Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) announced Wednesday that they have drafted legislation to strip Big Tech companies from the protections offered them in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
“The ‘discussion draft’ legislation, penned by McMorris Rodgers, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Jordan, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, exclusively obtained by Fox News, would prevent Big Tech companies from using Section 230 liability protections to ‘silence conservatives,’” according to Fox Business.
“The bill would amend Section 230 of the Communications Act to provide that immunity does not apply to ‘certain companies’ and would require internet platform companies to ‘implement and maintain reasonable and user-friendly appeals processes for decisions about content on the platforms,’” the outlet continued.
Section 230 stipulates that “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
McMorris Rodgers told Fox that “Big Tech can no longer be allowed to hide behind Section 230.” She said their drafted bill, which has yet to receive a formal introduction date, is a “solution to remove Big Tech altogether from Section 230 and put them under new obligations that will hold them more accountable for censoring Americans.”
“It’s time to expose Big Tech’s bias and make sure they treat constitutionally protected speech fairly,” she added.
Jordan claimed Big Tech is “out to get conservatives,” and said that the legislation he helped to draft “builds upon previous work by our conference to undo the legal immunity that Big Tech hides behind to evade accountability.”
“We want to hear from our colleagues about how we can move forward together to finally stop the censoring of conservative voices on the internet,” Jordan added.
Before he was banned from Twitter, former President Donald Trump stressed the need for a repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects social media companies such as Twitter from being treated as publishers. Section 230 states:
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.
The term “otherwise objectionable” has given license to sites such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter to censor material they find “otherwise objectionable.” This is critical because it means that if those two words were removed from the Code, those sites could theoretically be open to legal liability for removal of content for political reasons.
A new report shows that a staggering number of Christians have been brutally killed by Nigeria’s Islamic jihadists so far this year.
In the past 200 days, 3,462 Christians were murdered by extremists. That is just 68 less than the total number killed in 2020 alone, according to data.
The report by the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) shows that, from May to July, 780 additional Christ-followers were abducted from villages throughout Nigeria.
Members of the Islamic jihadist group Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen are named throughout the report. These terror groups are relentless in their efforts to gain control over the country through the kidnapping and killing of innocent victims.
Hundreds of children from Nigerian schools have also been targeted this year, kidnapped by armed insurgents threatening to harm their captives unless a ransom is paid.
CBN News reported that more than 300 boys were taken from a Government Science secondary school on Dec. 11 where police engaged in a shootout with the assailants.
Then, hundreds of girls were kidnapped in February from the Government Secondary Jangebe School in Zamfara state after a large group of gunmen raided the school.
In March, eight members of Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) in Kaduna were abducted at gunpoint. Kidnappers demanded a ransom of $131,000.
Amazon hit with $887 million fine by European privacy watchdog as it sees $148 billion in market value wiped out after missing sales forecast—Bezos still world’s richest person.
QUICK FACTS:
The Luxembourg National Commission for Data Protection said Amazon’s processing of personal data did not comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation, according to CNBC.
As a result, the tech giant was issued a fine of 746 million euros ($887 million) by a European privacy watchdog.
At the same time, Amazon fell as much as 8.1% in early trading, wiping $148 billion off the company’s market value, according to Business Insider.
Jeff Bezos lost 80% of his wealth gains for the year.
Good morning. The @markets wrap was the most-read story on @TheTerminal during the past 24 hours as of 9 am in NY:
Stocks look set for a down day as Amazon guidance stokes worries about tech 👇https://t.co/3HOZaPrYRG
Insider notes that Amazon shares dropped “as much as 8.1% on the Nasdaq exchange on Friday. That took Amazon’s market capitalization – the value of all its shares combined – to $1.67 trillion, $148 billion lower than at Thursday’s close.”
CNBC reports the fine was disclosed by Amazon on Friday in a securities filing and was issued two weeks ago by Luxembourg’s privacy regulator. “The Luxembourg National Commission for Data Protection said Amazon’s processing of personal data did not comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.”
The net worth of Jeff Bezos fell $13.5 billion after Thursday’s after-market results missed Wall Street’s expectations and foreshadowed an end to the retailer’s pandemic-fueled sales surge, erasing 80% of the billionaire’s wealth gains for the year, according to Bloomberg. He’s still the world’s richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Jeff Bezos lost $13.5 billion today (he still has $193.6 billion left) https://t.co/Z1TxVwCqKG
Joe Biden on Thursday called for newly vaccinated Americans to receive $100 payments, but a peer-reviewed medical journal publication from earlier this year disagrees with the “problematic” approach.
