A little-watched civil rights case that threatens Silicon Valley’s Section 230 immunity took a huge step forward Friday as an appeals court that rarely does so agreed to review a lower court’s decision.
The U.S. Appeals Court for the Second Circuit in New York agreed to review a lower court’s ruling that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) protects Big Tech companies like Vimeo from civil rights liability in censorship cases.
Big Tech censorship became a hot button issue during the 2020 presidential campaign when President Donald Trump was selectively censored by Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.
The controversy became especially heated late in the campaign when a New York Post series of news articles about the allegedly corrupt business dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, was banned by the Big Tech giants.
Trump has filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court against the firms that censored him. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has also been the most vocal of multiple congressional conservative Republican critics of Section 230 immunity.
The case of Domen v. Vimeo came about after Vimeo, an Internet video-hosting company, terminated Church United’s video streaming activities after it featured videos of five men and women who left the gay lifestyle to pursue their Christian faith. Vimeo claimed its terms of service bar streaming videos that promote sexual orientation change therapy. Church United is led by Pastor Jim Domen.
A federal district court had previously held that Section 230 exempted firms like Vimeo and a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit upheld the lower court’s ruling.
As a result of Friday’s decision, however, the panel’s ruling will be reheard before the entire Second Circuit. The Second Circuit covers six federal district courts in three states, including New York, Connecticut and Vermont.
There currently are 10 active judges on the Second Circuit and 13 semi-retired senior judges.
“This ruling puts Section 230 immunity in the crosshairs of judicial review. We suspect that the en banc court recognizes that Big Tech is not exempt from state and federal civil rights laws,” said attorney Robert Tyler, general counsel for the California-based Advocates for Faith & Freedom. His law firm, Tyler & Bursch, represents Pastor Jim Domen and the California-based Church United non-profit.
“Section 230 was not intended to give Big Tech the right to exclude persons from their platform just because the customer is black, Muslim, white, Christian, homosexual or formerly homosexual. That is plain invidious discrimination,” said Tyler.
Church United is a non-profit that claims to have more than 750 pastors affiliated with its efforts to “positively impact the political and moral cultures of their communities.”
Tyler’s firm claimed in a statement made public Friday that the court’s decision “is even more remarkable given the Second Circuit’s notable reputation for shunning re-hearings.”
The statement cited an August 2016 article in the New York Law Journal that said the court had granted fewer rehearing petitions than any other federal appeals court since 1979.
“I never thought I’d see the day that it would be legal in America to discriminate against my faith and the fact that I was previously engaged in the gay lifestyle,” Domen said in the statement. “As a pastor and former homosexual, I’m encouraged by the rehearing of our sexual orientation and religious discrimination lawsuit.”
In its appeal from the lower court’s decision for the re-hearing by the Second Circuit, Church United argued that “the outcome of this case will determine whether websites have blanket immunity to discriminate against customers, including outright banning customers from their website based on race, sexual orientation, religion and other protected classes.
“Under the District Court’s ruling, discrimination that is unconscionable in any other business or consumer context, is allowed if it is committed by an interactive computer service.
“The free ticket for internet platforms to discriminate is erroneously based on the Communications Decency Act … The legislature created this immunity to ensure that providers of an interactive computer service would not be treated as publishers of third-party content and therefore liable for the content of others.
“However, … applying the CDA to shield websites from liability for banning protected classes of customers based on discriminatory intent goes far beyond both the plain language of the CDA and the legislative purpose.”
Vimeo has been asked for comment, but has not yet responded.
Yes, I’m still here and speaking the same truth as years ago about this fraud of a Community Services District set up over 40 years ago by Tuolumne and Mariposa County LAFCOs (Local Agency Formation Commissions) which essentially forced their own respective LAFCO annexation interests on the “DEEP POCKET CUSTOMERS” of the LDPCSD by attempting to create a foothill water empire (based on a groundwater substitution program to replace Merced River water transfers to LAFCO ANNEXATIONS outside the permitted PLACE OF USE of water license 11395) – which was to be surreptitiously subsidized by all the MR WECs (MERCED RIVER WATER ENTITLED CUSTOMERS) of the Lake Don Pedro residential subdivision for perpetuity!
Want to discuss a major betrayal of citizens by their own local government? Folks this crap has been happening across our entire nation at every level of government where leftist bent operators/agents could/can quietly insert their own personal or political interests over that of the legitimate public demand without accountability. TRAITORS to our country and concept of rule of law. Repeated clear violations of existing law with no accountability despite a massive rippling effect of negative consequences into our future for already financially victimized customers. On and on, paying more for less. County response as to how this nightmare started? Close all public records documenting the deceit.
Filing boxes sit off to the side at an absentee ballot processing room at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Ga., on Nov. 2, 2020. (Megan Varner/Getty Images) Election Integrity
After several Fulton County, Georgia, poll monitors testified last year that boxes of mail-in ballots for Joe Biden looked liked they’d been run through a photocopy machine, state investigators quietly broke the seal on one suspicious box and inspected the hundreds of votes it contained for signs of fraud, RealClearInvestigations (RCI) has learned exclusively.
At the same time, a key whistleblower told RCI that state investigators pressured her to recant her story about what she and other poll monitors had observed—what they called unusually “pristine” mail-in ballots while sorting through them during last November’s hand recount.
