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@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Good god. The Swiss people just approved digital IDs. Australia implemented them in Dec. UK last week. In all 3 nations, deep state-allied politicians are behind them. This is a digital ID/censorship emergency. Please share and reply below with info about other nations. https://t.co/YEgVE4ROdX

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The deep state swamp creatures know that digital IDs are unpopular and so they are trying to rush them through before anyone realizes what they are doing. The good news is that the more people learn about them the more alarmed they become. Polling in Switzerland showed 60% backed digital IDs which both houses in parliament had already approved. The final vote was just 50.4%. It almost lost. I hope the Swiss people are carefully scrutinizing the vote count. Same dynamic in UK. Opposition to digital IDs is low and will rise. Digital IDs can and must be killed. https://t.co/PFefaMlWdA

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

@sundarpichai @Google UK opposition vs support of digital IDs is 45 to 42. Opponents should be able to drive that opposition number up significantly. It is absolutely essential that the UK kill two-tier @Keir_Starmer plan for digital IDs before they metastasize across the West.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

From a Swiss source: "Palantir and Mercator sponsored the Yes Campaign. Palantir is a member of Digital Switzerland, alongside other tech companies. Digital Switzerland lobbied for the E-ID/digital ID in Switzerland in this vote.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

"The NGO called Digital Society Switzerland accepted 750'000 CHF from the Mercator foundation in 2023, and since then they are in favour of digital ID. So, Mercator bascially corrupted Digital Society Switzerland." https://t.co/3Skzsjgte0

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Palantir set up its European hub in Switzerland. I'm told this was likely to be in EU market and avoid EU regulation. https://t.co/RQyt9Hruzg

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The totalitarian digital ID scam should bring down every politician who has pushed for it.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Source: "Switzerland currently hosts the 'Clube de Berne,' which is the alliance of 27 intelligence Western agencies on surveillance. Geneva is known as 'spy hub.' Snowden was there. Switzerland is similar to Vienna. First they said fake news and now they say it's about child protection."

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

"It's not a coincidence. It's coordinated through Clube de Brune and WEF. They will use digital ID to censor and cancel people. If you don’t have digital ID you won’t be able to use social media platforms because it will be mandatory for platforms to require digital ID. They’re against anonymity, whistle blowers, people with unpopular opinions. Some people are smart and use VPNs so people don't know who they are; they want to stop this. It’s a fight against anonymity. Look at the Pedro Sanchez speech at WEF where he called for 'an end to anonymity on social media.'"

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Clarification: The British people have not approved digital IDs. PM @Keir_Starmer unilaterally announced they would be required for work. He may have taken an extreme position to make voluntary digital IDs seem reasonable, as other politicians have done https://t.co/ifL7dbFz5n

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

We need digital IDs to halt migration, increase efficiency, & safeguard data, they say. But border control does not require digital IDs and centralizing data is a hacker's dream. The real reason they want digital ID is for billions in fees and the control of our behavior. https://t.co/8jPWnMurnx

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

@Keir_Starmer Frustrating: https://t.co/zDbBS5icAt

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Everybody needs a digital ID, say heads of state and high-tech leaders. They give many reasons: it will stop illegal migration; it will increase efficiency; it will protect privacy; and it will prevent online fraud and data ransoming. But we don’t need digital IDs for any of those things. The US just stopped illegal migration without digital IDs. Our online activities are more efficient than ever and it’s hard to see how they could get more efficient without sacrificing privacy and safety. And centralizing data through digital IDs, which could link social media, vaccine, and banking information, in ways that allow government control, would undermine cybersecurity because having separate log-ins for our financial, health, shopping, banking, credit card, and other data makes sure that if one is hacked they aren’t all hacked. “All your information in one place is a hacker’s dream,” said an Oxford University IT expert. “We already have countless ways we can provide our identity – passports, driving licences, and so on.” Many Americans likely think that digital IDs are only something people in Britain have to worry about. Prime Minister Keir Starmer last week declared that every working person there must have digital ID, or “BritCard”. The U.S. should never allow such a thing. A digital ID that linked our social media, vaccine records, and bank accounts could allow governments to censor and control the population, violating our free speech and privacy rights. Those Americans should think again. We are rapidly moving to the exact same digital ID surveillance and control system as the British. Real IDs contain embedded microchips that bring us one step closer to digital IDs. State governors are pushing it. Gavin Newsom last year allowed drivers licenses onto Apple and Google wallets. This “mobile drivers license,” or mDL, is a digital ID, and one more link in the chain. And it is Americans, including Bill Gates and the controlling owner of Oracle, Larry Ellison, who are financing the digital ID push. “ The NHS [National Health Service] in the UK has an incredible amount of population data, but it’s fragmented,” he told Blair in February of this year. “It’s not easily accessible by these AI models. We have to take all of this data we have in our country and move it into a single, if you will, unified data platform… The secret is to get all of that data in one place.” In September, Ellison made clear that he viewed the power of data centralization in behavior change. “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re constantly watching and recording everything that’s going on.” Ellison’s Oracle is an AI database cloud computing company and he is its best salesman. Ellison, the second richest man in the world, and owner of CBS and CNN, has “donated or pledged at least £257m to the Tony Blair Institute,” reportedthe New Statesman last week. “Ellison donations have helped it grow to more than 900 staff, working in at least 45 countries.” The nightmare scenario for mass, constant spying on citizens is not theoretical. China in 2019 created a social credit system with rewards that include better employment, school admissions, and shorter wait times in hospitals, and punishments including denial of access to public services and social events, denial of train and air tickets, and public shaming. One study found that at least one-third of total “offenses” were not actually against the law and thus expanded “local government authority into moral and social domains beyond the law,” found researchers. UK’s Big Brother Watched recently warned that a digital ID system, even if initially limited, could be a gateway to more invasive government surveillance and intrusion. Why would any liberal and democratic Western government like Britain want such a thing? Money is no doubt a big part of it. Oracle and other high tech companies stand to make billions taking bits of our money here and there for every transaction. Governments like Keir Starmer’s also seem eager to give them billions in contracts to monitor and analyze the population. We found no evidence Starmer would personally benefit financially from digital IDs, however, and as a political leader, he must consider whether his actions are popular, and digital IDs are not. A YouGov poll released yesterday found UK opinion toward digital IDs was 42 percent in favor and 45 percent against. And given the negative reaction to them online, popular opposition will likely rise. Tony Blair Institute’s (TBI) polling may have misled Starmer. TBI’s first question primed people to think about how inconvenienced they’ve felt without a digital ID, a blatantly manipulative form of polling. No honest pollster seeking to give a client a realistic understanding of how the public thought about digital IDs would have started with that question, because they know the importance of framing. The second question was equally biased. “Some are suggesting the government should introduce a new app, allowing instant access to a range of public services.” The framing suggests awareness on the part of the pollster that the public had a negative view of “digital ID,” hence the use of the “app” euphemism. The third question was “Do you think there is digital technology that could help tackle these issues... Processing asylum seekers and managing the UK’s borders.” One reason to think Starmer relied on the TBI’s biased polling is that Starmer pitched the digital ID as necessary to stop mass migration. “I know working people are worried about the level of illegal migration into this country,” said Starmer. “Digital ID… will make it tougher to work illegally in this country, making our borders more secure.” The notion is absurd. Nations have maintained borders for hundreds of years without the need for digital IDs. Given how badly the Starmer government’s digital ID roll out appears to have backfired, why did Starmer and Blair push it? One possibility is that they really believe in the mission of improving people’s lives. That is already how they justify it. Said Starmer, “it will also offer ordinary citizens countless benefits, like being able to prove your identity to access key services swiftly - rather than hunting around for an old utility bill.” But it is hard to believe Starmer and Blair really viewed the difficulty of finding where you left your utility bill as a high-priority social problem. It appears more likely that they are hiding their reasons and that the real motivation is the same as the Chinese government: to control the population. Gates last year released a Netflix documentary calling for sweeping AI-powered censorship of people he disagrees with on vaccines and other issues. The Starmer government’s digital IDs should be a wake-up call to all of us. For years, various people have been raising concerns about digital IDs but free speech and privacy advocates have clearly not done enough to stop them. That needs to change. The good news is that the backlash to the digital IDs appears strong and growing. And anyone can see that, when they spoke, Blair was taking instructions from Ellison.  “You can pipe this data from these three thousand separate data sources into a single unified database,” said Ellison, “and that’s what we need to do.” The episode should wake us Americans up to the continuing threat of total surveillance and censorship. Powerful American high-tech elites see dollar signs in controlling our data — and our behavior. As such, this episode has motivated my colleagues and me to do more on this issue, including making grants to people doing investigative reporting, research, documentary filmmaking, policy development and policy advocacy on digital IDs. Please email info@civilizationworks.org to get involved, and consider making a tax-deductible donation. And if you’re not already a subscriber, please subscribe now to support our award-winning investigative journalism, which is essential to revealing the truth about censorship and digital IDs. https://t.co/CKvmxLHJf5

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

🚨TWITTER FILES – FRANCE At this moment, the Trump administration is negotiating with the EU over final obstacles to a trade deal, one of which is European censorship of US social media platforms. Many analysts believe the massive size of the EU will lead US social media firms to impose European censorship, including on Americans. Last year, the EU’s then-top digital censor, Thierry Breton, threatened action against Elon Musk after he announced a conversation on X with Donald Trump. Now, new TWITTER FILES show a coordinated effort by France’s President Emmanuel Macron, legislators, and state-affiliated NGOs working together to force the world’s most influential social media platform to censor users for legal speech and influence Twitter’s worldwide “content moderation” for narrative control. What’s more, TWITTER FILES - FRANCE reveals the birth of the censorship-by-NGO proxy strategy at the heart of the Censorship Industrial Complex: — President Macron personally reached out to then-CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey; — The timing of Macron’s action strongly suggests coordination with NGOs on a pressure campaign to win more censorship and demand sensitive user data from Twitter; — The pattern of events indicates potentially illegal activity by various actors. The TWITTER FILES FRANCE investigation was led by @McmahonPascal and @battleforeurope, and edited by @galexybrane and @shellenberger. We are releasing the Files here on X and simultaneously publishing a comprehensive report by Clerótte and Fazi on France’s invention of the Censorship Industrial Complex.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

2. “President Macron wants to text Jack” On October 14, 2020, Twitter’s Public Policy Director for France and Russia wrote, “President Macron's team has been asking me (again!) Jack's number because the President wants to text him some supporting words re our new policies and functionalities on Election integrity.” There was one issue, though – Dorsey did not give out his contact information, even to heads of state. “I have already advised that he could send him a DM. I'll push back again, but wanted to double check with you first that indeed Jack never shares his number,” the policy director wrote. Public requested a response from President Macron and did not hear back.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

3. “Macron only sends texts to people he is close to and works frequently with…” The first reply came from Twitter's Global Vice President of Public Affairs, who copied Vijaya Gadde, one of the platform's chief censors. This Global Vice President of Public Affairs noted, “I know that Macron only sends texts to people he is close to and works frequently with colleagues and senior govt. leaders (like Angela Merkel) over text. [redacted] - could you pls. ask Jack if he would be willing to accept a text from Macron, and we will ask Macron's team only to share Jack's number with Macron? Thanks.” Dorsey’s office replied, “Will circle w Jack. Is there an alternative? FYI: Jack doesn’t have a phone number (I swear) and only immediate team has his contact info to get a hold of him.” “I am really pushing for DM but apparently Macron doesn’t use Twitter by himself and wants to do a personal note. Maybe a telegram or signal.” This was followed by a review of various potential communication channels, including email, Signal, Telegram, and iMessage. But why was Macron so desperate to get in contact with Dorsey?

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

4. CONTEXT: Escalating lawfare and censorship under Macron’s presidency France has long presented itself as the cradle of modern democratic ideals, born of the Revolution of 1789 and enshrined in the motto “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.” In reality, few Western governments have more sway on free speech than France. The French government and its Censorship Industrial Complex have used various methods, including judicial intimidation, to demand censorship from social media platforms. In August last year, French police arrested Pavel Durov, the founder of the social media company Telegram, and held him for four days. France indicted him on a staggering list of charges, including complicity in organized crime, criminal conspiracy, and facilitating terrorism. Durov has alleged that the director of France's foreign intelligence service urged him to suppress conservative voices on Telegram in the wake of Romania’s presidential election rerun, which followed its cancellation.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

5. “This case is largely about painting Twitter as a dangerous actor in the press.” Macron’s request for Dorsey’s number appears to be linked with the simultaneous launch of a lawsuit by four French government-linked NGOs against Twitter. “We were sued back in the spring by four NGOs claiming that we are not doing enough to address hate speech in France (and comparing us unfavorably with Facebook and others),” wrote Karen Colangelo, Associate Director of Litigation, Regulatory, and Competition at Twitter, in an October 19, 2020, email to colleagues. “They seek to have an expert appointed to examine our reporting and enforcement systems.” Colangelo didn’t think the goal of the NGOs was to win the lawsuit, which was without merit. Rather, she said, “This case is largely about painting Twitter as a dangerous actor in the press.” The lawsuit was filed against Twitter by the French NGOs SOS Racisme, SOS Homophobie, the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF), and J’accuse, claiming that Twitter failed to remove hate speech in a timely manner. These NGOs appear to be backed by the French government and the EU. SOS Racisme is a partner in an EU program, and UEJF is a member of the European Union of Jewish students, which receives support from the EU. SOS Homophobie receives funding from the French government, and is affiliated with the EU through its international LGBTQ youth program. The NGOs did not respond to our request for comment.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

6. “They are concerned that we let users Tweet anonymously” Following a mediation session with the NGOs on November 7, 2020, Colangelo updated her colleagues: “The NGOs articulated their concerns, which, broadly speaking, are (1) they feel we are not actioning hate speech quickly enough (and, in their view, sometimes not at all), (2) they want additional transparency into how we handle hate speech reports and proactively monitor for hate speech content, and (3) they are concerned that we let users Tweet anonymously — they believe this allows perpetrators of hate speech to evade detection/punishment.” After a third mediation session, Colangelo noted, “We had our third session today and actually made some minor progress. They asked us specifically about five particular accounts that they believe should be suspended. We are going to re-review those accounts and see whether there is a basis to suspend.” Twitter appeared ready to cooperate with French censors.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

7. “I am not surprised that they are trying now to go back to court and make some public statement…” Twitter executives knew the timing of the NGOs’ lawsuit was not coincidental. “From a public policy standpoint,” wrote Audrey Herblin-Stoop, Twitter’s Public Policy Director for France and Russia, to her colleagues, “as you all may remember, their announcement of the lawsuit was made right before the final reading of the Avia bill and was aimed to support the vote of the bill.” The Avia bill was the new French censorship law, ostensibly intended to “combat online hate speech” and censor illegal content. “So,” she added, “I am not surprised that they are trying now to go back to court and make some public statement just ahead of the comeback of the hate speech regulation in the coming weeks.” The supposedly “nongovernmental” organizations’ lawsuit thus appears to have not been a spontaneous response to online abuse but part of a broader, coordinated effort by the French government, in which state-funded and politically connected NGOs acted in concert with government actors, including President Macron himself, to pressure social media companies to censor, and strengthen the hand of the French state in censoring its political opponents.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

