Attendees walk past a Facebook logo during Facebook Inc’s F8 developers conference in San Jose, California, April 30, 2019. (Reuters/Stephen Lam/File Photo) Censorship & Socialism

By Petr Svab March 25, 2021 Updated: March 25, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Democrats urged Big Tech to step up online censorship or face government regulation during a March 25 congressional hearing with the chief executives of Facebook, Google, and Twitter.

The lawmakers portrayed the platforms as rife with “disinformation and extremism” that the platforms are unwilling to purge.

“Our nation is drowning in disinformation driven by social media,” said Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), chair of the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, who hosted the hearing.

“The way I see it, there are two faces to each of your platforms,” he said in his opening statement. “Facebook has family and friends neighborhood, but it is right next to the one where there is a white nationalist rally every day.

“YouTube is a place where people share quirky videos, but down the street, anti-vaxxers, COVID deniers, Qanon supporters, and flat-earthers are sharing videos.

“Twitter allows you to bring friends and celebrities into your home, but also Holocaust deniers and terrorists, and worse.”

Bound by the Constitution, Doyle is unable to ban white nationalists or anybody else from organizing rallies, just as he can’t prevent Americans from discussing their opposition to vaccines, questioning the existence of COVID-19—the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus—supporting the anonymous “Q” persona, or believing that the earth is flat.

Doyle said, according to research, “misinformation related to the election” and “COVID disinformation” content was seen billions of times in past months. He acknowledged that the platforms have already taken steps to suppress the content, but called for more.

“You can take this content down, you can reduce the vision, you can fix this, but you choose not to,” he said.

The companies should now brace for regulation, said Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, in his written opening statement.

“It is now painfully clear that neither the market, nor public pressure will force these social media companies to take the aggressive action they need to take to eliminate disinformation and extremism from their platforms,” he said.

“And, therefore, it is time for Congress and this committee to legislate and realign these companies’ incentives to effectively deal with disinformation and extremism.”

It isn’t clear what he would qualify as disinformation and extremism. His office didn’t immediately respond to requests for further details.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), chair of the House Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce, held a similar opinion.

“The regulation we seek should not attempt to limit constitutionally protected free speech, but it must hold platforms accountable when they are used to incite violence and hatred—or as in the case of the COVID pandemic—spread misinformation that costs thousands of lives,” she said in a written statement.

While inciting violence could be illegal, inciting hatred and spreading misinformation generally is constitutionally protected speech. However, opinions vary on what constitutes hate speech and misinformation.

In recent years, Facebook has relied on paid fact-checkers, but there’s evidence that the fact-checkers themselves need to be fact-checked and their operations are politically slanted.

The platforms already prohibit “hate speech,” which is a subjective standard impossible to enforce fairly, according to Nadine Strossen, a law professor and former president of the American Civil Liberties Union.

People on the political left are much more likely to call a variety of statements “hateful,” while those on the right tend to call the same statements “offensive, but not hateful,” a 2017 Cato survey found (pdf).

President Donald Trump speaks to the media after signing a bill for border funding in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, on July 1, 2019. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images) Donald Trump

By Katabella Roberts March 26, 2021 Updated: March 26, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Former President Donald Trump on March 25 responded to President Joe Biden’s claims that he had left children to “starve to death” on the Mexican side of the border.

Trump joined “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News on Thursday to respond to President Biden’s first press conference of his term, which was held earlier that day, following mounting pressure from critics and journalists wondering why Biden was taking so long to hold a briefing.

During the conference, Biden appeared to accuse Trump of leaving migrant children to “starve to death” on the Mexican side of the southern border and vowed that his administration would not do the same.

“If an unaccompanied child ends up at the border, we’re just going to let him starve to death and stay on the other side—no previous administration did that either, except Trump. I’m not going to do it,” Biden told reporters.

Trump branded the comments from the Delaware Democrat as completely false and said that the situation at the border currently is “outrageous.”

“First of all, it’s just the opposite,” Trump said. “By the time we finished what we were doing [on the border], very few people were coming up because they knew they weren’t going to get through. We stopped ‘catch and release’, which was a disaster.

“The very biggest thing was, we had the Remain In Mexico policy, and that means that we wouldn’t allow people to wait in our country until they were totally checked out, which most of them didn’t get checked out, and they would go back to their own country.”

