Remember how Donald Trump was ahead in several states election night only for tons of Biden ballots to be “found” at 4 AM? I hope all Republican officials in every state are working overtime to prevent similar occurrences this November.
Texas Attorney Ken Paxton seems to be taking nothing for granted, as the Elections Integrity Unit just executed several warrants.
Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced that his office had carried out search operations as part of an ongoing investigation into alleged election fraud.
A statement from Paxton’s office reads, “On August 20, 2024, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Election Integrity Unit executed multiple search warrants in Frio, Atascosa, and Bexar Counties as part of an ongoing election integrity investigation.”
Bexar County is the big one here, being home to San Antonio, whereas Atascosa and Frio are directly south and southwest of San Antonio. The geographic clustering suggests the warrants may all be part of the same election fraud case.
These searches are the result of a 2022 referral by 81st Judicial District Attorney Audrey Louis, who flagged concerns about alleged voter fraud and ballot harvesting in the 2022 elections.
“Secure elections are the cornerstone of our republic,” Paxton said. “We were glad to assist when the District Attorney referred this case to my office for investigation. We are completely committed to protecting the security of the ballot box and the integrity of every legal vote. This means ensuring accountability for anyone committing election crimes.”
Paxton’s involvement in this case is made possible only through the referral by the local District Attorney. This follows a December 2021 ruling by the Court of Criminal Appeals—Texas’ highest court on criminal matters—that declared a state law granting the attorney general unilateral authority to prosecute election cases unconstitutional. The court argued that the Texas Constitution does not expressly provide the attorney general with such authority.
Following reports of organizations potentially working in Texas to register illegal aliens to vote, Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced his office is launching an investigation.
According to a release from Paxton’s office:
Investigators from the Texas Attorney General’s Election Integrity Unit recently conducted undercover operations to identify potential voter registration of noncitizens in Texas. The investigation has already confirmed that various nonprofit organizations have been located outside Texas Department of Public Safety Driver License offices, operating booths offering to assist in voter registration for persons doing business at the driver’s license offices. But all citizens have already been presented an opportunity to register to vote as part of the process of renewing or being issued an identification card or driver’s license, so there is no obvious need to assist citizens to register to vote outside DPS offices—calling into question the motives of the nonprofit groups.
I wonder if these unnamed organizations had “justice” or “tides” in their name.
Paxton said the possibility of this activity is deeply troubling to Texans.
“If eligible citizens can legally register to vote when conducting their business at a DPS office, why would they need a second opportunity to register with a booth outside? My office is investigating every credible report we receive regarding potential criminal activity that could compromise the integrity of our elections,” said Paxton.
“The Biden-Harris Administration has intentionally flooded our country with illegal aliens, and without proper safeguards, foreign nationals can illegally influence elections at the local, state, and national level. It is a crime to vote—or to register to vote—if you are not a United States Citizen. Any wrongdoing will be punished to the fullest extent of the law,” he added.
Gov. Greg Abbott expressed support for Paxton’s investigation on X.
Illegally registering non-citizens to vote won't be tolerated in Texas.
It's a crime.
Attorney General @KenPaxtonTX is thoroughly investigating it.
Fortunately, Texas has strong Voter ID laws that should prevent illegal aliens from voting in the 2024 election, but Paxton is obviously trying to close off all potential fraud vectors. Despite what your Facebook friends may post, Texas is in no danger of turning blue anytime soon, but voting could easily tip some down-ballot races. Best to nip it in the bud.
Yesterday I covered the Supreme Court blocking the Biden Administrations unilateral rewrite of Title IX by executive fiat to impose transexism on colleges, but that’s not the only place Democrats are trying to impose their twisted gender ideology. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issuing the Biden Administration over their attempt to impose their gender ideology in Title VII.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is once again challenging the Biden administration, filing a lawsuit against the federal government in an effort to block enforcement guidance that the state argues unlawfully compels employers to adopt “transgender” mandates under the threat of discrimination or harassment lawsuits.
Specifically, the lawsuit points to a change the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) made in April to the “enforcement guidance on harassment in the workplace” that now includes the definition of “gender identity” under the category of “sex.”
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 created the EEOC to enforce the prohibitions on employment discrimination.
The EEOC guidelines explain how sex-based harassment includes harassment based on “sexual orientation or gender identity,” including misusing pronouns and “the denial of access to a bathroom… consistent with the individual’s gender identity.”
Forcing pronouns on people and making the peasants acquiesce to allowing men in women’s restrooms seems like a huge goal for the Democratic Party, one they’re been relentlessly pushing for over the last decade.
Paxton argues that the EEOC guidance “relies on an intentional misrepresentation of the Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.” He adds that the decision “did not discuss how such employers must accommodate such employees in the workplace.”
In Bostock v. Clayton County, the court ruled that firing someone for being “gay or transgender” is a form of sex discrimination, but Paxton argues that this does not extend to accommodations such as pronoun use, bathroom access, or dress codes.
“Thus,” the lawsuit states, “EEOC may not interpret Title VII to require employers to comply with the Pronoun Accommodation, the Bathroom Accommodation, or the Dress Code Accommodation.”
The lawsuit asks the court to declare the 2024 guidance unlawful, invalidate it, and permanently prevent its enforcement, as well as cover their legal costs and provide any additional relief deemed appropriate by the court.
Paxton is joined by the conservative Heritage Foundation in this legal challenge.
“The Biden-Harris Administration is attempting yet again to rewrite federal law through undemocratic and illegal agency action,” Paxton wrote in a statement.
“This time, they are unlawfully weaponizing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in an attempt to force private businesses and States to implement ‘transgender’ mandates — and Texas is suing to stop them.”
Pronouns and tranny bathrooms are popular with far leftwing activists, but deeply unpopular with ordinary American citizens. No voters outside of San Francisco (and possibly not even there) would vote for these policies, so the Democratic Party’s activist cadres must impose them by stealth via judicial and executive fiat. Just as with the Title IX cases, expect this radical activist regulation to wither under judicial scrutiny.
There’s too damn much going on in the world right now! Compiling the LinkSwarm used to be more like hunting and gathering, but the last few weeks have been like drinking from the firehose.
The real unemployment rate is crushing ordinary Americans, another Trump assassin thwarted, Maricopa cues up illegal alien voter fraud again, Tim Walz’s own National Guard unit accuses him of stolen valor, Ukraine captures a chunk of Russia, Google is declared a monopoly, a global censorship organization immediately folds at the first sign of scrutiny, the leader of Bangladesh flees, and California fines a business for daring to fly Old Glory.
There are lies, damned lies, and government statistics — and maybe none is more damnable than the official unemployment rate which is half the actual rate, according to Rasmussen. Worse, the number of Americans who are neither retired nor employed is more than four times higher than July’s official rate of 4.3%.
I’ve been writing for months now in quick-hit Instapundit items that this country has been in a jobs recession since the COVID lockdowns and, thanks to Bidenomics, never recovered from. Well, the latest Rasmussen unemployment survey has the numbers.
The report is paywalled, but I pay the subscription fee (and take the tax write-off) so you don’t have to if you ever wondered where some of your VIP membership dollars wind up.
Rasmussen surveyed nearly 9,000 American adults and found that in July the percentage of Americans who are unemployed and looking for work — this is the number that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) should report each month — was 8.4%. The BLS reported a rosy 4.3% unemployment rate last month, up from June’s equally imaginary 4.1%.
From there, things only get worse. Because under Bidenomics, of course, they do.
One in four adult Americans is retired, which is nice for them. Fifteen percent say they’re entrepreneurs (that can be anything from driving an Uber to launching a Silicon Valley startup), and just under 30% are employed by a private company.
Nearly one in 10 work for the government at one level or another. Those workers are supported entirely by tax dollars without producing any material wealth. Every government employee involved in regulation makes it harder for the rest of us to do so.