8. CONTEXT: France invented the Censorship Industrial Complex 53 years ago From royal censors to revolutionary tribunals, Napoleonic decrees to Vichy oppression, France’s history has long been defined by the tug-of-war between censorship and free speech. France’s 1972 Pleven Law was a direct response to mounting political tensions and disputes over mass migration. Ostensibly aimed at combating racism by criminalizing incitement to hatred, defamation, or insults based on race, ethnicity, or religion, the law empowered two state-accredited, partially state-funded NGOs to act as “private prosecutors” with the power to initiate criminal indictments as third parties. This created a potent weapon: NGOs, often ideologically driven and well-resourced, could launch costly, reputation-destroying lawsuits against critics or dissenting voices, imposing in effect a system at the root of the DSA and its “trusted third parties” tasked with censoring the internet. The Pleven Law opened Pandora’s box. The 1980s witnessed an explosion of NGOs frequently acting as proxies for political parties or interest groups. These groups relentlessly lobbied for accreditation and expanded powers to initiate indictments in new domains, such as sexual orientation, turning lawfare into a core political strategy. Over time, the scope of speech that could be penalized or censored expanded dramatically. Starting in the early 2010s, these groups initiated a string of legal actions against Twitter over allegedly hateful content, targeting antisemitic hashtags, Holocaust denial, or homophobic abuse. By 2012, France was already the global leader in censorship requests to Twitter, demanding “pre-bunking” measures.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

9. Macron Leads Censorship Effort The year 2016 marked an inflection point in the state’s crackdown on online speech. Events like Brexit, Trump’s victory, the Arab Spring, and France’s Yellow Vest movement, organized via social media, convinced elites that “information disorders” represented an existential threat to their power. A consensus thus emerged: digital platforms needed to be regulated to curb the rise of populism. This led Macron to launch a legislative onslaught. Under Macron’s presidency, France: — mandated that platforms implement "misinformation detection”; — gave platforms a 24-hour window to remove “hateful” content, and required platforms to remove “deepfakes”; — launched VIGINUM, a counter-disinformation agency created in July 2021, which likely played a role in the contentious cancellation of the first round of Romania’s 2024 presidential election. This pattern of activity suggests a concerted effort by Macron and his allies to police global speech and elections.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

10. “—we were planning to confidentially disclose some information sought by the NGOs to them in exchange for them dropping the suit” The NGOs would not settle, despite Twitter’s efforts to cooperate. And so Twitter caved, offering to censor its platform — for all users — in exchange for an end to the lawfare. “An update on the French hate speech matter: back in January we thought we were nearing a settlement,” wrote Twitter’s Associate Director of Litigation, Regulatory, and Competition on February 23, 2021,”[W]e were planning to confidentially disclose some information sought by the NGOs to them in exchange for them dropping the suit. After some weeks (and, apparently, in-fighting among the plaintiffs), they came back to us with a counter-offer that was ultimately unacceptable.” What made the counter-offer unacceptable, she explained, is that “they have refused to make any firm commitment to drop their lawsuit.” In other words, even with access to Twitter’s data, the NGOs wanted to continue their suit. Why? The answer appears to be to create public pressure for greater platform censorship. And Twitter execs knew it. “We anticipate negative press on the ‘failure’ of the mediation, and comms has prepared a reactive statement,” the litigation director wrote. “It is likely the NGOs will try to paint us as failing to cooperate/negotiate in good faith and that we don’t care about/intentionally profit from hate speech. While I believe these characterizations are false and made in bad faith, these are the common themes we have heard from the NGOs throughout the mediation.”

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

11. “We should be cognisant of the precedent we are setting here which could trigger more asks of this nature into the future.” Twitter also agreed to send a letter from CEO Jack Dorsey to the NGOs, promising stronger action in the future. The “plaintiffs in the UEJF hate speech case are now suggesting that they would be willing to settle the case so long as we provide them with a letter from Jack indicating that he is aware of the case and that the company is committed to fighting hate speech,” wrote Twitter attorney Karen Colangelo on March 9, 2021. “If we can really get the case to go away by just providing this letter, litigation recommends we provide it.” “I think Jack will be supportive,” responded Twitter Acting General Counsel, Sean Edgett, a few hours later. Twitter’s head of public policy responded, “We're supportive of this move and will work with our comms colleagues on the inevitable press cycle that will follow if this letter is leaked. We should also be cognisant of the precedent we are setting here which could trigger more asks of this nature into the future.”

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

12. “Notably, the lawsuit was very strategically timed…” On March 10, 2021, Colangelo wrote up a brief for Edgett to share with Dorsey on why they wanted the letter. “The lawsuit is one part of a larger effort in France to paint Twitter as a bad actor. Notably, the lawsuit was very strategically timed to begin ‘testing’ of our response rate the day after we announced that our response times would be impacted by COVID-19, many of the ‘hateful’ Tweets included in the 88% we did not remove are not actually illegal under French law or actionable under our TOS, and the suit was publicly announced to coincide with the introduction of the Avia hate speech bill which, according to its author, was motivated by Twitter’s refusal to remove hate speech.” Then, on March 23, Colangelo told her colleagues that the NGOs had “changed their minds” about the letter from Jack Dorsey and “decided that it was insufficient.” The good news, she said, was that “the mediators (who have the ear of the judge) are frustrated with the NGOs and believe they acted in bad faith.” On July 6, 2021, Twitter’s French attorney announced that the Court had dismissed NGOs claims based on lack of standing but ordered Twitter to give the NGOs “any documents relating to the resources dedicated to fighting hate speech… the number, location, nationality and language of the persons assigned to moderation…the number of reports from users of the French platform of its services, concerning apology for crimes against humanity and incitement to racial hatred” and related information. On August 16, 2021, a Twitter executive in Ireland emailed Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker, former General Counsel of the FBI, to say that “the French Constitutional Court handed down its decision on Friday on the new French law that places requirements on Twitter to take a number of significant steps in respect to how we treat content moderation in France. The bill will be enacted by the President in the next few days and enforceable immediately.”

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

13. Macron Attempts to Circumvent French Law The apparent coordination between the NGOs, the hate speech bill, and Macron’s attempt to contact Dorsey could easily be seen as attempts to circumvent the law. Under French law, the state is barred from imposing preemptive censorship — a practice referred to internally at Twitter as “proactive monitoring.” The government has attempted to bypass the law by using state-funded NGOs as enforcers, acting public pressure and strategic litigation to coerce platforms into moderation practices that exceed their legal obligations. Under Macron, the state is determined to undermine the international “country-of-origin” standard, which holds that digital content must comply with the laws of the country where it is produced, not where it is consumed.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

14. Miss France's attorney demands censorship: "What would have happened if Twitter was around in 1942?  Would they have allowed Hitler to speak?" The NGOs cited displeasure with how Twitter was handling alleged online harassment of Miss France. "Despite Plaintiffs' initial insistence that they were done with the mediation, for the first time, Plaintiffs have expressed that they may be willing to drop their case if we give them some information about our moderation practices." On February 23, 2021, Twitter attorney Colangelo wrote to her colleagues, “Note that there was a hearing today on the request from Miss France, April Benayoum, for us to disclose information about various accounts that were allegedly making anti-semitic comments about her.” Benayoum had sued Twitter for failing to act quickly.  “Plaintiffs have expressed they may be willing to drop their case if we give them some information about our moderation practices,” wrote Colangelo to her colleagues in January. But, as with the NGOs, her main goal appeared to be negative publicity — and the acquisition of internal Twitter Data. “Ms. Benayoum's attorney made a number of emotional arguments that might get press attention,” wrote Colangelo, “including talking about the Holocaust, WWII, Adolf Hitler, etc. -- one question he posed to the court is ‘What would have happened if Twitter was around in 1942?  Would they have allowed Hitler to speak?’” Benayoum’s lawsuit demanded extensive internal data from Twitter, including dates and times of Tweet and account removal, and details about Twitter’s process for removing tweets proactively. While the court on April 13, 2021, dismissed most of her claims and acknowledged that Twitter France had no operational control over moderation, which was managed by Twitter International in Ireland, they still ordered disclosures of data relating to reports made to French authorities. The case concluded in a confidential settlement, demonstrating once again how legal action can pressure platforms into concessions. On June 7, 2022, Twitter settled with Miss France.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

15. “Twitter's moderation… can undermine public order and the proper functioning of our society.” French courts in 2022 prosecuted then-Twitter France CEO, Damien Viel for alleged “non compliance with a judicial injunction” and “complicity to libel.” The issue? A unit of the Ministry of Interior posted a picture of a high-ranking civil servant inspecting policemen tasked with enforcing Covid lockdowns, and replies from Twitter users compared the French Police to those of Philippe Petain’s Nazi-collaborationist regime. Twitter users dubbed the high-ranking civil servant a “Nazi,” and called for “hanging him at the Liberation.” The litigation appears to have been part of the pressure campaign to expand Twitter’s transparency and hate speech obligations in France. The Versailles prosecutor launched an investigation for libel of a public official and delivered an injunction to Twitter for user ID information. But Twitter France’s CEO did not have access to any user data, which were stored by Twitter International Corporation in Ireland. After the Versailles prosecutor decided Twitter had not responded quickly enough, he charged Viel on the grounds of  “the total failure of Twitter's moderation, which has become a completely asocial network that can undermine public order and the proper functioning of our society.”

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

16. “How likely do you think a raid is on the Twitter France office?” It was a show trial that failed to persuade the judge. “Damien was just perfect,” wrote Twitter’s French attorney in a July 9, 2021 email to Twitter executives about the hearing. “The police officer was very courteous and hardly convinced by the usefulness of his mission and by the instructions he received.” Still, Twitter’s French lawyer warned, “the prosecutor could increase the pressure on Twitter France by ordering a raid on the company's Paris premises. I don't know what he could find there. However, the risk does exist and we would need to discuss it.” “How likely do you think a raid is on the Twitter France office?” asked the Associate Director of Litigation, Regulatory, and Competition. “It is quite impossible to assess how important the risk of a raid is,” the lawyer answered. I can only say that it does exist and the Prosecutor has such power within the frame of a criminal investigation.” The case ended with Viel and Twitter France being cleared of all charges in March 2022.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

17. France is now going after Elon Musk’s X In July 2025, a Paris prosecutor launched a criminal investigation into Elon Musk’s X and its management for alleged interference with an IT system, fraudulent data extraction, and foreign interference. These are significant cybercrime offenses that carry penalties under the criminal code, including up to ten years in prison and a fine of €300,000. Why is France prosecuting X? The answer appears to be that it wants to force X into compliance with French government-approved narratives. The courts have also targeted Marine Le Pen, France’s leading opposition figure. A court found her guilty of embezzling EU funds — for political campaigning purposes — and sentenced her to four years in prison. The punishment includes a five-year ban on holding public office. The court ordered this penalty to take place before Le Pen can appeal, which prevents her from competing in the presidential race, in which she is the frontrunner. For identical charges, the current Prime Minister was acquitted.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

18. The US Must Resist Global Censorship The TWITTER FILES - FRANCE reveals a previously unknown aspect of the rise of the Censorship Industrial Complex, which is that nation’s role in pioneering government censorship-by-NGO proxy, which was at the heart of the US Department of Homeland Security’s censorship efforts. The active involvement of Macron underscores the high importance the government put on influencing social media platforms to create, control, and censor narratives. And Macron’s apparent coordination with NGOs and members of Parliament on a Twitter pressure campaign reveals a high level of thought, calculation, and strategy, similar to the “influence operations” and censorship advocacy that Intelligence Community-adjacent NGOs carried out in the US and other nations. The Trump administration has said it is committed to free speech diplomacy and may be pursuing that with Europe. The TWITTER FILES - FRANCE dramatically illustrates the importance of protecting the First Amendment, and why US companies should operate under it, and not a lower standard of free speech.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

19. Read the full investigation by @McmahonPascal and @battleforeurope here: https://www.civilizationworks.org/cw-master-blog/france-invented-the-censorship-industrial-complex-the-twitter-files-france-case-studies /END

How France Invented the Censorship Industrial Complex — Civilization Works civilizationworks.org

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

There's no shortage of police in L.A., said @GavinNewsom a few hours ago. In fact, L.A. has far fewer police per capita than other big cities. And now, the protesters have overrun the police and blocked the highway. Video: @AnthonyCabassa_ https://t.co/1L3kP2qa3v

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

It's "inflammatory" to enforce migration laws, say Democrats. But it's not. It's essential for protecting the vulnerable. The reason the Left opposes law enforcement is that they take pleasure at the destruction of civilization, at least so long as it only hurts other people. https://t.co/tSffm8yjGX

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The idea that the Biden administration viewed millions of Americans as a terrorist threat sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it’s not. Newly declassified documents show that in December 2021, the FBI and DHS labeled opponents of Covid mandates "Domestic Violent Extremists." https://t.co/9GyQdIoptn

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

NEW: Biden Administration Labeled Opponents Of Covid Mandates As “Domestic Violent Extremists,” Newly Released Documents Show The designation infringed on the First Amendment and opened the door to investigating Americans for vaccine mandate skepticism. by @shellenberger @C__Herridge and @galexybrane Former President Joe Biden announces Covid vaccine mandates on September 9, 2021, in Washington, DC. Three months later (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images) The Biden Administration labeled Americans who opposed the COVID-19 vaccination and mask mandates as “Domestic Violent Extremists,” or DVEs, according to newly declassified intelligence records obtained by Public and Catherine Herridge Reports. The designation created an “articulable purpose” for FBI or other government agents to open an “assessment” of individuals, which is often the first step toward a formal investigation, said a former FBI agent. The report, which the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has declassified, claims that “anti government or anti authority violent extremists,” specifically militias, “characterize COVID-19 vaccination and mask mandates as evidence of government overreach.” A sweeping range of COVID narratives, the report states, “have resonated” with DVEs “motivated by QAnon.” The FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) coauthored the December 13, 2021 intelligence product whose title reads, “DVEs and Foreign Analogues May React Violently to COVID-19 Mitigation Mandates.” The report cites criticism of mandates as “prominent narratives” related to violent extremism. These narratives “include the belief that COVID-19 vaccines are unsafe, especially for children, are part of a government or global conspiracy to deprive individuals of their civil liberties and livelihoods, or are designed to start a new social or political order.“ “It’s a way they could go to social media companies and say, ‘You don’t want to propagate domestic terrorism, so you should take down this content,’” said former FBI agent Steve Friend.... Please subscribe now to support Public's defense of free speech and to read the rest of the article! Complete document release below. https://t.co/nsDMnAvCP1

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

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@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Document 2 (of 2)

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Since WWII, Germany's liberal democracy has held. Now, it's on the brink. The government censors, spies on, and persecutes critics. And, today, it laid the groundwork to ban the nation's most popular political party, the AfD. My exclusive interview with one of its leaders. https://t.co/K6zxu4j2YQ

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

After the fall of the Third Reich, the architects of the new German republic wrote a constitution, known as the “Basic Law,” designed to prevent a return to tyranny. It protects free speech, free assembly, and freedom of the press. It limits the powers of elected leaders and requires an independent judiciary. And the system worked. Even during moments of crisis — reunification, terrorism, economic turmoil — Germany’s institutions, for the most part, held. Today, Germany’s liberal democracy is in grave danger. The government is seriously considering banning the most popular political party in the country, the Alternative for Germany, or AfD. It came in second in national elections in February and now leads in the polls. It has surged by campaigning against mass migration, energy shortages, and the erosion of national sovereignty. Instead of trying to defeat the party through open debate and fair elections, Germany’s political establishment has turned to the courts, the intelligence services, and the language of national security. Today, the government’s domestic spy agency has labeled the AfD a “confirmed extremist organization,” a designation that opens the door to round-the-clock surveillance, undercover infiltration, and a ban. “It’s clear to me that a ban has to come," said a member of the governing Social Democratic Party (SPD). All of this comes at a time when state prosecutors are using new speech laws to target AfD candidates and supporters, fining them, harassing them, and in some cases trying to disqualify them from running for office. Behind closed doors, parliament leaders have refused to grant the AfD basic accommodations, including access to meeting space. What began as democratic competition is turning into something else.... Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning journalism, watch the full video, and read the whole article! https://t.co/r2YJLZ2w8K

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

👏 https://t.co/QCkfCgU4RM

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

This is one of the best NPOV explanations I've seen of the Trump tariffs and how they fit into his strategy to create a new global security and economic order, whether you agree with it or not. @JoeriSchasfoort https://t.co/zMRAR4Xxsg

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

We should not be surprised that one of the best explainers out there came from a Dutch YouTuber rather than from an Ivy League professor or mainstream news media outlet in the US, but it still reflects badly on America's sense-making institutions.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