“If young kids were with parents, but a lot of times, they weren’t, and we would take care of them, but … what they are doing now is outrageous. And they should finish the wall,” Trump added.

Elsewhere during Thursday’s press conference, Biden blamed the surge at the border—which has seen tens of thousands of illegal aliens attempt to enter the United States—on his predecessor and claimed the vast majority of illegal border-crossers “are being sent back.”

The president defended his decision to reverse the “Remain in Mexico” policy implemented by Trump—a move critics have said has encouraged a surge in illegal immigration.

Biden said it wouldn’t stop the number of people arriving at the border. An ongoing immigration policy tracker by the Heritage Foundation found that Biden has rolled back almost all of Trump’s immigration policies.

A total of 16,513 unaccompanied illegal alien minors were in the custody of either Customs and Border Protection or the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as of March 23, according to the HHS Administration for Children and Families.

Biden said there will be a military facility at Fort Bliss in Texas to hold 5,000 beds for unaccompanied minors that would be open this week at the border.

“We’re providing for the space, again, to be able to get these kids out of the Border Patrol facilities, which no child—no one should be in any longer than 72 hours,” he told reporters.

Bowen Xiao contributed to this report.

President Joe Biden talks to reporters during the first news conference of his presidency in the East Room of the White House in Washington, on March 25, 2021. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Executive Branch

By Isabel van Brugen March 26, 2021 Updated: March 26, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

President Joe Biden, during his solo first press conference Thursday, consulted notes that assisted him with key policy points, data, and appeared to show numbered images of reporters attending the event.

Biden, during his first press conference after more than two months in office, answered questions on topics including whether he will run for reelection, the burgeoning crisis along the border, and abolishing the 60-vote filibuster.

Photos taken at the press briefing show one card with facts about U.S. infrastructure, and another with headshots of what appeared to be the reporters in attendance. The briefing was limited to 25 reporters.

“The United States now ranks 13th globally in infrastructure quality—down from 5th place in 2002,” one bullet point read. The president still corrected himself after mistakenly telling reporters that the United States ranked 85th in the world in infrastructure.

“I still think the majority of the American people don’t like the fact that we are now ranked what, 85th in the world in infrastructure. I mean, look,” the president said, before clarifying: “We rank 13th globally in infrastructure.”

“China spends 3 times more on infrastructure than U.S.,” another bullet point said. The bullet point below noted: “Bridges: More than 1/3 of our bridges (231,000) need repairs or preservation.”

At Thursday’s briefing, the president took answers only from a list of reporters whose outlets and names were listed and numbered on a cue card. Biden took 31 questions from reporters, notably ignoring those from Fox News and The New York Times.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House for comment.

The president was also asked about whether he plans on running for reelection, which comes as members of the media have speculated and questioned why he hasn’t held a formal White House press conference in more than two months.

“My plan is to run for reelection,” he said at the White House, adding that he has “no idea” about whether he will run against former President Donald Trump. Biden said he expects Vice President Kamala Harris to join him on a potential ticket.

Trump in November 2019 referred to a notebook with handwritten notes during a press briefing at his first impeachment hearing.

Ivan Pentchoukov contributed to this report.

Mark Morgan, then-acting commissioner Customs and Border Protection, speaks at the National Press Club in Washington on Dec. 20, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times) Immigration & Border Security

By Samuel Allegri March 24, 2021 Updated: March 24, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Former U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan said that the Biden administration’s policies on the border are detrimental for the nation.

“This administration is absolutely—has dismantled everything, and everything that they’re doing is against the nation’s best interest, and I believe it’s for perceived political gain,” Morgan told Just the News.

Morgan then elaborated on unofficial illegal immigration numbers.

“I think within the last 10-11 days, they actually had a single-day encounter of over 6,000. Have you seen that officially? Has anyone in [the Department of Homeland Security] reported that? No. Six thousand! They’re averaging, now, anywhere between probably about 4,500 to 5,000 a day.”

“But here’s the truth, and here’s the stat they’re not presenting officially: 75 percent of the so-called unaccompanied minors are older teenagers—15, 16, 17 years of age,” Morgan told the outlet.