“I felt I was under investigation,” said Suzi Voyles, a longtime Fulton County poll manager whose sworn affidavits have been used by election watchdogs to sue the county for access to the ballots in question.
In this still image from video, Fulton County polling manager Susan Voyles testifies to state lawmakers in Atlanta on Dec. 3, 2020. (NTD Television)
Although the ballots are at the center of disputes about the Georgia presidential race, which Joe Biden won by just 12,000 votes, the state never disclosed its probe to the public or to election watchdogs suing to inspect the ballots.
State officials also neglected to inform the judge hearing the lawsuit that they were conducting such an inspection, even though the judge had issued a protective order over the ballots in January. In a nine-page amicus brief recently filed in the case, attorneys for the office of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger urged Superior Court Judge Brian Amero to deny petitioners’ requests to inspect the ballots, calling them a “fishing expedition.”
Frances Watson, chief investigator for the secretary of state’s office, confirmed in a statement to RCI that she sent investigators to Fulton County earlier this year to inspect the batches of sealed ballots. Poll monitors involved in last November’s hand recount had described the mail-in ballots in sworn affidavits as devoid of creases and folds and featuring identically bubbled-in marks for Biden. The state said it couldn’t find any ballots matching that description.
“Our investigators looked into it and didn’t find anything,” she said, while adding that the investigation is “still ongoing.”
The watchdogs question why state officials didn’t disclose their activities to the court and fear they may have “tampered” with the sealed ballots, which are at the center of the lawsuit seeking access to all 147,000 absentee ballots cast during the 2020 election in Fulton County, which includes much of Atlanta.
Led by longtime Georgia poll watcher Garland Favorito, founder of VoterGA.org, the court petitioners say the state has failed to inform the judge overseeing their case that they broke the chain of custody over the pallets of shrink-wrapped absentee ballots warehoused in a locked county facility in Atlanta.
“If the secretary of state’s office did that, they tampered with the ballots and violated Georgia state law,” which restricts the handling of ballots to authorized elections officials involved in the tabulation and care of the ballots, Favorito said. He also noted that Judge Amero had placed the ballots under a protective order in January. “They would have had to ask for a court order to unseal and inspect those ballots, and they never did that.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger gives an update on the state of the election and ballot count during a news conference at the State Capitol in Atlanta on Nov. 6, 2020. (Dustin Chambers/Reuters)
Raffensperger’s office seemed to acknowledge that the ballots were still under seal when it urged Amero to prevent the watchdogs from inspecting the ballots.
“The security and confidentiality of ballots is to be strictly maintained,” attorneys for Raffensperger argued in the brief they filed with Amero in April, “and the court should be cautious in granting petitioners’ access to ballots that Georgia law requires to remain under seal, which makes it a felony as soon as petitioners were to lay hands on them.”
Raffensperger’s office didn’t respond to questions about why it didn’t inform the court about its probe, although it acknowledged that this is the first time its inspection of the ballots—which began in early January—has been publicly disclosed. Judge Amero didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Biden narrowly won Georgia thanks to a late-night tally of absentee ballots in Fulton and other Democratic strongholds. The revelation that state authorities have already unsealed and investigated the ballots in question is a new twist in a case that has seen the firing of poll managers who blew the whistle on the suspicious ballots; a recent breach of security at the warehouse that Fulton County officials were supposed to be guarding around the clock; and an 11th-hour attempt by county officials to dismiss the court-ordered inspection of those ballots—many of which came from Atlanta area drop boxes whose chain of custody documentation has mysteriously gone missing.
Last month, Amero ordered Fulton County to unseal its 147,000 absentee ballots and allow the petitioners to inspect them under certain restrictions, but the county filed a motion to dismiss the case. Amero is expected to rule on the motion later this month.
The issue is further muddied by Suzi Voyles’ allegation, never previously reported, that she was pressured to recant her testimony about the pristine ballots. In sworn affidavits last November, Voyles said she observed that a large batch of mail-in ballots for Biden didn’t appear to have been folded or handled like she would have expected from her two decades of working elections in the county. She also said that the marks for Biden were identical, as though they had been filled in by a copy machine rather than a pen or pencil.
Henry County Superior Court Judge Brian Amero during a hearing on June 21, 2021, in a screenshot from video. (Henry County via NTD)
In a Jan. 7 interview, which took place at a secretary of state’s office in Atlanta, Voyles told RCI that an investigator identifying himself as Paul Braun “grilled me for over two hours” about her testimony. She said he was joined by another official whom she said was from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. She said the investigators didn’t have a copy of her affidavit and didn’t know the box number or batch numbers of the ballots in question.
“I smelled a rat when they didn’t know the batch numbers when they were clearly denoted in my affidavit,” Voyles said.
She said the investigators “gave no indication” they had gone to the warehouse to find the suspicious ballots or were conducting any kind of forensic investigation. She said they kept trying to convince her she might have been mistaken about her observations.
“I did not recant,” she said. “The ballots that I saw had been preprinted. It’s a very serious thing, in my opinion. That’s what I swore to under penalty of perjury. Recanting would be perjuring myself.”
Watson told RCI that Voyles “stated that she may have been mistaken about the batch number and provided a different batch number.”
“I never said that,” Voyles insisted.
“The second batch number provided by Ms. Voyles did not exist,” Watson said.
