This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Hearing scheduled on plan by city to hand out cash based on race
One of the big fights triggered by leftists across America has been over reparations.
That mostly involves cash payments to black Americans, whose ancestors may have been abused as slaves in centuries past.
Multiple local jurisdictions have tried delivering those payments at times, not without resistance because of the racially discriminatory nature of the programs.
And the latest fight is developing in Evanston, Illinois.
Government watchdog Judicial Watch has announced a hearing is scheduled Wednesday in a class action civil rights case against the city "on behalf of six individuals over the city's reparations program."
The organization explained it "filed the lawsuit over the city's use of race as an eligibility requirement for a reparations program, which makes $25,000 direct cash payments to black residents and descendants of black residents who lived in Evanston between the years 1919 and 1969."
The case charges that violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The city wants the case dismissed.
But Judicial Watch noted, "The program's use of a race-based eligibility requirement is presumptively unconstitutional, and remedying societal discrimination is not a compelling government interest. Nor has remedying discrimination from as many as 105 years ago or remedying intergenerational discrimination ever been recognized as a compelling government interest. Among the program's other fatal flaws is that it uses race as a proxy for discrimination without requiring proof of discrimination."
Judicial Watch chief Tom Fitton said, "It should go without saying that Evanston's reparations program is clearly discriminatory and unconstitutional. Judicial Watch's class action lawsuit should proceed."
A report from Newsweek only last year said the U.S. never implemented a widespread slavery reparations program, but it was local elected officials who were pursuing the social engineering agenda.
California even has a state Reparations Task Force that at one time considered a plan to give black Americans and slave descendants priority in professional license applications, a scheme that failed to gain traction.
There have been a variety of other proposals made, too.
Chicago's mayor at the time also created the city's own reparations task force in order to address the "historical wrongs committed against black Chicagoans and their ancestors."
Critics have noted multiple times the legal and constitutional challenges to handing out special benefits based on race.
They cite the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.
Not only are the benefits subject to challenge for this, critics of such programs note that those who would be forced to pay the "reparations" had nothing to do with the offense against a group of people.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
After the third day of U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations concluded last Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described the discussions as "serious," though marked by significant obstacles. He cautiously expressed hope for progress.
The Iranian regime continues to assert its "inalienable right" to enrich uranium on its own soil and refuses to export its enriched stockpiles. In contrast, the United States insists on limiting Iran's enrichment activities and including the country's missile program in the negotiations – a demand Tehran has declared a non-negotiable red line.
As the Iranian daily Etemad, known for its proximity to the regime, reported: "Evidence suggests that the United States has stepped back from its original demand for the complete dismantling of Iran's enrichment program and is now prepared to settle for restrictions. According to observers, this could pave the way for a new deal – a so-called JCPOA 2."
Any perceived change in the regime's behavior is an illusion
While a genuine shift in the regime's behavior would be a welcome step toward peace, such expectations are more illusion than reality.
After all, just weeks ago, on Feb. 3, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declared: "Negotiation is neither wise, nor dignified, nor intelligent."
Despite that, he reluctantly agreed to the talks – not from a position of strength, but after commanders of the pro-regime Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, as well as senior security officials warned him that a military strike on nuclear facilities could trigger a national uprising. Such an event, they cautioned, could be seized upon by the Resistance Units, who are prepared to lead such a movement toward the regime's overthrow.
In short, the regime was driven to the negotiating table not by choice, but by fear.
A half century of broken promises
Over the past 46 years, the Iranian regime has consistently failed to uphold its international obligations. After the Iranian Resistance revealed the existence of secret nuclear sites in 2002, Khamenei reluctantly agreed to suspend enrichment and seal certain nuclear facilities. However, just one year later, the seals were broken, and nuclear activity resumed – and even expanded.
Hassan Rouhani, who would later serve two terms as president, recalled the events of that time:
"In 2004, IAEA inspectors took samples at several of our sites and reported enrichment levels as high as 80 percent. That's when the nuclear file was handed over to me."
Negotiations as a tool of deception
For more than four decades, the Iranian regime has used negotiations as a tool to buy time – all while quietly advancing its weapons program and executing destabilizing policies across the region.
The only true solution to the crisis in Iran – and to lasting peace in the Middle East – is the overthrow of the regime by the Iranian people themselves, a goal supported by a broad segment of society.
But this change will not happen on its own. International pressure, while important, is not enough. What is also required is an organized resistance and a network of forces on the ground.