“They’re not being ripped from their parents. They’re making a tough decision on their own to leave simply because they want a better job in the United States.”

Morgan further noted that over 20,000 people have been released since January by mandate of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and that three-quarters of those being labeled as unaccompanied miners are older teenagers.

Morgan then said that DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas wasn’t honest regarding the border’s security.

“So, and this is one of the most disgusting lies—lie—that came out of the mouth of the DHS Secretary when he said, ‘The southwest border is secure.’ … And the 63,000 men and women of CBP on the frontlines of our nation, on the southwest border, know that’s a lie,” Morgan said.

On Tuesday, 14 Republican congressmembers demanded an explanation over “troubling reports” that illegal immigrants are being released into the United States with no court dates.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said in a letter to Mayorkas that the senators are “seeking answers to recent troubling reports that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is releasing aliens who entered the country illegally without the aliens being given Notices to Appear (NTA.)”

“Despite your repeated claims that ‘the border is secure,’ these reports raise serious questions about DHS’s commitment to faithfully enforcing the law,” reads the letter, which was obtained by Fox News.

The outlet reported that during the weekend, migrants were being processed and released without NTA in the Rio Grande Valley sector.

President Joe Biden delivers remarks in Washington on March 15, 2021. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters) Immigration & Border Security

By Jack Phillips March 24, 2021 Updated: March 24, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) confirmed reports it is investigating President Joe Biden’s move in January to freeze construction of the border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Former President Donald Trump, who made border wall construction a key 2016 campaign promise, started building the wall amid legal battles and fights with Congress. On his first day in office, Biden used his executive authority to stop building the wall even after Congress approved $1.4 billion for the measure as part of a $900 billion stimulus package bill to offset losses incurred by the COVID-19 pandemic in December.

Politico first reported that GAO would now launch an inquiry into whether the Biden administration had violated any laws by freezing construction, which would contravene the Constitution’s law that allows Congress alone to allocate funds.

A spokesperson for the watchdog agency confirmed the report, telling The Epoch Times on Wednesday, “Yes, we received a congressional request for a legal opinion on the matter and we have accepted that request.”

The exact nature of the investigation was not disclosed.

Some senators, who spoke to Politico, noted that Biden was a member of the Senate for decades and should know the rules.

“He was in the Congress a long time,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) told the political news website. “He knows it’s the Congress’s job to authorize how the money is spent and the president’s job to spend it efficiently.”

The president suspended construction on his first day in office, on Jan. 20, and also rescinded several other Trump-era immigration rules. Biden termed the border wall wasteful spending.

“Like every nation, the United States has a right and a duty to secure its borders and protect its people against threats. But building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution,” Biden said in his order. “It is a waste of money that diverts attention from genuine threats to our homeland security.”

The president’s order further stipulated that “no more American taxpayer dollars” should be “diverted to construct a border wall,” adding the federal government would conduct “a careful review of all resources appropriated or redirected to construct a southern border wall.”

Meanwhile, more than 60 Republican House lawmakers and four GOP senators wrote to GAO on Tuesday.

“We are writing to be added as co-requesters of a March 17, 2021 letter, signed by 40 United States Senators, requesting the Government Accountability Office’s legal opinion on the actions of the Biden Administration to suspend border wall construction and to order a freeze of funds provided by Congress for that purpose, which we believe violated the Impoundment Control Act,” the lawmakers said in a letter to the GAO.

Republicans have seized on Biden’s immigration orders, including the president’s support of a pathway to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, and said the orders are responsible for the surge along the U.S.-Mexico border. White House officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, have said Trump left Biden a broken immigration system and they’re working to fix it.

The border crisis “is the result of President Trump’s dismantlement of the safe and orderly immigration processes that were built over many, many years by presidents of both parties,” Mayorkas said in a TV interview Sunday.

But Trump, in a rare interview this week with Fox News, said Biden is actively working to “destroy” the United States with his orders.

“You can’t take millions of people, they’ll have millions of people before this mess is over,” Trump said. “We want people to come in, but they have to be able to help our country. They have to come in through merit and they have to come in legally,” the former commander-in-chief remarked.

why?

https://www.conservativedailynews.com/2021/03/how-history-homer-and-physics-forever-changed-voting-and-politics/

A Facebook panel is seen during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, in Cannes, France, on June 20, 2018. (Eric Gaillard/Reuters) Social Media

By Samuel Allegri March 22, 2021 Updated: March 22, 2021

Facebook on March 22 issued an announcement on how it plans to combat misinformation on its platforms. The technology giant also said it took down 1.3 billion fake accounts between October and December 2020.