By pulling back on tariffs, Trump has given up on his nationalist strategy, some say. On the contrary: he's just getting started. And, under the new nationalist paradigm, the market, including the stock market, must serve the interests of the whole nation, not just investors. https://t.co/LGH3yIprdc

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The stock market surged today in response to President Donald Trump’s decision to pause tariffs on all nations except China for the next 90 days. Many are saying that Trump has abandoned his nationalist protectionist agenda. But the Trump administration left the flat 10% global tariff in place, raised tariffs on Chinese imports to 125%, kept 25% tariffs on steel, aluminum, and autos from Canada and Mexico, and is moving forward with tariffs on copper, lumber, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals. Moreover, there remains significant uncertainty about future trade relations between the US and other nations, which may not end in 90 days. As such, we remain in the messy transition to a new global economic and security order, and there will thus likely continue to be a considerable amount of volatility and uncertainty in the months and perhaps years ahead. Critics of Trump’s tariffs say that his administration crashed the stock market and then reversed course, showing he didn’t know what he was doing. They say that Trump and his team are just making it up as they go along. And to some extent, that is true. But all of life is, to some extent, making things up as we go along. And Trump’s Chair of his Council of Economic Advisors, Stephen Miran, made clear last November, in a 41-page white paper, that one of the main goals of Trump’s tariffs was to gain leverage going into negotiations. And that appears to be precisely what they have done. What is being negotiated is not just a new global trading system but also a new security relationship between the US and its allies in Europe and Japan. The arrangement put in place after World War II where the United States subsidizes the security of its allies in Europe and Asia, and lets them impose higher tariffs on US manufacturers than we impose on their manufacturers, is coming to an end, because it has undermined America’s national security, hurt America’s working class, and undermined the social solidarity required for all nations, particularly the world’s most important superpower, to exist. The current system undermines America’s national security because we are dependent upon the nation, China, against which we are most likely to go to war. America is dependent upon China for our drones and dependent upon Taiwan, which China could invade at any time, for our microchips. Writes Miran, “the paradox of being a reserve currency is that it leads to permanent twin deficits which in turn lead over time to an unsustainable accumulation of public and foreign debt that eventually undermines the safety and reserve currency status of such a large debtor economy.” Trump’s team is, according to Miran, Trump, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, as well as the people Public has interviewed over the last week, seeking a new global security and economic arrangement. Under the new arrangement, the US will, first and foremost, significantly re-industrialize. The priority will be to re-industrialize those areas essential to national security. This could take many forms. Existing manufacturers may expand production, and foreign investors and manufacturers may create factories in the US like Japanese automakers did in the South after President Ronald Reagan imposed import quotas. Over the last few days, we saw many Wall Street investors, both small and large, urge Trump to drop the tariffs. We also saw businesses express concern over higher prices of imported goods. This is understandable. Many people lost a lot of money, and were worried about losing customers or decreasing sales with higher prices. However, we must not let either the stock market or the prospect of more expensive imports decide America's future. All markets, including the stock market, must serve the people, not the other way around. The nation trumps the market.... Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning journalism, read the rest of the article, and watch the full video! https://t.co/Ovr1U807xG

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Democrats fiercely resisted Trump last night, but what they stand for is increasingly unclear. A big part of the reason is that their agenda has become wildly unpopular. But the underlying problem is that their narcissism has severely impaired their ability to grok reality. https://t.co/uGSA4rvqj7

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Democrats appeared to fiercely resist President Donald Trump’s agenda during his address last night to Congress. They dressed in pink to symbolize “power and protest.” They held up signs that said “False,” “No King,” and “Musk Steals.” And at least one was evicted by security guards for refusing to sit down and stay quiet. But viewers of the spectacle left the evening without any clear idea of what Democrats were defending. Some said the pink outfits symbolized the defense of women, but why then had Senate Democrats voted unanimously just one day earlier to allow boys and men to compete in girls’ and women’s sports? The accusation of Trump as King, or dictator, or Hitler, etc, was also hard to take seriously, given that he won the popular vote three months ago and has a popularity rating 15 points higher than that of Democrats. And the Democrats’ heckling was risible given their condemnation just a few years ago of Republican members of Congress who had done the same to Democratic presidents. Nonetheless, Democrats likely scored points with the public. Some Democrats held up signs defending Medicaid, which is popular with voters, including swing voters and Republicans, and which some Republicans in Congress wish to cut. And Democrats have tapped into genuine anxieties over the potential impact of Trump’s agenda on women, his alleged authoritarianism, and the role of Musk. But the Democrats’ messaging on even their core issues was confusing and all over the place. The problem isn’t simply that they can’t decide whether to frame Trump as a liar, authoritarian, or cruel. It’s that they have lodged those accusations against him for eight years, voters still elected him president, and he hasn’t done anything to change their minds since taking office. The flip side of the same problem is that Democrats haven’t presented a positive agenda of their own that might define them as a better alternative to Trump and the Republicans. Most of the protests by Democrats, including their eviction from the speech last night, signified the lack of a core vision, values, and agenda for America. Little surprise then that 76% of viewers of Trump’s speech told CBS News’s pollsters that they approved of what they heard. “We’re becoming the metaphorical car alarms that nobody pays attention to,” wrote US Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania on X a few hours ago. In fact, the situation for Democrats is even worse than that. Not so long ago they said climate catastrophe was inevitable if they didn’t get hundreds of billions in taxpayer money to subsidize green energy. Now, Democrats are quiet about the large cuts to green energy subsidies and the abandonment of ESG policies by the world’s largest energy companies. Every Senate Democrat voted to allow boys and men to compete in girls’ and women’s sports, and yet no member of Congress last night held up signs saying “Transwomen Are Women”; many others had long since removed their pronouns from the X bios. And where during Trump’s first term in office, progressive leaders, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, histrionically accused the president of grave human rights violations for his immigration policy, Democrats did not denounce the decline in border crossings last month to their lowest level in 25 years, thanks to Trump’s crackdown. The Democrats’ symbolically thin protests on some issues and their silence on others leave the impression that the party has few core convictions and is driven by vacuous emotionalism. If green energy investments are necessary to prevent the apocalypse, why didn’t a single Democrat wave a sign about climate change? If Trump’s insistence that there are only two sexes and that nobody is born into the wrong body is wrong, then why aren’t Democrats accusing him of encouraging trans suicides or even trans genocide? And if Trump is the white supremacist and racist Democrats have long said he is, why aren’t they defending the DEI programs Trump has eliminated? The obvious answer to all of these questions is that the Democrats’ positions on transgenderism, climate change, and DEI are wildly unpopular and only becoming more so as new evidence emerges. Nearly 80% of respondents to a New York Times poll last month said they supported a ban on males in female sports. The Department of Justice is investigating the misuse of a $27 billion climate program managed by the Environmental Protection Agency. “It appears the billions didn’t revitalize anything,” noted the Free Press, “except the coffers of a range of environmental nonprofits associated with former Obama and Biden administration officials.” And in the weeks since Trump signed executive orders against DEI, journalists have reported that the Department of Education, Department of Justice, and Department of Defense had allocated hundreds of millions for divisive, racially segregationist DEI trainings and initiatives. But that raises the question of why Democrats aren’t putting forward an original agenda. The two most high-profile efforts to propose an alternative agenda for Democrats came from center-left Substacker Matthew Yglesias and center-left think tank Third Way. But both of them simply recommended abandoning unpopular Democrat Party agenda items, including transgenderism, climate extremism, and DEI, to make Democrats appear more like Republicans. Neither offered anything new for Democrats to embrace other than a weak imitation of positions already embraced by Trump. The result is a kind of Democrat nihilism, where the party seems to stand for nothing and to be against Trump and Republicans for incoherent and emotional reasons. Why is that? Why have Democrats failed to create a coherent vision, agenda, and message? If you're not already a subscriber, please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning journalism, read the rest of the story, and watch the rest of the video! https://t.co/dWLNhhAAKD

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

“Democrats had their worst night of their six torrid weeks since Mr Trump entered office in January, somehow managing to snatch defeat from the jaws of irrelevance…. Whatever image the Democrats had hoped to project from the night, it was unlikely to be a senior citizen waving around his walking stick and yelling.”

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

@ZelenskyyUa .@SecRubio confirms here that @ZelenskyyUa didn’t have to come to the US. He wanted to come. He was spoiling for a fight. He thought he would argue with Trump and Vance, the media and Europeans would applaud him, and Trump and Vance would bow down to him. Nutty arrogance.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The US government didn’t censor anyone, said the media. But it did. Not only that, it worked with other nations to do so. Now, the US government has not only repudiated censorship, it’s put free speech at the center of its foreign policy. Thank you and bravo @SecRubio !

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The Brazilian government launched a criminal investigation of me for publishing the legal and accurate Twitter Files - Brazil. The US encouraged and financed censorship in Brazil. But now, the US is pushing free speech rather than censorship.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The FBI, George Soros, and Brazil's government say they defend free speech and democracy. But a new, months-long investigation finds that they have been secretly working together to oversee a mass censorship effort that is in direct violation of the US & Brazilian Constitutions. https://t.co/jET5tYxwRg

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

VP @JDVance deserves enormous credit for denouncing the EU’s totalitarian censorship monster known as the “Digital Services Act.” Europe wants to censor the entire world. Until now, it had the support of the US government.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

@JDVance I have fought alongside very brave Brazilian people for free speech. Now, finally, the US government has switched from supporting censorship to supporting free speech.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Tomorrow, I fly to São Paulo to join other lovers of free speech to protest censorship, including the X ban. There's a chance I'll be arrested. It's worth the risk. The greatest threat to our freedom doesn't come from totalitarians. It comes from our fear of them. https://t.co/mJoHsUUD8C

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

@JDVance Censorship is never the solution to wrong information and hatred. Only free speech is.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

We must censor the Internet to counter the spread of misinformation, say global leaders. But only free speech, not censorship, can counter misinformation. The real reason they want mass online censorship is so they won't keep getting called out for spreading disinformation. https://t.co/PMtg1iWZmI

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Healthy relationships depend on mutual respect. Ukraine and Europe don't respect us; they look down on us. America never had any obligation to protect Ukraine. And now we're asking why we should continue to spend our money, and put our lives on the line, to protect Europe. https://t.co/XgdfDogPfO

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

https://t.co/901moqdCzX

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The elites who want to continue an endless war in Ukraine benefit directly from it and few of them care at all about the American people. https://t.co/vcldGb02x0

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Trump is abandoning Ukraine and threatening global peace, say his critics. He's not. He's negotiating an end to the war, & reducing the US role in Europe, which voters want. Elites are enraged because Trump's new, post-globalist order takes from them the power they badly abused. https://t.co/jYjYe8u467

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Anyone who has been to Europe knows Europeans look down on us. Many will admit it's true. They were grateful after WWII. Since then, they've become entitled & narcissistic. They live in a bubble. They don't care about us. No relationship without mutual respect can last.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

.@ZelenskyyUa has learned absolutely nothing. Just like Europe's leaders. https://t.co/TMghZA4etB

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Europeans are only now starting to understand what's happening. https://t.co/fxDuFVdiSf

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The UK media is waking up first. Eventually, the French will. Whatever the case, the relationship is ending. https://t.co/BRwLFkcNpZ

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

"The Zelenskyy team made what turned out to be several miscalculations." Understatement of the decade. https://t.co/JgnIhSsavO

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The Ukraine news media, like Zelenskyy, is delusional. Europeans are apparently incapable of reading a poll. Europeans really, really do not care at all about Americans.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

https://t.co/S4OH9RgN4D

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

They’re finally starting to get it https://t.co/2x0nImsg2m

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Zelensky says he wants the war to end, but he’s not acting like it. Friday he dismissed the US ceasefire as unworkable. Saturday he had European leaders affirm his position. And now he says the end of the war is “very, very far away.” Feels like we’re being played. https://t.co/ZfJu7v9Edo

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

If Zelensky’s strategy is to alienate the American people, and the president they just elected, one day before he addresses Congress, it’s working. https://t.co/oHOsO1uJhQ

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Even The Guardian now gets it: “On Friday, in the Oval Office, Zelenskyy contested Trump’s stance. The Ukrainian president stated flatly: “We will never accept just [a] ceasefire. It will not work without security guarantees.” Zelenskyy maintained that strong security guarantees had to come from the US, not just Europe. A European military force, he said, would not work unless the US provided a significant backstop: ‘They need USA.’ “In short, Zelenskyy insisted he would not agree to a ceasefire, because Russia would not honor it, unless the US provided precisely what Trump had seemingly already ruled out.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

https://t.co/5Pwofc4xTp

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Universities used to be sanctuaries for free thought. Today, they promote intolerance and censorship. But now there’s an alternative: University of Austin, which was founded to teach all sides of every issue. I’m proud to be its CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship and Free Speech!

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

I thought the LA fires would wake California up. I was wrong. *Half* of LA fires are started by ~50k meth/fentanyl addicts/mentally ill homeless. LA has half the firefighters it needs. There's not enough hydrant water. And Gavin Newsom is focused like a laser on his podcast.

@GavinNewsom - Gavin Newsom

I'm launching a NEW PODCAST. We need to change the conversation. I'm talking directly with people I disagree with, people I look up to, and you -- the listeners. Egg prices? Tariffs? DOGE? We're tackling all your big questions.  This is Gavin Newsom. Subscribe now ➡️ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-is-gavin-newsom/id1798358255

Video Transcript AI Summary

I'm launching a new podcast to change the conversation. It's going to be anything but your ordinary politician podcast. I will be speaking directly with people that I disagree with as well as people I look up to. More importantly, I'll be talking directly with you, the listener. Real conversations, no political mumbo jumbo. We'll tackle topics like the rising cost of eggs, the real impact of tariffs, the power of executive orders, and the inside scoop on Doge. There's an onslaught of information, so let's go straight to the sources. In the first few weeks, we're sitting down with some of the biggest leaders and architects in the mega movement, like Gavin Newsom.

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Speaker 0: We need to change the conversation, and that's why I'm launching a new podcast. And this is gonna be anything but the ordinary politician podcast. I'm gonna be talking to people directly that I disagree with as well as people I look up to. But more important than anything else, I'll be talking directly with you, the listener. Real conversations. What's going on with the cost of eggs? What are the impacts, real impacts to you around tariffs? What power does an executive order really have? And what's really going on inside of Doge? Look. There's an onslaught of information that we take in, so let's take it to the sources without the typical political mumbo jumbo. In the first few weeks, we're gonna be sitting down with some of the biggest leaders and architects in the mega movement. This is Gavin Newsom.

