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Bishops Advise Catholics to Avoid ‘Morally Compromised’ J&J Vaccine

Some U.S. bishops are advising Roman Catholics to avoid the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, saying it is immoral because aborted human tissue is used in its manufacture.

Their guidance is stricter than the Vatican’s declaration that the formula is broadly acceptable for the faith’s 1.3 billion followers.

The Archdiocese of St. Louis, known as the “Rome of the West” for its size and influence, on Tuesday urged its 500,000 members to choose shots by Moderna Inc. and Pfizer Inc., but to go with J&J “in good conscience if no other alternative is available.”

The Archdiocese of New Orleans, with 518,000 Catholics, was more forceful. In a Feb. 26 statement, it cited “the wrongdoing” of the vaccine’s creators for the “extensive use of abortion-derived cell lines.” The two archdioceses declared the formula “morally compromised.”

Asked to comment, Sarah McDonald, a New Orleans archdiocese spokeswoman, emailed a portion of the guidance: “If the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine is available, Catholics should choose to receive either of those vaccines rather than to receive the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine because of its extensive use of abortion-derived cell lines.”

The U.S. coronavirus death toll on Feb. 22 surpassed 500,000 as Catholics worldwide observed Lent, the season that precedes Easter, the Church’s holiest day. Almost 25% of Americans identify as Roman Catholic, according to a 2018 Gallup Poll.

The sanctity of life is central to global church teaching, and abortion is considered a grave sin, even if the fetus is the result of rape or the expectant mother’s life is in danger. On Dec. 21, though, the Vatican — the center of Catholic rule — declared that COVID-19 vaccines tied to abortion “can be used in good conscience.”

“The morality of the vaccination depends not only on the duty to protect one’s own health, but also on the duty to protect the common good,” according to a statement ordered to be published by Pope Francis.

In the absence of choices, “It is morally acceptable to receive COVID-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process.”

J&J’s product is the third to enter the U.S. market after its approval by the Food and Drug Administration on Saturday. The formula, which doesn’t need freezer storage and is one shot as opposed to its rivals’ two, will ease broader distribution and faster population immunity. Its addition, with manufacturing help from Merck & Co., means that enough vaccine doses will be on hand by the end of May for every American adult, said President Joe Biden, who is Catholic.

The development of all three vaccines relied on cells from aborted fetal tissue, though none has that ingredient in the shots. The product by New Brunswick, New Jersey-based J&J differs because the cells are used during production.

“We are able to manufacture hundreds of millions of doses using our engineered cell-line system and look forward to delivering those doses around the world and help meet the critical need,” spokesperson Lisa Cannellos said in a statement.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in a statement issued Tuesday, said that if one has the choice, it should be “the vaccine with the least connection to abortion-derived cell lines.”

“While we should continue to insist that pharmaceutical companies stop using abortion-derived cell lines, given the world-wide suffering that this pandemic is causing, we affirm again that being vaccinated can be an act of charity that serves the common good,” read the statement, by Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend and Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas.

Maria Lemakis, a spokesperson for the St. Louis Archdiocese, said in an email that no one was available to comment but that its J&J statement is aligned with that of the bishops group.

Pompeo Hints at Possible 2024 Presidential Bid

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is not counting out a possible run for the White House in 2024 if former President Donald Trump doesn’t enter the race.

Pompeo made his comments during an interview with Fox News‘ Sean Hannity on Wednesday.

“Sean, I’m always up for a good fight,” he said. “You and I have been part of the conservative movement for an awfully long time now. I aim to keep at it.”

Hannity said he would take Pompeo’s remarks as “a strong maybe.” And Pompeo replied: “That’s perfect.”

Pompeo voiced concern over how world leaders perceive President Joe Biden.

“World leaders and my counterparts all across the world are watching closely,” Pompeo said. “Senior leadership all across the world, they watch every statement that is made, they watch every move. They see what their patterns are like, the kinds of behaviors they exhibit when times are tough and when the pressure is really on.”

Appearing on Newsmax TV on Feb. 22, Pompeo had questioned the Biden administration’s approach to foreign policy.

Pompeo said he wanted to give the administration “every opportunity to get it right” but feared that on some issues they were “about to throw it all away … for … almost nothing.”