“Tackling misinformation actually requires addressing several challenges including fake accounts, deceptive behavior, and misleading and harmful content,” Guy Rosen, vice president of integrity at Facebook, wrote in the statement.

Rosen said they have a group of “more than 80 independent fact-checkers, who review content in more than 60 languages,” and if they judge something as untrue, the content’s dissemination is limited.

“When they rate something as false, we reduce its distribution so fewer people see it and add a warning label with more information for anyone who sees it,” Rosen wrote.

He also noted that once one of these labels is applied, the vast majority of people don’t click on the post.

“We know that when a warning screen is placed on a post, 95% of the time people don’t click to view it,” he said.

The company published its policies before a U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce investigation into how tech platforms are tackling misinformation.

Rosen wrote that Facebook suppresses the distribution of “Pages, Groups, and domains who repeatedly share misinformation,” with a particular emphasis on “false claims about COVID-19 and vaccines and content that is intended to suppress voting.”

Rosen said the platform uses both people and artificial intelligence to detect activity they’re looking to combat, adding that they now have 35,000 people working on it.

“As a result, we’ve removed more than 12 million pieces of content about COVID-19 and vaccines,” he said.

Facebook Fact-Checker Funded by Chinese Money

While Facebook portrays its army of fact-checkers as independent, the money behind at least one carries a distinct taint.

Lead Stories is partly paid through a partnership with TikTok, a social media platform run by a Chinese company that owes its allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Moreover, the organization that’s supposed to oversee the quality of fact-checkers is run by Poynter Institute, another TikTok partner.

Lead Stories says it’s been contracted by ByteDance “for fact-checking-related work,” referring to TikTok’s announcement earlier this year that it has partnered with several organizations “to further aid our efforts to reduce the spread of misinformation,” particularly regarding the CCP virus pandemic, which originated in China and was exacerbated by the CCP regime’s coverup.

Lead Stories was started in 2015 by Belgian website developer Maarten Schenk, CNN veteran Alan Duke, and two lawyers from Florida and Colorado. It listed operating expenses of less than $50,000 in 2017, but had expanded sevenfold by 2019, largely because of the more than $460,000 Facebook paid it for fact-checking services in 2018 and 2019. The company took on more than a dozen staffers, about half of them CNN alumni, and became one of Facebook’s most prolific fact-checkers of U.S. content.

Petr Svab contributed to this report.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem gives a State of the State address in Pierre, S.D., on Jan. 8, 2019. (James Nord/AP Photo) Policy

By Masooma Haq March 22, 2021 Updated: March 22, 2021

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem on Monday announced the formation of a national coalition to “Defend Title IX” to protect the rights of female athletes and keep competition fair.

During a press conference Monday morning, Noem said, “Today we’re announcing that we’re forming a coalition called DefendTitleIXNow.com,” referring to the federal law that prohibits discrimination based on sex in educational programs and activities. “The coalition will consist of athletes, leaders, and everybody who cares about protecting women’s sports.”

Noem said that the coalition is separate from the debate surrounding House Bill 1217, titled Promote Continued Fairness in Women’s Sports, which bars biological males from competing in women’s or girls’ sports, because the coalition’s focus will be on women’s rights and maintaining a fair competitive environment in women’s sports and Title IX, not transgender athletes rights.

However, the governor said one of the main motivators for creating the coalition is to build enough support to push back against any pressure from groups like the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which insists on requiring biological males be included in girls’ sports.

“Once we have enough states on board, a coalition brought big enough where the NCAA [National Collegiate Athletic Association] cannot possibly punish us all, then we can guarantee fairness at the collegiate level,” Noem added.

Noem said after consulting legal scholars she decided that the coalition to protect Title IX will be far more effective and cost-efficient than getting into a legal battle about transgender women playing on female sports teams.