If you’ve been keeping track of these numbers in your head, you might notice they don’t add up to anything close to 100%. About three percent of adults surveyed answered “not sure” about their employment situation, the kind of answer that I assume involves smoking weed. The remaining 9.7% said they were unemployed but not looking — i.e., “Not in Workforce.”
That means the percentage of Americans who could be working and perhaps would really like to be working but either can’t find work or have given up finding work is 18.1%. That’s more than four times the official unemployment rate.
An alleged Iranian agent plotted to hire hitmen to assassinate US government officials — including possibly former President Donald Trump, according to sources and a federal criminal complaint.
Pakistani national Asif Merchant, 46, is accused of planning political assassinations in New York City in August or early September, and paid $5,000 in advances to men he believed to be contract killers, according to US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace.
“The Iranian indicted in Eastern District today is 100% an agent of the Iranian government,” a law enforcement source told The Post.
The plot was allegedly in retaliation to the 2020 Trump-ordered killing of prominent Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani, US Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed Tuesday.
Trump has been a known target of previous Iranian-backed assassination plots, and the feds believe he may have been one of Merchant’s targets, law enforcement sources told The Post. But, the accused terrorist never divulged the name of who he planned to kill during his meetings with undercover agents — instead cryptically saying only that the target would have “a lot of security.”
Last week’s plea bargain deal to let 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and accomplices Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi avoid the death penalty broke a little late to include in the last LinkSwarm, but defense secretary Lloyd Austin has nixed the deal.
Although the last few weeks have had their alarming aspects – chief among which was the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13, the odds-on favorite candidate for president – they have also had their amusing moments.
In the latter category, I place the sudden queen-for-a-day-like coronation of Kamala Harris.
True, that coronation was in the nature of an anti-democratic semi-soft-coup (or anti-democratic “inversion of a coup”). Biden and his handlers, right up until the morning of July 21, were insisting that he was not dropping out, that he was “in it to win,” etc. But someone made him an offer he couldn’t refuse and out he went.
Here’s the amusing bit. Until the moment Biden was chased out of the race, Kamala Harris functioned primarily as political life insurance. “You might not like me,” Biden communicated, “but if I go, you’re stuck with her.”
Biden’s polls were in the toilet and, following his catastrophic debate with Donald Trump, were circling the drain, poised for oblivion. But Kamala’s polls were even worse. She was cordially disliked by—well, by everyone. Her staff, her colleagues, but above all, by voters. In the 2020 race, she got no delegates: none, zero, zip. She dropped out of the race for president but was then tapped to be VP only because this half Indian, half Jamaican woman was swarthy enough to pass as black and Biden had promised to select a black female as a running mate. Kamala truly is, as Biden himself acknowledged recently, a DEI vice president.
And sure enough, Kamala was every bit the disaster people predicted she would be. As a matter of clinical interest, she proved that senility is not the only cause of supreme rhetorical incoherence. Some people, and she is one, come by it naturally. Her tenure as vice president is littered with examples, and she provided another doozy just a couple of days ago when she attempted to comment on the prisoner exchange with Russia.
It’s painful, as are all the many video clips of Harris angrily denouncing people who say “Merry Christmas,” of her presiding as “border czar” over the disaster of our non-existent southern border, of her outlining how she wants to give Medicare, as well as the franchise, to all illegal immigrants, and how she wants to develop a national data base of gun owners so that she can confiscate firearms by force.
Can such a person win the presidency? No.
Then, how can we explain the sudden efflorescence of Harrismania? Democrats are wetting themselves with glee over their sudden fundraising windfalls ($200 million in a week, it is said) and sudden surge in the polls. New York magazine just beclowned itself with a cover showing Kamala sitting on top of the world with Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and even Joe Biden dancing and whooping it up below. “Welcome to Kamalot,” we read: “In a matter of days, the Democratic Party discovered its future was actually in the White House all along.”
Was it? Again, the answer is no. It is a temporary sugar high caused partly by the feeling of liberation following the sudden release from Joe Biden, partly by the slobbering media jumping all over the reinvention of Kamala like dogs vibrating over a bitch in estrus. The feeling of intoxication may linger through the Democratic convention, but there are already signs that it is fading. I think James Piereson is correct. Kamala’s position now is akin to that of Michael Dukakis (remember him?) in 1988.
Dukakis was way ahead of George Bush in the summer of 1988. Then it all unraveled.
The puppeteers have stopped pretending. “Obamaites Take Over Team Kamala.”
Ho hum, nothing to see here, just another cycle in which Barack Obama runs for president. What is this, five in a row now?
In this case, though, we may have to give Kamala Harris a pass. It’s not as if she developed a team of campaign experts on her own. Or that they’d stick around for long if she did (via Memeorandum):
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris hired a battery of new senior advisers to her campaign this week, moving swiftly to replace lifetime loyalists of President Biden with Democratic campaign veterans, including multiple leaders of Barack Obama’s presidential bids, according to people briefed on the campaign shifts.
David Plouffe, a top strategist on both of Obama’s presidential campaigns, joins Harris as senior adviser for strategy and the states focused on winning the electoral college. Stephanie Cutter, the deputy campaign manager for Obama’s reelection who has been working in recent months with Harris, is the new senior adviser for strategy messaging. Mitch Stewart, a grass-roots organizing strategist behind both Obama wins, will become the senior adviser for battleground states. David Binder, who led Obama’s public opinion research operation and previously worked for Harris, will expand his role on the Harris campaign to lead the opinion research operation.
All of the new hires will report to campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, another veteran of Obama’s two campaigns. She managed Biden’s 2020 campaign and built his 2024 operation from the White House before moving to Wilmington, Del., this year. Harris took control of Biden’s campaign as soon as Biden announced he would not seek reelection, an operation consisting of more than 1,300 employees and more than 130 offices. She asked O’Malley Dillon to remain in charge.
O’Malley Dillon tried gaslighting this right off the bat, although the Washington Post doesn’t put it that way. “This team is a reflection of the vice president,” she declared, but the Post’s reporting makes it abundantly clear that it reflects Obama rather than Harris. Harris’ existing staffers will remain in place, but the reporting strongly suggests that they will be eclipsed by people who [checks notes] know how to get to Iowa in a primary cycle.
On one hand, this is smart politics, especially given Harris’ record of abysmal performance on the campaign trail. Until now, Harris has only faced one significant competitive election against a Republican, the AG race in California, which she almost lost while other Democrats won statewide races by double digits. Thanks to California’s jungle-primary system, she won her Senate seat against a fellow Democrat in the general election. She then failed to get to a single primary contest in 2020 after entering that primary cycle as one of the favorites, melting down in two debate exchanges with Tulsi Gabbard and utterly failing to inspire Democrat primary voters.
If anyone needs an Obama rescue, it’s Kamala.
Still. During most of Biden’s presidency, Obama’s team largely drove policy, especially in foreign affairs, and Biden’s clear cognitive decline made it appear that someone pulled the strings behind the scene — and Obama was the most likely suspect. Then Biden got humiliated in a debate he demanded and suddenly Obama became even more of a public puppeteer in forcing Biden to withdraw. And now practically his entire political team has taken over Team Kamala even more than they had with Team Biden.
And not to be too conspiratorial about it, but how did we find out about this? In the oh-so-traditional Friday afternoon news dump.
It seems like the Democrats’ rule of thumb is: if you can’t win, cheat.
On Thursday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed itself and will now allow Arizonans to register to vote in federal races without having to prove citizenship.
“It’s another dizzying swerve in the legal battle over a 2022 law that aims ultimately to reverse a portion of the National Voter Registration Act and require all Arizona voters to show proof of citizenship to register to vote,” reports USA Today. “The order reopens a path for potential voters who just two weeks ago were barred from using the state voter registration form to sign up to vote unless they could produce proof of U.S. citizenship. It comes with two months left before the Oct. 7 registration deadline for the high-stakes presidential election.”