Voyles said she never provided any other batch numbers. Watson also revealed that “investigators went to Fulton County and reviewed the batches identified by Ms. Voyles, but found no ballots that looked as Ms. Voyles described.” Favorito said his group’s attorney plans to file a motion to depose Watson and Braun to understand exactly what investigators have done regarding the boxes of absentee ballots in question.
Favorito said he doesn’t doubt Voyles’ testimony and said the ballot images his group has reviewed support her account of anomalies.
“At no time has Susan Voyles claimed she was mistaken,” Favorito said. “She has consistently stood by her affidavit since she submitted it almost seven months ago.”
Asked if Voyles is under criminal investigation, Georgia Secretary of State Communications Director Ari Schaffer said, “I have no reason to believe she’s under investigation for perjury.”
Last December, Raffensperger “condemned” the unexplained firing of Voyles by Fulton County elections officials and called on them to rehire her.
Protesters gather outside State Farm Arena as ballots continue to be counted inside in Atlanta on Nov. 5, 2020. (Megan Varner/Getty Images)
As RCI reported previously, Voyles is one of four Fulton County poll monitors who signed affidavits swearing they observed the same pattern of irregularities in stacks of mail-in ballots for Biden. All of them suggested the ballots had been photocopied.
Favorito, who didn’t vote for Trump, said the state has also tried to interview another witness—poll monitor Robin Hall—and said he himself is under investigation. He suggested state investigators are trying to intimidate witnesses into backing off their testimony, and are more interested in investigating whistleblowers than finding evidence of ballot fraud.
Schaffer said he’s unsure whether other affiants have been interviewed. “I’ll have to check on the other three” witnesses, he said.
Favorito said the discovery of hard evidence of fraud in Georgia’s largest county would be embarrassing for Raffensperger, who is running for reelection with little support from the Georgia GOP, which recently censured him for creating “opportunities for fraud” by agreeing to the relaxation of voting rules during the 2020 election.
“He is worried that we will uncover serious wrongdoing on the part of the secretary of state, not just Fulton County,” Favorito said.
Fulton County, Ga., includes most of Atlanta. (Google Map)
Voyles pointed out that Raffensperger has been too quick to declare the 2020 Georgia election free of fraud. Most recently, he was blindsided by revelations that Fulton County election officials had “misplaced” the required chain-of-custody forms documenting the collection of almost 20,000 mail-in ballots from 36 largely unsupervised drop boxes Raffensperger agreed to let Democrat-controlled Fulton County distribute across the Atlanta area ahead of the election.
“New revelations that Fulton County is unable to produce all ballot drop-box transfer documents will be investigated thoroughly,” Raffensperger tweeted on June 14, adding that Fulton officials failed to follow state rules regarding the boxes. “This cannot continue.”
Voyles said Raffensperger’s office is increasingly concerned about its preelection decision to mollify demands by a Democratic voter-rights group to make it easier to vote by absentee ballot.
“They are investigating us to divert attention from their consent agreement with [Democratic activist] Stacey Abrams,” Voyles said.
“We never should have had any drop boxes. We wouldn’t have had chain-of-custody problems and the other problems with absentee ballots if they hadn’t put in those drop boxes,” she said. “It was negligence.”
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer speaks during a press conference on Belle Isle in Detroit, Mich., on June 22, 2021. (David Guralnick/Detroit News via AP) US News
Michigan’s Senate on Thursday approved a petition that repeals Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s emergency powers, with another approval expected by the state’s lower chamber.
Whitmer, a Democrat, cannot veto the petition.
The Michigan Senate’s 20-15 vote came two days after the Board of State Canvassers certified the petition, which was started by a group called Unlock Michigan that gathered over 340,000 signatures.
The board deadlocked 2-2 in April but voted 3-0 this time around.
The petition took aim at the 1945 Emergency Powers Act that enabled Whitmer to impose harsh restrictions on state residents during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Republicans on the Senate floor before the vote praised the petition and said it was needed to curb Whitmer’s power.
“This initiative represents a people’s veto of this governor and the unlimited power that she’s tried to claim during this pandemic,” state Sen. Tom Barrett, a Republican, told colleagues.
Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, another Republican, said the petition “doesn’t take power away” but “reassesses where the power belongs.”
Democrats offered different explanations for their “no” votes.
State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, a Democrat, argued that the legislature is “a deliberatively slow moving body.”
“But when an emergency faces our state, we don’t have the luxury of time. That is what this legislature of the past put into place. And I could not in good conscience support or measure to remove those powers and put future residents at risk if the executive of the state does not have the ability to act quickly,” she said.
A Whitmer spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
A Michigan House of Representatives GOP spokesman told news outlets that the chamber will vote on the petition soon. If it does not within approximately one month, or if the vote fails, then voters will decide on whether to repeal the emergency powers law in the next election.
Republicans control both chambers of the legislature in Michigan.
If the House follows the Senate, then an emergency declaration will be good for 28 days before requiring the legislature’s approval to be extended.
The vote on Thursday came after a series of developments, including a ruling by the Michigan Supreme Court that the emergency powers law was unconstitutional. The court later ordered the Board of State Canvassers to certify the petition after the board deadlocked along party lines, with Republicans voting for and Democrats against, in April.
Unlock Michigan, meanwhile, received approval this week for a new petition that would limit emergency powers for the Michigan Department of Health. Unlock Michigan spokesperson Fred Wzolek told The Epoch Times that the petition was “another step to keep Whitmer from ruling by decree on her own.”