“We’ve been trying to figure out how to defend women’s sports effectively. These legal scholars think that South Dakota’s chances of winning a lawsuit against the NCAA are very low. When it comes to this issue if South Dakota passes a law that’s against their policy, they will likely take punitive action against us.”

Recently, a letter signed by more than 500 college athletes was sent to the NCAA urging the organization to “only operate championships and events in states that promote an inclusive atmosphere.”

To date, close to 20 states have introduced legislation barring biological males from competing on female teams, including recently Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, who signed such a bill for which his state is likely to be sued by civil rights and private organizations like the NCAA. Idaho was sued last year for such a bill.

Noem is trying to get around these legal issues by focusing on Title IX of the federal law. She said she is asking members of the coalition to sign a pledge to protect fairness in women’s sports.

The Pledge reads: “The undersigned agree that Title IX needs to be protected and that we commit to working together to keep fairness in women’s sports. We believe that only girls should play girls’ sports. Title IX was passed to protect fairness for women. The federal government should enforce Title IX in a way that protects fairness for women’s sports, rather than misusing it in a way that undermines fairness. The NCAA and other athletic sanctioning bodies should not take any adverse actions against any state or school that acts to protect fairness for women.”

The South Dakota governor said the coalition would refer to a person’s birth certificate designation to define their sexual identity.

Noem’s effort to protect the rights of biological female athletes by forming this national coalition is in sharp contrast to Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives passing the Equality Act, which they say is an anti-discrimination set of laws aimed at giving transgender individuals equal rights under the law. Opponents say it would penalize religious people for their beliefs about marriage and biological sex.

Last week Noem made headlines when she returned House Bill 1217 to the legislature with a ‘style and form veto’ with suggested revisions she wants to be made before signing.

At Monday’s press conference she said she is still eager to sign the bill if the changes are made.

Former NFL players Hershel Walker and Jack Brewer spoke at Noem’s press conference as advocates for keeping biological males out of female sports competitions.

“Now, I can classify myself as a woman and compete in the Olympics and probably win a gold medal in certain events today [by simply] saying I’m a woman,” said Walker.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with members of the public of Crimea via a video link in Moscow on March 18, 2021. (Alexey Druzhinin/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

By Li Hai March 22, 2021 Updated: March 22, 2021

The Russian Foreign Ministry has expressed regret that the Biden administration didn’t support the suggestion for a live discussion between the two world leaders, claiming that the United States missed an opportunity to improve bilateral relations.

“We regret to note that the American side has not supported the proposal made by President of Russia Vladimir Putin to U.S. President Joe Biden to hold a live broadcast discussion on March 19 or 22, 2021, on the problems that have accumulated in bilateral relations, as well as on the subject of strategic stability,” the ministry said in a statement on Monday.

Last week, Putin challenged Biden to a live debate after Biden called him a “killer” during an interview.

“I want to propose to President Biden to continue our discussion, but on the condition that we do it basically live, as it’s called. Without any delays and directly in an open, direct discussion,” Putin told Russian state TV on March 16.

Putin said he didn’t want to put it off for long and hoped the two leaders could do it either on March 19 or 22. “We are ready at any time convenient for the American side,” he said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki responded on March 18 that discussion was unlikely, saying that Biden is scheduled to travel to Georgia the next day and is “quite busy.”

On March 19, White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre added that Biden would meet Putin “when the time is right.”

Biden “was asked a direct question, and he gave a direct answer, and he’s not going to back off. He’s going to be very frank and very open about that relationship, especially when he is asked directly,” Jean-Pierre said.

Before leaving Washington for Georgia on March 19, Biden told reporters, “I’m sure we’ll talk at some point.”

“One more opportunity has been missed to find a way out of the deadlock in Russian-US relations created through the fault of Washington,” the Russian Foreign Ministry added on Monday. “Responsibility for this lies entirely with the United States.”

The White House didn’t respond to a request from The Epoch Times for comment.

On March 20, Russian ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, left for Moscow. The embassy said the trip was to discuss ways to rectify Russia-U.S. relations “that are in crisis,” referring to the bilateral ties as being in a “deadlock.”

Earlier this month, Antonov criticized the United States for claiming that Russia had meddled in the 2020 election and poisoned Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny.

The United States declared sanctions against Russia for the poisoning on March 2.

Jack Phillips and Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.