The order means people can again use the state-issued voter registration form even if they don’t produce proof of citizenship. Instead, they attest under penalty of perjury that they are citizens, and are limited to voting in federal races only.
In the first 10 days after the July 18 ruling that required the documentary proof, the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office said it had rejected 200 voter applications.
On Thursday, the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office clarified the impact of the ruling.
“Election officials may not reject voter registration applications submitted without DPOC, regardless of which form is used,” communications director Aaron Thacker said. DPOC is shorthand for documentary proof of citizenship.
There is only one reason to allow Arizonans the ability to register to vote without proving citizenship: to let illegals vote. That’s why Joe Biden opened up the border, and that’s why the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed itself.
America First Legal (AFL) has filed a lawsuit against Maricopa County, Arizona recorder Stephen Richer for failing to remove non-citizens from county voter rolls.
On Monday the legal organization founded by former senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller sued Richer and Maricopa County on behalf of the Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona and a registered voter and naturalized citizen, for allegedly refusing to verify the citizenship of voters registered in the county, Just the News reports.
On July 16, AFL sent letters to all 15 Arizona counties demanding that election officials follow state and federal law by ensuring that non-citizens were unable to vote, and warned of legal action if they didn’t by the following week.
America First Legal (AFL) has filed a lawsuit against Maricopa County, Arizona recorder Stephen Richer for failing to remove non-citizens from county voter rolls.
On Monday the legal organization founded by former senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller sued Richer and Maricopa County on behalf of the Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona and a registered voter and naturalized citizen, for allegedly refusing to verify the citizenship of voters registered in the county, Just the News reports.
On July 16, AFL sent letters to all 15 Arizona counties demanding that election officials follow state and federal law by ensuring that non-citizens were unable to vote, and warned of legal action if they didn’t by the following week.
Richer replied via his legal counsel, claiming that he’s following the law by verifying the citizenship of voters – however AFL says he’s lying, as voter rolls have had an increase in the number of registered voters without confirmed citizenship under his watch, and that databases have not been accessed which would verify voters’ citizenship.
CNN: “Do you think Kamala Harris is black?” Actual black people in a barbershop: “Nope.” CNN: “You black people have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Tim Walz’s first executive order as the Democratic governor of Minnesota governor was establishing a diversity, equity and inclusion council for all of the state government’s actions and designated himself as the chair. On Tuesday, Waltz was selected to be Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate in the 2024 presidential election.
The Democratic Vice Presidential nominee told The Associated Press in 2019 that the “One Minnesota Council on Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity” would ensure the “lens of equity” for all state government businesses, including “recruiting; retaining and promoting state employees; state government contracting; and civic engagement.”
“Walz told reporters Wednesday he’ll chair the council,” the AP said at the time, “patterned on a similar council formed by former Gov. Mark Dayton, but expand its scope to include geographic diversity and other considerations.” Walz said that the point of the council, per AP, was to “work to ensure that all Minnesotans have the opportunity to fully participate in the development of state policy. He says it will ensure that the ‘lens of equity’ is focused on everything the state does, whether it’s transportation projects or hiring.”
He has spoken many times about the “privilege” he’s been given as a “white man.” “I understand the privilege I’ve been given as a white man,” he said during his leadership, saying that he was in office “not just to talk about the problem” of racial disparity “but the solve the problem.”
It was late in the spring of 2005 when Tom Behrends, a farmer in his mid 40s with three kids, got the call from his superiors: The Minnesota National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery was being sent to Iraq. Tim Walz, the unit’s command sergeant major, had just resigned to run for Congress. Behrends was in line to take his place.
He’d need to talk with his family, Behrends told his bosses. He had a farm to run and his youngest child was still in elementary school. Because he wasn’t in the unit when it was activated, technically Behrends had to volunteer to go.
But Behrends told National Review it was clear what he needed to do.
“My first reaction was, I’m not going to let my soldiers down,” he said.
Behrends ended up spending 17 difficult months in Iraq with the unit. Among the unit’s tasks was maintaining a key supply route, keeping it clear of explosives. Three of his soldiers were killed and dozens more were injured during the tour, he said.
Although they were both first sergeants in the Minnesota Guard, Behrends said he didn’t really know much about Walz. They were in meetings together. “The only thing I knew about him is he talked too much, and he liked to hear himself talk,” Behrends said.
When Democrats decide they need a veteran to help disguise their radical nature, they inevitable seem to pick a “blue falcon,” dating back at least as far as tapping John Kerry in 2004.
The Tim Walz Stolen Valor story goes back to the very beginning of his political career. From the onset of his foray into national politics, Walz sold himself to the public and the media as a combat veteran of the Global War on Terror, masking the reality that he quit the military to run for office and avoid being deployed to Iraq.
Thanks to some quality reporting, we know that the Minnesota governor — who yesterday officially joined the Kamala Harris campaign for President as its VP on the ticket — quit the military in 2005, after learning that his battalion was about to be sent to Iraq. Walz spent his entire career in the Army National Guard learning to lead people into battle, with training and his lone six month overseas deployment to Italy provided at U.S. taxpayer expense. He then retired when he learned he was going to be leading people into battle in Iraq, leaving Minnesota’s 125th Field Artillery Regiment high and dry for a career in politics.
But that’s not what Tim Walz told the public when he decided to run for public office upon abruptly leaving the military.
Just months after leaving his battalion to go to Iraq without him, he announced a run for Congress, and the dissembling about his service record began immediately.
Instead of being honest about his early departure from the military, Walz told the media a much more heroic tale, one that was entirely fictitious.
To this day there are Democrats who believe that Walz served in Iraq, when he never got closer than Italy.
When the US Marine Corps asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it.
When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, he dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him. I think that's shameful. pic.twitter.com/Dq9xjn4R51
Minnesota National Guard spox Army Lieutenant Colonel Kristen Augé told Just the News that Walz, Kamala Harris’ vice presidential running mate, was demoted and did not retire as a command sergeant major as he has claimed for years – including on his official gubernatorial biography – as he failed to complete a 750-hour course in the Army’s Sergeants Major Academy, a mandatory course for E-9s, the Army’s highest enlisted rank.
While Walz temporarily held the title of command sergeant major he “retired as a master sergeant in 2005 for benefit purposes because he did not complete additional coursework at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy,” Army Lt. Col. Kristen Augé, the Minnesota National Guard’s State Public Affairs Officer, told Just the News.
The statement reignited a controversy that began during his 2018 election for governor in which National Guardsman claimed on social media and in a paid ad that Walz declined to deploy to Iraq for combat duty in 2005 and forfeited his title of command sergeant major. Walz chose to run for Congress that year. -Just the News
The governor’s biography, however, says that “Command Sergeant Major Walz” retired from the Minnesota National Guard in 2005. At the time he was serving as one of the highest ranking members of the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion.
How is it that stolen valor and career embellishment are so endemic among Democratic office holders? Is it status anxiety, or the arrogance of the entitled? “It’s OK to lie about my record, because I deserve this!”
Ex-UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter’s home in upstate New York was raided by the FBI as part of a federal investigation, Wednesday, officials said.
An FBI spokeswoman confirmed to The Post that agents conducted a raid on the Delmar home as part of a federal investigation. She declined to comment further, citing the ongoing probe.
Ritter, a convicted sex offender, told reporters outside his Delmar home after the raid that the warrant focused on potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the Times Union reported.
He recently had his passport seized by the US Department of State as he tried to fly to Russia for a conference – a brouhaha he contended in the Russian propaganda site RT was a spiteful move against his pro-Russia stances.
