his concerns on the mask mandates being imposed in the country. Paul, however, has not uploaded that video in his Rumble account as of this time.
In line with his opposition on the mask mandates, as well as, the lockdowns, Paul urged Americans on Sunday that it is “time” to “resist” all the “anti-Science” directives of President Joe Biden’s Administration and “choose freedom” instead.
“We are at a moment of truth and a crossroads. Will we allow these people to use fear and propaganda to do further harm to our society, economy, and children? Or will we stand together and say, absolutely not. Not this time. I choose freedom,” Paul said in Twitter highlighting what he said in the video that accompanied the post.
A senior Texan lawmaker has signed an arrest warrant for 52 Democrats who fled the state to avoid voting on a controversial Republican bill which cannot be passed into law without the presence of five more lawmakers.
Late on Tuesday evening, Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan signed the arrest warrants, understood to be civil not criminal, for 52 Democrat legislators who have avoided their duties in the assembly, according to US news agencies.
The move came after the Texas Supreme Court gave lawmakers permission to use law enforcement to compel the runaway Democrats to return to the House. According to The Dallas Morning News, the House also voted 80-12 to force the runaway lawmakers to return.
“People aren’t going to jail, but they got to come back to work,” Republican state representative Mayes Middleton said.
In July, the Democrats traveled to Washington, DC to lobby for voting reform and in doing so avoided voting on a controversial GOP election reform bill. President Joe Biden has previously described the Texas voting bill as an “assault on democracy.” He added that the bill is part of a series of measures that are “disproportionately targeting Black and Brown Americans.”
More than half of the 52 Democrats have returned to the Lone Star state, but many have elected to stay away from the statehouse. Democrat Ana-Maria Ramos accused her colleagues who attended the house of “throwing them under the bus” in a tweet on Monday.
The bill’s contents were finalized by Republican leaders and propose several amendments to voting procedure in the state. According to The Texas Tribune, this includes a ban on drive-thru voting, new ID requirements for mail-voting, and bans officials for mailing ballot applications to voters who haven’t requested them.
The proposed measures are heavily influenced by former President Donald Trump’s accusations of voter fraud in the 2020 election.
On Tuesday, the Republicans were five short of a quorum [the minimum number of members necessary to undertake proceedings] needed to pass the bill.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) blocked a middle-of-the-night/early Wednesday morning attempt by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to pass a revised version of the “For The People” Act.
Schumer took a stab at sneaking through the Democrat Party’s signature piece of legislation, which essentially amounts to a federal takeover of U.S. elections.
The legislation is also a countermove to contend with recent actions by Republican led states to enact revised voting and election laws. Democrats have characterized these new laws as “restrictions,” and have not been able to pass the Act because of GOP Senate filibusters.
Schumer’s attempt at pushing the bill through came in the form of “unanimous consent,” which requires the objection of only one Senator to kill voting on a bill.
Sen. Ted Cruz blocked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's attempt to pass Democrats' signature voting rights package — a revised version of the "For the People Act" — in the early hours of Wednesday morning. https://t.co/eQBYPuCIXq
Dems Pass Pork-Filled Spending Resolution Bill, Then Try Election ‘Reform’
After almost fifteen hours of votes on various amendments, and no Republican votes, the Senate passed the massive $3.5 trillion budget resolution bill. The bill, which passed 50-49 along party lines, contains most of liberal Democrats wish list items, including child care, paid leave, education, health care, and climate initiatives.
Schumer quickly got his one Senator objection in Sen. Cruz, who said, “This bill would constitute a federal government takeover of elections. It would constitute a massive power grab by Democrats.”
Schumer replied with, “We have reached a point in this chamber where Republicans appear to oppose any measure no matter how common sense to protect voting rights and strengthen our democracy.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said of the Democrat stunt, “Here in the dead of night, they also want to start tearing up the ground rules of our democracy and writing new ones of course on a purely partisan basis.”
Do we really want the federal government handling our elections?
Since Democrats failed to pass their so-called "For the People Act," they are attempting to introduce a similar bill called HR 4.