Ballots cast in the 2020 general election are examined and recounted by contractors working for Florida-based company, Cyber Ninjas, at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, Ariz., on May 6, 2021. (Matt York/Pool/AP Photo) Regional News
At least one of three counties targeted for a forensic investigation of Pennsylvania’s 2020 presidential election has said it will not allow access to its voting machines.
Pennsylvania Sen. Doug Mastriano, chair of the Intergovernmental Operations Committee, sent letters to election officials in three Pennsylvania counties, Philadelphia, York, and Tioga, requesting access to voting machines and information to be used as evidence in a forensic analysis of the 2020 election.
Tioga County Commissioners decided not to provide access after receiving a directive from the Pennsylvania Department of State ordering county boards of elections not to provide any access to third parties seeking to examine the systems or system components.
It further warned that if counties do allow access, the voting equipment will be considered no longer secure or reliable to use in future elections. The department would decertify the expensive election equipment and counties would have to buy new voting machines on their own.
“We’ve been given the directive that we cannot give access or they will decertify our machines,” Tioga County Solicitor Christopher Gabriel told the Epoch Times. “The state did two audits after the election. Nothing of significance was found.”
York and Philadelphia counties have not made their intentions public yet; each county has until July 31 to respond in writing to the request for access.
“The Intergovernmental Operations Committee has not received a formal written response indicating refusal to comply from any of the three counties who received letters from the committee,” Mastriano said Thursday in a written response to the Epoch Times. “We intend to move forward with our plan to investigate these counties.”
“We do have grave concerns that the Wolf Administration is continuing to weaponize the State Department just like they did in 2020. In this case, the department is being used to intimidate county officials and obstruct a Senate-led forensic investigation of the 2020 and 2021 elections,” Mastriano said. “This threat, disguised as a directive to all counties in Pennsylvania, is an attack on the autonomy of local officials and the General Assembly’s power to review, investigate, and legislate in matters within its legislative authority, which includes Pennsylvania’s election system. The Legislature has clear authority—both statutorily and constitutionally—to provide oversight and issue subpoenas.”
Mastriano again questioned the authority of the Department of State to enforce such directive through the acting secretary, Veronica Degraffenreid, who has yet to go before the Senate to be officially confirmed.
Pennsylvania Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro said in a tweet that the effort is not a real audit, but a pet project of one man.
“If this state senator goes forward and issues a legal subpoena, that would be litigated,” Shapiro said in a media interview. “I’m confident we would win the litigation, protect the will of the people and protect the taxpayers of Pennsylvania, who at the end of the day, would not only suffer privacy loss, but millions of dollars in cost.”
Silhouettes of mobile device users are seen next to a screen projection of YouTube’s logo in this picture illustration taken March 28, 2018. (Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters) Media & Big Tech
A county board of commissioners in North Carolina is pushing back against tech giant Google after YouTube, owned by Google, deleted one of the board’s videos for allegedly violating YouTubes terms and conditions regarding medical misinformation.
After its June 16 meeting, the Henderson County Board of Commissioners video upload on YouTube was taken down, prompting commissioners to call an emergency meeting on Friday, June 18.
During the emergency meeting, the board directed staff to seek out other platforms on which the board’s meetings can be posted, as well as to find alternatives to Google products.
Henderson County’s budget includes about $400,000 for Google Chromebooks for the county’s public school system.
Though the Chromebooks have already been budgeted for fiscal year 2021, Lapsley said an equivalent to the Chromebooks that aren’t manufactured by Google will be considered for fiscal year 2022.
“We aren’t going to buy Google products whenever we have a choice,” Board of Commissioner Chairman William Lapsley told The Epoch Times.
In the public comment period of the June 16 meeting, several people had asked that the commissioners not use local taxpayers’ money to assist in North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper’s vaccine incentives, which includes four $1 million cash drawings, $25 cash cards, and signage such as billboards.
These incentives are not funded by state or local governments, but from the U.S. Treasury Department’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package passed in March.
Citizens who speak in the public comment period are allotted three minutes and can talk about any subject, according to Lapsley, “as long as they keep it civil.”
It’s not, however, a dialogue with the commissioners, Lapsley said.
“It’s just an opportunity for anybody to tell the commissioners what’s on their mind,” Lapsley said.
For several years, county staff has uploaded the meetings to YouTube, where it would stay for 90 days.
“We posted the video as we normally do, and within about two hours we got an email from YouTube telling us that the video has been taken down because of misinformation,” Lapsley said.
Lapsley said staff appealed in the process provided by YouTube within an hour, however, YouTube said the video will remain pulled and will not return.
According to a spokesperson for YouTube: “Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we established clear policies to prevent the spread of misinformation that could lead to real-world harm. While we welcome open debate and discussion about the COVID-19 vaccines on our platform, we don’t allow content that includes claims the vaccines have killed thousands of people, and as such we removed a video from the Henderson County Board of Commissioners’ channel.”
Though none of the 12 people who spoke in the meeting made the direct claim that vaccines have killed thousands of people, each one of them spoke against the vaccine programs “targeting massive groups of people” based on what they said were “suppressed facts.”
One of the speakers in the meeting addressed Big Tech censorship as one of the causes of misinformation on the COVID-19 vaccines.
Lapsley later added that the board recognizes the right of a privately owned company such as YouTube to review and control the material on their platforms.