The raid came a day after Ritter, the former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, palled around with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was in an Albany courtroom for a hearing over whether the independent presidential candidate should be on New York’s November ballot, the Times Union reported.
Ritter is indeed a Russian tool, but the timing from our increasingly politicized FBI does seem a tad suspicious…
Google has engaged in illegal activity by using its search-engine dominance to thwart competition, a federal judge ruled on Monday in a landmark decision that could have major implications for the way Americans consume information.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled against Google this week, after the Department of Justice and a coalition of state attorneys general challenged the tech company’s market dominance in 2020. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said in the decision that Google is a “monopolist” that has “acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” Google paid $26.3 billion in 2021, for example, to promote its search engine as the default option on smartphones and browsers.
“The default is extremely valuable real estate,” Mehta wrote. “Even if a new entrant were positioned from a quality standpoint to bid for the default when an agreement expires, such a firm could compete only if it were prepared to pay partners upwards of billions of dollars in revenue share and make them whole for any revenue shortfalls resulting from the change.”
“Google, of course, recognizes that losing defaults would dramatically impact its bottom line. For instance, Google has projected that losing the Safari default would result in a significant drop in queries and billions of dollars in lost revenues,” he added.
Once again, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton took a leading role in bringing the lawsuit. “The legal battle began in October 2020 when Paxton announced that Texas had sued Google for utilizing business strategies to squelch competition for search advertising and internet searches.”
We have been discussing media rating systems being used to target advertisers and revenue sources for certain cites and companies. NewsGuard and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) have been criticized as the most sophisticated components of a modern blacklisting system targeting conservative or dissenting voices. I recently had a series of exchanges with NewsGuard after a critical column. Now, the House Judiciary Committee under Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is moving forward in demanding documents and records from leading companies utilizing the GARM system, a company that I have previously criticized. It is a welcomed effort for anyone who is concerned over the use of these blacklisting systems to curtail free speech. However, time is of the essence.
The demand to preserve evidence went to various companies, including Adidas, American Express, Bayer, BP, Carhartt, Chanel, CVS and General Motors.
In my new book, I discuss the rating systems as a new and insidious form of blacklisting.
It is an effort to strangle the financial life out of sites by targeting their donors and advertisers. This is where the left has excelled beyond anything that has come before in speech crackdowns.
Years ago, I wrote about the Biden administration supporting efforts like the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) to discourage advertisers from supporting certain sites. All of the 10 riskiest sites targeted by the index were popular with conservatives, libertarians and independents. That included Reason.org and a group of libertarian and conservative law professors who simply write about cases and legal controversies. GDI warned advertisers against “financially supporting disinformation online.” At the same time, HuffPost, a far-left media outlet, was included among the 10 sites at lowest risk of spreading disinformation.
Once GDI’s work and bias was disclosed, government officials quickly disavowed the funding. It was a familiar pattern. Within a few years, we found that the work had been shifted instead to groups like the GARM, which is the same thing on steroids. It is the creation of a powerful and largely unknown group called the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), which has huge sway over the advertising industry and was quickly used by liberal activists to silence opposing views and sites by cutting off their revenue streams.
Notably, Rob Rakowitz, head of GARM, pushed GDI and embraced its work. In an email to GARM members obtained by the committee last month, Rakowitz wrote that he wanted to “ensure you’re working with an inclusion and exclusion list that is informed by trusted partners such as NewsGuard and GDI — both partners to GARM and many of our members.”
GARM is being used by WFA to achieve what GDI failed to accomplish. The WFA sites refers to Rakowitz as “a career change agent” who will “remove harmful content from ad-supported digital media.”
Rakowitz’s views on free speech are chilling and his work shows how these systems can be used to conceal bias in targeting the revenue of sites with opposing views.
Rakowitz has denounced the “extreme global interpretation of the US Constitution” and how civil libertarians cite “‘principles for governance’ and applying them as literal law from 230 years ago (made by white men exclusively).”
He appears to be referring to free speech.
Know who else isn’t wild about GARM? Elon Musk, who’s suing them for coordinated boycott of Twitter/X.
Elon Musk’s X sued a coalition of advertisers leading a boycott against the social platform, accusing the group of conspiring to “collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue.”
The suit takes aim at the World Federation of Advertisers and its initiative called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), which led a boycott against the platform formerly known as Twitter after it was acquired by Musk in 2022.
“The boycott and its effects continue to this day, despite X applying brand safety standards comparable to those of its competitors and which meet or exceed those specified by GARM,” reads the lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday in Texas federal court.
X accused the coalition and several specific advertisers, namely Unilever, Mars and CVS, of violating antitrust law and circumventing the competitive process with their boycott.
“The brand safety standards set by GARM should succeed or fail in the marketplace on their own merits and not through the coercive exercise of market power by advertisers acting collectively to promote their own economic interests through commercial restraints at the expense of social media platforms and their users,” the platform argued.
Since Musk’s takeover of the platform, X has struggled to retain advertisers, which were wary of the tech billionaire’s early decisions to roll back content moderation policies and reinstate previously banned users, like former President Trump.
An advertising industry initiative targeted by an Elon Musk lawsuit is “discontinuing” its activities and has deleted the member list from its website.
On Tuesday, Musk’s X Corp. sued the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) over what X claims is an illegal boycott spearheaded by a WFA initiative called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). The WFA isn’t disbanding but is halting GARM’s activities, and the GARM member page now produces a 404 error. An archived version of the page from yesterday shows the initiative members, including X.
X’s antitrust lawsuit has drawn skeptical responses from law professors, who say it will be difficult to prove that companies violated antitrust laws by stopping advertisements. But while X may never obtain financial damages from the advertising group or corporations like CVS and Unilever that it also named as defendants, fighting the lawsuit could be costly.
Business Insider reported on the GARM shutdown today:
The advertising trade group The World Federation of Advertisers told its members on Thursday that it was “discontinuing” activities for its Global Alliance for Responsible Media initiative following an antitrust lawsuit filed by Elon Musk’s X against the company earlier this week.
Stephan Loerke, the CEO of the WFA, wrote in an email to members, seen by Business Insider, that the decision was “not made lightly” but that GARM is a not-for-profit organization with limited resources. Loerke said that the WFA and GARM intended to contest the allegations in X’s suit in court and were confident the outcome of the case would “demonstrate our full adherence to competition rules in all our activities.”
If that’s not an open admission of guilt, it will do until one comes along. In the meantime, expect this censorship hydra to put up again under another same.
What has all that investment in “green” energy gotten California? “Since January 2014, residential average rates for the PG&E service area have jumped by 110%, those of SCE have surged by 90%, and SDG&E rates have soared by 82%….A total of 18.4% of the customers of the three investor-owned utilities are in arrears in their energy bills.”
“Bangladesh Leader Flees Country In Helicopter As Protesters Storm Parliament.” “Bangladesh’s long-serving Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, resigned and fled the country on Monday, after protesters defied a military curfew and stormed her official residence. Hasina, who had been in power for 15 years, fled the capital Dhaka along with her sister by a helicopter to India, the daily newspaper Prothom Alo reported, after weeks of violent crack downs on protesters left nearly 300 people dead.”
“Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus took charge of Bangladesh’s caretaker government on Thursday, hoping to help heal the country that was convulsed by weeks of violence, forcing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to quit and flee to neighbouring India. Known as the ‘banker to the poor’, Yunus is the pioneer of the global microcredit movement. The Grameen Bank he founded won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for helping lift millions from poverty by providing tiny loans to the rural poor who are too impoverished to gain attention from traditional banks.” I’d be more enthused about Yunus if their bank hadn’t been a contributor to the Clinton Global Initiative.
Just a normal everyday traffic stop: pulling over a couple of Chinese nationals, driving through Texas, with $250,000 worth of gold bars on their person.
That was the scene last week in Van Zandt County, according to KETK NBC.