“What I have heard so far, suggests a very muddled understanding of what led to so many successes that our administration had,” Pompeo said. “When you’re tough, when you’re strong, where you establish deterrents, then securing American freedom is possible to do.”

Ron Johnson vows to force clerks to read the entire 700-page $1.9 trillion coronavirus bill

  • Johnson said it could delay the bill by up to 10 hours
  • He also plans to offer a series of amendments 
  • Series of votes expected Thursday
  • Mitch McConnell blasted it as a ‘smorgasbord of borrowed money’

The Daily Mail reports:

Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson is threatening to force Senate clerks to read through the entire 600-700 page $1.9 trillion coronavirus package and offer a series of amendments in order to stall Joe Biden‘s signature legislation.

Johnson issued the threat online and in a radio interview, blasting a proposal that enjoys broad popularity in opinion polls. It passed the House 219-212 this weekend on a mostly party line vote, with all Republicans voting against it. 

‘I’m going to make the Senate clerk read the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion bill. All several hundred pages of it,’ Johnson tweeted. 

‘Then I’m going to offer amendments. Many amendments. We need to highlight the abuse. This is not a COVID relief bill. It’s a boondoggle for Democrats,’ he said.

The process will ‘probably take about 10 hours,’ he told Wisconsin radio station WISN.

He drove home the point point on the Senate floor. ‘My suggestion: At least, while we’re considering this, let’s have a debate. Let’s have a discussion. Let’s consider the amendments. Let’s not do this in 20, 24, 30 hours. Let’s take the time to seriously consider what we are doing to our children,’ he said. 

The move comes as Biden continues to try to appeal to Republicans to back the package, after tweaking provisions on income groups that get $1,400 checks in order to assuage centrist Democrats.

Johnson, who has infuriated Democrats by promoting conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6th Capitol riot, said he would ‘lead the effort to resist’ the legislation.

The bill contains several provisions that have made it popular in opinion polls, even while attracting virtually no Republican support in Congress. It includes an extension of unemployment benefits and a supplemental unemployment benefit of $400 per week, an expanded child tax credit of up to $3,600, and more than $300 billion for state and local governments.

President Biden pitched the plan in a virtual speech to House Democrats holding their annual issues conference.  

‘Staying unified as we complete this process to pass the American Rescue Plan won’t just make a difference in our fight against COVID-19 and our efforts to rebuild the economy, it will also show the American people we are capable of coming together for what matters most to them,’ he said. 

‘They have lost faith in government. This is a time to reestablish that faith.’

‘It’s good policy and it’s good politics,’ he said of the package.

‘And I’m not sure we’ve ever seen something that is needed as badly as the American Rescue Plan that was as broadly popular.

‘We’ve never had anything this urgent and this ambitious that was so widely embraced. If we deliver on this it also builds momentum. It builds real enthusiasm as well. … this will make everything more possible to get it done. That’s why starting off this victory is so important because it’s so consequential to their lives,’ he said. 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted what he called a ‘partisan bill’ on the floor Wednesday. He complained that education funds would go out over a period of years, and funds to boost rural agriculture would come out at a ‘slow drip.’

‘Doesn’t sound very urgent to me,’ he said. He also complained about adding money to the debt, although previous coronavirus bills also also contained ’emergency’ spending. He called it a ‘runaway government bailout’ and called it a ‘smorgasbord of borrowed money.’

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) pointed to broad Democratic support for a series of coronavirus packages under President Trump. 

‘Every Democrat voted for the proposed CARES Act that was engineered by the Trump administration. Party was pushed aside,’ he said. Democrats also backed the coronavirus bill in December.

He said the lack of GOP cooperation had forced Democrats to use a reconciliation procedure and rely on every Democrat to back it. ”It’s not a pretty seen. But it’s long overdue,’ he said. 

WATCH: Texas Woman Accused of Election Fraud Used Gift Bags: Warrant

A former congressional campaign volunteer who was recorded on hidden camera saying she could deliver thousands of votes for tens of thousands of dollars, had a series of gift bags that were similar to the one she was recorded giving to an elderly woman, arrest warrants stated.

Raquel Rodriguez (left) faces charges of election fraud, illegal voting, unlawfully assisting people voting by mail, and unlawfully possessing an official ballot, according to a press release from AG Ken Paxton’s office. (Kendall County).