That role today is fulfilled by the Resistance Units, affiliated with the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran or PMOI – a courageous and defiant movement in which women play a leading role, standing up to one of the world's most misogynistic regimes.
The theocracy at its weakest point
Today, the Iranian regime is at its most vulnerable point in history, a convergence of factors pushing it to the edge:
In response, the regime has intensified its use of repression – including widespread political executions – to maintain control.
Over the last four decades, more than 120,000 political prisoners have been executed – an unparalleled crime in the modern era.
A democratic alternative
The National Council of Resistance of Iran, or NCRI, has laid out a vision for the country's future through its Ten-Point Plan. This vision includes:
Crucially, the NCRI is not seeking power for itself. Its mission is to return sovereignty to the people of Iran through free and fair elections.
The urgency of a firm policy
The root cause of many Western policy failures in dealing with Iran over the past four decades has been the systematic dismissal of Iran's organized, internal democratic resistance.
A firm and realistic strategy, therefore, must now include:
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The "rights" ideology for the LGBT community started out with homosexuals demanding they be left alone to live their chosen lifestyle.
Soon that was expanded to demand that they be treated as a privileged part of society, and their "rights" protected.
It expanded quickly to encompass lesbians, bisexuals and more, even transgenders, and the requirements for the rest of society soon were that those outside the community had to not just tolerate and respect them, but promote their ideologies.
Words were created, like "homophobia," for those who didn't accept the same-sex beliefs.
Even "minor-attracted" individuals, or pedophiles, have been demanding recognition and rights.
Now it's moved to the next level, according to a report in the Daily Mail.
It's because of a ruling from a Quebec Superior Court that found that it would be "unconstitutional" not to provide "legal rights" to so-called multi-parent families.
Sometimes they are called "throuples," where three people are in a "relationship."
Polygamy and polyamory are the defining ideas.
Involved in the case were several groups of people: a man and two women who share children, a lesbian duo and a male sperm donor, and a trio where the husband had a baby with his wife's friend.
"In these times when the right to equality is savagely attacked, it feels good," said Marc-Andre Landry, a lawyer who fought for the change.
The report noted the law only applies to parental "units" that were set up before the conception of a child, not residences occupied by step-parents or others.
The movement so far has had a limited impact in the United States, where most states allow recognition of only one or two parents.
The report noted that the Quebec government now will have to amend its law to reflect the change, although an appeal still could develop.
Technically, polyamory and bigamy still remain illegal in Canada, following a 2011 court ruling that affirmed the limits. That was based on the fact the potential harm to women and children outweighed concerns over "personal freedom."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
'Settlers' homes and the surrounding areas are your target. Burn them with your Molotov cocktails and set fire to the grass near the settlement outposts'
Wildfires are raging around Jerusalem and up and down Israel, forcing the evacuation of some communities and the closures of highways.
International help to fight the infernos is coming, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirming Italy and Croatia are expected to send three firefighting planes soon. IDF soldiers are on duty.
And other requests have been given to Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria.
There has been extreme wind and dangerous winds in recent days, and some reports attribute the flames to those conditions.
But a report in the Jerusalem Post suggests there's another contributing factor: Terrorists who are urging people to "set" those fires.
"All you have to do is burn," was one message from Hamas, which in fall of 2023 dispatched its terrorists to invade Isreal and killed some 1,200 civilians, kidnapping hundreds more.
"Youth of the West Bank, youth of Jerusalem, and those inside Israel, set their cars ablaze… Gaza awaits the revenge of the free," the terrorist organization wrote, according to the Post.
The terror organization also posted on social media encouragement for Palestinians to "burn whatever you can of groves, forests, and settler homes."
While more than a dozen people already have been injured, there have been no fatalities reported yet.
The Jenin News Network Telegram channel called on Palestinians to "burn the groves near the settlements," the report said.
Estimates are that 220 fires have broken out across Israel over the past few days, under conditions that include heat and winds.
Dozens of homes have been destroyed.
"O, youth of the West Bank," one online statement claimed. "Let us be the flame of freedom which will not die. Let us make their night – a burning day. Let us bring back to them the nightmares of the occupation, so they know that every day is a struggle for the resistance. Set fires of freedom everywhere. We will not give in and will not give up until we burn every piece of stolen land."
The Post explained online, the fires were being called "Flames of the Flood," a reprise of Hamas' description of its terror assault on Israel as "Flood of Al-Aqsa."