“However, we feel that by posting our local government video in the past, they were providing a ‘public space’ for their customers to exercise their individual right to free speech,” Lapsley said. “Obviously, they are now censoring the free speech of our county citizens by their action of taking down the county video of a public meeting—this presents a dangerous precedent that this branch of local government will not support. The board has directed county staff to identify any and all purchases of Google (parent company of YouTube) related products and to seek other vendors for similar equipment and/or services.”
Escalating Censorship
YouTube’s most recent highly publicized video deletion was one uploaded by the American Conservative Union (ACU), a nonprofit educational foundation that examines conservative-based solutions to American issues.
The video, which was an episode of “America UnCanceled,” featured former President Donald Trump announcing his plan to file a lawsuit against Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
According to the ACU, YouTube alleged the video contained “medical misinformation” regarding COVID-19, however, the ACU said YouTube didn’t cite examples.
In a statement on its website, ACU Chairman Matt Schlapp said it’s “yet another example of Big Tech censoring content with which they disagree in order to promote the political positions they favor.”
Though Google is a private company, the platform, along with Facebook and Twitter, is protected from liability for its content under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which allows for the platforms to remove posts that violate their terms and conditions.
Because YouTube, Google, Facebook, and Twitter partake in public discourse regarding government actions, it’s been argued that, though they are private companies, they must adhere to the First Amendment addressing free speech.
According to Henderson County Attorney Russell Burrell, the Henderson County Board of Commissioners are required by law to take public comment at its two meetings each month.
“The statute states that the board has no control over what the public talks about,” Burrell told The Epoch Times. “If people want to come in and talk about how they chose the name of their child, I don’t think the commissioners can stop them. It’s their three minutes.”
However, the content of the public comment period—what Burrell called “the business of the people”—was not what YouTube wanted on its platform, Burrell said, so it removed the entire meeting, “including the parts of the meeting that had nothing to do with vaccines.”
“This was not something that was pleasing to the commissioners, and I know they were upset about it, so they decided not to use YouTube as a repository for those videos in the future,” Burrell said.
As far as recourse under the First Amendment, Burrell stated that the language of the law expresses that Congress can’t pass legislation prohibiting free speech, while the Fourteenth Amendment applies this rule to state government.
“However, there’s no amendment that applies this to Google,” Burrell said, unless, he added, a court were to decide Google to be a monopoly. “Then the Federal government could, if it chose to do so, regulate Google as a monopoly,” Burrell said.
The Henderson County Board of Commissioners’ next meeting is on July 21.
The livestream for the June 16 meeting can be found here.
On July 8, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded to news of a Chinese genomics company that is harvesting genetic data from around the world, in what could be connected to a Chinese Communist Party eugenics or bioweapons program. “Everything that their government does is connected to the military,” Pompeo said on a podcast. “And everything that comes under the face of their private sector is connected to that government and that military.”
The following day, a German health ministry spokesperson said that the country was taking seriously the news of gene harvesting by a Chinese company, which markets prenatal testing in Germany and other European countries. The spokesperson said that Germany would raise the issue with the European Commission.
Geneticists Wang Jian and Wang Jun founded the Chinese company, now called BGI and based in Shenzhen, in 1999 as a state-backed enterprise that was originally called Beijing Genomics Institute. BGI was founded to develop the Human Genome Project. Wang Jian served as a research fellow in the United States for six years starting in 1988. BGI is partially owned by the Chinese regime, and said in its latest annual report, according to Reuters, that it “has been working hard to promote Chinese technology, Chinese experience, and Chinese standards to ‘go global.’”
While Reuters reported that the BGI test is not marketed in the United States, the popular genetic testing company 23andMe is part-owned by Chinese entities, and there are concerns about whether 23andMe data are being shared, leaked, or hacked by the Chinese regime. In 2020, attempts by a prenatal genetic testing company to establish itself near a military base in San Diego were blocked by the U.S. government.
The U.S. government warned Nevada officials in 2020 not to use a donation of 250,000 BGI coronavirus test kits, facilitated by Peng Xiao, the CEO of G42, who sought to establish a coronavirus testing lab in Nevada. U.S. officials expressed concern about patient privacy, and Nevada turned down the offer. Nevertheless, a similar attempt by BGI to market its coronavirus tests in the United States directly to state, county, and city officials, was in part successful, and resulted in testing centers in California and Kansas.
BGI has prominent academic supporters in the United States, including Harvard geneticist George Church, who since 2007 has served on the company’s scientific advisory board, according to the Washington Post. BGI established an institute in 2017 named the George Church Institute of Regenesis, with a dozen BGI staff in China, that collaborates with Church’s Harvard lab.
The Post summarized Church as saying that the Institute attempts to “synthesize organisms made from human-made DNA, among other projects.” According to the Post, “Church also has a business relationship with BGI: Consumers who want their genomes decoded can send saliva samples to a company he co-founded, Nebula Genomics, which sends them to BGI labs in Hong Kong for sequencing.” Professors who mix their research and business with China, may be incentivized to share more data with the totalitarian country than they otherwise would.
The University of California at Davis also collaborates with BGI.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) forced a sale of China’s stake in a health-tech company, PatientsLikeMe, in 2019. China’s stake was held by iCarbonX, founded by BGI’s Wang Jun. Approximately 700,000 people have trusted PatientsLikeMe with their health data.
CFIUS was established in 1975 by President Gerald Ford and expanded under President Donald Trump.