This is Gavin Newsom Listen to iHeartPodcasts's This is Gavin Newsom podcast on Apple Podcasts. podcasts.apple.com

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Everyone talks about the coming disastrous fires and "Big One" earthquake, so you'd think Gavin Newsom would be taking urgent action. He's not. Instead, he's attacking Trump and demanding $40 billion to pay for the LA fires that his leadership failures created. https://t.co/nAUPn6MeDZ

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Fire fighters and many others warned Gavin and LA's mayor that catastrophic fires were coming. In response, they cut funding for fire prevention and fire fighters. Why? Because they were focused on promoting DEI, transgenderism, and climate apocalypse https://t.co/pJ3X3f68OQ

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Gavin and the media promote the Big Lie that nothing could have been done to prevent LA's fires. It's all outrageous nonsense. People were raising the alarm for years. Dems defunded firefighting and fire prevention. https://t.co/hNRn1AOqpb

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Nothing could have been done to stop the catastrophic L.A. fires that killed 24, incinerated 12k homes, and cost $250B, say the media. Nonsense, says an LA firefighter. The failure by Newsom & Bass to mobilize firefighters before the fires began led to an avoidable catastrophe. https://t.co/bM7dgulyDn

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

People say, "California Democrats are incompetent." Well, duh. The question is why? The answer is they believe Indigenous genocide and slavery make America evil, and so they defund the things that protect civilization, like police and firefighting. https://t.co/E3dNBE4ONf

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

California is the richest state with the highest taxes and yet it cut funding for firefighting, which led directly to L.A.'s catastrophic fires. Why? Because Newsom & Bass diverted billions from preventing and fighting catastrophic fires to migrants, homeless, and climate. https://t.co/FVckx9qaDU

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The behavior of Zelenskyy is typical of Europe as a whole. Entitled. In denial of reality. Narcissistic. Unconcerned with our need to deal with many massive internal problems. Such juvenile & entitled behavior makes us less not more desirous of helping Ukraine and Europe.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Zelensky says he wants peace but he just rudely dismissed the Trump administration's diplomacy as pointless. That angered Trump and @JDVance and now Zelensky has fled the White House. This should be the wake-up call that global elites & Europe desperately need. https://t.co/DnFw3nQYv3

Video Transcript AI Summary

I need to align myself with everyone to get a deal done. I'm aligned with the United States and the world, and I want to end this. Others have tremendous hatred, which makes it tough to make a deal. I could be tougher than anyone, but that won't get us a deal. We need diplomacy to end the destruction. Some people stood up and talked tough, but Putin still invaded. I'm trying to bring an end to this conflict. You should be thankful for what we are trying to do. You are gambling with World War Three and you are disrespectful to this country. We've given you so much money and equipment. I empowered you to be tough, but you're not acting thankful. If we're out, you'll fight it out, but it won't be pretty.

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Speaker 0: And now I'm talking with my friends in Poland, and they are they are worried that you align yourself too much with Putin. What's your message for them? Speaker 1: Well, if I didn't align myself with both of them, you'd never have a deal. You want me to say, really terrible things about Putin and then say, hi, Vladimir. How are we doing on the deal? That doesn't work that way. I'm not aligned with Putin. I'm not aligned with anybody. I'm aligned with The United States Of America and for the good of the world. I'm aligned with the world, and I wanna get this thing over with. You see the hatred he's got for Putin. That's very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate. He's got tremendous hatred, and I understand that. But I can tell you the other side isn't exactly in love with, you know, him either. So it's not a question of alignment. I have to I'm aligned with the world. I wanna get the thing set. I'm aligned with Europe. I wanna see if we can get this thing done. You want me to be tough? I could be tougher than any human being you've ever seen. I'd be so tough, but you're never gonna get a deal that way. So that's the way it goes. Alright. One more question. Mister President Well, hey. Speaker 2: I I will respond to this. So look. For four years in The United States Of America, we had a president who stood up at press conferences and talked tough about Vladimir Putin, and then Putin invaded Ukraine and destroyed a significant chunk of the country. The path to peace and the path to prosperity is maybe engaging in diplomacy. We tried the pathway of Joe Biden of thumping our chest and pretending that the president of The United States' words mattered more than the president of The United States' actions. What makes America a good country is America engaging in diplomacy. That's what president Trump is doing. Speaker 3: Can I ask you? Speaker 1: Sure. Yeah? Yeah. Speaker 3: Okay. So he occupied our parts big parts of Ukraine, parts of East and Crimea. So he occupied it on 2014. So during a lot of years I'm not speaking about just Biden, but those time was Obama, then president Obama, then president Trump, then president Biden, now president Trump, and god bless. Now president Trump will stop him. But during 2014, nobody stopped him. He just occupied and took. He killed people. You know what the contract Speaker 1: Twenty fifteen. Speaker 3: Twenty '14. Speaker 2: Twenty '14 and Speaker 3: '20 Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1: So he he was not here. Speaker 2: Yeah. But That's exactly right. Speaker 3: Yes. But during 2014 till 2022, you know, the well, the situation the same that people are been dying on the contact line. Nobody stopped him. You know that we had conversations with him, a lot of conversation, my bilateral conversation, And we signed with him, me, like a new president in 2019. I signed with him the deal. I signed with him Macron and Merkel. We signed ceasefire. Seasefire. Speaker 1: All of Speaker 3: them told me that he will never go. We signed him with gas contract. Gas contract. Yes. But after that, he broken the ceasefire. He killed our people, and he didn't exchange prisoners. We signed the exchange of prisoners, but he didn't do it. What kind of diplomacy, JD, you are speaking about? What what do you what do you what do you mean? Speaker 2: I'm talking about the kind of diplomacy that's gonna end the destruction of your country. Yes. Speaker 3: But if Speaker 2: you Mister president mister president, with respect, I think it's disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media. Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the president for trying to bring it into this conflict. Speaker 3: Ever been to Ukraine? Did you say what problems we have? Speaker 2: I have been to come once. I have actually I've actually watched and seen the stories, and I know what happens is you bring people you bring them on a propaganda tour, mister president. Are do you disagree that you've had problems What? Bringing people into your military? Speaker 1: We have problems. Speaker 2: And do you think that it's respectful Speaker 1: Hold on. To come to Speaker 2: the Oval Office of The United States Of America and attack the administration that is trying to trying to prevent the destruction of your country? A lot Speaker 3: of a lot of questions. Let's start from the beginning. Sure. First of all, during the war, everybody has problems. Even you, but you have nice ocean and don't feel now. But you will feel it in the future. Speaker 1: God bless. You don't know that. Speaker 3: God bless. You're not bless. Speaker 1: You will not have war. Don't tell us what we're gonna feel. We're trying to solve a problem. Don't tell us what we're gonna feel. Speaker 3: I'm not telling you Speaker 1: I'm not saying position to dictate that. Remember this. I'm not dictating. In no position to dictate what we're gonna feel. We're gonna feel very good. Speaker 3: Feel influence. Speaker 1: We're gonna feel very good and very strong. Speaker 3: You will feel influence. Speaker 1: You're right now not in a very good position. Allowed your seller to be in a very bad position, and he happens be right about it. Speaker 3: From the very beginning of the war You're Speaker 1: not in a good position. I was You don't have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards. Right now, you don't you're playing cards. You're playing You're cards. You're gambling with the lives of millions of people. You're with World War three. You're gambling with World War three. And what you're doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country. It's back to you far more than a lot of people said they should have. Have you said thank you once in entire meetings? Speaker 2: No. In this entire meeting, you said thank you. Speaker 1: Today. You went Speaker 2: to Pennsylvania and campaigned for the opposition in October. Offer some words of appreciation for The United States Of America and the president who's trying to save your country. Please. You're saying that if you will speak very loudly about the war you Speaker 1: have He's not speaking loudly. He's not speaking loudly. Your country is in big trouble. Speaker 3: Can I Speaker 1: ask Wait minute? No. No. You've done a lot of talking. Your country is in big trouble. I know. Not winning. I know. You're not winning this. Speaker 3: I Speaker 1: You have a damn good chance of coming out okay because of Mister president, Speaker 3: we are staying in our country, staying strong from the very beginning of the war. We've been alone, and we are thankful. I said thanks. Speaker 1: You haven't been alone. Speaker 3: You haven't been alone. This cabinet Speaker 1: We gave you through this stupid president three hundred and fifty billion dollars. You voted for your equipment. You voted but they had to use our military One of my questions. If you didn't have our military equipment You invited me to have our military equipment, this war would have been over in two weeks. In three days. Speaker 3: I heard it from Putin. In three days. This is something less. In two weeks. Of course. Yes. Speaker 1: It's gonna be a very hard thing to do business like this. Speaker 2: I tell you. To say thank you. Speaker 3: I said a lot of Speaker 2: times here to American people. Except that there are disagreements, and let's go litigate those disagreements rather than trying to fight it out in the American media when you're wrong. We know that you're wrong. Speaker 1: But you see, I think it's good for the American people to see what's going on. I understand. I think it's very important. That's why I kept this going so long. You have to be thankful. You don't have the cards. You're buried there. You you people are dying. You're running low on soldiers. Don't listen. You're running low on soldiers. It would be a damn good news. Then you then you tell Speaker 4: us, I don't want Speaker 5: a cease fire. I don't Speaker 4: want a cease fire. I wanna go, and I Speaker 1: want this. Look. If you could get a cease fire right now, I tell you, you take it so the bullets stop flying and your men stop getting killed. Of course, we want Speaker 3: to stop the war. Speaker 1: You're saying you don't want a ceasefire? Said to you I want a ceasefire. Because you get a ceasefire faster than any greater. Speaker 3: Ask our people about ceasefire. What they think? Speaker 1: That wasn't me. For you. What That wasn't with me. That was with a a guy named Biden who was not a smart person. That was your that was with Obama. It was your president. Excuse me. That was with Obama who gave you sheets, and I gave you javelins. Yes. I gave you the javelins to take out all those tanks. Obama gave you sheets. In fact, the statement is Obama gave sheets and Trump gave javelins. You gotta be more thankful because let me tell you, you don't have the cards. With us, you have the cards. But without us, you don't have any cards. Speaker 6: What if Russia breaks these talks? What do you do then? I understand that it's a heated conversation Speaker 3: right now. Speaker 1: What are you saying? Speaker 2: What She's asking what if Russia breaks the cease fire? Speaker 1: Fire. Well, what if they what if anything? What if a bomb drops on your head right now? Okay? What if they broke it? I don't know. They broke it with Biden because Biden, they didn't respect him. They didn't respect Obama. They respect me. Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch hunt where they used him and Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia. You ever hear of that deal? That was a phony that was a phony Hunter Biden, Joe Biden scam. Hillary Clinton, shifty Adam Schiff. It was a Democrat scam, and he had to go through that, and he did go through it. We didn't end up in a war, and he went through it. He was accused of all that stuff. He had nothing to do with it. It came out of Hunter Biden's bathroom. It came out of Hunter Biden's bedroom. It was disgusting. And then they said, oh, oh, the laptop from hell was made by Russia, the 51 agents. The whole thing was a scam, and he had to put up with that. He was being accused of all that stuff. All I can say is this, he might have broken deals with Obama and Bush, and he might have broken them with Biden. He did, maybe. Maybe he didn't. I don't know what happened, but he didn't break them with me. He wants to make a deal. I don't know if you can make a deal. The problem is I've empowered you to be a tough guy, and I don't think you'd be a tough guy without The United States. And your people are very brave. But you're either gonna make a deal or we're out. And if we're out, you'll fight it out. I don't think it's gonna be pretty, but you'll fight it out. But you don't have the cards. But once we sign that deal, you're in a much better position. But you're not acting at all thankful, and that's not a nice thing. I'll be honest. That's not a nice thing. Alright. I think we've seen enough. What do you think?

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Trump is abandoning Ukraine and threatening global peace, say his critics. He's not. He's negotiating an end to the war, & reducing the US role in Europe, which voters want. Elites are enraged because Trump's new, post-globalist order takes from them the power they badly abused.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Do Europeans think we don’t know they disrespect us? Look down on us? Think they’re better for us? I love Europe, but it is run by snotty children. This kind of behavior makes us want to get us the hell out of NATO. Go defend yourself, Europe. We’re sick of you ingrates.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Oh look, European leaders are all rallying behind @ZelenskyyUa Great. Let them protect you then. Time for Europe to protect itself https://t.co/HDpoiWbXqf

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

@ZelenskyyUa Have fun guys. We have plenty to deal with here at home. Good riddance.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Zelensky says he wants peace but he just rudely dismissed the Trump administration's diplomacy as pointless. That angered Trump and @JDVance and now Zelensky has fled the White House. This should be the wake-up call that global elites & Europe desperately need. https://t.co/DnFw3nQYv3

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Trump is abandoning Ukraine and threatening global peace, say his critics. He's not. He's negotiating an end to the war, & reducing the US role in Europe, which voters want. Elites are enraged because Trump's new, post-globalist order takes from them the power they badly abused. https://t.co/jYjYe8u467

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

You cut fire prevention; LA burned. You spent $24 billion on homelessness; it rose 40%. You reduced penalties for violent crime; it's 31% higher in California than in the US as a whole. And instead of taking responsibility, you're trying to become an influencer. It's pathetic.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

It's been increasingly clear you don't care about the people of California. Now it's obvious your real passion is hearing yourself talk. Please, for everyone's sake, go do what you love: quit now and focus on your podcast. You were never equipped to have larger responsibilities.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Receipts: https://www.capradio.org/articles/2021/06/23/newsom-misled-the-public-about-wildfire-prevention-efforts-ahead-of-worst-fire-season-on-record/ https://calmatters.org/explainers/californias-homelessness-crisis-explained/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/california-homelessness-spending-audit-24b-five-years-didnt-consistently-track-outcomes/ https://www.ppic.org/blog/californias-violent-crime-rate-is-diverging-from-the-national-trend/

California's homelessness crisis — and possible solutions — explained California's most vexing issue is its most shameful: the rising number of people who lack a home. What to know about the problem and solutions. calmatters.org

Newsom Misled The Public About Wildfire Prevention Efforts Ahead Of Worst Fire Season On Record Gov. Gavin Newsom dramatically overstated the amount of fire prevention work performed on “priority projects” he touted and cut Cal Fire’s mitigation budget by $150 million last year, an investigation by CapRadio and NPR’s California Newsroom found. capradio.org

Audit finds California spent $24B on homelessness in 5 years, didn't consistently track outcomes A state audit has found that California spent $24 billion to tackle homelessness over a five year period but didn't consistently track the outcomes or effectiveness of its programs. cbsnews.com

California’s Violent Crime Rate Is Diverging from the National Trend In the decade preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, California's violent crime rate roughly mirrored the nationwide trend. But as of 2022, California's violent crime rate is nearly one-third higher than the US rate, a divergence driven largely by aggravated assaults. ppic.org

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

FBI whistleblower @GOBactual confirmed to me that a source inside FBI said FBI employees were destroying evidence on servers, and that he informed @Kash_Patel I hope he & @AGPamBondi @JohnRatcliffe @elonmusk @realannapaulina are preventing this. We urgently need disclosure!

@realannapaulina - Anna Paulina Luna

There is a massive war happening in the intelligence agencies right now. The corruption being exposed right now is actual treason…

@charliekirk11 - Charlie Kirk

CNN now says that "top leadership" at the CIA are worried anti-Trump personnel may by motivated to sell out America to a foreign power. In other words, the people who created the Russia Hoax might now sell America's secrets to Russia — and then CNN will be there to blame Trump.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Also I hope @realDonaldTrump @TulsiGabbard and @Sec_Noemare are alert to any insider threats that could be destroying evidence that belongs to the American people. Don’t let abusers of power cover up their tracks!

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

@realDonaldTrump @TulsiGabbard To clarify, @GOBactual reports that his source said that FBI is or was operating standalone servers. Was it? Is it?

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

@realDonaldTrump @TulsiGabbard @GOBactual @Sec_Noem

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The UK seems like a free nation. It’s not. It is run by a tyrant, Prime Minister @Keir_Starmer . Shame on him for his totalitarian demand. And bravo to Apple CEO @tim_cook for defying the government. Please share this to warn the world that UK is no longer safe for free people!

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

“Apple previously called a bill from the UK Parliament that sought access to user data ‘unprecedented overreach by the government.’ At the time, the company said that ‘the UK could attempt to secretly veto new user protections globally preventing us from ever offering them to customers.’”

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

“Customers already using Advanced Data Protection, or ADP, will need to manually disable it during an unspecified grace period to keep their iCloud accounts. “The company said it will issue additional guidance in the future to affected users and that it does not have the ability to automatically disable it on their behalf. “The move to pull its encryption feature — rather than complying and building a backdoor — is a clear rebuke of the government’s order.”

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Thank you @tim_cook for standing strong against tyranny! 🇺🇸🇬🇧✊🏼

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Look what the UK creeps demanded: “As part of its order to Apple, the UK asked it for access to global user data, Bloomberg News reported. The mandate orders Apple to provide access under the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act, a law that granted officials the authority to compel companies to remove encryption under what’s known as a “technical capability notice.” The law also makes it illegal for companies to reveal when the government has made such an order.”