Another Palestinian "news channel" incited, "A call to the revolutionary youth and all the heroes of the West Bank. Settlers' homes and the surrounding areas are your target. Burn them with your Molotov cocktails and set fire to the grass near the settlement outposts."
Authorities have confirmed that some of the blazes appear to be arson.
Israel Fire and Rescue Commissioner Eyal Caspi announced the authority's alert level has been raised to the highest level.
And the government confirmed Independent Day events have been canceled because of the threat from the flames.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
All across the United States the nation is becoming more and more divided, since the Supreme Court threw out the faulty and unconstitutional Roe v. Wade ruling from decades ago that created a so-called "right" to abortion.
Since that ruling returned regulation of abortion to the medical powers in each state, officials have taken two paths. One is for a regulation structure that recognizes the health and life of the mother, as well as the health and life of the unborn infant, and that has involved several standards.
The other has been a free-for-all regarding abortion, when unborn children can be killed, legally, up to the moment of birth.
One of those scenarios has developed in New Mexico, which has no restriction on abortion, allowing the unborn to be destroyed just before birth.
And more specifically, the industry has exploded in Albuquerque, where there now are six abortion businesses operating.
Those circumstances have led the American Center for Law and Justice, a prominent player in fights against the abortion industry, to begin a new investigation into four New Mexico operations that do abortions past 23 weeks.
The legal team noted, "Such late-term abortions raise grave moral, medical, and legal concerns."
"New Mexico has no restrictions on abortion – it is available on demand up until birth. Further, New Mexico remains one of the few states in America that does not have a Born-Alive Infant Protection law. Such a law would ensure that if a child survives an abortion attempt, that child is recognized as a living human being under the law and must receive immediate lifesaving medical care. In the absence of this basic protection, the state's permissiveness on late-term abortion raises deeply troubling questions about whether infants born alive during abortion procedures are being left to die – or worse," the ACLJ reported.
Further triggering concern is the fact that a new abortion business, the Valley Abortion Group, recently opened and boasts of abortions throughout all three trimesters.
"This marks the sixth abortion center in the city, and it is operated under a radical ideological banner that promotes abortion as its sole service. No prenatal care, counseling, or adoption services are offered – only abortion. This facility is not an outlier, but rather the latest example of an unregulated and ideologically driven abortion industry operating with little accountability," the ACLJ reported.
The facility, the ACLJ reported, charges as much as $17,500 for abortions, a price funded by taxpayers as the state pays for abortions through Medicaid.
Its work, the ACLJ said, now involves an "Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA) request" that was filed with the New Mexico Department of Health and the New Mexico Medical Board.
"Our objective is clear: to uncover whether these facilities are complying with the state's reporting laws and to expose practices that may be violating the law or placing women and viable preborn children at risk," the ACLJ said.
Requested were all records, including emails, provided to the CDC for the National Vital Statistics System that reference abortion, institutional records about the abortion businesses, records from attending physicians, records that reference an infant who survived an abortion and records of abortions past 24 weeks.
The report, compiled by ACLJ staff members John Monaghan and Olivia Summers, said, "The ACLJ will not stand by while the most vulnerable among us – preborn children – are subjected to inhumane procedures behind closed doors. We will continue to demand transparency, uphold the rule of law, and advocate for protections that recognize the sanctity of every human life."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Those "Pride" events held all across America periodically to promote the alternative sexual lifestyle choices of the LGBT agenda are looking less and less like the excesses of yesteryear when public nudity was common and featured was "deviant revelry," before the agenda "inserted itself into grade schools."
A plunge in corporate funding is impacting their outlooks, in a major way.
That's happening as DEI, those "diversity, equity and inclusion" ideologies, are losing their attractiveness for companies facing White House opposition, public exposure and stockholder and customer criticism.
A commentary at PJMedia pointed out, "In 2025, it's all trending in the right direction. New York City and Seattle's Pride organizations each say they're suffering a $350k deficit this year. Pride St. Louis is short $150k. Twin Cities Pride is about $200k short for its June Pride bacchanalia. So is the infamous San Francisco festival."
The report even noted that San Francisco Pride Executive Director Suzanne Ford noted, "Will we be able to keep the doors open? You know, that's what I'm most concerned about now."
The plunge in funding for the ideology has been documented by Bloomberg, which pointed out in a report organizers of those events "are scrambling to make up hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost corporate sponsorships."
It noted the entitlement that the leftist event promoters feel, as Andi Otto, of Twin Cities Pride, said, "We spend our money as a community in these corporations and I want them to give back. They should give back."
