From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By TOM HEBERT

“Internal talking points prepared by Amazon,” says the report, “included the question: ‘Is the [Biden] Admin asking us to remove books, or are they more concerned about search results/order (or both).’”

High-ranking Biden White House operatives coerced Big Tech companies into censoring posts critical of the Biden administration or those that spread so-called “misinformation” about COVID-19. A blockbuster new report from the House Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan, exposes how the Biden administration weaponized Big Tech against conservatives.

“The report,” the committee said when it released it, “details the months-long campaign by the Biden White House to coerce large companies, namely Facebook, Google, and Amazon, to censor books, videos, posts, and other content online. By the end of 2021, Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon changed their content moderation policies in ways that were directly responsive to criticism from the Biden Administration.”

This report is the result of a multi-year investigation by the Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The evidence, including tens of thousands of emails and other non-public documents, shows a disturbing pattern of Biden officials pressuring Big Tech companies into censoring Americans online.

Shortly after Biden’s inauguration in 2021, then-White House Digital Director Rob Flaherty began haranguing top Facebook officials for more detail on their policies for taking down COVID-19 related posts. “In February 2021,” says the report, “Facebook increased its censorship of anti-vaccine content as well as the lab leak theory of the origin of the virus because of ‘tense conversations with the new [Biden] Administration’ and as part of an effort to be responsive to the Biden White House’s exhortations to ‘do more’ to combat alleged misinformation.”

As 2021 progressed, the White House demanded to know what Facebook was doing to censor “borderline content,” posts that did not violate Facebook’s content moderation policies but were nevertheless objectionable to Biden officials. “Facebook would meet again with the Biden White House on March 12, 2021, to discuss how it was approaching ‘borderline content,’ that is, content that did not violate its policies,” says the report.

“Facebook walked through its policies and enforcement practices for violative and borderline content,” it says. “But call notes reveal that throughout the meeting, Flaherty continued to ask about the removal and reduction of content above all else.”

Unsatisfied with Facebook’s unwillingness to “play ball,” Flaherty and the White House played hard ball. On July 16, 2021, a reporter asked Biden: “On Covid misinformation, what’s your message to platforms like Facebook?” Biden responded: “They’re killing people.”

In response to the intense pressure from the White House, Facebook went on to change their content moderation policies and censored posts about vaccine hesitancy and the lab-leak theory.

Facebook was not the only social media platform that Biden officials pressured. In April 2021, Flaherty reached out to YouTube with a litany of questions about YouTube’s efforts to censor borderline content. “Flaherty’s email was particularly focused on how YouTube handled non-violative ‘borderline’ content,” says the report. “These requests were prefaced by stating the Biden White House wanted ‘to be sure that you have a handle on vaccine hesitancy generally and are working toward making the problem better’ and that this ‘is a concern that is shared at the highest (and I mean highest) level of the [White House].’”

After Flaherty succeeded in making YouTube change its content moderation policies “to remove content that questioned the safety or efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines,” other Biden bureaucrats started to pester YouTube employees to clamp down on other content. In March 2022, according to the committee report, former Biden advisor Tim Wu asked for a meeting with Google employees to discuss “Russian misinformation/disinformation” and “airline competition.”

Another staffer communicated with YouTube about abortion-related content. “On July 14, 2022, YouTube Government Affairs staff contacted White House personnel to brief them on ‘updates related to addressing reproductive health misinformation on YouTube,’ to which White House staff responded, saying that they were ‘specifically interested in abortion,’” said the report.

Biden officials clearly sought to censor content they perceived as politically damaging to Biden.

The report also shows the White House’s obsession suppressing books that they disagreed with. In March 2021, the Biden White House emailed an Amazon executive “asking to have a discussion regarding the ‘high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation at Amazon.’”

“Internal talking points prepared by Amazon,” says the report, “included the question: ‘Is the [Biden] Admin asking us to remove books, or are they more concerned about search results/order (or both).’”

There are two important takeaways from this report.

One, the Biden administration sought to impose a censorship regime through Big Tech to benefit the president politically.

Two, Congress should act to prevent future government-directed censorship of American speech. There are numerous bills that would address this problem. The House passed the “Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act” last year, legislation that would ban bureaucrats from advocating for censorship of viewpoints. The “Free Speech Protection Act” imposes penalties on bureaucrats who censor speech, and the “Censorship Accountability Act” would allow  Americans to sue bureaucrats who violate their First Amendment rights.

The Biden administration has displayed an appalling amount of contempt for American free speech. Exposing Biden’s censorship-industrial complex is an important first step toward ensuring that unelected bureaucrats do not have a veto over what we say online.

Tom Hebert is Director of Competition and Regulatory Policy at Americans for Tax Reform and executive director of the Open Competition Center.

From LifeSiteNews

By Emily Mangiaracina

Slovakia recently announced that it would not support the WHO’s pending Pandemic Agreement, which Robert Fico has described as ‘nonsense’ that ‘could only be invented by greedy pharmaceutical companies.’

Slovakia Prime Minister Robert Fico, an outspoken opponent of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) pandemic accord, is “fighting for his life” after he was shot five times in an assassination attempt on Wednesday.

🚨 🇸🇰 Breaking: Slovakia

The Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico has just been shot in public.

This comes only days after Fico formally & publicly rejected The WHO Global Pandemic Accord ‼️ pic.twitter.com/QIZOgGQCyE

— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) May 15, 2024

Fico is undergoing surgery while the gunman, who has not yet been publicly identified, is in custody, according to government officials. According to Slovakia Defense Minister Robert Kaliňák, Fico’s medical state is “extraordinarily serious,” and his surgery has been ongoing for at least 3 1/2 hours.

The assassination attempt, which occurred as he was leaving a government meeting, comes only a few days after Slovakia announced that it would not support the WHO’s pending Pandemic Agreement, including the new International Health Regulations (IHR) in the proposal. Slovakia’s health minister declared the country would not sign any agreements weakening the nation’s sovereignty, according to Radio Slovakia International. 

In November, Fico referred to the Pandemic Agreement as “nonsense” that “could only be invented by greedy pharmaceutical companies, which began to perceive resistance from some governments against mandatory vaccination,” Euractiv reported.

The WHO’s Pandemic Agreement, which has a May 2024 signing deadline, has been widely denounced as a threat to the national sovereignty of WHO member nations by giving the WHO greater power over the countries in the case of a declared public health emergency. All 49 Republican U.S. Senators have signed a letter urging the Biden administration to reject the WHO agreements, “or at least submit any agreement to the Senate as a treaty.”

Two international agreements are being considered at this month’s World Health Assembly that surrenders U.S. sovereignty to the WHO. @POTUS should reject them, or at least submit any agreement to the Senate as a treaty.

The entire Senate GOP conference has signed onto my… pic.twitter.com/a3IBoE2DeD

— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) May 2, 2024

During an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s podcast in January, liberal intellectual Bret Weinstein argued that the WHO is gearing up for a “re-run” of COVID-19 in order to set up a “totalitarian planet.” He noted that the agreement is being modified so the WHO will have even more power to crack down on voices that dissent from Big Pharma’s narrative.

Fico won a third term in October after running a campaign critical of Western support for Ukraine, and his government has already halted arms deliveries to the war-torn country, according to the Associated Press. He previously served as prime minister of Slovakia from 2006 to 2010 and from 2012 to 2018, holding a record as the longest-serving prime minister in the country’s history.

Fico has been acutely critical of the mainstream media as well as globalist billionaire George Soros, known for funding the radical left. In November 2021, Fico described journalists as “Soros’ corrupt gang of swines for whom water is already boiling.”