While McConnell was busy reprimanding Democrats about sneaking legislation into overnight Senate sessions, McConnell and 19 other Republicans had no trouble siding with Democrats in passing a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package, only 23% of which is actually infrastructure.
The “McConnell Republicans,” as they have been dubbed by conservative host Mark Levin, are the usual suspects. The names that come to the top of the list include Collins, Murkowski, McConnell, Romney, and a host of others.
A press release from Sen. John Kennedy’s (R-LA) office lists some disturbing facts about the bill. Kennedy claims that Senators were told it would be paid for, but it will increase the deficit by $256 billion.
Kennedy also alleges that while Repubicans were told the bill would not raise taxes, it raises taxes on Louisiana industry specifically. Kennedy called the bill an “inflation bomb.”
Mark Levin TORCHES the 19 Republicans Who Voted for $1 Trillion “Infrastructure” Bill 🔥🔥🔥https://t.co/Szy1DSzsri
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee tried to get the confirmation of roughly 30 nominations passed, again using unanimous consent during the Senate’s all-nighter, but Cruz blocked all of them.
Cruz’s blocking of the nominations is in protest of the sanctions reversal on the pipeline by the Biden administration last month.
Cruz stated Wednesday morning, “I have made clear to every State Department official, to every State Department nominee, that I will place holds on these nominees unless and until the Biden administration follows the law and stops this pipeline and imposes the sanctions.”
Sen. Ted Cruz: Reports of Deal to Finish Nord Stream 2 Pipeline a ‘Catastrophe for the US and Our Allies’
On Tuesday, Andrew Cuomo announced that he would be stepping down as New York Governor after a number of sexual harassment accusations were levelled against him. He denied any wrongdoing but admitted that his behaviour could have made people feel uncomfortable.
Sputnik comes live from Albany, New York state’s capital, as the future governor Kathy Hochul holds a press conference after her predecessor’s resignation.
Cuomo said earlier that he would resign and hand the office over to Hochul in 14 days.
Hochul will become the state’s 57th governor and the first female governor of New York.
A squalid homeless encampment attached to a Seattle grade school is a petri dish of bacterial pathogens, thanks to the scores of vagrants who are urinating, defecating, sleeping, doing drugs and having sex just steps from where kindergartners are set to begin school next week.
Despite outcries from worried parents and frustrated residents, local politicians and the city’s left-wing school board do not want the filthy shantytown to be dismantled, claiming that would be “inhumane,” according to Jason Rantz of KTTH-AM in Seattle.
A flimsy, see-through fence separates Broadview-Thomson K-8 School from the homeless camp.
“This has been an encampment that has been growing for the last year or so,” Rantz told Fox News host Dana Perino last week. “And obviously, parents have been complaining about the deteriorating situation there.
“You’ve got people who are shooting up out in the open. You’ve got brawls that are breaking up fairly frequently.”
A homeless encampment at a Seattle school continues to grow but the district does little. Fights, drugs, prostitutes… what will happen when the school reopens to students on September 1? I discussed on @AmericaNewsroom with @DanaPerino. This was my 200th FOX News appearance! pic.twitter.com/Xncw212mzZ
— (((Jason Rantz))) on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) August 5, 2021
Kindergartners are set to begin school on Tuesday, according to the Broadview-Thomson calendar. Sept. 1 is the first day of school for Grades 1 through 8.
Accordingly, many parents are extremely concerned for their children’s safety.
One of them, Ryle Goodrich, told The Post Millennial, “It’s important to understand that the encampment has become a crime epicenter for the neighborhood. People show up with stolen tools from Lowes or Home Depot. … People are coming and going all the time. Some of them come to the camp to beat campers and collect debt, or use drugs and mental health crises afterwards.”
He described the camp as a hotbed of crime.
“People broke into the school this summer,” Goodrich said. “We had an intruder and 3 lockdowns or shelter in places this school year. Prostitutes, rapes, assaults, visible shooting drugs, drug dealing, lewd behavior, sexual harassment and other fights in the encampment. Neighbors have received death threats, been robbed, had trespassers, even been robbed at gunpoint.”