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

@tim_cook Here’s the context for this. The UK government is one of the most totalitarian in the world!

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

It’s true that Apple could have just quit the UK rather than accede to the governments demands, and in that sense it caved in. But it’s hard to see a publicly traded company responsible to shareholders doing that and so it appears to have chosen the best of two bad options. I may be wrong and if so I’m happy to be convinced otherwise.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Here is the response to Apple's decision from the UK's @BigBrotherWatch : "This decision by Apple is the regrettable consequence of the Home Office’s outrageous order attempting to force Apple to breach encryption." https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/press-releases/big-brother-watch-response-to-apple-removing-protections-from-uk-customers/

Big Brother Watch Response to Apple Removing Protections from UK Customers — Big Brother Watch Defending Civil Liberties, Protecting Privacy bigbrotherwatch.org.uk

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

I amend my above post to say that I wish Apple's CEO @tim_cook had stood firm and mobilized the world against UK's totalitarian demands. At the same time, Apple appears to have done more than other companies to resist the government's demands. And, ultimately, UK voters must demand their right to privacy; none of us can depend on the fortitude of CEOs to do the right thing.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

As powerful as Big Tech is, nation-states are more powerful. Elections matter, so it's important to build a pro-privacy and pro-free speech movement.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

JD Vance's criticism of EU censorship was outrageous, say Europe's leaders. In fact, it was wholly justified. The only solution to misinformation is accurate information. While BBC sometimes spreads misinformation, it would never occur to me to demand its censorship. Me on @BBC

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

I have been critical of @BBC in recent years and thus am grateful that it gave me the opportunity to make the case for freedom of speech. Let's hope it represents a vibe shift.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The head of the @BBC says it will “Pursue the truth with no agenda by reporting fearlessly & fairly.” But, according to current & former BBC journalists, the BBC is suppressing the truth about "gender-affirming care," mislabeling men as women, and failing to safeguard children.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Further evidence of a vibe shift at the storied media network? @GoodwinMJ

@GoodwinMJ - Matt Goodwin

In case you missed: What I Told Question Time https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/what-i-told-question-time?r=6g7nl

What I Told Question Time Highlights from my appearance on last night's show mattgoodwin.org

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

USAID said it was a charitable group. It wasn't. It was a tool for regime change. After 2016, it turned its guns inward. In 2019, a front group it created fabricated the evidence used by the CIA, moles in the White House, and House Democrats to impeach Trump. That's treason. https://t.co/u7oYXNkCA6

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

They said the government was by and for the people, and the media was free. They weren't. Deep state actors controlled them. Then, after the populist revolts of 2016, they turned the tools of regime change, including disinfo, censorship, and lawfare, against the American people. https://t.co/Em0dnauRNn

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Last week, we reported that the CIA and a USAID-run front group, OCCRP, were behind Trump’s 2019 impeachment. Now, a new investigation finds that USAID’s OCCRP drove the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. Blockbuster new investigation led by @galexybrane https://t.co/ihouA5Yooh

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Last week, we reported that the CIA and a USAID-run front group, OCCRP, were behind Trump’s 2019 impeachment. Now, a new investigation finds that USAID’s OCCRP drove the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. Blockbuster new investigation led by @galexybrane https://t.co/ihouA5Yooh

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

“OCCRP’s Work is Not Political,” said the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project last week, apparently in response to our story about its involvement in the 2019 impeachment of President Donald Trump. “OCCRP has recently become the target of a conspiracy theory suggesting that we worked with one of our donors, USAID, to undermine President Donald Trump during his first administration. This is simply untrue, and it’s not how OCCRP operates.” But the allegations in our report, that USAID effectively created and oversees OCCRP, are true. Senior managers at USAID and the co-founder of OCCRP confirmed that USAID must sign off on the hiring of key OCCRP personnel and its annual work plan. OCCRP created a central piece of evidence in a CIA analyst’s whistleblower complaint that resulted in the House of Representatives voting to impeach President Donald Trump in December 2019. OCCRP admits all of this in its response: “Here are the facts: One of our storieswas cited in a 2019 whistleblower complaint filed against President Donald Trump. The complaint then sparked his first impeachment.” OCCRP defended itself against accusations that it was part of a conspiracy. “That story, like all stories we do, was reported without our donors’ knowledge or input. OCCRP had no contact with the whistleblower, and was unaware of the complaint until after it was reported by U.S. domestic media.” In an email to Public, OCCRP’s Editor in Chief noted that OCCRP published an article about how Hunter Biden’s business partner, Devon Archer, “had received millions from a reputed organized crime associate” as evidence that OCCRP has no political bias. But neither we nor any other media outlet claimed that OCCRP had the direct input of USAID for its story, nor that it had any contact with the whistleblower. It’s not clear that such communication would even be needed for USAID and OCCRP to participate in a scheme to develop evidence against Trump for a supposedly impeachable offense. As for OCCRP’s article about Hunter Biden’s business partner, it repeatedly stressed that Hunter Biden was not involved. “While the younger Biden had previously been involved with RSTP [Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners],” OCCRP wrote, “there is no evidence that he played a role in the mbloom [startup fund] deal.” OCCRP went on to say that it had confirmed Biden’s lack of involvement after reviewing “financial records.” It did not specify how it obtained those records. And despite the extensive evidence of influence peddling by the Bidens in countries routinely covered by OCCRP, including Ukraine, the organization does not appear to have thoroughly investigated them. OCCRP describes itself as a cost-effective arm of the US government’s anti-corruption efforts, writing that “our stories have helped return more than $11 billion to public coffers through seizures and fines” and that “OCCRP has brought in at least ten times more money to the U.S. government than it has received in grants.” But if it’s an arm of the US government, it’s one that was weaponized against Trump. A new investigation by Public shows that OCCRP played a significant role in developing the narrative that Trump and his associates had ties to Russian banking and Russian money laundering, as well as other undisclosed conflicts of interest with Russia. Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning investigative journalism, watch the rest of the video, and read the rest of the article! https://t.co/VhsLw9NPXL

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Democrats were the party of "reinventing government." Then, they decided to weaponize it. The reason Democrats today defend waste, fraud, and abuse, even at the expense of the separation of powers, is because their wealth and their ability to rule depend on it. https://t.co/rXw8fzvpJA

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

President Donald Trump is causing a constitutional crisis by eliminating the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and giving Elon Musk access to confidential Treasury records, say the media and Democrats. The American people didn’t elect Musk, said Democrats in a rally on Friday, where some House members were disallowed from entering the Department of Education. A judge on Friday restricted Musk’s team’s access to Treasury records. Trump yesterday, in an interview with Bret Baier of Fox, said that Musk would soon begin seeking efficiencies in the Departments of Defense and Education. As such, what’s happening is a “constitutional crisis,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin on Meet the Press, where he threatened a class action lawsuit on behalf of the American people. But there is no constitutional crisis. The American people elected Trump as president, and he, not Congress, exercises authority over all executive branch agencies, including USAID, the Department of Education, the Department of Defense, and the Treasury Department. Trump has clear Constitutional authority to audit the finances overseen by the Treasury and every other agency, and that includes assigning that audit to whoever he chooses. The Constitution grants Congress oversight duties but those powers do not include members being allowed to enter any executive branch building whenever they please. None of that means that the administration should ignore Congress, court orders, or the potential public health problems that could be created by the closure of USAID and freezing of its funds. Said the surgeon, New Yorker author, and former USAID official, Atul Gawande, on X, “20M people with HIV, including 500,000 children, have been cut off from access to medicines keeping them alive. Global HIV transmission, resistance, and deaths will now increase, endangering all.” Gawande added that, as a result of the loss of USAID, the US has lost critical bird flu surveillance, sacrificed humanitarian aid in Gaza, and halted the resettlement of former Islamic State combatants. USAID may have been doing and funding projects that were worthwhile. And it may be that Congress will need to pass legislation to continue those projects through the State Department. But it’s emotional blackmail to suggest the USAID closure and freeze on aid will kill African children. The Trump administration already created a waiver for HIV treatment and resumed aid for tuberculosis, malaria, and newborn health. And USAID’s health programs should be subject to scrutiny, given the agency’s history of using such programs as cover for other activities, including regime change and biodefense research. For example, under President Barack Obama’s administration, USAID was caught using an HIV program to foment rebellion in Cuba. USAID used EcoHealth Alliance as a passthrough organization to funnel $1.1 million to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was conducting risky gain-of-function experiments that may have caused the Covid pandemic. As such, anyone who truly believes in public health for poor people in poor nations must agree that USAID needs to be reined in and cleaned up. That starts first with precisely the kind of audit the Democrats are trying to stop. After that, USAID — and other government agencies eventually — must justify what they are spending money on. The public’s interest is ensuring that every dollar of taxpayer money is accounted for and justified. A major reason that the American people elected Trump was precisely because they believed he would reform the government, and that meant rooting out abuse, fraud, and waste. There is a large body of evidence of all three in USAID, the DOD, and the Department of Education. And, as for complying with the law on the closure of USAID, support for just such a law is growing in Congress. The media and others in Washington, D.C., have known for decades that USAID was a hub of fraud and abuse. The Washington Post cited two individuals with the Center for Global Development, a center-left think tank funded by Bill Gates that has been defending USAID, who told the Washington Post that a claim by Musk that just 10% of USAID money reached people on the ground was “wildly incorrect and misleading.” But their clarification — that just “10 percent of USAID payments are made directly to organizations in the developing world” and the “remaining 90 percent” is delivered by organizations in the US and developed world — underscored that USAID fundamentally isn’t working. Think about it. If USAID were so effective in achieving its ostensible goal of “development,” why are the countries it works in still so poor and underdeveloped? In truth, Democrats and Republicans alike have recognized for decades that USAID needed reform. In 2015, even the Center for Global Development urged a “top-to-bottom review of USAID’s sector- and country-based activities based upon program effectiveness, allocation of USAID resources, alignment with partner priorities, and national security implications” followed by “comprehensive reform.” As recently as 2021, the media acknowledged the obvious. That year, the New York Times published an article headlined, “U.S. Aid to Central America Hasn’t Slowed Migration. Can Kamala Harris?” In it the Times acknowledged that “experts say the reasons that years of aid have not curbed migration” is in part because “much of the money is handed over to American companies, which swallow a lot of it for salaries, expenses and profits, often before any services are delivered” — precisely the reason President Trump shut down USAID. Wrote the Times, “From 2016 to 2020, 80 percent of the American-financed development projects in Central America were entrusted to American contractors, according to data provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development.” It’s the same story for education. Just 10 days ago, the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) released the latest test scores showing yet another decline in reading and continued flat-lining in math for eighth graders. The media described the test results as a “new low” and “even worse” than in the past and “disheartening.” Democrats and the media thus know perfectly well that the Department of Education’s work is either insufficient to counteract the decline or is actively contributing to it, and thus reform of the Department of Education is highly reasonable. And yet Democrats demanded they be allowed to enter the Department of Education headquarters in Washington as though to defend it. From what? Improvement? The position of the Democrats is even more ridiculous when one considers the example of the Defense Department. Will Democrats now, after decades of attacking military spending as wasteful, defend it? If they do, they will alienate their own partisans. But if they don’t, then they will find it difficult to answer the question of why reform is necessary in the military but not in the Department of Education or USAID? Making the situation even more surreal is that it was Democrats, not Republicans, who made the biggest push for government efficiency and reform in the last thirty years. In 1993, shortly after taking office, President Bill Clinton empowered Vice President Al Gore to oversee a “Reinventing Government” initiative. The aim was to streamline bureaucracy, cut costs, and improve government efficiency. It emphasized customer service, performance-based management, and innovation — all things that Musk is famous for implementing at his companies. It’s not obvious why Democrats are opposing Trump’s actions. Doing so reinforces that they are the party of waste, fraud, and abuse. Polling shows that public support for Trump is at an all-time high of 53%, according to a new CBS poll. By contrast, 57% of registered voters have an unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party, the worst numbers in 17 years. Nor is it obvious why the media has maintained its anti-Trump bias. The Washington Post’s daily traffic declined by nearly 90% from 23 million daily active users in January 2021 to 2.5 to 3 million in the middle of last year. In the week ending November 24, CNN and MSNBC lost 47% and 53% of their primetime viewership. Last month, CNN announced it was laying off 200 employees while MSNBC saw its president step down. Politico’s cofounder said last week that “The left right now, liberal media, has probably never been weaker in my lifetime than right now.” The public desperately wants reform, and 60% of the public has long supported cutting foreign aid, which has long been popular with the public. Why can’t Democrats and the media just embrace Trump’s government efficiency effort? Why are they engaging in such seemingly self-destructive behavior? Please subscribe now to support Public's award winning journalism, watch the rest of the video, and read the rest of the article by @galexybrane and @Shellenberger ! https://t.co/Iuqc7FhgpJ

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The American people elected Trump and he has authority over the Dept of Ed, not Congress. Its oversight duties don’t mean its members can storm executive branch buildings. Radicalized members, not Trump, are the ones threatening the separation of powers. https://t.co/E01ShUO1D0

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The members of Congress are saying they’re entitled to enter the building because they are members of Congress. Nope. That’s not what our Constitution says. Left-wing authoritarianism overlaps exactly with narcissism. That’s what’s on display above. Most obnoxious people in DC https://t.co/8sGMTG6aez

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Naturally, the members of Congress who stormed the Department of Education are the same people who are accusing Trump, in exercising his Constitutionally-specified duties, of violating the constitution. It's all projection all the time with these people. https://t.co/deRjA88j4K

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

And these are the same members who advocated, justified, or defended the weaponization of the deep state agencies FBI, DHS, CIA, and USAID against their political rivals. Shocking, sick and deeply illegal stuff. And it went on for nearly a decade. https://t.co/Or9qF8ZFJE

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

USAID's defenders say it's about charity and development in poor nations. It's not. It's a $40 billion driver of regime change abroad. And now the evidence suggests that it, along with the CIA, were behind the 2019 impeachment of Trump — an illegal regime change effort at home. https://t.co/6HxUPiVpFX

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

In the specific case of the Department of Education, what are the radicalized members of Congress defending? Record low student performance? The Department's failure to stop the pseudoscientific anti-phonics dogma that deprived millions of children proper reading instruction? https://t.co/l4dat0lvhd

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

😂 Sounds like a confession. https://t.co/aqW5lB7FtR

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Many said we would never learn the truth about who killed JFK. Now it appears we will. The FBI just announced 2,400 undisclosed records. "This is huge," said @jeffersonmorley. " It shows the FBI is taking this seriously." Listen to Morley explain its context and significance: https://t.co/saZeVq6FeT

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

We need experts to rule society, they said. No, we didn't. They made Covid, inflation, crime, trans, etc. worse. Facing a backlash, elites censored & persecuted ordinary people. Now, they're panicking because a populist counter-elite is, finally, putting an end to their grift. https://t.co/IgjvOVCJJr

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Democrats were the party of "reinventing government." Then, they decided to weaponize it. The reason Democrats today defend waste, fraud, and abuse, even at the expense of the separation of powers, is because their wealth and their ability to rule depend on it. https://t.co/rXw8fzvpJA

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

This group attacking @elonmusk claims to be independent but it's not. USAID funds it & requires approval of its senior hires. @OCCRP admits it contributed to "regime change" in 5-6 nations, proof that USAID turned foreign counter-insurgency tactics against the American people.