The warrants say that in exchange for $500, Raquel Rodriguez agreed to show a person that posed as a potential client how she could get votes for the candidates of her choice, reported San Antonio Express-News.

Rodriguez was arrested in January and faces four felony charges.

She was recorded in October last year by journalists working undercover for Project Veritas.

In the video, Rodriguez visits an elderly woman and appears to assist her in changing her mail ballot from Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) to Democrat challenger MJ Hegar.

Rodriguez then gave the 72-year old lady a gift bag that had a shawl. The warrant says the same type of gift bags were found at Rodriguez’s home office.

On Oct. 29, the Texas Attorney General’s office started investigating the Bexar County Elections Office.

ORLANDO, FLORIDA – FEBRUARY 26: James O’Keefe, President, Project Veritas, addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference being held in the Hyatt Regency on February 26, 2021 in Orlando, Florida. Begun in 1974, CPAC brings together conservative organizations, activists, and world leaders to discuss issues important to them. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Rodriguez said in a live stream on the show “Carpenters Apprentice” in October last year that she was just playing along with the undercover reporter.

“I don’t care again what party you are on, I’m non-partisan,” Rodriguez said. “I feel horrible about that because reality is, I lied. I lied about a lot of stuff. Just to make sure I was enticing them enough to find out what the bottom of this was. They asked for a proposal, I gave them a proposal.”

“99 percent was bs to make a sale,” Rodriguez added. “I expect people to believe me now. I’m here telling you my story, I have nothing to hide at this point.”

“It was just conversation, like the bs-ing,” Rodriguez told News4SA. “They were pulling me and I was pulling their strings that’s how I saw it. Little did I know what they were doing but I knew something was wrong and I just went with it.”

In the Project Veritas video, she also indicated she has experience in manipulating votes and boasted about her influence with elected officials in Texas who owe her “favors.”

“First, everybody who knows me directly, they know what I do for the community, they know what I do for people, but I’m not like a monster like they make me out to be,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez was charged with four felonies: election fraud, illegal voting, unlawfully possessing an official ballot, and unlawfully assisting people voting by mail—a practice known as ballot harvesting, the collection and submission mail-in ballots by a third-party rather than direct submission by the voters themselves.

She said in the video she was a “consultant” for GOP congressional candidate Mauro Garza, but was seen in one clip attempting to persuade a voter to cast a straight Democrat ballot.

“This is what you call flipping people!” she was recorded as saying, also noting that she “could go to jail” for what she did.

When Veritas founder James O’Keefe confronted the woman in public with some of the recordings, she said she didn’t want to talk and that she didn’t break any law.

4 times media, gov’t promoted claims that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones are safe for kids

Much of the mainstream media has portrayed the medicalization of gender, some of which has been federally funded, as “life-saving” healthcare for children and teens suffering from gender dysphoria.

This comes amid increased public opposition to allowing boys who identify as transgender to compete in girls’ athletic competitions and the heightened scrutiny of the experimental use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones on youth that is sometimes followed by genital mutilation and elective double mastectomies being performed on teens and pre-teens. 

Late last year, a U.K. high court ruled that children younger than 16 are incapable of giving informed consent to taking puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. 

In an email to The Christian Post Jennifer Bilek, an independent investigative journalist who writes at the 11th Hour Blog and has for several years been tracing the money streams and extensive infrastructure driving transgenderism into law and culture, said that some mass media corporations are tethered to pharmaceutical and medical corporations that are key players in a much larger revenue-generating operation. 

“Media conglomerates controlling mainstream media on the political left interface with Big Pharma and have vested interests in lifetime medical patients. The gender identity industry, generating pre-pubescent children to grave clients, provide those patients,” Bilek told CP. 

“Desisters, a growing population [of people choosing to re-identify as their birth sex], offer yet more profiteering opportunities for the medical-industrial complex, once young women — the larger market by current standards — have ruined their health with puberty blockers and wrong sex hormones,” she added.

Fox News, which is known for its conservative-leaning tilt, is the mainstream broadcast news outlet that has done the bulk of critical reporting scrutinizing gender identity issues, Bilek said. In contrast to other media company owners, Murdoch doesn’t own a health platform, thus “shoring up the perception that Big Pharma connections dictate what will air and what won’t [on other outlets],” she added.