In addition to the left-wing lunacy of prioritizing drug addicts and criminals over children, the situation is further complicated by the fact that the land the camp sits on is not owned by the city.
“The city of Seattle does not own this property,” Rantz told Fox News. “It’s owned by the Seattle school district. The Seattle school board refuses to sweep [the area] because they think any sweep is inhumane and lacks compassion.”
He said parents and local residents have been complaining to authorities for months, but no action has been taken because the situation was allowed to fester for almost a year while schools were shut down. During this time, Rantz said, the camp grew bigger and bigger.
In fact, when volunteers distributed leaflets about the encampment on campus, Chandra Hampson, president of the Seattle school board, threatened them with trespassing charges, according to Ari Hoffman of KVI-AM.
Thread: Neighbors, parents & employees complained about homeless encampments on @SeaPubSchools property. Officials refused to remove the encampments. President of the school board Chandra Hampson threatened volunteers distributing leaflets about the situation with trespassing 1 pic.twitter.com/TiD90X4yIg
EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: The situation is deteriorating at a homeless encampment attached to a K-8 school in Seattle.
In a new video, the homeless are seen brawling.
And there have been more sightings of sex workers wandering in and out of the encampment. https://t.co/ethaTGdG0d
— (((Jason Rantz))) on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) August 3, 2021
Residents are increasingly worried because they recently spotted suspected prostitutes working in their middle-class neighborhood.
“Videos recorded by another neighbor show what appears to be a sex worker first speaking on her cell phone before entering the encampment from the north entrance,” Rantz reported on KTTH.
A few months ago, when the school semi-resumed in-person learning, the camp was still there.
As a result, the school had to shut down several times because of fights, drug use and other crimes being committed at the encampment.
“There were multiple times in which the school had to go into lockdown because of situations that happened, including someone breaking into the school,” Rantz recounted.
WARNING: The following video contains graphic language that some viewers will find offensive.
Rantz said the longer the camp stays there, the more it will expand, fueling crime, pollution and drug use.
“The mayor’s office is not taking responsibility for this because it’s not their property,” he said.
This isn’t surprising because Seattle’s feckless Democratic mayor, Jenny Durkan, allowed lawless “autonomous zones” to metastasize in her city last summer.
Rantz said this problem could be easily solved by having authorities sweep the homeless encampment, but they lack the political will to do anything — even it means sacrificing children’s safety on the altar of toxic wokeness.
This comes after the US Department of Justice earlier this month revealed that the US Treasury had to provide a congressional panel with ex-President Trump’s tax returns.
US District Court Judge Amit Mehta issued a decision on Wednesday that will allow the House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee to have access to some of former President Donald Trump’s tax records.
The decision holds that Congress’s authority under the Foreign Emoluments Clause to conduct oversight of federal lease agreements authorizes the legislative branch of government to access Trump’s tax returns for 2017 and 2018.
“The Court holds that the Committee’s asserted legislative purpose of bolstering financial disclosure laws for Presidents and presidential candidates does not warrant disclosure of President Trump’s personal and corporate financial records,” Mehta said. “By contrast, the Committee’s other stated justifications for demanding President Trump’s personal and corporate financial records… do not implicate the same separation of powers concerns.”
The link to the court’s ruling is available online.
Now: Federal judge in DC rules on the House subpoena to Mazars for Trump tax docs. He finds lawmakers can't get records requested for financial disclosure oversight, but can get ones it wanted for federal leases (aka Trump Hotel) + emoluments.
Earlier, the Democrat-controlled House Oversight Committee filed a lawsuit, saying that it needs the former president’s financial records to address “conflicts of interest” linked to future presidents.
Trump, for his part, challenged in court the DOJ’s order to turn his tax returns over to a House of Representatives committee. His lawyers said the House Ways and Means Committee lacked a legitimate basis for seeking his federal tax returns.