Sgt. Charlie Hughes of the Wills Point Police Department was monitoring traffic on I-20 near the 533-mile marker when he saw a White Chevy Malibu with Michigan plates committing a traffic violation.
He then stopped the vehicle and identified the driver as 25-year-old Weijian Chen.
KETK writes that due to a language barrier, Hughes asked Chen to use a translator app in his patrol vehicle to communicate.
The officer said that during the interview he “observed multiple factors that lead [him] to believe there was criminal activity afoot.”
The driver said that he was heading to Dallas and had also been in Florida to “play”.
The vehicle was rented under the name of the passenger, 46-year-old Wenqiang Lin, who consented to a search but appeared uncertain. A K9 unit alerted to the front passenger door.
Inside, officials found a Spirit Airlines boarding pass indicating that Weijian Chen had flown from Los Angeles to Atlanta on July 30-31 without any bags. The rental agreement showed the car was rented in College Park, Georgia, on July 31 and was due in Los Angeles by August 3, the report continued.
A bag behind the driver’s seat contained gold bullion bars worth an estimated $200,000 to $250,000, including:
Seven 1-ounce 999.9 gold bars
Three 5-gram 999.9 gold bars
One 1-gram 999.9 gold bar marked with 20 squares
Eight 10-ounce 999.9 gold bars
After arresting Chen and Lin, Sgt. Hughes contacted U.S. Homeland Security, which revealed both men had entered the country illegally. Lin entered on September 15, 2023, and was awaiting immigration processing in Los Angeles. Chen entered on December 17, 2023, and is also pending immigration judicial action.
“Austin ISD Chief Financial Officer Arrested on Insurance Fraud Charges. Austin Independent School District (ISD) Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Eduardo Ramos has been placed on paid leave following his arrest on charges of insurance fraud unrelated to district activities.” Maybe. But I’d still say a forensic audit is in order…
The New York State Supreme Court has denied New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s request for a preliminary injunction against busing illegal immigrants from Texas to the city.
Adams, who faces challenges from New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and others in his reelection bid next year, filed a lawsuit against 17 charter bus companies in January.
His goal was to stop the companies from busing migrants, many of them undocumented, from communities in Texas to New York. The mayor cited Social Services Law 149, which stipulates that any person “who knowingly brings, or causes to be brought, a needy person from out of state into this state for the purpose of making him a public charge” has an obligation “to convey such person out of state or support him at his own expense.”
But in her nine-page July 29 ruling, Judge Mary V. Rosado found that the lawsuit was “unconstitutional.”
Maybe if NYC hadn’t gone out of its way to declare itself a “sanctuary city” I might feel a tiny more smidge of sympathy. Who am I kidding, no I wouldn’t. This is all on Adams’ Democratic Party. Choke on it.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has provided an update to an investigation related to allegations that the Democratic fundraising operation ActBlue is involved in illicit activities.
“ActBlue has cooperated with our ongoing investigation. They have changed their requirements to now include ‘CVV’ codes for donations on their platform,” Paxton said in the press release.
“This is a critical change that can help prevent fraudulent donations.”
Paxton added that “suspicious activity on fundraising platforms must be fully investigated to determine if any laws have been broken.”
This alleged “suspicious activity” by ActBlue in Texas has been an ongoing point of contention.
Current Revolt first reported on the investigation into ActBlue and the allegedly illegitimate donations last week.
Journalist James O’Keefe recently produced a series of videos where he purported to show alleged money laundering by ActBlue in Texas.
According to O’Keefe, some individuals in Texas are being reported by ActBlue to have made thousands of individual donations, but said individuals deny them when asked if they made those contributions.
O’Keefe received a statement from the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office regarding some of these incidents.
“It appears that both donors made voluntary contributions through ActBlue. One donor was reimbursed after contesting some of the charges, while the other cannot recall whether all or only some of the donations were authorized,” the sheriff’s office told O’Keefe.
I suspect ActBlue will drop any reforms just as soon as they need to launder more money.
“Federal Court Orders California College To Drop Censorship Policy. A federal judge ordered a California community college on Aug. 2 not to enforce a poster policy that was used against three students whose anti-communist posters were taken down. U.S. District Judge Jennifer Thurston found that the poster policy of Fresno-based Clovis Community College violated the students’ First Amendment and 14th Amendment rights.”
Warner Brothers Discovery took $9.1 billion write-down on it’s network TV assets. As many have observed, this means that not only is CNN worthless from the standpoints of truth, philosophy and morals, but that it’s quite literally worthless as an economic asset as well. It may actually be worth less than your grandmother’s closet full of Beanie Babies…
Actually, it could be worth considerably less than nothing. “CNN Could Be Forced to Pay Upwards of $1 Billion from Defamation Suit from Tapper Show.”
The case may not be as well known (yet), but CNN could be facing a defamation liability rivaling or exceeding the $787 million Fox News paid out to Dominion Voting Systems. NewsBusters recently reported on Florida’s First District Court of Appeals affirming that plaintiff Zachary Young could seek punitive damages, in addition to economic and emotional damages, from the Cable News Network in a civil trial after they allegedly defamed him regarding his work in getting people out of Afghanistan. The total could near or exceed $1 billion.
For that outcome to be remotely in the cards, Young needed to prove malice and according to the ruling, he’s done exactly that. “Young sufficiently proffered evidence of actual malice, express malice, and a level of conduct outrageous enough to open the door for him to seek punitive damages,” Judge L. Clayton Roberts wrote in the court’s ruling.
The court felt the high bars for actual and expressed malice were met because of internal CNN messages that were extremely vicious toward Young. Correspondent Alex Marquardt, the “primary reporter” expressed in a message to a colleague that he wanted to “nail this Zachary Young mfucker” and thought the story would be Young’s “funeral.” On that declaration of wanting to “nail” Young, CNN editor Matthew Philips responded: “gonna hold you to that cowboy!”
Alongside Marquardt, CNN senior editor Fuzz Hogan, who’s a member of CNN’s internally lauded “Triad” of editorial, legal, and standards/practices oversight personnel, described Young as “a shit.”
In an interview with NewsBusters, Vel Freedman, the lawyer representing Young, said that “everyone makes mistakes” but what CNN’s messages showed was a “systemic problem” inside the network. He added that their internal mechanism for accountability had “clearly failed” and opened themselves to “massive, massive liability.”
Freedman told NewsBusters that his client had lost between $40-60 million in economic opportunity over the course of his now-damaged career as a security contractor since people in the field no longer wanted to work with him. If a jury awarded his client for emotional damages, the upper end could be as high as $600 million. The court recognizing the malice and outrageous conduct by CNN, effectively removed the cap on punitive damages in the State of Florida.
All of that meant CNN could be facing upwards of $1 billion in total damages.
Dell lays off 12,500 employees. The Biden Recession is bad for everyone, but especially tech workers.
“Tim Walz Vows To Make America As Great As Minneapolis.” “As the governor who presided over the looting and burning of Minneapolis during the summer of 2020, I have full confidence that I will be able to apply my experience stirring up race riots on the national scale as well as I have in my home state.”
I think these LinkSwarms have gotten too long. Since I’m I’m still between jobs, I have more time to waste on read the Internet. “Oh, there’s a link I should include!” Wash, rinse, repeat. I’m either going to have to start cutting these down in size or start doing multiple LinkSwarms a week.
Texas won another victory over the Biden Administration, this time simply because the feds failed to file an appeal.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a court order for President Kamala Harris Joe Biden’s administration to finish the border wall.
Biden issued an executive order to stop the border wall and told DHS to find a way to redirect the $1.4 billion Congress allotted for the wall.
Paxton sued the administration “under the Administrative Procedure Act, arguing that Biden violated the Consolidated Appropriations Act.”
In May, Paxton received a final injunction from Judge Drew Tipton of the United States District Court Southern District of Texas McAllen Division.