@OCCRP - Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project

The world's richest man, @elonmusk, is using a 2019 @OCCRP investigation to attack the free press and U.S. humanitarian aid. The story in question revealed how Rudy Giuliani enlisted questionable associates to dig up dirt in Ukraine. https://t.co/r0Ov3nJA74

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The evidence supporting these claims is in this documentary. In the documentary, a senior @OCCRP staff person admits to all of the above. Deeply crooked, illegal, and unethical. https://t.co/z58u8zhUEq

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

USAID's defenders say it's about charity and development in poor nations. It's not. It's a $40 billion driver of regime change abroad. And now the evidence suggests that it, along with the CIA, were behind the 2019 impeachment of Trump — an illegal regime change effort at home. https://t.co/6HxUPiVpFX

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The House of Representatives impeached President Donald Trump on December 18, 2019, after a White House whistleblower went public with evidence that Trump abused his powers by withholding military aid to Ukraine in order to dig up dirt on his rival, Joe Biden. In the complaint, the whistleblower claimed to have heard from White House staff that Trump had, on a phone call, directed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to work with his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to investigate Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. The whistleblower who triggered the impeachment was a CIA analyst who was first brought into the White House by the Obama administration. Reporting by Drop Site News last year revealed that the CIA analyst relied on reporting by a supposedly independent investigative news organization called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which appears to have effectively operated as an arm of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which President Trump has just shut down. The CIA whistleblower complaint cited a long report by OCCRP four times. The OCCRP report alleged that two Soviet-born Florida businessmen were “key hidden actors behind a plan” by Trump to investigate the Bidens. According to the story, those two businessmen connected Giuliani to two former Ukrainian prosecutors. The OCCRP story was crucial to the House Democrats’ impeachment claim, which is that Trump dispatched Giuliani as part of a coordinated effort to pressure a foreign country to interfere in the 2020 presidential election, which is why the whistleblower cited it four times. In a 2024 documentary that German television broadcaster NDR made about OCCRP’s dependence on the US government, a USAID official confirmed that USAID approves OCCRP’s “annual work plan” and approves new hires of “key personnel.” NDR initiated and carried out the investigation with French investigative news organization Mediapart, Italian new group Il Fatto Quotidiano, Reporters United in Greece, and Drop Site News in the United States. However, according to a Mediapart story published the same day as the Drop Site News article, NDR censored the broadcast “after US journalist Drew Sullivan, the co-founder and head of the OCCRP, placed pressure on the NDR management and made false accusations against the broadcaster’s journalists involved in the project.” On December 16, Drop Site’s Ryan Grim posted a link on X to the 26-minute-long documentary. “NDR, Germany’s public broadcaster, is facing a censorship scandal and has defended itself by saying it never killed a news report about OCCRP and its State Department funding — b/c no report was ever produced to kill,” said Grim. “That was absurd — and dozens, maybe hundreds, of journalists knew it to be false, and now of course, someone has leaked it.” The journalistic collaboration revealed that OCCRP’s original funding came from the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs of the State Department, and quotes a USAID official who says, “Drew’s just nervous about being linked with law enforcement,” referring to Sullivan. “If people who are going to give you information think you’re just a cop, maybe it’s a problem.” OCCRP does not operate like a normal investigative journalism organization in that its goals appear to include interfering in foreign political matters, including elections, aimed at regime change. Sullivan told NDR that his organization had “probably been responsible for five or six countries changing over from one government to another government… and getting prime ministers indicted or thrown out.” As such, it appears that CIA, USAID, and OCCRP were all involved in the impeachment of President Trump in ways similar to the regime change operations that all three organizations engage in abroad. The difference is that it is highly illegal and even treasonous for CIA, USAID, and its contractors and intermediaries, known as “cut-outs,” to interfere in US politics this way. OCCRP threatened to file a lawsuit against Public in response to questions we sent. “The premise of your article is factually false and defamatory,” wrote Miranda Patrucic, the Editor in Chief of OCCRP, over email. “The claim by Dropsite News and partner media that USAID has control over editorial appointments has been disproven and we suggest you read our response to that.” But neither OCCRP nor anyone else disproved Drop Site’s allegations and Drop Site stands by them. And the evidence does not support OCCRP’s claim of journalistic independence.... Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning investigative reporting, to read the rest of the article, and to watch the rest of the video! https://t.co/vRQimCkDrg

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Last year, a whistleblower gave us a trove of leaked internal communications from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). They showed that the organization was violating basic medical ethics and knowingly causing harm to patients. These documents, which we called the “WPATH Files,” revealed that clinicians, while publicly touting the benefits of medical transition, privately admitted that children would come to regret losing their fertility through so-called “gender-affirming care.” Vulnerable patients, they acknowledged, faced a litany of severe adverse effects, including loss of sexual function and major psychological damage from supposed “treatments.” The WPATH Files thus exposed the leading authority on transgender healthcare as morally and scientifically bankrupt. We were, therefore, thrilled to read President Donald Trump’s executive order to restrict puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries for minors. The order uses accurate words, including “mutilation,” rather than euphemisms, to describe the systematic disabling and disfigurement of vulnerable young people. “Across the country today,” the order states, “medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions.” The order notes that WPATH “lacks scientific integrity” and directs all agencies to rescind or amend any policies that cite WPATH’s guidance. Trump’s executive order does not mean that the struggle to end gender-affirming care for minors is over. The practice is legal in 24 U.S. states, which may continue to provide coverage through state-level programs. In 16 states plus the District of Columbia, lawmakers have gone out of their way to create “shield” laws that protect the doctors and other medical professionals engaged in mutilating and sterilizing children from legal liability. And some states have gone further. In July 2024, California passed legislation that lets teachers hide children’s social “transition” from their own parents. However, Trump’s order gives the movement to protect children significant new momentum. The order bans the use of federal funding to cover gender-affirming care for minors, limits research and education grants to institutions that promote such care, and directs the Department of Health and Human Services to issue new regulations. And Trump’s order comes as public and policymaker opposition to gender ideology is growing. Across the United States, a majority of voters oppose transgender medicine for children. Last year, the UK temporarily banned puberty blockers for all minors, including in private clinics. When a new Labour government took over in December, it doubled down on this ban, making it indefinite. Sweden and Finland have revised their guidelines to severely limit the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors. Even steadfastly anti-Trump, Democratic Party-supporting publications like The Atlantic recently published an article against puberty blockers. With these changes, we may be nearing the end of the destructive gender madness that has consumed medical institutions, scientific journals, and universities for far too long. Gender-affirming care may seem like it’s just one of many issues that have become a political liability for Democrats and progressives recently, like censorship, DEI, and the mass migration crisis. But the horror of child mutilation and sterilization is unique. A central responsibility of civilization is to reproduce itself by protecting the welfare of children and by properly guiding them into adulthood. Yet nearly every major institution in our society, from hospitals to elementary schools to Hollywood studios to Fortune 500 companies, actively supported or went along with the inane idea that children “know who they are” and can make life-altering medical “decisions.” Instead of protecting the young, our civilization sacrificed them to deranged activists and medical predators. How did we allow this to happen, and what should we do now? Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning journalism, read the rest of the article, and watch the full video! https://t.co/snjNCy4VCw

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Victory! Shell abandons whale-killing wind project & writes off $1 billion. Another company abandons $250 million plant to make subsea cables that would have wrecked the sea floor. And a wind project in Maine is on the ropes. The fight's not over so please share the truth! https://t.co/58QmLcEeWd

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Industrial wind energy projects "don't make sense without the tax credit" subsidies, says Warren Buffet. Wind energy is garbage energy: inherently chaotic, inefficient and expensive. That's why simply pausing subsidies, as President Trump did, prevents them from being built.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Studies of specific whale deaths & underwater sound measures show illegal levels of noise & boat traffic in previously untrafficked areas drive the deaths of whales. The North Atlantic right whale will go extinct should wind energy continue. The proof is in this amazing doc: https://t.co/kBrrafBWMB

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The first duty of civilization is to protect children from predators. Ours celebrated medical predators as liberators, and condemned resisters as bigots. Teachers, medical groups, and Hollywood conspired to permanently disfigure children in the name of addressing their "trauma." https://t.co/H3Otm280jA

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Trump has, blessedly, restricted gender surgeries, hormones, and puberty blockers for kids. But why did this scandal go on for so long? Part of the answer is money. Another is the rise of the "trauma" therapy cult. And, at the heart of trans medicine, is an anti-human nihilism. https://t.co/QmWO4tIhsh

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

.@GavinNewsom @EleniForCA @XavierBecerra @RobBonta you must end this barbarism at once. Here's a poll you can show your donors to assure them that you are continuing to act in your own self-interest. https://t.co/5ggIY1Xmhf

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The reason Democrats have "no coherent message" is because they have no moral compass. All these politicians demand the sterilization and mutilation of children by predators: @GavinNewsom @SpeakerPelosi @SenSchumer @AOC @EleniForCA @XavierBecerra https://t.co/YdwFGnf7XO

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

https://t.co/MrgylOdYic

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

It will be hard for the Democrats to come back from this scandal. If the party had real leaders, they would take the lead now in phasing out "gender affirming care" nationwide, repudiating it, and apologizing for it. If they did it ASAP, they might limit the damage.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

But since the party has no real leaders, and is instead led by craven individuals, it's likely that Republicans will be able to oppose gender affirming care and males in female sports for years to come. Dems are caught between voters and their base of extremist LGBT donors.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

California is the richest state with the highest taxes and yet it cut funding for firefighting, which led directly to L.A.'s catastrophic fires. Why? Because Newsom & Bass diverted billions from preventing and fighting catastrophic fires to migrants, homeless, and climate. https://t.co/FVckx9qaDU

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass claimed her $17.5 million cut to the LA Fire Department budget did not impact the department’s ability to prevent or fight fires. But the LA Fire Chief told CNN that “the $17 million budget cut… did absolutely negatively impact” the Department’s ability to respond to the fires. And a video released yesterday by NewsNation, which was shot by a former employee of Kamala Harris, shows that it took the LA Fire Department 45 minutes to respond to the Pacific Palisades fire. “It could have been confined,” said attorney Michael Valentine. “It wouldn’t have touched any of the homes.” It is impossible to stop fires from starting in Los Angeles. The challenge is to put them out before they become catastrophic. And the video provides evidence that firefighters could have responded earlier. “ By 10:50, the plume had spread considerably, twice as large,” reported Rich McHugh. “Eight minutes later, the size of the fire seems to have doubled yet again. Still nobody fighting the fire.  At 11:13 a.m., nearly 45 minutes after Michael's wife called in the fire, you see a chopper come through at 11:23. A helicopter comes in, begins to dump water on it. But at this point, the fire is massive and moving quickly down this ridgeline.” And now, a second firefighter has come forward to say that “There wasn’t sufficient funding for predeployment and I’m sure that played a role. The fire prevention department has taken huge cuts too and it limited their resources.” Specifically, this person said, “There were not enough mechanics, engines, or fire stations.” LA has been cutting the budget of the LA Fire Department for years, leading to rising response times.”You’re supposed to be in route in 30 seconds and there in three to five minutes, but now it’s 10 minutes and on the extreme end 30 minutes,” said the firefighter. “The other day they had a cardiac arrest call that took 30 minutes and there was a pediatric call two weeks ago and the station that was available was very far away and it took them a long time to get to the kid.” The whistleblower said staffing and equipment shortages create two tragedies. The first are unnecessary deaths and the second is the impact on the firefighters. “They just can’t make it to places fast enough and it’s a hazard to the public,” said the whistleblower. “A family member is dying and it’s 30 minutes to show up and then they’re yelling at the firefighters who are trying to do their job but there’s not enough of them. Some of that stuff really affects them.” The LA Fire Department budget is $820 million and significantly more is needed. The number of calls LA firefighters make in a year has tripled over the last 30 years while staffing has declined by one-third, according to another whistleblower. The LA Firefighters are currently owed significant backpay and have filed a lawsuit against the city. Said the whistleblower, “Nobody understands why this is going on. Why is there no money? Why can’t we pay people? We’re 80 fire stations short. Why aren’t we building them? Why aren’t we paying firefighters their contracted wages?” All of this is particularly mysterious because California is by far the richest state in the United States and has the highest taxes. The center of Big Tech, the most profitable industry in the world, and with an annual GDP of $3.8 trillion, California is the fifth-largest economy in the world. California has the highest income tax at 13.3 percent, the highest sales tax at 7.25 percent, and one of the highest corporatetaxes at 8.84%. Where is all the money going? While California’s firefighting budget rose since 2018, it was, obviously, not enough. And California’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Office reported that Governor Gavin Newsom slashed funding by $101 Million in the 2024 budget and cut millions for prescribed burns, forest fire monitoring, and $12 million for home hardening. And the state funding that Newsom cut could have been used to harden homes to fire and reduce vegetation around homes in LA. Bass proposed cutting the Fire Department’s funding by an additional $48.8 million next year. The priorities of the leaders of California and Los Angeles over the last decade have been homelessness, climate change, and providing services to undocumented migrants, Since 2019, California has invested $27 billion in homelessness, or about 4.5 billion per year. That amount does not include spending on firefighting, police, or emergency medical services for the homeless. Nor does it include the $40 billion the state spent on affordable housing. California spends over $30 billion per year to provide benefits and services to migrants who came to the US illegally, according to a recent cost analysis by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). The California Budget and Policy Center estimates that they contribute up to $9 billion annually in state and local taxes. And California will spend over $48 billion on climate programs over the next seven years, or about seven billion annually. As such, California spends about $41.5 billion per year on the homeless, illegal immigrants, and climate change. If just 2% of that money, or $1 billion, had been spent on LA’s Fire Department, it could have more than doubled its budget. What’s more, there is evidence that all of that spending on homelessness made the problem worse. Since 2019, homelessness increased by 40%. And the homeless cause over half of all fires in Los Angeles. The spending has distorted other priorities... Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning journalism, read the rest of the article, and watch the rest of the video! https://t.co/K3A3MfqCxz

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Video proof that there was no response to LA's Pacific Palisades fire for 45 minutes. Terrific reporting here by @RichMcHugh @NewsNation https://t.co/LzxZDMfKnf

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Nothing could have been done to stop the catastrophic L.A. fires that killed 24, incinerated 12k homes, and cost $250B, say the media. Nonsense, says an LA firefighter. The failure by Newsom & Bass to mobilize firefighters before the fires began led to an avoidable catastrophe. https://t.co/bM7dgulyDn

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Had a massive water reservoir been online, it wouldn't have made much difference to LA firefighters, say the media. In fact, it would have made a massive difference. And now a whistleblower has come forward to say the reservoir should never have been drained in the first place. https://t.co/H5M5uLNFhc

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The lack of water available to firefighters in Los Angeles was unavoidable, say experts and the media. Hydrants ran dry because the fires were just too big and the water system too old. Even if the large Santa Ynez reservoir had been filled with water, it likely would not have made a difference, they say. But there are good reasons to believe that it would have made a very significant difference. The Santa Ynez Reservoir is just a few thousand feet away from where the massive Pacific Palisades fire started and is the second largest of L.A.’s “ten major active reservoirs.” It’s too early to say precisely how much of a difference it would have made, and there’s no question that LA’s fire system is antiquated. It was never created to battle so many different fires at once. What’s more, the use of so many hydrants and the destruction of so many service lines to private residences resulted in a major loss of water and, thus, of water pressure. But the Santa Ynez reservoir was uphill from the Pacific Palisades fire and the firefighters doing battle with it would likely have had first access to its 117 million gallons of water before other firefighters below them. And that would likely have kept water pressure high. While the media downplayed the significance of the Santa Ynez, a senior water utility executive has come forward to tell Public that “117 million gallons is a huge amount of treated water storage to have available for firefighting. Massive. Maybe one of the biggest treated water storage reservoirs on the whole West Coast.” The person I spoke with has worked as a senior professional in a California water utility for two decades. The person told Public that the LADWP should never have drained the Santa Ynez reservoir of water. Instead, it should have kept it full for emergency use, and only drained it to repair a torn cover after the fire risk was far lower and after LADWP had a contractor under contract and ready to perform necessary repairs.... Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning investigative journalism, read the rest of the article, and watch the full video! https://t.co/xpORG36gm4