The report documented a survey of dozens of corporate executives confirming 40% are scaling back their "Pride" month involvements.
"That includes both internal engagement like promoting workplace equity and public-facing participation like sponsoring or appearing in Pride events," the report said.
"Conservative scrutiny is really the top driver of change," Luke Hartig, of Gravity Research, told Bloomberg.
"Six in ten companies cite pressure from the Trump administration — which has pushed policies targeting transgender and nonbinary people, while also cracking down on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI — as a key reason for their change. Nearly 40% of all companies point to the threat of backlash from conservative activists and consumers, including more than three-quarters of consumer brands," the report noted.
In fact, the report noted some of those companies already had started pulling back as early as 2023.
LGBT activists described the plunge in support as unprecedented, the report said.
"Among the largest of the events is World Pride, a weeks-long celebration that was expected to draw at least 2 million domestic and international visitors to Washington, D.C., beginning May 17. In February, after shutting down its DEI department, the federal contractor Booz Allen Hamilton withdrew its sponsorship from the event. Comcast, Darcars Automotive Group and Deloitte have also decided not to commit any funding, according to Ryan Bos, Executive Director of the Capital Pride Alliance, which is organizing the event," the report said.
Dollar General and Nissan both have dropped their sponsorships of events set for Nashville, the report said.
PJMedia, calling the circumstances the "Best pride month ever!" explained, "OF COURSE, corporations shouldn't be funding exotic sexuality extravaganzas (especially for children and youth, for the love of God!) Imagine if they spent this much money and effort promoting wholesome, healthy families. Or go wild and imagine if they spent this kind of time and treasure evangelizing the word of Christ — the greatest faith in history, with a tangible record of bringing emotional health and overall wellbeing to its practitioners, be they gay, straight, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, American or foreign, old or young."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
It was only days ago that the Washington Examiner editorialized about the affinity Democrats have for violence.
Really bad violence.
The report noted more than half of Americans who "identify as 'left of center'" think assassinating President Donald Trump is 'justifiable."
"That's what a new study from Rutgers University has found. According to the survey produced by the university's Social Perception Lab that asked 1,264 U.S. citizens about their attitudes toward political violence, 55% of all self-identifying 'liberals' believe killing the president is a justifiable means of pursuing their political goals."
The Examiner explained, "This is the fruit of hysteria that Democratic politicians and their allies in the news media have nurtured in their followers for the past eight years. This is a political faction that considers 'misgendering' to be 'literal violence,' but it is one also building an assassination culture."
The attitude really isn't that new. Fox News reported months ago that Democrats' violent rhetoric was exploding.
That conclusion followed two assassination attempts against Trump during his campaign in 2024, including one in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a bullet nicked his ear.
Trump has said he thinks God allowed him to escape that assassination attempt so that he could be president and help America.
That violent rhetoric included comments from both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris that Trump is a "threat" to democracy.
One Democrat, Rep. Dan Goldman, a Democrat, said Trump is so dangerous he "has to be eliminated," and then quickly apologized.
Now, those circumstances have drawn from Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a warning about what result the circumstances could produce:
He said, "So, they are lowering the bar on what's permissible. And we're going to see something like we saw with these two assassination [attempts]. I don't want to predict it; I hope it never happens."
He added, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation, "But if they keep this language up and you start to see polls that say 50% of self-identified leftists think it's okay to shoot, and you see them romanticizing a assassin [allegedly] like [Luigi] Mangione, and you see them go fund an alleged murderer like Karmelo Anthony and basically saying that he was a victim and you see this [alleged] MS-13 wife beater who was pulled over for trafficking and let go and was found — yes, everybody, he was found by a immigration judge to have MS-13 ties. Even his wife did not deny it. She didn't deny that she was beaten by him either."
He explained that the result is a growing risk of more assassination attempts against the president.
In light of the Democrats' popularity being assessed as low as 27%, he said, there will be desperation.
"I'm just watching this and I see that the more impotent they are and the less actual power they wield, and the less the public likes them — if you look at the polls of the Democratic Party, 29%, 27%, one poll I think was 23% approval — they react to that by being crazier and more strident and upping the, you know, not just 'fascist,' but the other day [Democratic Texas Rep.] Jasmine Crockett said that Trump was like worse than the MS-13 gang member, you know."
In fact, Crockett claimed she believed alleged MS-13 member Kilmar Abrego Garcia was "less criminal" than Trump, the report explained.