Trump was the first US president in 40 years to not release his tax returns, as well as other financial documents linked to his family company, the Trump Organization.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) blocked the quick confirmation of dozens of State Department nominees on Wednesday morning, guaranteeing that they will stay in limbo until next month when the Senate returns from its summer break.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) tried to get the nominations confirmed at the end of an all-night session before the Senate left Washington until mid-September.
In a floor back-and-forth that lasted roughly 50 minutes, and wrapped just before 6 a.m., Menendez and then Murphy went one by one through the list of State Department nominees trying to get consent to confirm them.
Each time they were blocked by Cruz, though Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) also got in on the action and blocked one of the nearly 30 nominees: Brian Nichols’s nomination to be an assistant secretary of State for Western Hemisphere affairs.
“I know the hour is late, but we have nearly 30 highly qualified foreign affairs and development nominees who are languishing on the Senate floor. We have to confirm these nominees to fully equip the United States to pursue our foreign policy objectives,” Menendez said as he kicked off the floor slog.
Cruz has been slow-walking the nominations until the Biden administration imposes congressionally mandated sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will allow Russia to deliver natural gas to Germany.
The Biden administration in May issued a sanctions waiver on one entity and three individuals related to the pipeline’s construction, which is more than 90 percent complete.
“All of the senators in this chamber know precisely why these nominees have not moved forward, and the reason is because the Biden administration is currently engaged in open defiance of the United States Congress,” Cruz said on Wednesday morning.
“Vladimir Putin desperately wants the pipeline completed. If the pipeline is completed it will give billions of dollars to Putin to use for malign efforts in Europe and throughout the world,” Cruz said, referring to Russia’s president.
Cruz’s actions don’t prevent the Senate from eventually confirming the nominees, but Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) will be required to eat up limited floor time in order to do so.
Cruz said on Wednesday morning that he would lift his block, and let the nominees be confirmed, if the Senate passed legislation imposing sanctions over the pipeline. But Menendez objected to Cruz’s bill, noting it hadn’t gone through the Foreign Relations Committee, and Cruz, in turn, kept blocking Menendez and Murphy from being able to confirm the nominees.
The State Department and Senate Democrats have called out Cruz for holding up the confirmation votes on key members of Biden’s national security team.
Murphy, on Wednesday, warned that Cruz’s tactics could be replicated by Democrats under a GOP administration.
“This place just becomes unworkable if every single senator holds up this many nominees over one particular policy disagreement. And this tactic will be utilized by Democrats when there is a Republican in the White House,” Murphy said.
In addition to the Nichols’s nomination being blocked by Lee, Cruz blocked quick confirmation of nearly 30 nominees including six nominees to be assistant secretaries of State and several ambassador nominations.
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd weighed in on New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s resignation Tuesday, saying the disgraced governor could make a political comeback after the dust settles on his alleged sexual misconduct.
Speculating the Democrat’s resignation was a defensive move against his critics and an attempt to stay in good graces with his party, the Meet the Press host said stepping down could open the door to future political opportunities.
“He eventually did something that, maybe over time, will at least give him an opening to maybe not be a full pariah, say in three years, four years, five years,” Todd said on MSNBC.
Cuomo, whose resignation is effective in two weeks, faces credible accusations of sexual misconduct from 11 different women, according to an investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
The 63-year-old governor repeatedly denied accusations of harassment, saying, “The most serious allegations made against me had no credible factual basis in the report.”
“This is a sad day for New York because independent investigators have concluded that Gov. Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women and, in doing so, broke the law,” James said. “I am grateful to all the women who came forward to tell their stories in painstaking detail, enabling investigators to get to the truth. No man, no matter how powerful, can be allowed to harass women or violate our human rights laws, period.”
Todd noted Cuomo is a “career politician,” working on his father’s campaign when he was younger and eventually succeeding to the governorship himself.
“This is all he’s known,” he said. “What would he do without the ability to run for office?”