Biden’s administration had 60 days to appeal, which it never did, securing the victory for Texas.
“For the reasons stated in this Court’s Memorandum Opinion and Order granting Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction in part, (Dkt. No. 128), the Court concludes that Plaintiffs have demonstrated success on the merits of their claims brought under the Administrative Procedure Act for violation of the Consolidated Appropriations Act,” Judge Drew Tipton wrote. “Accordingly, the Court concludes that entry of a permanent injunction is appropriate.”
The order told the administration it could not implement any plan to divert funds from their original purpose.
The funds must go to “construction of physical barriers, such as additional walls, fencing, buoys, etc.”
Paxton said: “This is a final victory against Biden’s attempt to defund the border wall. His Administration illegally sought to prevent the construction of the border wall and illegally attempted to repurpose the money allocated for American safety and sovereignty, working instead to keep the border open. I sued and won to stop their unlawful scheme. Now, the Administration has thrown in the towel by declining to appeal their defeat and will be legally required to build the wall.”
There’s a saying that half of life is simply showing up, but the Biden Administration couldn’t even do that. Maybe everyone was distracted by the soft coup against the administration’s titular figure head. Or maybe the plain language of the statute made them realize that the case was hopeless.
This is another in an increasingly long string of victories Paxton has secured over the Biden Administration, which is probably the real reason Dade Phelan’s backers tried to hard to engineer his impeachment.
At the very least this should mean an end to federal agents actively attempting to dismantle border security barriers erected by the state of Texas.
Now it remains to be seen if the Biden Administration will actually resume border wall construction, or if they’ll merely try to stall and run out the clock. I suspect the latter, given that open borders have become a central goal for the social justice-infected Democratic Party. The courts have ways to enjoin government action, but it is much harder to compel an Administration to do what it doesn’t want to do, as there are simply too many ways for a bureaucracy to wage passive resistance.
Texas’ theory that the state is undergoing an illegal alien invasion, as per Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the Constitution of the United States of America, due to the Biden Administrations willfully ignoring border control laws, just got some validation from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit permitted the State of Texas’ buoy barrier in the Rio Grande to remain in an en banc ruling Tuesday night, but an ancillary opinion from Judge James Ho endorses one of Gov. Greg Abbott’s main border contentions: that the state is being “invaded” by illegal immigrants.
Overall, the court’s ruling was more procedural than substantive on the case’s full scope — that the U.S. government’s argument that the 1,000-foot stretch of water constitutes a “navigable water” under federal law is “unlikely to succeed” on its merits.
But Ho’s part-concurrence, part-dissent opinion takes a different route, fully endorsing the State of Texas’ invocation of the much-debated “invasion clause.”
Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution reads: “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”
After shrugging off, then toying with the suggestion that an invasion be declared to expand Texas’ border enforcement capabilities, Abbott gave it his full-throated backing in January.
“President Biden has instructed his agencies to ignore federal statutes that mandate the detention of illegal immigrants. The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense,” he stated.
Dozens of counties in Texas had already invoked the invasion clause, currently at least 55.
It then became one of the central contentions in the state’s legal strategy related to border security and illegal immigration.
The case for such a declaration has been made slowly over the last couple of years, including by such center-right political figures as Ken Cuccinelli, a former deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under President Donald Trump, and his new employer the Center for Renewing America.
Cuccinnelli touted the ruling, saying on social media, “This is a complete victory for the Center for Renewing America’s position that [the invasion clause] of the US Constitution provides states with a complete and unreviewable right to self-defense (called ‘non-justiciability’).”
In the 2022 gubernatorial race, former state Sen. Don Huffines and former Texas GOP chair Allen West both hit Abbott on the issue, who to that point had not endorsed the idea. Like Abbott, Attorney General Ken Paxton expressed skepticism of the concept in 2022 before becoming one of its biggest proponents.
Now, its proponents have written legal backing from the bench — implicit from the majority opinion and explicit from Ho’s.
“It is of course true that the invocation of Article I, § 10, clause 3 constitutes a non-justiciable political question; the parties agree on that, as does every member of our en banc court,” Judge Andrew Oldham wrote in his concurring opinion.
Right off the bat, the court is agreeing wholesale that it cannot determine what constitutes an invasion — throwing that jurisprudential ball back into the state’s and federal government’s court.
Then Ho goes much further, actually opining on the merits of Abbott’s invocation.
“A sovereign isn’t a sovereign if it can’t defend itself against invasion. … States did not forfeit this sovereign prerogative when they joined the Union,” Ho wrote.
“Indeed, the Constitution is even more explicit when it comes to the States. Presidents routinely insist that their power to repel invasion is implied by certain clauses. But Article I, section 10 is explicit that States have the right to ‘engage in War’ if ‘actually invaded,’ ‘without the Consent of Congress.’”
Ho cited multiple historical examples of states engaging in military action to repel foreign actors, including deploying state soldiers to the border in the 19th century to beat back bandits who’d crossed the southern border from Mexico.
An important distinction made there and applicable to today’s situation is that those bandits were not agents working on behalf of a foreign nation but were foreign individuals, just as illegal border crossers are today.
In Ho’s assessment, the distinction between a cartel actor and a run-of-the-mill immigrant matters not when evaluating the invasion clause’s application; it still counts as a state protecting itself from a foreign actor.
He also cited the U.S.’s pursuit of Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa and airstrikes against Middle Eastern terrorist groups both before and after 9/11.
Few in 2020 would have thought that Democrats were so determined to open the border to an invasion of illegal aliens that federal courts would be referencing Pancho Villa’s raids in comparison, yet here we are.
“The use of military force in these contexts continues to be a matter of great controversy,” Ho continued.
“It was controversial before September 11, and it remains controversial after September 11. But that’s the point. These are political controversies, not judicial ones. Which private acts warrant military action are questions for the political branches, not the courts.”
Ho then wrote, “Supreme Court precedent and longstanding Executive Branch practice confirm that, when a President decides to use military force, that’s a nonjusticiable political question not susceptible to judicial reversal. I see no principled basis for treating such authority differently when it’s invoked by a Governor rather than by a President.”
“If anything, a State’s authority to ‘engage in War’ in response to invasion ‘without the Consent of Congress’ is even more textually explicit than the President’s.”
June border apprehensions by U.S. Border Patrol agents showed a 29 percent dip, but the monthly encounters are still in the six figures and approaching two million total for the Fiscal Year 2024. And that doesn’t include the number of “got-aways” that evaded state and federal police.
Ho continues, “To begin with, ‘there are no manageable standards to ascertain whether or when an influx of illegal immigrants should be said to constitute an invasion.’”
“It’s hard to imagine that anyone would conclude that a few border crossings would suffice to justify a military response. On the other hand, numerous officials have concluded that military action was warranted in response to bands of Mexican criminals in the 19th century and terrorist attacks in the 20th and 21st centuries. Determining where the present illegal immigration crisis falls along this spectrum is not a legal question for judges, but a political determination for the other branches of government.”
The founders crafted the constitution not just to balance the power of the three branches of government, but also to balance the power of the federal government with the states (which they intended to have more power than the federal government), and the power of individuals to oppose the state, and thus by distribution of power to different entities thwart tyranny. But I suspect even at their most cynical, the founders would never imagine that a political party would deliberately engineer the invasion of America by millions of foreigners merely for political gain…
Did you know that Facebook was extracting biometric data from your images? That be because they never asked your permission. Which is why Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton just extracted a $1.4 billion settlement from them.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the largest settlement ever obtained by a single state after he alleged that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, collected Texans’ biometric identifiers without their consent.
The $1.4 billion settlement announced Tuesday stemmed from the first lawsuit ever brought under the Texas Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act, which prohibits the capturing of an individual’s biometric identification such as retina, fingerprints, or hand geometry for a commercial purpose unless the the individual is informed and provides consent prior to capture.