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

For more than a decade, the media, Democrats, and Hollywood have told us that Western civilization in general and the United States in particular are white supremacist, genocidal, and unsustainable. The founding of America occurred not in 1776 but rather in 1619 with the beginning of slavery, whose effects are felt more strongly than ever. The original colonies and the expansion of the Western frontier depended on the extermination of indigenous people and theft of their lands. And our crimes against nature have resulted in apocalyptic climate change, which requires radical changes to the way we live our lives. The consequences of this self-hating Woke ideology can be seen today in catastrophic fires, mass evacuations, and burned rubble of Los Angeles. So-called progressives finally achieved what they supposedly warned of but in truth wished for: the eviction of the affluent descendants of colonizers, the incineration of their homes, and the destruction of a city that, more than any other, represents our bloody history of white supremacy and conquest. I’m not suggesting that Democrats consciously sought to destroy Los Angeles. The entertainment industry professionals in Malibu, Topanga Canyon, and Pacific Palisades, who voted overwhelmingly for California’s progressive Governor, Gavin Newsom, and LA’s radical Left mayor, Karen Bass, thought they were voting for social justice and sustainability. They didn’t imagine their vote would result in their homes burning down. And yet that’s what their votes resulted in. Over the last 24 hours, the evidence of gross mismanagement and incompetence by Newsom and Bass has only grown more overwhelming. On January 2nd, a full eight days ago, the National Weather Service urgently warned of extreme fire conditions. To drive home the point, the National Weather Service’s Los Angeles office held a press briefing warning of impending catastrophe. On that day, Newsom and Bass should have called out the National Guard. They should have had planes and helicopters circling over Los Angeles spotting fires and putting them out immediately upon detecting them. They should have issued emergency warnings to residents. And they should have used various methods to spray water, including mobile sprinkler units alongside normal firefighter hoses, to wet down vulnerable areas. Instead, the following day, Karen Bass flew to Ghana on a frivolous junket. And Gavin Newsom only called out the National Guard yesterday, seven days later than he should have. In truth, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Newsom and Bass should have constructed two to three times more water reservoirs than Los Angeles has in order to deal with fires of that magnitude. Newsom and Bass should have not only built water recycling and desalination plants, like they have in Israel, they should have built them with excess capacity so that, in an emergency, those plants could have pumped fresh water to supplement the water in the reservoirs. And instead of emptying the prisons and jails, subsidizing rampant homelessness, eliminating penalties for breaking the law, and allowing addicts the mentally ill to camp everywhere and start fires, Newsom and Bass should have cracked down on the rampant disorder and violent crime, all of which has skyrocketed under their misrule. It now appears that at least one of the fires was started by a homeless man. Whether or not that’s the case, over half of all fires put out by the Los Angeles Fire Department are started by the homeless, which has diverted the agency from doing what it should have been doing, which was preventing catastrophic fires, including by putting them out as soon as they started. Why didn’t they? Why did Newsom and Bass make so many catastrophic errors? Part of the reason is that they are self-centered and craven politicians, typical of the people who hold office in California. They claim to care about society’s victims; in truth, they care only about themselves and their self-image. Newsom, Bass, and other California politicians are uninterested in doing a good job and instead obsessed with their own personal promotion. For that reason, they have long been focused like a laser on playing politics rather than governing effectively. Another reason is that they are beholden to affluent, radical Left environmentalist and social justice donors who live in places like Marin County and Hollywood. These are the same people who bankroll radical Left groups like the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council, who have successfully blocked desalination and water storage plants, the proper clearing of flammable debris in forests, and effective management of landscapes around housing development, for over 45 years. Before that, the same groups and financial interests halted the expansion of nuclear power, which is the perfect energy source for desalination. And these are the same people who demanded that homeless encampments be allowed to spread throughout the city and that addicts and the mentally ill be given free housing with no strings attached. All of these things were done in the name of saving the environment, social justice, and saving black lives. The result of them was the destruction of the environment, grotesque injustice, and the disproportionate loss of black lives, including from violent crime, which increased 15% since Newsom took office and grew to be 31% higher than the national average. For decades, Hollywood cranked out movies and TV depicting the exhaustion of natural resources and climate as causing the apocalypse. Yesterday, some reporters and scientists blamed climate change for the lack of rain in LA. That’s ridiculous. There's no trend in annual rainfall from 1877 to 2024. We have wet years and dry years. Destroying civilization turned out to be expensive, not cheap. Californians pay the highest taxes for the most expensive gasoline, electricity, and water in the nation. Under Newsom, we spent $24 billion to increase homelessness by 40%. Both ancient wisdom and modern psychology teach us that one can understand a person’s motivation by the consequences of their actions. California’s Democrats, progressives, and politicians lied when they said their highest priority was protecting the people of California. They lied when they said they cared about social justice. And they lied when they said they cared about protecting the environment. Instead, what they cared about was destroying the civilization they had long ago decided was evil. All civilizations require a story. The story that built Los Angeles and California was one of human progress. The story that destroyed it was of human sin. For decades, progressives, Democrats, and the news and entertainment media preached that civilization was evil and doomed. Slavery, indigenous genocide, and climate change were proof. And now, as the city of angels smolders, it’s clear that progressives reaped what they sowed.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Some reporters and scientists are blaming climate change for the lack of rain in LA. It's ridiculous. There's no trend in annual rainfall from 1877 to 2024. We have wet years and dry years. Climate change isn't responsible for the LA fires. Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass are. https://t.co/iX4Q7TxfdH

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Climate change is causing the fires in L.A., says the media. But one of the government's top fire experts says, “I don't think these fires are the result of climate change." The media blame climate change to divert attention from the incompetence of the politicians they like. https://t.co/5fPNh6wiWD

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

This is garbage @ByIanJames @latimes https://t.co/0OHVdGsrmv

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Garbage science that doesn't support the claims made @ByIanJames https://t.co/TcsJwXG9mt

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The EU government will have 150 thought police listening to @elonmusk livestream with @Alice_Weidel today in order to lay the groundwork for fining and censoring X. https://t.co/QxevcNbDyb

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The EU’s @vonderleyen and @HennaVirkkunen need to back off President @EmmanuelMacron please reign in your attack dogs

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

We must censor the Internet to counter the spread of misinformation, say global leaders. But only free speech, not censorship, can counter misinformation. The real reason they want mass online censorship is so they won't keep getting called out for spreading disinformation. https://t.co/PMtg1iWZmI

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Over the next few weeks you’re going to hear Governor Gavin Newsom, Mayor Karen Bass, and the Democratic Party tell you that there’s nothing that could have been done to prevent the fires from destroying Los Angeles. Those will be lies. They could have prevented them. Governor Newsom cut the funding for preventing forest fires and failed to build sufficient water resources for fighting fires. Mayor Karen Bass cut $17.5 million in funding for the Los Angeles Fire Department and then went to Ghana even though she knew of the risk of catastrophic fires. It’s true that California, in general, and Los Angeles, in particular, are fiery places. It’s true that the Santa Ana winds made the fires worse. But Newsom and Bass have known about those hazards for all of their careers and failed to deal with them. Their rank incompetence and lack of leadership are shocking and scandalous. It’s hard to overstate how badly they screwed up water management. LA firefighters haven’t had the water they needed. Newsom hasn’t built the new water reservoirs that Los Angeles needed. And Newsom even cut the budget for water infrastructure projects last year. Why is that? Part of the reason is that they were focused on other things. Making the fire department more racially diverse. Climate change. Homelessness. And the reason they were focused on those things is because those are what the radical Left that controls the Democratic party wanted them to focus on. Year after year, they do nothing while focusing on things like trans and Trump and climate and ignoring the things that really matter to the people of California. The Democrats in California aren’t like Democrats in other states. They are radicals. I would know, since when I was a young radical I moved to California for that reason. As many of us get older, we become more moderate. We become more practical. We understand firefighters and police officers are necessary. We are reminded of the importance of things like safe streets and hard work and good schools. But more than that, I saw the consequences of radical progressive policies on the environment, homelessness, crime, education, water, and everything else. Violent criminals, in particular, are devouring Los Angeles, Oakland, and the rest of California. The people who control the Democratic Party in California worship books about Los Angeles, like City of Quartz by the Marxist author Mike Davis. In that book, Davis claims that the problem in Los Angeles is that too much money goes to things like firefighting to protect wealthy neighborhoods. They did the same thing on crime and homelessness. They failed to provide adequate funding to the police. They weakened the laws that allowed for burglaries and robberies. They subsidized homelessness, attracting homeless people from around the United States to camp illegally and start fires. Over half of the fires in places like Los Angeles and Oakland are caused by the homeless committing arson, often out of some petty revenge. We don’t know what started all of the fires, but at least one started within the housing subdivision. Others may have started in the interface between housing and wildlands. Or it could have been started by the homeless. Whatever the case, California and LA didn’t invest enough in preventing fires because they were distracted by radical Left causes. When Rick Caruso ran for Mayor against Karen Bass, he called for increasing the fire department’s budget. A big part of the reason he lost is simply because he was white. I watched focus groups in 2022 and the most racist people were white liberals in Los Angeles. When they discussed the mayoral race, the white people overwhelmingly said they couldn’t vote for a white man and had to vote for a black woman because she was black. The Latino men and women in separate focus groups were much less racist. They wanted to know about their policies. It was the radical Left that invented the racist idea that white people alive today should feel guilty about things white people did in the past. Racist white guilt led people in Los Angeles and California to vote against a guy who would have prevented those fires. And so, over the next few weeks, when you hear Governor Gavin Newsom, Mayor Karen Bass, and the Democratic Party tell you that there’s nothing they could have done to prevent the fires from destroying Los Angeles, don’t believe them. It’s time for California to grow up and move beyond the juvenile Leftism that has destroyed the state and destroyed Los Angeles. We can’t trust our leaders to run anything. It’s not just incompetence. It’s that they really don’t care. It’s time for Californians to demand new leaders — ones who aren’t beholden to the radicals who control the Democratic Party. .

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

For over 4 years, the FBI said the threat of terrorism from white supremacists exceeded that from radicalized Muslims. But the data never supported the claim. And now, the New Year's terrorist attack gives ammunition to the push for sweeping reform of our politically corrupt FBI. https://t.co/yOwIWLGBjN

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Democrats Weaponized FBI To Falsely Claim White Supremacists Posed Greater Terror Threat Than Radical Islamists There was never any evidence that right-wing political violence was increasing by @shellenberger FBI Director Christopher Wray; New Orleans terrorism suspect, Shamsud-Din Jabbar; President Joe Biden A 42-year-old former Army IT specialist named Shamsud-Din Jabbar committed an act of terrorism by killing 15 in his truck in New Orleans early on New Year’s Day, says the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). And there appears to be abundant evidence, including testimony from his close relatives and videos he posted to Facebook, that radical Islamic ideology motivated Jabbar. Jabbar’s motivations may come as a surprise to millions of Americans. After all, for the last four years, the FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), President Joe Biden, and other United States agencies that constitute the Intelligence Community (IC) have emphasized that the greatest threat of terrorism comes from white supremacists, not radicalized Islamists. The “top threat we face from DVEs [Domestic Violent Extremist] continues to be those we identify as Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists (‘RMVEs’), specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told Senate Judiciary Committee on March 2, 2021. “According to the intelligence community,” said Biden in 2021, “terrorism from white supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today. Not ISIS, not al Qaeda — white supremacists.” As a result, Wray said in 2021 that " racially motivated violent extremism is the biggest chunk of our domestic terrorism portfolio, if you will, overall. I will also say that the same group of people we're talking about have been responsible for the most lethal attacks over the last decade." Those arguments have continued over the last four years. In August 2024, the New Yorker reported “around 2018 the F.B.I. began seeing an increase in racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists—in particular, ‘individuals espousing the superiority of the white race.’” The evidence never supported any of those claims. Between 2012 and 2021, Islamic extremists committed five acts of domestic US terrorism that killed 77 people, whereas white supremacists committed four acts of domestic terrorism that killed 49 people. And even if the numbers were reversed, at just 12 cases of domestic terrorism, the sample size is too small to be able to claim, scientifically, any kind of discernible trend about DVE. The total number of killings by white supremacists annually is very low. In 2022, there were only 21 homicides linked to white supremacists in the entire country. By comparison, Chicago alone saw an average of 58 homicides every month. In 2022, there were a total of 24,849 homicides. Thus, the share of them that were by white supremacists was .08%. This is not to suggest that the FBI could have prevented the New Orleans attack on New Year’s had it been more focused on the threat of would-be Islamic terrorists. The FBI was still on the alert for Islamic terrorism, even as it claimed that white supremacists posed a greater threat. And some mass killings are difficult to prevent so long as we live in a relatively free society. But the fact that some mass killings may be difficult to prevent is no excuse for the FBI to mislead the public, policymakers, and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The FBI’s claim that white supremacy was the main driver of the acts of terrorism was also misleading. Most of the white supremacist killers appeared to suffer from mental illness, whereas most of the radical Islamicists appeared sane and driven overwhelmingly by ideology. The Wisconsin shooter had a history of alcoholism and depression; the Charleston and Pittsburgh shooters showed signs of paranoia; the El Paso shooter was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a chronic and serious mental illness that combines the symptoms of schizophrenia, including hallucinations or delusions, with a mood disorder like depression or bipolar disorder; and the Buffalo shooter had been temporarily committed to a mental hospital. The only exceptionto this appears to be the Orlando shooter. Thus, there was never any good evidence that there was a rising threat of terrorism from the political ideology of white supremacy, nor that it was greater than the threat of Islamist terrorism. And yet FBI Director Wray, President Biden, and the whole of the US IC have claimed, repeatedly, for four years, that it was. Why? Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning journalism, and to read the rest of the article! https://t.co/CZlQsSl5Ah

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

We must censor the Internet to counter the spread of misinformation, say global leaders. But only free speech, not censorship, can counter misinformation. The real reason they want mass online censorship is so they won't keep getting called out for spreading disinformation. https://t.co/PMtg1iWZmI

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Over the last two years, we have been reporting on the alarming rise of censorship by governments around the world and speaking out against it. If you’re an American, you might not think this should bother you. But in every one of these nations, the people pushing for censorship made clear that they wanted to censor the entire Internet, not just in their own countries. The picture you get is of nations working together to make censorship global not local. Free speech advocates have won a number of important battles. In the last few months, Senators in Ireland and Australia rejected censorship legislation, while the executive branch of the European Union forced its top censor to step down after he warned Elon Musk not to speak to Donald Trump on X. We are more aware of the strategies that the Censorship Industrial Complex of politicians, government agencies, supposedly nongovernmental organizations, and the media use, around the world, to demand ever-more censorship by Internet and social media companies. But it’s also clear that elites worldwide view expanding censorship of online platforms as a must-have, not a nice-to-have feature of global governance. After a week back home in California after returning from Australia, I flew to Brussels, Belgium, to speak to the European Parliament at the invitation of MEP Fernand Kartheiser. There, I learned that the entire European Censorship Industrial Complex remains in place, complete with its Star Chamber of “trusted flaggers,” which are the organizations and people chosen by the EU government to identify wrongthink and demand that Meta/Facebook/Instagram, TikTok, and Google censor it. As in Brazil, those Big Tech companies are going along with it because they must, as organizations serving the interests of shareholders, not free citizens. And the EU has also made clear that it intends to enforce its draconian agenda by confiscating other assets belonging to Musk and any other social media companies and their owners who do not comply with censorship orders. “For decades,” notes the Economist in an article this week about Elon Musk’s conflict with Europe over censorship, “the EU has had free rein to regulate businesses within its borders in ways that often went on to be adopted across the world, a phenomenon known as the ‘Brussels effect.’” I am confident that free-speech lovers will ultimately prevail. Our cause is both righteous and popular. Sixty-one percent of Republicans and 30% of Democrats oppose government censorship of online platforms. Simply pointing out that “Fighting misinformation and hate speech” is, in reality, “Government censorship” has proven effective everywhere, as it breaks the hypnotic trance imposed by censorship advocates. And advocating for censorship has proven bad for the careers of everyone from Ireland’s justice minister to the top Censorship Industrial Complex operative working from the Stanford Internet Observatory, which terminated its censorship project earlier this year. There are good reasons for optimism. We are doing our part. In Brussels, I delivered a message, “Back off!” to the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, and its President, Ursula von der Leyen. But it’s not enough. The whole bureaucracy remains in place, including the provision within the EU’s Orwellian “Digital Services Act” to demand censorship worldwide, not just in the EU. And so it’s increasingly clear to me that defunding, demoralizing, and ultimately ending the Censorship Industrial Complex will require a significant amount more time and effort, as our opponents are not giving up. Top Democrats, media personalities, and progressive philanthropists made that clear both before and after the November elections. The Brazilian government forced Musk to ban hundreds of individuals from the platform or face total confiscation of Starlink assets and the destruction of all Musk businesses in the eighth-largest economy in the world. Britain and Germany are both engaging in new demands for censorship, including the direct imprisonment of people for posting distasteful but nonetheless harmless content online. And massively expanding censorship remains one of the highest priorities if not the highest priority of the elites behind those governments. Davos’ World Economic Forum (WEF) earlier this year named misinformation as the number one global risk. The United Nations has made misinformation one of its top risks. And Bill Gates, the largest private funder to the World Health Organization, as well as the WHO itself, have both called for mass censorship by governments of online platforms, with Gates openly disparaging our First Amendment, similar to how Barack Obama did in 2022. Why is this happening? Why have they decided that this is a must-have rather than a nice-to-have?