Here are four examples of how the mainstream media has promoted puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones as beneficial to young people despite a growing number of dissenting voices, including Harry Potter series author J.K. Rowling, who, when speaking of transgenderism, now refer to it in terms of an emerging medical scandal. 

1. Washington Post article claims puberty blockers are reversible 

In June 2018, a Washington Post headline read: “When kids come in saying they are transgender (or no gender), these doctors try to help.”

The national newspaper, which never defined what it means to identify as having “no gender,” reported at the time that endocrinologists assured that experimental puberty blockers were not harmful, had no lasting effects, and were merely used to “buy teenagers some precious time” to allow them to delay a final decision as to whether to proceed with elective surgeries, such as a double mastectomy or other related procedures sought by people who want to look more like the opposite sex.

According to the Post, if children ” … change their minds and become what are called ‘desisters’ — kids who return to their assigned gender at birth — no harm done; their puberty has simply been delayed a year or two. The effects are largely reversible.” 

“We recognized that there’s no biological logic to a cutoff of 16,” said Joshua Safer, an endocrinologist at Boston University School of Medicine, who helped revise international guidelines on the subject, said in an interview with the Post at the time.

“There are kids with a clear gender identity out there and there is no reason to make them wait for some legal line when we can already be helping them with their biological reality,” he said.

The paper reported that the Child and Adolescent Gender Center at the University of California San Francisco, has been seeing youth who are seeking “some kind of boutique treatment” such as “just a touch of testosterone” for those who claim a “nonbinary” or “androgynous” identity.

A recent study in the United Kingdom that followed a cohort of youth who were given puberty-blocking drugs found that the use of such blockers in children stunts their bone growth. The hormone suppressants delay the necessary mineral acquisition like calcium, which decreases bone density at a critical stage of development, putting children at risk for diseases like osteoporosis.

While the Post acknowledged this particular risk to the human skeletal system, it did so tepidly, quoting Stephen Rosenthal, the director of the Child and Adolescent Gender Center at USCF, who spoke of staying on blockers for too long as a “theoretical harm if you put puberty on hold a long time.”

The Post added that the San Francisco gender clinic staff believe it will one day be possible for males to give birth, reporting that they “anticipate a future in which trans women will be able carry their own babies to term, thanks to medical breakthroughs such as uterine transplantation.”

As the experimental practices of prescribing puberty blockers have come under considerable scrutiny in England, the nation’s National Health Service updated its website last year, which used to claim that their effects were “fully reversible.” The NHS site now states that the long-term effects of puberty blockers remain unknown.

In the United States, hormone blockers like Lupron — a drug often used to treat prostate cancer in men and endometriosis in women — have been FDA-approved for precocious puberty, a condition where children start puberty very early before normal puberty should begin, in order to delay it until an appropriate age.

Such blockers have not been formally approved for gender dysphoria and are prescribed off-label in the dozens of transgender clinics being opened across the country. Lupron has also been used to treat sex offenders.

Read the full article here.

The Deeper Danger Of Political Hypocrisy

The Daily Wire reports:

Accusations of hypocrisy are perhaps the most reliable feature of any political battle. On a routine basis, both political parties will point to the hypocritical statements or actions of their opponents, while presenting themselves as the consistent and ideologically pure alternative.

One such example was demonstrated by the Berkeley Teachers Union president Matt Meyer, after “video surfaced of him taking his two-year-old daughter to an in-person preschool,” despite advocating for a “gold standard” which demands that Berkeley schools remain closed “until all educators and district staff members have been vaccinated and schools agree to enforce social distancing and mask wearing.”

In this example, and countless others, the accusations of hypocrisy are entirely accurate. Meyer advocated for one rule for “us,” and another for “them.” We’ve seen this happen during COVID-19 lockdowns, whether it be politicians ignoring mandates in order to receive hair treatments or dine indoors, and it almost always comes hand-in-hand with an open abuse of power. In simple terms, the powerful see themselves as inherently exempt from the rules they set for the rest of us.

While much of the debate around political hypocrisy descends into one of two camps — either condemning the blatant abuse of power or debating whether such accusations are examples of “whataboutism” — many continue to miss the broader and more dangerous impact of hypocrisy.

This is the impact repeated hypocrisy has on the psyche of society when it comes to policy. In the case of Meyer, his “gold standard” demands are demonstrably absurd — a position supported by “the science.” His hypocritical dismissal is then taken by critics as proof — using a circular argument — that his policy suggestions are absurd. “See? I told you these lockdowns are stupid, the politicians aren’t even following their own rules!”