A BGI subsidiary called Forensic Genomics International sold Chinese police the DNA collection and analysis supplies used since 2017 on millions of males in China, including children. The men and boys, who had no serious criminal background, could not reasonably have given free consent to the procedures.
BGI and G42, a United Arab Emirates company, started a coronavirus testing lab in 2020 in Abu Dhabi, and BGI established similar labs in Angola, Australia, Brunei, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sweden, and Togo, according to the Associated Press and Washington Post. Saudi Arabia established six BGI testing labs with 500 Chinese specialists after a call between King Salman and Xi Jinping.
American, British, Japanese, and European values support a policy that strives to keep science open and globally accessible. But these policies are being exploited by the Chinese regime, which can now access genetic data on Western and allied populations, while not offering reciprocity. Such sharing of genetic data by democracies with China is irresponsible given the Chinese regime’s well-documented acts of genocide against the Uyghurs, as well as widespread data theft globally. The failure of U.S. and allied governments to ban China harvesting of women’s genetic data, despite a warning by the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) against BGI and other such China collections, is irresponsible and a dereliction of their most basic governmental duty to protect citizens.
Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He’s a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. He authored “The Concentration of Power” (forthcoming in 2021) and “No Trespassing,” and edited “Great Powers, Grand Strategies.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki holds a press briefing the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington on July 8, 2021. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images) US News
Door-to-door vaccination effort started in April, press secretary says By Zachary Stieber July 8, 2021 Updated: July 8, 2021 biggersmallerPrint
The White House’s effort that involves people going door-to-door to try to boost COVID-19 vaccination rates does not rely on a database, the Biden administration’s press secretary said Thursday.
“The federal government does not have a database of who has been vaccinated. That is not our role,” press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington. “We don’t maintain a database along those lines. And we have no plans to.”
White House officials, as well as President Joe Biden, said Tuesday that a key focus in the coming weeks was knocking on doors to deliver information about COVID-19 vaccines to Americans.
“We need to go to community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood, and oftentimes, door to door—literally knocking on doors—to get help to the remaining people,” or those who have not received a vaccine, Biden said in remarks from the White House.
The plan triggered staunch pushback from Republicans, with Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich warning the administration against using medical records to ascertain which Americans have not gotten a jab.
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson added on Thursday that he informed the state’s health department “to let the federal government know that sending government employees or agents door-to-door to compel vaccination would NOT be an effective OR a welcome strategy in Missouri!”
Psaki told reporters in Washington that the effort will utilize data on where vaccination rates are lagging and that the messengers are not government employees.
“These are grassroots voices across the country. They are not members of the government. They are not federal government employees. They are volunteers. They are clergy. They are trusted voices, and communities who are playing this role in door knocking,” she said. “So in our view, this is is a way to engage and empower local activists, trusted members of the community.”
“The best people to talk about vaccinations with those who have questions are local trusted messengers. Doctors, faith leaders, community leaders. As part of our efforts, trusted messengers may go door to door,” White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeffrey Zients said in a separate, virtual briefing.
The comments came on the same day a top administration official, Health Secretary Xavier Becerra, argued on television that the federal government has the right to know who has been vaccinated and who has not.
The door-to-door knocking actually started way back in April, White House officials are saying. A network called the Community Corps was launched then by the Department of Health and Human Services. The announcement did not detail volunteers going to door-to-door, but said the corps would be provided with public health information and resources so they could “help get friends, family, and followers vaccinated.”
A volunteer listing told prospective applicants that they would get “fact sheets on vaccine safety, tips on how to talk with friends and family about the importance of vaccination, and hints for planning and attending community events.”
A smattering of local news stories later detailed how some volunteers were knocking on doors to promote vaccination. U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy told volunteers on a phone call last month that he’d heard from students who were knocking on doors, CNN reported. And the Biden administration said in a fact sheet in early June that the administration would mobilize people to make calls and texts to those in areas with low vaccination rates, as well as going door to door to try to get Americans to visit nearby clinics to get a jab.
Jefferson County Commissioner Sheila Tyson (L) accompanies volunteers and staffers during a door-knocking outreach effort to inform residents about an upcoming COVID-19 vaccination event in Birmingham, Ala., on June 30, 2021. (Elijah Nouvelage/AFP via Getty Images)
Still, the remarks this week, especially Biden’s, set off a firestorm after appearing to some to be a new program.
“President Biden wants to send people to knock on your door to bully you into taking an ‘optional’ vaccine. Anyone who wants a vaccine is able to get one. Leave everyone else alone! Americans don’t need the federal government telling them how to live,” Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) wrote on Twitter.
“The Biden Administration wants to knock on your door to see if you’re vaccinated. What’s next? Knocking on your door to see if you own a gun?” added Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
Approximately 47 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated, with another 7.5 percent getting at least one dose as of July 7, according to federal data. The two most widely used vaccines in the United States require two doses.
Experts differ on what percentage of the population needs protection to reach herd immunity, especially given the variants that keep emerging. Some point to a growing body of evidence showing those who have had COVID-19 and recovered enjoy a level of immunity similar to that provided by a vaccine.
Door knockers will merely present people with details on vaccines but will not try to compel them to get a shot, White House officials have said.
“I will say the thing that is a bit frustrating to us is that when people are critical of these tactics, it’s really a disservice to the country and to the doctors, faith leaders, community leaders, and others who are working to get people vaccinated,” Psaki said. “This is about saving lives and ending this pandemic.”