QUICK FACTS:
Biden incentivized U.S. citizens to receive Covid-19 mRNA vaccine by calling for state and local governments to make $100 payments to every newly vaccinated American, according to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
The Treasury Department said the payments are intended to serve “as an extra incentive to boost vaccination rates.”
“They can be funded by tapping a $350 billion pot of money for state and local governments that was included in the stimulus package passed earlier this year,” according to WSJ.
But a January 2021 publication by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)—a peer-reviewed medical journal published by the American Medical Association—argues that cash incentives for vaccinations can be perceived as “coercive.”
“BRIBING” AMERICANS:
USA Today opinion columnist Christian Schneider is pro-vaccine, yet still argues that “bribing Americans to get the COVID vaccine doesn’t solve our real problem.”
While Schneider believes the “real problem” is vaccine hesitancy, he nevertheless reveals that the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has shown that “offering bribes to get the vaccine might actually dissuade people from getting it.”
This is because “they will assume something is wrong if citizens need to be paid to have it injected into their bodies.”
“Think about it,” says Schneider, “if you were walking down the street and someone handed you a drink and said, ‘I’ll give you $1,000 to drink this,’ you would immediately suspect it was surreptitiously seasoned with the sweat from a hobo’s mustache.”
— Christian Schneider (@Schneider_CM) May 19, 2021
WHY JAMA REJECTS PAYING CASH INCENTIVES FOR VACCINATIONS:
Even though the JAMA publication cited by Schneider says that people “have a moral duty to be vaccinated,” it nevertheless characterizes “paying cash incentives for COVID-19 vaccination” as “morally suspect, likely unnecessary, and may be counterproductive.”
“[P]ayment-for-vaccination proposals are not only unnecessary, but problematic,” the publication emphasizes.
The publication also says “paying a substantial sum as an incentive to overcome vaccine hesitancy and to promote vaccine uptake is not a prudent investment” because “paying people to get vaccinated would come with high costs, possibly requiring many billions of dollars; the money would be more efficiently spent addressing the pandemic in other ways.”
The publication maintains that offering monetary incentives for vaccination can be seen as “coercive.”
“[T]here is a genuine ethical concern about the influence of such an incentive on decision-making,” says the publication.
“As individuals and families struggle, some people might feel they must accept a vaccine in order to, for example, purchase food or pay rent. They might feel they have no choice but to be vaccinated for cash.”
“It is deeply problematic that the government would offer cash incentives to promote vaccination when it has failed, in numerous instances throughout this pandemic, to offer money or other supports needed to ensure that the basic needs of many people are being met.”
The publication argues that “cash incentives might reasonably be expected to heighten…apprehensions or raise new ones, as offers of payment are often understood to signal that a behavior is undesirable or risky.”
“In a climate characterized by widespread distrust of government and propensity to endorse conspiracy theories,” it goes on to say, “those who are already COVID-19 vaccine hesitant might perceive that the government would not be willing to pay people to get vaccinated if the available vaccines were truly safe and effective. Incentive payments might also stoke new fears and, perversely, increase resistance to vaccination.”
Problems With Paying People to Be Vaccinated Against COVID-19 – The JAMA Network https://t.co/bey8Emt0zB
On Wednesday, Chinese officials hosted Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and a Taliban political delegation in Tianjin. During the high-profile visit, China’s Foreign Ministry publicly expressed support for the Taliban, saying they would “play an important role in the process of peace, reconciliation and reconstruction in Afghanistan.”
A Chinese Foreign Ministry press release said State Councilor and Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi met with Barada and said the Taliban is “a pivotal military and political force in Afghanistan and is expected to play an important role in the process of peace, reconciliation and reconstruction in Afghanistan.” Wang also told Baradar to “hold high the banner of peace talks, establish peace goals, establish a positive image, and pursue an inclusive policy.”
According to the Chinese government statement, Baradar said, “China has always been a reliable friend of the Afghan people and commended China’s just and positive role in Afghanistan’s peace and reconciliation process. The Afghan Taliban has the utmost sincerity to work toward and realize peace. It stands ready to work with other parties to establish a political framework in Afghanistan.”
The Taliban delegation’s visit to China is part of two days of planned talks between the two sides, the New York Times reported.
During their initial meeting, Wang reportedly stressed that the Taliban avoid ties with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). Wang said, “We hope the Afghan Taliban will make a clean break with all terrorist organizations including the ETIM and resolutely and effectively combat them to remove obstacles, play a positive role and create enabling conditions for security, stability, development and cooperation in the region.”