Now, while Meyer’s policy suggestion is ineffective, his hypocrisy is unrelated to any logical argument which reaches this conclusion. And this is where the danger lies.

Unfortunately, we have become all too used to politicians ignoring the rules they enforce or demand. During the era of COVID-19, accusations of hypocrisy are plentiful and — usually — accurate. However, such frequent hypocrisy has cemented the viewpoint that hypocrisy alone is evidence of bad policy — an illogical and dangerous conclusion.

As an extreme example, what if a mayor or governor imposed strict punishments for driving on the wrong side of the road, and then proceeded to be caught driving on the wrong side of the road? Yes, the politician is a hypocrite, but this certainly doesn’t reduce the importance of road safety. However, by the currently growing field of logic, evidence of hypocrisy could be interpreted as evidence of bad policy.

In other words, with this mentality and an abundant supply of hypocritical politicians, eventually we’ll find ourselves ignoring rules that actually matter.

We all know and understand that hypocritical politicians undermine their own positions when they act hypocritically. What they need to understand is that they are playing a dangerous game that goes well beyond the usual abuse of power and influence. If we become used to judging the efficacy and importance of policies based on whether or not politicians follow them, what happens when a policy is necessary, and politicians do what they do best?

Unless politicians understand that their hypocrisy has consequences far beyond the immediate, they will be to blame for the damage that will inevitably ensue.

Google to Stop Selling Ads Based on Your Specific Web Browsing

Citing privacy concerns, Google says it won’t use technologies that track individuals across multiple websites.

Google plans to stop selling ads based on individuals’ browsing across multiple websites, a change that could hasten upheaval in the digital advertising industry.

The Alphabet Inc. company said Wednesday that it plans next year to stop using or investing in tracking technologies that uniquely identify web users as they move from site to site across the internet.

The decision, coming from the world’s biggest digital advertising company, could help push the industry away from the use of such individualized tracking, which has come under increasing criticism from privacy advocates and faces scrutiny from regulators.

Google’s heft means the change could reshape the digital ad business, where many companies rely on tracking individuals to target their ads, measure the ads’ effectiveness and stop fraud. Google accounted for 52% of last year’s global digital ad spending of $292 billion, according to Jounce Media, a digital ad consultancy.

About 40% of the money that flows from advertisers to publishers on the open internet—meaning digital advertising outside of closed systems such as Google Search, YouTube or Facebook—goes through Google’s ad buying tools, according to Jounce.

“If digital advertising doesn’t evolve to address the growing concerns people have about their privacy and how their personal identity is being used, we risk the future of the free and open web,” David Temkin, the Google product manager leading the change, said in a blog post Wednesday.

Google had already announced last year that in 2022 it would remove the most widely used such tracking technology, called third-party cookies. But now the company is saying it won’t build alternative tracking technologies, or use those being developed by other entities, for its own ad buying tools to replace third-party cookies.

Instead, Google says it will use new technologies it has been developing with others in what it calls a “privacy sandbox” to target ads without collecting information about individuals from multiple websites. One such technology analyzes users’ browsing habits on their devices, and allows advertisers to target aggregated groups of users with similar interests, or “cohorts,” rather than individual users. Google said in January that it plans to begin open testing of ad buying using that technology in the second quarter.

Google’s planned change elicited some concerns in the ad world. At the moment, advertisers use the data harvested from people’s browsing across the web to figure out whom to serve ads to, and whether a targeted user went on to buy the advertised product. After Google’s change, advertisers won’t be able to get as detailed a picture of either. Still, other ad industry executives said the change is good for consumers and expressed hope that Google’s new targeting technologies will still help brands achieve their goals in online marketing.

Google’s latest move and the concern about its potential implications underscore tension in the digital ad industry between protecting user privacy and promoting competition. Smaller digital-ad companies that use cross-site tracking have accused Google and Apple Inc. of using privacy as a pretext for changes that hurt competitors.

Read the full article here.