A screen outside a shopping mall shows news coverage of Chinese leader Xi Jinping delivering a speech during a Communist Party of China and World Political Parties summit, in Beijing on July 7, 2021. (Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images) Chinese Regime
In his speech to party leaders from over 100 developing countries on July 6, Chinese leader Xi Jinping vowed that his regime would “manage and shape mankind’s common future,” and people in the world should share the same fate as Chinese citizens.
“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) insists on making the Chinese people and the people of all countries to have the same destiny,” Xi said. “[The CCP] is progressing the development and prosperity of all countries [in the world].”
In fact, the CCP regime is a dictatorship, so sharing the same fate as Chinese people would be a disaster for the free world.
China was ranked 129 in its freedom index 2020 by Washington-based CATO institute. Chinese people don’t have free speech, can’t freely access the Internet, aren’t allowed free belief, are monitored by the surveillance system, and controlled by the social credit system.
To protect their lives and property, Chinese people are trying their best to escape China. In the past decades, they form one of largest immigration groups in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and European countries.
Xi Jinping warns foreign countries during the CCP 100 anniversary activities | China in Focus (NTD)
Xi’s Vow
Xi gave a 22-minute address at the CCP and World Political Parties Summit video conference on July 6, in which he repeated the CCP’s ambition—to build a community with a shared future for mankind.
“We [the parties] should take the responsibility of guiding the direction [of human development]. [We should] manage and shape mankind’s common future,” Xi said. “We should take high responsibility for [directing] human’s future and fate.”
He emphasized the leading role of the CCP because he believes that the “CCP stands on the right side of history,” but didn’t mention any of the innumerable crimes the CCP committed in China over the past 100 years.
“As a major country and a major party, the CCP will fulfill its responsibilities of enhancing human well-being,” Xi said. “The CCP will actively promote the improvement of global governance, and contribute to the global society of facing the common challenges.”
To whitewash the CCP’s dictatorship, Xi changed the definition of democracy in his July 6 speech by claiming: “Whether a country is democratic or not, should be judged by the people in the country.” On July 1, Xi claimed that he could represent all of the 1.4 billion people in China.
Xi gave his address by reading from a draft. During the live broadcast, he re-read some sentences at approximately 20 minutes into his speech. One of his staff quickly told him that he had read the wrong page.
After saying, “I have already read this [page]?” Xi jumped to the right paragraph.
A large screen showing communist China leader Xi Jinping during a mass gala marking the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party at the Olympic Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing, China on June 28, 2021. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)
Xi’s Ambition
“Xi is falsifying the definition of universal values, and trying to kidnap 1.4 billion Chinese people to support his dictatorship to rule the world,” Tang Jingyuan, U.S.-based China affairs commentator, told The Epoch Times on July 7. “Now is the critical moment for the international community to say no to the CCP and stop its ambition.”
Tang said that a large number of people can’t separate the CCP from China and the Chinese people, while the CCP claims to represent both.
“Chinese people love peace, but the CCP doesn’t. Chinese people don’t wish to control the world, but the CCP does,” Tang said. “Xi’s speech clearly delivered his opinion that the CCP wants to lead the world in the near future and control the world in the end.”
“The international community needs to recognize the CCP’s evil and understand clearly that the CCP can’t represent China nor Chinese people. Only then, [will] they [the free world] know how to protect themselves from the CCP’s lies and threats.”
The CCP’s 100 Year Anniversary: Bashing Heads |The Beau Show (The Epoch Times)
The Chinese regime claimed that leaders from over 500 parties participated in the summit. It listed some names. They are?
– Cyril Ramaphosa, president of the party African National Congress in South Africa
– Nursultan Nazarbayev, chairman of Nur Otan in Kazakhstan
– Dmitry Medvedev, chairman of United Russia in Russia
– Alberto Fernández, president of Justicialist Party in Argentina
– Nguy?n Phú Tr?ng, general secretary of Communist Party of Vietnam in Vietnam
– Miguel Díaz-Canel, first secretary of Communist Party of Cuba in Cuba
– Rodrigo Duterte, chairperson of PDP–Laban in the Philippines
– Hun Sen, president of Cambodian People’s Party in Cambodia
– Emmerson Mnangagwa, first secretary of ZANU–PF in Zimbabwe
– Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of Fatah in Palestine
– Aleksandar Vu?i?, president of Serbian Progressive Party in Serbia
– Imran Khan, chairman of Pakistan Movement for Justice in Pakistan
– Filipe Nyusi, leader of Partido Frelimo in Mozambique
– Hage Geingob, leader of SWAPO party in Namibia
– Denis Sassou Nguesso, president of Congolese Party of Labour in Congo
– Anura Kumara Dissanayake, leader of People’s Liberation Front in Sri Lanka
– Evo Morales, leader of Movement for Socialism in Bolivia
– Saadeddine Othmani, general secretary of Justice and Development Party in Morocco
– Salva Kiir Mayardit, chairman of Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in South Sudan
– José Luis Centella, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Spain in Spain
GALVESTON, Texas—A group of sheriffs and active Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have filed suit against the Biden administration for its “unlawful and unconstitutional” requirements regarding the arrest and deportation of illegal aliens.
The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction to a Feb. 18 memorandum that they say “commands ICE officers to violate the specific terms of federal immigration law.”