The ETIM, which is also known as the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Party (ETIP), is a movement of ethnic Turks including Uyghurs who have advocated for the formation of an independent state in the Xinjiang region of China. China considers the group a terrorist organization and in 2002, the United States and the United Nations also declared the group to be a terrorist organization.
In 2020, the U.S. State Department removed the ETIM from its list of designated terrorist groups. Voice of America reported the State Department’s move was hailed at the time by ethnic Uyghurs, who saw ETIM’s terrorist designation as having helped China portray its crackdowns in Xinjiang as a part of a legitimate counterterrorism measure. China has been accused of detaining around 1.8 millionmembers of the Uyghur population and other ethnic minority groups in Xinjiang.
According to the Chinese statement, Baradar said the Afghan Taliban will never allow any force to use the Afghan territory to engage in acts detrimental to China.
The new talks between the Taliban delegation and China come as the U.S. has continued to withdraw from Afghanistan. Amid the U.S. withdrawal, the Taliban has made territorial gains throughout the country and recently claimed to control about 85 percent of Afghan territory during a visit to Russia. The Taliban delegation in Russia sought to reassure Moscow that violence in Afghanistan would not spill over into areas like Tajikstan, where Russian troops are located. Days earlier, about 1,000 Afghan troops fled into Tajikistan to escape Taliban military advances in northeast Afghanistan.
On Thursday, the BBC reported Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the interactions between China and the Taliban could serve a positive outcome. Blinken reportedly said if China was looking towards a “peaceful resolution of the conflict” that could be “a positive thing.”
Barnett R. Rubin, a former State Department official and United Nations adviser on Afghanistan who is a senior fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation, told the New York Times that the Taliban-China meeting was not necessarily a show of China’s support for the Taliban, but for a peaceful end to the fighting in Afghanistan.
“It is an effort to use China’s influence to persuade the Taliban not to seek a military victory but to negotiate seriously for an inclusive political settlement,” Barnett said.
New documents represent the Biden administration’s latest attempt to squelch investigations into irregularities, silence critics of the 2020 election, and cement free-for-all voting ‘procedures.’
Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice issued two “guidance documents” purportedly “to ensure states fully comply with federal laws regarding election.” Those documents, however, really represent the Biden administration’s latest attempt to squelch investigations into potential voting irregularities, silence critics of the 2020 election, and cement forever the free-for-all COVID voting “procedures” implemented last voting cycle.
Wednesday’s guidance came in the form of two documents entitled, respectively, ”Federal Law Constraints on Post-Election ‘Audits’” and “Guidance Concerning Federal Statutes Affecting Methods of Voting.” In the DOJ’s guidance on post-election audits, the Biden administration began with its familiar refrain that “the November 3rd election was the most secure in American history,” and that notwithstanding “automatic recounts or canvasses,” there was no evidence “of either wrongdoing or mistakes that casts any doubt on the outcome of the national election results.”
Yet, as the DOJ put it, there has since been an “unusual second round of examinations” by states looking at “certain ballots, election records, and election systems used to conduct elections in 2020.” Then, with a not-so-veiled threat, the Biden administration rattled off the “federal constraints, which are enforced by the Department of Justice,” on these audits.
Helping Suspicious Events Avoid Oversight
Among other laws, the federal guidance on post-election audits highlighted Section 301 of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 that “requires state and local election officials to ‘retain and preserve’ all records relating to any ‘act requisite to voting’ for twenty-two months” after the covered election. This mandate, the DOJ explained, means that election records must “be retained either physically by election officials themselves, or under their direct administrative supervision,” the latter of which requires election officials to have physical access to the records, according to the DOJ.
While not singled out by name, the detail contained in its guidance statements suggest the DOJ has in its sights the Arizona Republicans leading the probe into Maricopa County voting. Just Monday, the Republican-led Arizona Senate served another subpoena on officials in Maricopa County, seeking its routers and other information necessary for the legislature to complete its audit.
The DOJ’s guidance will likely provide the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which has resisted attempts by the state Senate to obtain the equipment and other data, an excuse to keep a close hold on the information. The guidance from the Biden administration, however, seems also to seek to scare off state officials from pursing such investigation, as seen by the DOJ’s reference to the criminal penalties that attach to willful violations of the Civil Rights Act.
Attempt to Intimidate State Officials
The DOJ referenced criminal penalties again later in its guidance statement when discussing federal laws that prohibit the intimidation of voters. Then, after providing some examples of non-physical intimidation, the Biden administration suggests that work apparently planned as part of the Arizona audit qualifies as “intimidation.”