“After vigorously pursuing justice for our citizens whose privacy rights were violated by Meta’s use of facial recognition software, I’m proud to announce that we have reached the largest settlement ever obtained from an action brought by a single State,” said Paxton.
“This historic settlement demonstrates our commitment to standing up to the world’s biggest technology companies and holding them accountable for breaking the law and violating Texans’ privacy rights. Any abuse of Texans’ sensitive data will be met with the full force of the law.”
In a statement to The Texan, Meta said, “We are pleased to resolve this matter, and look forward to exploring future opportunities to deepen our business investments in Texas, including potentially developing data centers.”
The Meta spokesperson also noted that there is no admission of wrongdoing in the settlement agreement.
Paxton sued Meta in 2022 alleging that “Facebook engaged in false, misleading, and deceptive acts and practices in violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act.”
Moreover, the lawsuit explains that Facebook has “built an Artificial Intelligence empire on the backs of Texans by deceiving them while capturing their most intimate data, thereby putting their well-being, safety, and security at risk.”
In 2011, Facebook introduced “Tag Suggestions,” a facial recognition feature that automatically tagged people in uploaded photos without informing Texans how it worked. The “tag” feature captured “the facial geometry of the people depicted” and led to Paxton alleging this action violated Texas law, thus leading to the state suing Meta for capturing facial data without consent and the $1.4 billion settlement.
Illegally stealing information to train AI seems to be a habit with Meta, which is why they’re being sued for using pirated books to train their AI.
$1.4 billion is a lot of cheddar, even to Meta. But will it change their ways about feeding every possible scrap of information to train an AI engine deep in the bowels of some giant data center? Probably not. Just about every software tech giant has decided that AI is The Next Big Thing, and seem to be pouring more money and resources into it rather than their ostensible “core” businesses.
Of course, Facebook’s core business is selling your data to other companies, so nothing new there. And AI is probably less of a money-losing boondoggle than their crappy Metaverse VR project, which they’ve lost (at least) $21 billion on despite nobody using the damn thing.
Knowing Facebook, this time next year we’ll probably be complaining about some completely different nefarious, illegal activity they’ll be undertaking…
Attorney General Ken Paxton announced today that a federal court has vacated the controversial Title IX guidance nationwide.
The ruling included a permanent injunction against its enforcement against Texas and its schools.
The Biden administration’s 1,500-page rewrite of Title IX added “gender identity” as a protected class and would force K-12 schools to allow boys into girls’ facilities and activities. Schools that refused were threatened with loss of federal education funds.
In response to the rewrite, Gov. Greg Abbott instructed the Texas Education Agency to ignore the new Title IX rule. He later directed all public universities to also ignore the rewrite.
Meanwhile, Paxton sued to stop enforcement of the new rule.
“Joe Biden’s unlawful effort to weaponize Title IX for his extremist agenda has been stopped in its tracks,” said Attorney General Paxton Tuesday. “Threatening to withhold education funding by forcing states to accept ‘transgender’ policies that put women in danger was plainly illegal. Texas has prevailed on behalf of the entire Nation.”
According to the court order, “Rather than promote the equal opportunity, dignity, and respect that Title IX demands for both biological sexes, [the DOE’s] Guidance Documents do the opposite in an effort to advance an agenda wholly divorced from the text, structure, and contemporary context of Title IX. Not to mention, recipients of Title IX funding—including Texas schools—will face an impossible choice: revise policies in compliance with the Guidance Documents but in contravention of state law or face the loss of substantial funding.”
Not to mention being divorced from basic biological reality. If the cells in a person’s body contain XX chromosomes, that person is female. If those cells contain XY chromosomes, then that person is male. No amount of legislation or regulation will ever change that basic reality, no matter how hard the party insists that you must affirm that 2+2=5.
“Thus, to allow [the Biden Administration’s] unlawful action to stand would be to functionally rewrite Title IX in a way that shockingly transforms American education and usurps a major question from Congress,” wrote U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor. “That is not how our democratic system functions.”
Multiple Texas laws and school policies implicate the concept of sex in the educational context. The Texas Education Code prohibits school districts from allowing “a student to compete in an interscholastic athletic competition sponsored or authorized by the district or school that is designated for the biological sex opposite to the student’s biological sex.” TEX. EDUC. CODE § 33.0834. The Board of Trustees for independent school districts “have the exclusive power and duty to govern and oversee the management of the public schools of the district.” Id. § 11.151(b). Pursuant to that oversight power, Texas school districts promulgate additional policies on related issues that mirror § 33.0834. These school districts receive federal funds.
These additional district-specific policies take various forms. For example, some Texas school districts—such as Frisco ISD, Grapevine–Colleyville ISD, and Carroll ISD—mandate that schools within their respective districts maintain separate bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers based on biological sex. These school districts also prohibit the assignment of bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers based on subjective gender identity. Consistent with the biological reality of sex, Carroll ISD precludes district employees from “requir[ing] the use of pronouns that are inconsistent with a student’s or other person’s biological sex.
“The biological reality of sex” is precisely what the left has declared war on.
As part of the radical left’s war against Christianity and the nuclear family, the social justice-infected Democratic party has decided to make pandering to confused and mentally ill men a higher priority than protecting actual women. Despite how deeply unpopular this anti-reality position with the American public, conservatives were initially slow to take up the fight against it, either cowed by histrionic emotional arguments (“If you deny transexualism, you’re literally forcing them to kill themselves!”) or an inability to believe that the something so brazenly absurd is real and not some sort of elaborate joke. But when the Biden Administration tries to rewrite Title IX, a law written to protect women, by executive fiat to mean the exact opposite of the statutory language in order to protect men pretending to be woman at the expense of actual women, then we have to assume that they are very serious indeed.
Texas is fortunate to have a governor and attorney general who are not afraid to fight against the Biden Administration’s war on reality.
Attorney General Ken Paxton announced today the launch of a new major initiative to protect citizens’ sensitive data from unauthorized exploitation by tech companies and artificial intelligence.
The initiative was launched under the umbrella of the Attorney General Office Consumer Protection Division and established a team for “aggressive enforcement” of state privacy laws. It will also “ensure companies respect Texans’ privacy rights and safeguard their personal data.”
According to a press release from Paxton’s office, the data protection team is set to be one of the largest privacy law enforcement teams in the entire United States.
“Any entity abusing or exploiting Texans’ sensitive data will be met with the full force of the law,” said Paxton. “Companies that collect and sell data in an unauthorized manner, harm consumers financially, or use artificial intelligence irresponsibly present risks to our citizens that we take very seriously.
“As many companies seek more and more ways to exploit data they collect about consumers, I am doubling down to protect privacy rights,” he continued. “With companies able to collect, aggregate, and use sensitive data on an unprecedented scale, we are strengthening our enforcement of privacy laws to protect our citizens.”
Specifically, the new team will focus on enforcing the Data Privacy and Security Act, the Identify Theft Enforcement and Protection Act, the Data Broker Law, the Biometric Identifier Act, the Deceptive Trade Practices Act, and federal laws such as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
“Texas has been a national leader in advancing conservative technology policy, and this initiative is the perfect complement to legislative wins in recent sessions as it will ensure Texas has the expertise and firepower to enforce laws that protect consumers and hold Big Tech accountable,” said David Dunmoyer—the Texas Public Policy Foundation Better Tech for Tomorrow campaign director.
“Big Tech companies have gleefully flouted laws like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act for years, and in the absence of meaningful federal action, this initiative demonstrates Texas’ willingness to once again step into the breach and fight on behalf of Texans,” he continued. “This initiative will only further cement Texas’ national leadership in this space.”
This is the latest development in Texas’ efforts to crack down on data privacy infringement. In mid-summer of last year, Gov. Greg Abbott signed the Texas Data Privacy & Security Act into law.