“The relief we are seeking is that the court order ICE and the Department of Homeland Security to simply follow the law,” lead attorney Kris Kobach said after filing the suit at the Galveston federal courthouse on July 1. “To follow the specific laws … that require them to detain and deport certain illegal aliens.”
The lawsuit (pdf) alleges that “many extremely dangerous illegal aliens who would have been detained prior to the February 18 Memorandum are now not being detained—against the wishes of the ICE officers seeking to detain them, and in violation of federal statutes requiring their detention and/or removal.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued interim guidelines on Feb. 18 for handling the arrest, detainment, and deportation of illegal immigrants.
DHS directed ICE officers to focus on only three priority groups of illegal immigrants, including national security threats, such as known or suspected terrorists; those who crossed the border illegally after Nov. 1, 2020; and public safety threats who are convicted of aggravated felonies or gang members.
Part of ICE’s job is to track down and remove the 672,000 fugitives who have been ordered removed by a federal immigration judge but are still in the United States.
But the new DHS directive says that ICE agents must first get clearance from supervisors if they encounter illegal immigrants who aren’t convicted criminals during operations.
The decision of whether to arrest the individual needs to take into account whether the person might be suffering from a serious physical or mental illness, a DHS official said at the time.
“We want [ICE] to think about ties to the community, whether the individual has family here in the United States, U.S. citizen family members, and other considerations,” the official said.
(L–R) Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe, former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, and Kinney County Attorney Brent Smith stand outside the federal courthouse in Galveston, Texas, on July 1, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Upon the rollout of the new guidelines, a DHS official said that ICE arrests weren’t expected to drop under the new guidelines.
However, ICE reported a record low 2,962 deportations in April, in comparison to an average of 8,634 illegal immigrant deportations per month during fiscal year 2020.
ICE officers have been “rarely granted preapproval for enforcement actions against non-priority aliens,” according to the lawsuit.
“The time-consuming paperwork and the low probability of preapproval being granted have caused many ICE officers not to even attempt seeking preapproval,” the lawsuit reads.
The lawsuit outlines several cases provided via affidavit by ICE officers who were forced to release illegal alien criminals into the community.
In one case, ICE officers sought approval to arrest a twice-deported illegal alien who had been convicted of sexual battery against a child. ICE management denied the request, according to the lawsuit.
In another case, local police initiated the arrest of a twice-deported illegal alien for selling heroin.
“The alien attempted to evade arrest by ramming the police car with his vehicle, nearly hitting an officer who was standing outside the police car,” the lawsuit states.
“The alien was eventually arrested and found to have a quarter of a pound of heroin in his possession, as well as a female and a baby in the back seat of his vehicle.”
ICE officers requested approval to place a detainer on the illegal alien, in order to gain custody once he was released from local custody. ICE management denied the request, according to the lawsuit.
A third case involved an illegal alien arrested by local authorities for the rape of a child. ICE officers sought approval to place a detainer on the illegal alien, in order to detain him upon release from local custody. ICE management denied the request, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit says that ICE officers are being forced to choose between following the Feb. 18 memorandum and following federal laws.
“Plaintiffs fear that they will be disciplined or will lose their jobs if they follow the law,” the lawsuit states.
The Texas sheriffs joining the lawsuit include Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West, Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe, Edwards County Sheriff J.W. Guthrie, and McMullen County Sheriff Emmett Shelton. More counties are expected to join the lawsuit in the coming weeks.
The sheriffs allege in the lawsuit that they’re “no longer able to present illegal aliens arrested for criminal activities to ICE for removal and expect them to be removed.”
“The detention costs, crime response costs, crime investigation costs, and related costs experienced by the Plaintiff sheriffs and counties have consequently increased dramatically,” the lawsuit reads.
The federal courthouse in Galveston, Texas, on July 1, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
“Since all this began six to eight months ago … we’ve seen a drastic increase in human smuggling and what we call foot traffic—those that are walking through the ranches,” Sheriff Brad Coe of Kinney County said outside the federal courthouse in Galveston on July 1. Kinney County shares 16 miles of international border with Mexico.
“As far as jail space, it’s putting a huge dent in my budget. At one time I had up to 18 people in the neighboring county jail. And they were charging me $65 a day per person.”
Kinney County has 14 jail spaces available. Currently, Coe has 18 inmates, which includes six housed in a neighboring jail. Ten of the 18 are charged with human smuggling.
Acting ICE Director Tae Johnson said during a May 13 congressional hearing that the agency’s relationship with the state and local community is “vital in us being able to carry out our important mission.”
“Without their support, it’s very difficult for us to be efficient and effective. So when local jurisdictions do not cooperate, whether that’s in terms of not honoring our detainers, or not letting us in there at their facilities, then it puts ICE in a situation where we actually have to go out into the communities to find individuals that in this case would meet our priority,” she said.
The group is suing President Joe Biden, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Acting Director of ICE Tae Johnson, and Acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection Troy Miller.
Representatives from the White House, DHS, and ICE didn’t respond to requests for comment by press time.
In fiscal year 2020, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations removed almost 186,000 individuals, of whom 92 percent had criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, according to ICE’s end-of-year report.
The new guidelines place priority on those who have been convicted of an aggravated felony, not those with pending charges.
ICE detention facility capacity has been decreased from 52,000 to 15,000 illegal aliens.