Todd concluded by saying Cuomo’s resignation was a tactical decision, and he fully expects the governor to run again in another capacity.
“I expect, in my lifetime, Andrew Cuomo to run for office again. What that office is? I don’t know, but that’s what this resignation tells me today,” Todd said at the end of the segment. “He wants to live to fight another day.”
President Joe Biden, who called for Cuomo to resign and speculated he would be prosecuted, said the governor had done “a hell of a job” in office. However, the president was quick to clarify he was commenting on Cuomo’s performance as governor and not as a person.
“Should he remain as governor is one question. And women should be believed when they make accusations that are able to, on the face of them, make sense, and they are investigated. And the judgment was made what they said was correct,” Biden said. “That’s one thing.”
Cuomo will be replaced by Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who will become New York’s first female governor.
Senator Blasts YouTube For Censoring Speech On COVID
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul reportedly blasted YouTube for censoring his speech on COVID-19 last week.
Breitbart reported that Paul was suspended for a week from YouTube for speaking on the status of the coronavirus in the United States during an interview with Newsmax. Breitbart said this is actually the second time the Big Tech has censored Paul’s account. The first time involved his commentary on the whistleblower on former President Donald Trump’s withholding of military aid for Ukraine in 2020.
“They are now banning all my speech, including speech that is given on the Senate floor. YouTube now thinks they are smart enough and godly enough that they can oversee speech, even constitutionally protected speech,” Paul said in his interview with the Washington Examineer.
YouTube informed Paul that he violated the platform’s community guidelines on COVID-19 as the reason for his suspension. The Big Tech company has not given further comments on the matter.
As per Paul, YouTube has a right to ban members considering they are a private company but pointed out that what they are doing is already contrary to free speech since they are operating as “an arm of the government without any repercussions or push back” by acting as an “arbitrator of truth.” He stressed that it would be good to use alternatives to their services to curtail their wrongdoings.
“It is really anti-free speech, anti-progress of science, which involves skepticism and argumentation to arrive at the truth. YouTube and Google, though, have become an entity so huge that they think they are the arbitrator of truth,” Paul stated.
“My hope is that maybe through competition, we’ll prove them to be wrong in their way,” he added in Facebook on Tuesday.
The 8-minute video, which is also available in Paul’s Rumble account, was removed from YouTube because he reiterated his stand on the virus coming from the Wuhan Institute of Virology through the gain-of-function research grant of the United States National Institutes of Health. Paul also repeated what he said against White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and his involvement with the coronavirus pandemic.
“We need to question whether we should be funding gain-of-function, making super viruses in the United States as well. It’s supposed to go through a special committee, but Dr. Fauci and others provide exemptions to all of these people and they have their hands in it,” Paul highlighted in the said video.
“And remember this, Dr. Fauci has said, for years, publicly, that gain-of-function research is worth it,” he stressed, “even if there were a pandemic he would say it was worth it. He was acknowledging as early as 2012 that a pandemic could occur from this research.”
Paul also mentioned what Fauci said on using cloth masks as an alternative to using medical masks. He pointed out that this is “deadly misinformation” especially for people who follow it and suggest it to others to use as well.
“Saying cloth masks work, when they don’t, actually risks lives, as someone may choose to care for a loved one with COVID while only wearing a cloth mask. This is not only bad advice but also potentially deadly misinformation.”
Paul has also uploaded a video in YouTube condemning the Big Tech company for the censorship but it, too, was removed. In that video, he raised his concerns on the mask mandates being imposed in the country. Paul, however, has not uploaded that video in his Rumble account as of this time.
In line with his opposition on the mask mandates, as well as, the lockdowns, Paul urged Americans on Sunday that it is “time” to “resist” all the “anti-Science” directives of President Joe Biden’s Administration and “choose freedom” instead.
“We are at a moment of truth and a crossroads. Will we allow these people to use fear and propaganda to do further harm to our society, economy, and children? Or will we stand together and say, absolutely not. Not this time. I choose freedom,” Paul said in Twitter highlighting what he said in the video that accompanied the post.