“There have been reports, with respect to some of the post-2020 ballot examinations, of proposals to contact individuals face to face to see whether the individuals were qualified voters who had actually voted,” the DOJ wrote, citing a “Cyber Ninjas Statement of Work.” Cyber Ninjas is the Florida-based company hired by the Arizona Senate to conduct the audit. It reportedly had proposed using a “combination of phone calls and physical canvassing” to “collect information on voters in three urban precincts.”
The Biden administration claims “this sort of activity raises concerns regarding potential intimidation of voters,” especially “when such investigative efforts are directed, or are perceived to be directed, at minority voters or minority communities.” States “that authorize or conduct audits must ensure that the way those reviews are conducted has neither the purpose nor the effect of dissuading qualified citizens from participating in the electoral process,” the DOJ continues, before warning that “if they do not, the Department will act to ensure that all eligible citizens feel safe in exercising their right to register and cast a ballot in future elections.”
The DOJ’s closer seems a sure signal that it intends to shut down any real analysis of voting in Arizona because it claims that investigative efforts that are merely “perceived to be directed at minority communities” qualify as intimidation under federal law.
Keep 2020 Chaos Voting Or Else
Arizona is not the DOJ’s only target, however, as the second guidance document issued yesterday shows. Rather, in “Guidance Concerning Federal Statutes Affecting Methods of Voting,” the Biden administration, while hiding behind a litany of legal citations and legalese, exposes its intent to target any state that tightens voting procedures from the pandemic period.
After noting favorably the record turnout seen in 2020, stemming from the increased use of vote by mail and early voting, the DOJ explained that since then, “some States have responded by permanently adopting their COVID-19 modifications; by contrast, other States have barred continued use of those practices or have imposed additional restrictions on voting by mail or early voting.”
While one would think that returning to pre-COVID voting procedures would pose no legal problem—after all, if a voting rule was valid before COVID, why would it be illegal now—the Biden Department of Justice sees things differently.
“The Department’s enforcement policy does not consider a jurisdiction’s re-adoption of prior voting laws or procedures to be presumptively lawful,” the guidance document reads. Rather, “the Department will review a jurisdiction’s changes in voting laws or procedures for compliance with all federal laws regarding elections, as the facts and circumstances warrant.”
In other words: Red states, prepare to be sued.
Politicizing Election Security Is Dangerous
The DOJ already targeted Georgia last month with litigation under the Voters Right Act, claiming Georgia’s mainstream regulations of the time, place, and manner of elections result “in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” At the time the Biden administration filed suit against Georgia, the allegations against the state were pretty insane, but the entire case became a burning dumpster after the Supreme Court issued its decision in Brnovich v. DNC, shortly after the DOJ filed the case.
In Brnovich, the Supreme Court upheld Arizona’s in-precinct voting requirement and ban on ballot harvesting against a Voting Rights Act challenge. In doing so, the high court delineated several guideposts to address whether a voting regulation abridges the right of citizens to vote on account of race, including “the size of the burden; the degree to which the voting rule departed from the standard in 1982 when Congress amended [the Voting Rights Act]; the size of the disparity of the rule on minorities; the opportunities provided by the state’s entire voting system; and the strength of the state’s interests in the law.”
While yesterday’s guidance does not explicitly conflict with the court’s holding in Brnovich, that the Biden administration stressed in its summary that the Voting Right Act’s demand that election systems be equally open to voters of all races “reaches rules involving the availability of vote by mail, deadlines, application and ballot formalities, or drop boxes for returning ballots,” suggests the DOJ intends to push more frivolous lawsuits, like the one filed against Georgia.
At least in the Georgia case, though, the DOJ did not have the benefit of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brnovich. Should the Biden administration execute on the not-so-subtle threats conveyed in Wednesday’s guidance, it will be doing so with full knowledge that the voting-integrity laws passed by Republican-controlled states fully comply with the Voting Rights Act.
Unfortunately, the Biden administration and the Democratic Party have decided that they score a victory just by pretending Republicans seek to disenfranchise voters of color and by portraying voting-integrity laws as Jim Crow 2.0, whether they win in court (or success in passing H.R. 1). Here, the left is playing with fire, because our country is too divided to withstand many more elections where half the populace believes the election was rigged.
That reality represents the clear and present danger—not Arizona’s audit or any of the other complaints put forth by the Biden administration in yesterday’s guidelines.