SHAPIRO: When Lies Matter More Than Facts

The Daily Wire reports:

This week, The New York Times ran a long piece re-reporting a supposed race scandal from Smith College. The scandal, originally reported in midsummer 2018, featured a black student, Oumou Kanoute, who claimed that she was racially profiled while eating in a dormitory lounge. She suggested in a Facebook post that she was confronted by a campus police officer, who might have been carrying a “lethal weapon,” and a janitor, adding: “All I did was be Black. It’s outrageous that some people question my being at Smith College, and my existence overall as a woman of color.”

The janitor was placed on paid leave. The college president issued a campuswide statement explaining, “This painful incident reminds us of the ongoing legacy of racism and bias in which people of color are targeted while simply going about the business of their ordinary lives.”

The incident was reported by establishment media outlets far and wide.

There was only one problem: It was a lie.

A full investigation by an outside law firm found no evidence of bias. Kanoute was eating in a closed dormitory, and the janitor was doing his job. The campus police officer had no weapon.

So, did The Times apologize for its original coverage? Of course not. It turned the story into an investigation of supposed structural biases based on race and class. In one of the more astonishing sentences ever written in a major newspaper, The Times reported, “The story highlights the tensions between a student’s deeply felt sense of personal truth and facts that are at odds with it.”

For those who speak English, this sentence translates thusly: The story highlights the tensions between lies and the truth. But for those who speak the wokeabulary, this sentence actually makes equivalence between lies told on behalf of a self-serving victim narrative and factual truth. The two must be balanced against each other, not one dismissed for its patent falsehood.

Read the full article here.

Dark Money, Free Speech Addressed By H.R.1?

One America News reports:

Congress appears to be passing up an opportunity to address the issue of dark money in politics following past bipartisan attempts.

This comes as tensions appear to be growing on Capitol Hill over sweeping election reform proposed by House Democrats, which is something they said they would do last fall.

“We’re going to have H.R.1 right off the bat,” stated House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “This is about cleaner government, so we can reduce the role of big, dark special interest money.”

Lawmakers are mostly sparring over provisions that would federalize the election process among other related items.

“The bill would allow the sitting president to effectively appoint a majority at the FEC in his party,” explained David Keating, President of the Institute for Free Speech.

However, the debate is taking attention away from a problem both Democrats and Republicans have previously flagged: dark money.

Part of Democrats’ pitch in favor of election bill H.R.1 notes it shines a light on dark money in politics by enforcing transparency. They said it would boost online political ad disclosure and require organizations to disclose their large donors, but Republicans argue the proposal would push lawmakers to profit off elections.

“Members of Congress are able to funnel campaign contributions into their personal bank accounts by simply hiring their spouses as campaign consultants,” stated Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.). “In fact, one high profile member of the body — this body — exploited this loophole top the tune of $2.8 million in the last election cycle.”

By attaching unrelated items to the legislation, Democrats appear to be killing any chance of bipartisan reform when it comes to election spending. Republican lawmakers and other conservatives said they are doing so at the expense of the First Amendment.

“There’s about half of the bill that would restrict speech about campaigns, would restrict speech about members of Congress, would restrict speech about legislation coming up with in Congress,” Keating explained. “It would also get rid of the internet exception where organizations are allowed to speak to the public using websites like YouTube or social media.”

Free speech advocates like Keating have warned that advocacy groups ranging from the Chamber of Commerce to the Sierra Club to pro-gun groups will likely be impacted. It would make their work more difficult. Opponents of H.R.1 are urging Congress against passing the legislation and, instead, consider reworking it to uphold free speech.

Facebook Ending Ban on Political Ads

Facebook will lift its temporary ban on political advertising in the United States on Thursday, the company said in a blog post on Wednesday.

The social media giant has had a months-long freeze on political, electoral and social ads, which it introduced as part of an effort to crack down on misinformation and abuses around the Nov. 3 elections.

Facebook had temporarily lifted its ad pause in Georgia for the state’s January runoff elections but put it back in place.

Alphabet Inc’s Google, which had lifted its own political ad ban in December, later reinstated it following the Jan. 6 siege at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump. Google lifted the ban last week.

Democratic and Republican digital strategists have argued that such bans were overly broad and failed to combat the issue of organic misinformation on the platforms.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) issued a statement criticizing Facebook for not committing to a clear date to end the ban, saying the freeze had made it harder for campaigns and organizations to reach voters.

Facebook, which noted in its blog post that its systems do not distinguish between political and electoral ads and “social issue” ads, said it would look in the coming months at what other changes to its ads might be needed. 

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