Hanson said being created is a "climate of fear and legitimizing violence, and something's going to happen."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Warren Hern, the late-term abortionist who, now 87, retired from his abortion business in Boulder, Colorado, just weeks ago, now apparently has closed it down entirely.
Hern, who stunningly held University of Colorado "academic appointments" as assistant clinical professor, department of Obstetrics Gynecology; associate clinical professor, department of Family Practice and associate clinical professor, department of Preventive Medicine and Biometrics, had published his own "Abortion Practice" textbook instructing others how to destroy unborn babies.
Word of the closure of an abortion business that had been a guiding star for the abortion industry in America for more than 50 years came from the pro-life Operation Rescue, which explained the clinic's webpage now reads, "Closed. No longer schedule patients."
That's followed by an advisory, apparently from Hern himself, who wrote, "After more than 50 years of helping women to have safe abortions at my private medical practice, Boulder Abortion Clinic, we have closed and have stopped scheduling patients."
He said abortion is his "life's work."
"It has given me and others helping me great satisfaction and meaning in our lives," Hern said.
He had announced his retirement in January, promising his abortion business would continue, but that apparently has changed.
"Operation Rescue has some thirty years of history with this clinic – everything from activism on the sidewalk, documenting abortion injuries, filing complaints, and other legal efforts to expose wrongdoing, including one patient death," explained Troy Newman, chief of Operation Rescue. "We cannot praise God enough for the closure of this monstrous killing center."
The report said Hern "has likely committed hundreds of thousands of abortions since then, proudly specializing in gruesome, full-term killings." Others attributed to Hern the deaths of 42,000 unborn.
OR reported, "According to volunteers with the 40 Days for Life Boulder campaign, which has been on the sidewalk there for 17 years, there was a noticeable decline in patient activity over the last three weeks. Hern attempted to hire another abortionist, Benedict Mills, but it seems he could not handle the horrific job of a full-term abortionist."
Newman explained, "There is a devastating hardness of heart required to kill a child at nine months in the womb and only a handful of abortionists in this country have achieved that level of stone cold evil. Warren Hern is one of them, and we pray no one ever follows in his murderous footsteps."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
More review needed to determine whether climate organizations can take $20 billion from taxpayers
A video of a former employee of the Environmental Protection Agency last year explained how Biden administration officials were trying to hand taxpayer money out to various organizations and foundations very fast, before the administration of President Donald Trump came into office.
The worker said, "It truly feels like we're on the Titanic, and we're throwing like gold bars off the edge."
Now an appeals court has ordered a halt to the tossing.
A report from Washington Examiner said the D.C. Court of Appeals has put on hold an order from Tanya Chutkan, a leftist whose antagonism to President Trump is well-established in the court records, and had issued an order that gave various climate groups access to the funds being held in Citibank.
The appeals court said it wants to review Chutkan's full order before moving on with the dispute, in which the new EPA managers want to terminate some $20 billion in grants, to save taxpayers from those handouts.
"The purpose of this order is to give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the district court's forthcoming opinion in support of its order granting a preliminary injunction together with the emergency motion for stay pending appeal and any response thereto, and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion," the appeals court said.
That decision is just the latest development in the fight brought on by three climate groups against the EPA. The funding comes from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was part of Joe Biden's 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which even leftists have admitted was not intended to, and did not, reduce inflation.
Climate United official Beth Bafford said her group stands firm "on the merits of our case." Her group, along with Coalition for Green Capital and Power Forward Communities, all sued, demanding delivery of the tax funding they want.
However, Lee Zeldin, appointed to head the EPA under President Trump, explained the grant money was distributed improperly, because it was routed through Citibank.
The funds were frozen and there was an order to cancel the handouts.
Chutkan has tried, through a preliminary injunction, to order Citibank to hand out the money.
Taxpayers could be forced to hand out is $14 billion that the three nonprofits are demanding.
A previous report confirmed that there were many "financial conflicts of interest and billions of questionable expenditures under Biden's EPA."
And House investigators are reviewing the problems.
It was in a letter House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky.; and Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo.; asked Zeldin for a briefing, while also commending Zeldin for identifying waste, fraud and and abuse in the agency.
The report explained, "The letter from Comer and Burlison, the chairman of the Oversight's Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs, seeks more information on the EPA's "allocation of funding resources to outside groups and its novel agreements."