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Please subscribe now to support our defense of freedom of speech, to read the rest of the article, and watch the full video! https://t.co/mE5Gh9MOrK

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

You may not care what the European Commission has to say. But it cares about what you have to say. That's why it has a plan to censor the entire Internet. Today, I will warn the world of Europe's plan — from inside the European Parliament. Watch here: https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1jMKgBvamjkxL

@FernKartheiser - Fernand Kartheiser

I am very happy to host Michael @shellenberger in the European Parliament on Wednesday, on behalf of the @ecrgroup. Michael has been a champion of free speech for many years, and his visit to discuss the threats posed to it by EU regulation is very timely.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The EU intends to censor the entire Internet: The DSA "explicitly states its applicability in an extraterritorial context....the CJEU imposed no territorial limitation on the removal or blocking of illegal online content..." https://dsa-observatory.eu/2023/11/01/the-extraterritorial-implications-of-the-digital-services-act/

The extraterritorial implications of the Digital Services Act - DSA Observatory Laureline Lemoine & Mathias Vermeulen (AWO) As the enforcement of the Digital Services Act (DSA) is gathering speed, a number of non-EU based civil society and research organizations have wondered to what extent the DSA can have an impact on their work. This blog post provides a concise overview of the areas and provisions dsa-observatory.eu

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

EU wouldn’t dare? It already did

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Europe’s top censor has generated headlines warning that Elon Musk’s interview tonight with Donald Trump could contain hate speech and misinformation that trigger riots. As such, the EU is not only at war with our Constitution, it may also be interfering in our elections. https://t.co/S9BhMANnav

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Fauci says “I can’t, as a scientist, ignore the historical perspective” that HIV came from the wild, and thus that Covid might have too. In fact, a good scientist would seek to disconfirm one’s experiences & biases. Instead, he sought to reinforce them. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/28/opinion/covid-lab-leak-theory-disinformation.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Opinion | Dr. Fauci Could Have Said a Lot More (Published 2023) If officials don’t trust the public, the public won’t trust them. nytimes.com

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Anybody who says, “I represent science,” is anti-science. Science is a collective process by individuals who disagree. It is always provisional, always changing, and never represented by a single person. Fauci is arrogant, dogmatic, & authoritarian. https://www.axios.com/2021/11/28/fauci-republican-critics

Fauci: Republican detractors are "criticizing science" "I'm just going to do my job and I'm going to be saving lives and they're going to be lying." axios.com

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

This is anti-science: “Our main work over the last couple weeks has been focused on trying to disprove any type of lab theory,” said a researcher, Kristian Andersen. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/28/opinion/covid-lab-leak-theory-disinformation.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Opinion | Dr. Fauci Could Have Said a Lot More (Published 2023) If officials don’t trust the public, the public won’t trust them. nytimes.com

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Who’s peddling stereotypes?

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

"Trying to clean up disinformation by quashing ideas that somebody — a government employee, an academic think tank, a social media team — deems undesirable? This creates its own dangers. I’ve spent too many years in censored countries like Egypt, Russia and China to believe that our disinformation problem can be solved by monitoring speech and sorting out acceptable from unacceptable ideas."

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Fauci looks down on ordinary Americans. "He had, at other times, displayed a Hamiltonian distrust of ordinary people: when he admitted to lying about the benefits of masking because he feared panicked shoppers would buy up all the masks needed by frontline workers, or when he confessed to repeatedly nudging the herd-immunity target higher according to what he thought Americans could bear, apparently applying the boiling-frog theory to our collective tolerance for restrictions.... "It’s almost impossible to sort this out for the general public to understand.”

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Called it:

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The individuals who self-selected to secretly censor the American people think they are better than you. They believe that, because they read The New York Times, they are experts in every subject. They are the most dangerous people in America. https://public.substack.com/p/the-most-dangerous-people-in-america

"The Most Dangerous People In America Right Now" Excerpts of interviews with Die Welt and Weltwoche about the censorship-industrial complex public.news

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Who are the censors? They are a familiar type. Overly confident in their ability to discern truth from falsity, good intention from bad intention, the instinct of these hall monitor-types is to complain to the teacher — and, if the teacher doesn’t comply, to go above them, to the principal. Such an approach might work in middle school and many elite universities, but it is anathema to freedom and is an abuse of power. https://public.substack.com/p/exposed-americas-secret-censorship

EXPOSED: America's Secret Censorship-Industrial Complex U.S. government officials, agencies, and contractors are violating the First Amendment public.news

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

This piece by @Megankstack is one of the best things I've read on the will-to-censor by the self-appointed hall monitor class Glad to see it @nytimes https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/28/opinion/covid-lab-leak-theory-disinformation.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Opinion | Dr. Fauci Could Have Said a Lot More (Published 2023) If officials don’t trust the public, the public won’t trust them. nytimes.com

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Hopefully this is a sign that some within the mainstream media are rebelling not only against Fauci and scientism but also against the Censorship Industrial Complex.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

IMMACULATE CONSTELLATION - Report on the US government’s secret UAP (UFO) program From a whistleblower and released today by @NancyMace and discussed in today’s Congressional hearing FULL REPORT https://t.co/FKCywpnhsU

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

https://t.co/iNNQ51euBH

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

https://t.co/h6cB2FULyN

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Our Intelligence Community is supposed protect us. Instead, it persecuted us. The CIA and FBI created the Russiagate hoax in 2016 and interfered in the 2020 elections. DHS oversaw a mass censorship effort. We still don’t know what happened J6. It’s time for truth & accountability

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

What disinformation operations is the IC still running against the American people?

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

@elonmusk She certainly has a colorful history, so to speak https://t.co/VqvGpoDOlr

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Many Democrats say they want to understand what happened. Few genuinely do. That's because, at some level, they know they're guilty of having participated in a witch hunt in which they falsely accused their fellow Americans, and even their friends & family, of fascism & racism. https://t.co/c88WMOeOqs

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Red Scare's @annakhachiyan is right: many of the people who loudly declared their fellow Americans racists and fascists are covert narcissists who now feel wounded and exposed by Kamala's defeat. At some level, they know they're guilty of witch-hunting and, per usual, are projecting. https://t.co/vfpCjp8z4l

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

People who spent years calling patriotic Americans brown shirts and worse are now saying it's time to be kind. This guy is not kind. Not at all. I'm for reconciliation; it's the higher road. But that can't happen until there's some acknowledgment of the deranged and psychopathic witch hunt the Woke carried out against innocent people for over a decade.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

For over a decade before the election of Trump, Left-wing groups like CAP, led by @johnpodesta & @neeratanden, and @mmfa started a witch hunt against climate heretics like @BjornLomborg @RogerPielkeJr and many others. It was like a dress rehearsal for the much larger witch hunt to come.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

@johnpodesta @neeratanden @mmfa @BjornLomborg @RogerPielkeJr In 2022, the Washington Post brought both witch hunts together when it tried to accuse @AlexEpstein of racism because — wait for it — he defended the right of Africans to use fossil fuels. https://t.co/Ye1qlKNxdS

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Nobody's more eager to move on from the last two decades of progressive witch hunts than me. But there can't be any moving on until there's some society-wide acknowledgment that a group of powerful elites systematically engaged in character assassination against not only their political enemies but dissidents, apostates, and heretics within their ranks. That witch hunt didn't emerge organically from the public. It was created from on high, starting with CAP and Media Matters, out of the idea that it was necessary to enact a progressive agenda. The news media fully participated. It proceeded to brainwash half the country into believing that their fellow citizens were racist, fascist, and phobic nature haters. The media creating the crudest caricatures of ordinary Americans, and the vast majority of Democrats bought into them. The psychopathy of social media, and the stupidity of mobs, enabled the witch hunt. There have been some excellent books published recently on the topic, but a full accounting of the cruelty and madness of the last decade has not yet been written. https://t.co/nhdL7xsA5m

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Biden didn't call Trump supporters "garbage," the media said. But he did. And now two officials and an internal email reveal that the White House press office altered the transcript after it "conferred with the president" in direct violation of the Presidential Records Act. https://t.co/Y76ZciKBbF

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The New York Times says Biden only "appeared" to call Trump voters "garbage." That's disinformation. What Biden said is clear from the video. And now the White House has altered the official transcript in a potential violation of the Presidential Records Act https://t.co/ZxHJQpjTee

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

After the head of the White House Stenography Office found out that the Press Office had altered the transcript to change what Biden said, he sent an email complaining of “a breach of protocol and spoliation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices.” https://t.co/jpOA8rP6dP

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

This is bad "According to the email, the press office had asked the stenographers to quickly produce a transcript of the call amid the firestorm. Biden himself took to social media to say that he was not calling all Trump supporters garbage and that he was referring specifically to the 'hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally.' "The stenographers office is charged with preparing accurate transcripts of public and private remarks of the president for preservation by the National Archives and distribution to the public. "The two-person stenography team on duty that evening — a “typer” and “proofer” — said any edit to the transcript would have to be approved by their supervisor, the head of stenographers’ office. "The supervisor was not immediately available to review the audio, but the press office went ahead and published the altered transcript on the White House website and distributed it to press and on social media in an effort to tamp down the story. "White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates that evening also posted on X the edited version of the quote and wrote that Biden was referring 'to the hateful rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden rally as ‘garbage.''”

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Since 2022, the NY Times has championed the prosecution of Trump for allegedly violating the Presidential Records Act. Now that there is strong evidence that Biden was directly involved in manipulating a transcript in violation of the PRA, will the NY Times demand prosecution? https://t.co/Nl9nYVpZ8t

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

🫡 https://t.co/TKuvTWEkSw

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The New York Times says Biden only "appeared" to call Trump voters "garbage." That's disinformation. What Biden said is clear from the video. And now the White House has altered the official transcript in a potential violation of the Presidential Records Act https://t.co/ZxHJQpjTee

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

All the major elements of the FBI & CIA conspiracy to interfere in the 2020 election on behalf of Joe Biden are now confirmed: — FBI had the Hunter Biden laptop in Dec. 2019 & knew it "was real" immediately — FBI, spying on Giuliani, knew he would give the laptop to media — FBI ran a disinformation campaign in the summer of 2020 to "prebunk" the story with journalists & social media companies, both directly and through Aspen Institute, by falsely claiming Russians were planning disinfo relating to Hunter Biden — "Former" FBI General Counsel turned Twitter Dep. Counsel, Jim Baker, convinced colleagues to censor the NY Post story after they had determined that it had *not* violated Twitter's Terms of Service — CIA Director Gina Haspel approved, within a few hours, a disinformation campaign by 51 "former" CIA and other Intelligence Community leaders who falsely claimed the laptop was Russian disinformation The result was that millions of voters thought the laptop was fake and never learned that Joe Biden oversaw a vast influence-peddling scheme involving China, Ukraine, and other nations, with his son and brother, until after the election. These are high crimes for which people should go to prison. https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1604871630613753856

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

The evidence was already overwhelming that the FBI and CIA conspired to interfere in the 2020 election and violate the Constitution. The new, spectacular reporting by former CBS investigative journalist @C__Herridge confirms that the FBI knew the laptop was authentic immediately. The whistleblowers went to Herridge because they knew they could not trust the news media, which participated in the 2020 disinformation operation and continues to do the bidding of the FBI and CIA today. Both organizations and the media are rotten to the core. Please re-post this thread and email it to your friends and family. They need to understand that some of the top investigative journalists in the country, IRS whistleblowers, Twitter Files, and documents subpoenaed and released by Congress prove the conspiracy by FBI and CIA. The American people must know that the FBI, CIA, and legacy news media are a clear and present danger to the American people and to democratic republic. Additional information here:

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

We give the CIA and FBI great powers and expect they won't abuse them. But the evidence is now overwhelming that the CIA & FBI violated the Wiretap Act, spread disinformation, and interfered in the 2020 election. These crimes must be investigated and the perpetrators prosecuted. https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1828873564113813697/photo/1

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Be sure to share our original Twitter Files thread from December 2022, which revealed for the first time the full scope of the FBI's conspiracy to interfere in the 2020 elections. Please know that I am using the term "conspiracy" — "a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful" — literally. And it is not a "theory." It is proven.

@shellenberger - Michael Shellenberger

Holy smokes

@C__Herridge - Catherine Herridge

IRS Whistleblowers say investigators “corroborated” early in the case that ‘The Big Guy’ was then candidate Joe Biden. They say the FBI, IRS, Justice Department knew, “There was no question ever that ‘The Big Guy’ was referring to Joe Biden.” “How do these foreign officials pay US politicians? By paying their families.” The FBI, DOJ and IRS declined to comment, or did not respond to our questions. Empowr Oversight represents the IRS whistleblowers. They are raising money for this defamation suit and others like it. http://DEFENDWHISTLEBLOWERS.COM Donate: https://www.givesendgo.com/fightthelies

Video Transcript AI Summary

The big guy referred to in the discussions was confirmed to be Joe Biden. There was no doubt among the FBI and IRS that this was the case, which is why prosecutors in Delaware chose not to inquire about it during interviews. The focus of the investigation was on how the Biden family benefited financially from Hunter Biden's business dealings. These transactions were seen as a means of enriching the Biden family through access to political influence. Various family members, including James Biden, received payments from these deals, highlighting how foreign officials often pay U.S. politicians by compensating their families.

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Full Transcript

Speaker 0: There was no question in your mind based on the universe of data that the big guy was Joe Biden? Speaker 1: We corroborated that the big guy was Joe Biden. Yes. Speaker 0: Did your supervisors accept that the big guy was Joe Biden? Speaker 1: There was no question ever that the big guy was referring to I don't think that Joe Biden. Speaker 0: So FBI, IRS, everyone understood that. Speaker 1: And that's why when we were doing the interviews, the the the prosecutors, in Delaware specifically told us that they didn't wanna ask about the big guy because they knew it was Joe Biden. Speaker 0: Did president Biden financially benefit from his son's business deals? Speaker 2: This whole thing at the end of the day was about enriching a family, enriching the Biden family through access to an administration. Through all these different financial transactions, you see various members of the Biden family to include James Biden receiving money through a lot of these deals that were set up. How do these foreign officials pay US politicians? By paying their families.

Help Whistleblowers Fight the Lies Empower Oversight Whistleblowers & Research (Empower Oversight) represents many whistleblowers who get viciously attacked and defamed in retaliation for cour... givesendgo.com

Help Whistleblowers Fight the Lies Empower Oversight Whistleblowers & Research (Empower Oversight) represents many whistleblowers who get viciously attacked and defamed in retaliation for cour... givesendgo.com