Zeldin has explained the Biden administration parked the $20 billion at Citibank "to distribute climate grants to avoid oversight."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
'The American people don't need an obscure agency to 'protect' them from lies'
One of the most damaging attacks on Americans' constitutional rights in recent years actually came from the government itself, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he's working on President Donald Trump's campaign promise to "close the book" on the "weaponization" of the bureaucracy's agenda to "silence, censor, and suppress the free speech of ordinary Americans."
He's doing that by eliminating organizations like the Global Engagement Center, a key player that once had a huge role in the censorship industrial complex.
In a commentary posted at the Federalist, he explains:
"Over the past half-decade, bodies like GEC, crafted by our own governing ruling class, nearly destroyed America's long free speech history. The enemies of speech had new lingo to justify their authoritarian impulse. It was 'disinformation,' allegedly pushed by nefarious foreign governments, that was the No. 1 threat to 'our democracy.' To protect 'our democracy,' this 'disinformation' had to be identified and stamped out"
He then explained that GEC got its start in 2011 as the Center for Strategic Counter Terrorism Communications, responsible for advising the government on how to counter narratives from terrorists such as al-Qaida.
Then it strayed, he said.
"In early 2016, the Obama administration renamed CSCC the 'Global Engagement Center,' stripping away the explicit focus on international terrorism. Then, after Donald Trump's historic victory in 2016 but before he took office, GEC's mission was expanded to cover any and all 'foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts.'"
That was a deliberate move, he charged.
"Obama's man in charge at GEC, Rick Stengel, touted his efforts to protect 'democracy' while redefining it so that 'democracy' came to mean silencing the part of the electorate he doesn't like. In 2019, Stengel directly equated President Trump's campaign with foreign and terrorist propaganda, writing, 'Trump employed the same techniques of disinformation as the Russians and much the same scare tactics as ISIS.' That same year, Stengel wrote an entire article about 'why America needs a hate speech law,'" Rubio charged.
America has paid a price for the leftist ideology.
That agenda created "the hoax that Russian interference, misinformation, and 'meddling' is what caused President Trump's victory in 2016, rather than a winning political message that only he was offering."
He added, "In 2020, a coronavirus from a Chinese lab swept the globe, and GEC popped up with a report warning that a 'Russian disinformation apparatus' was behind public speculation that the virus was an 'engineered bioweapon' or that it existed due to 'research conducted at the Wuhan institute.' GEC tarred not only specific claims as foreign propaganda but also specific users. It created lists of thousands of accounts that were accused of being foreign propaganda vectors simply for sharing articles or even following certain accounts. These lists were sent to social media companies for 'review,' but nobody was fooled — the purpose of this was to pressure private companies in the direction of more censorship and less free speech."
Further, "GEC was an enthusiastic participant in the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), an infamous group established under constitutionally questionable conditions to monitor 'disinformation' about the 2020 election. The EIP pretty much exclusively singled out accounts and narratives associated with President Trump and his supporters and, in fact, directly flagged President Trump's tweets, along with his family members and friends of the administration," he said.
GEC even, "when it wasn't directly nagging social media companies to censor more, the GEC paid private actors to do it for them. With its multimillion-dollar budget, paid for by American taxpayers, GEC funneled grants to organizations around the world dedicated to pushing speech restrictions under the guise of fighting 'disinformation.'"
The former Florida senator confirmed he chose to publish his piece in the Federalist, because one group funded by taxpayers, the British Global Disinformation Index, "once produced a list of the top 10 'riskiest online news outlets' in a direct bid to drive off their ad revenue and put them out of business. Every one of those 10 sites was on the political right, and The Federalist was among them."
He cited another group getting State Department dollars, NewsGuard, "a company that rates the reliability of various websites, once again for the purposes of driving traffic and ad revenue away from those rated poorly."
"NewsGuard claims to be nonpartisan — but its board of advisers has included one Rick Stengel, the very man who built the Global Engagement Center, who says Donald Trump uses ISIS propaganda tactics, and who believes that propagandizing the American people is a good thing."
He said the Trump administration rejects propaganda, and the belief that information Americans get must be censored.
"The American people don't need an obscure agency to 'protect' them from lies by pressuring X to ban users or trying to put The Federalist out of business."
He explained one of his projects has been to "liberate American speech by abolishing forever the body formerly known as the Global Engagement Center."
It was "supposed to be dead already," he noted. But when Republicans in Congress ordered the end of its funding last year, "Biden State Department simply slapped on a new name. The GEC became the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R-FIMI) office, with the same roster of employees. With this new name, they hoped to survive the transition to the new administration."
Not so, he said. "Whatever name it goes by, GEC is dead. It will not return."