The law applies to primarily businesses and entities who conduct business in the state of Texas or produce a product consumed by Texans, process or engage with the sale of personal data, and who are not considered “small businesses” unless the business has its hand in transactions of personal data.
That enforcement effort sounds both needed and deserved, but the question is how you enforce those laws when they cows have not only left the barn, but have been sucked down and sliced up into thousands of vast international data farms far beyond the regulatory reach of the state of Texas.
Big data lives and breathes on personal data that you’ve agreed to give up in variegated clauses scattered throughout the sprawling text swamps of terms and conditions for online sites you use for free.
Have a Facebook account? Congratulations! Every bit of information you’ve shared with Facebook (your friends network, your interests, the sports teams you follow, the foods you favor, etc.) is now available to every partner of Facebook. And everyone partners with Facebook. If they have your email address or your phone number, they have your data.
Ditto Google, with the additional proviso that Google has sucked up and cataloged pretty much every public database in the world, plus every single search query you’ve launched, ever, and every web page you’ve ever viewed through Chrome.
Ditto Microsoft, for LinkedIn (yes, Microsoft bought LinkedIn), Windows, Explorer, Edge, Bing, etc.
Ditto Twitter for everything you’ve ever tweeted or liked there.
Ditto Sony, whose PlayStation Network data got hacked.
Ditto Apple, though they seem to have better privacy protection provisions than most, mainly because they make their money off hardware. This doesn’t make them the good guys, just the least bad buys.
And don’t forget state, location and federal government entities, whose data security is probably several orders of magnitude worse than the tech giants.
Given that there’s so much personal data out there, so much legally acquired, how do you go about putting the genie back in the bottle? It’s a near impossible task, given that the tech giants not only hire armies of lawyers to defend themselves from lawsuits, but also lobbyists to write laws protecting them from said lawsuits.
One place to start: Joining in a lawsuit where Facebook’s parent company Meta actually used stolen data to train AI, namely using a giant database of pirated books without paying authors. Paxton’s office could join one of the lawsuits against Meta, or file a new one on behalf of Texas authors whose work was used without compensation.
Catching a tech giant with their pants down while actually breaking the law may give Paxton leverage to address other privacy concerns, and possibly the chance to do some eye-opening discovery…
After the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) proposed a new rule expanding federal firearm license (FFL) requirements, the Office of the Texas Attorney General and Gun Owners of America filed a joint lawsuit challenging the rule, and on Sunday secured a federal court order blocking the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) from enforcing the rule against certain plaintiffs.
The DOJ claimed the rule was to help implement the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) authored by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), but critics, including Cornyn, say the Biden administration violated the law and the Constitution in proposing the rule.
The rule has prompted Cornyn to file a resolution of disapproval in the U.S. Senate seeking to strike it down legislatively.
Under the rule, gun owners would be forced to obtain an FFL and perform background checks before selling firearms in a wide range of new circumstances, including if they rented a table at a local gun show.
However, the court order by Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk compares the language of the BSCA against the new rule, highlighting how FFL requirements evolved from the original statute contained in the Firearm Owners Protection Act (FOPA) of 1986 to the current statutory language in the BSCA, and finally compared that to the new rule.
The FOPA required those “engaged in the business” of dealing firearms to have an FFL. It defined such persons as one “who devotes time, attention, and labor to dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or business with the principal objective of livelihood and profit through the repetitive purchase and resale of firearms.”
The BSCA changed the “engaged in the business” definition, broadening it by eliminating the requirement that a person’s “principal objective” of purchasing and reselling firearms must include both “livelihood and profit,” by shortening the requirement to just someone who predominantly earns a profit, Kacsmaryk explained.
He also noted the BSCA did not alter an existing exemption for a person who “makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms.”
Kacsmaryk wrote the new rule likely violated statutory laws in several ways, beginning with the requirement that a person who sells a single firearm or discusses selling a firearm could be subjected to licensure requirements under the rule conflicts.
Another provision he said likely runs afoul of the BSCA is the prohibition of firearms obtained for personal protection from being counted among the guns a firearm owner may sell from their personal collection.
“Nothing in the foregoing text suggests that the term “personal collection” does not include firearms accumulated primarily for personal protection — yet that is exactly what the Final Rule asserts,” Kacsmaryk wrote, adding the DOJ’s defense of that provision is “untenable.”
“I am relieved that we were able to secure a restraining order that will prevent this illegal rule from taking effect,” Paxton said in a statement on the order. “The Biden Administration cannot unilaterally overturn Americans’ constitutional rights and nullify the Second Amendment.”
en. John Cornyn (R-Texas) took up two pieces of Second Amendment-related legislation last week, filing a resolution of disapproval aiming to shoot down a proposed rule by the Biden administration to require federal firearms licenses (FFL) for most private gun sales, and a separate bill seeking to relax taxes imposed on firearms regulated under the National Firearms Act (NFA).
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) proposed a rule that greatly expands the circumstances in which someone is required to hold an FFL in order to sell a firearm, and when someone must conduct a background check on a potential buyer.
In proposing the rule, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said its purpose was to finalize the implementation of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), legislation authored by Cornyn that passed in 2022. However, Cornyn says the rule violates congressional intent.
The rule would greatly expand upon the circumstances in which someone is required to obtain an FFL, including if they rent a table at a gun show, make firearm purchases in an amount that exceeds their reportable income for a specific period of time, create records that track profits and losses from firearm sales, or any combination of a litany of details that could result in requiring a license.
According to Cornyn, the BSCA was motivated after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde that killed 19 children and two teachers. He also provided the mass shooting in Odessa as an example of what the bill was intended to prevent.
Addressing media questions regarding the resolution, Cornyn pointed out that the Odessa gunman was known to suffer from mental illness. He obtained the rifle used in the city-wide shooting spree from a Lubbock man who was purchasing bulk rifle parts from the internet, which he would assemble into functional rifles and sell as part of a regular business.
The man who sold the AR-15-style rifle to the Odessa gunman, Marcus Braziel, was convicted of acting as an unlicensed firearm dealer and failing to conduct a background check that would have prevented the sale of the rifle.
“Those making a living or profit for a business motive was the focus of the law, not those casually buying or selling their personal guns,” Cornyn told reporters.
“This rule is proof that the Biden administration is a dishonest broker, and Congress must hold it accountable for its actions in favor of its gun-grabbing liberal base over the Constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans,” Cornyn added in a statement on the resolution.
The resolution currently has 45 co-sponsors in the Senate.
The NRA has some new officers, and there are a few surprises.
Bob Barr representing the Old Guard did win the Presidency. The vote was 37-30. Then the surprises began. Bill Bachenberg from the reform slate went head to head with Blaine Wade for 1st VP and won 36-31. Following that, reformer Mark Vaughan, president of the Oklahoma Rifle Association, beat Tom King 35-31. King really represented the Old Guard and his defeat was a sea change in attitude on the Board.
Second, and what I consider the biggest surprise, Doug Hamlin, Executive Director of Publications and the reformer’s choice for EVP, beat Ronnie Barrett for EVP/CEO. There is some talk that Hamlin is intended as an interim choice while a nationwide search is conducted.
The excessive power that Wayne LaPierre gathered to the Executive Vice President position is part of the problem with the office, and is what let LaPierre turn the NRA into his own personal fiefdom. A lot of that should be stripped away and returned to the board.
More NRA news: The move to Texas resolution failed. Short term, there’s no question that move to Texas was planned as a Hail Mary to extract LaPierre from the legal troubles his corruption had ensnared the NRA in, and in that it failed. Long term, it probably is in the best interest of the NRA to move to Texas, as the state is a lot more friendly to gun rights, both politically and culturally, than either New York or Virginia.
And speaking of NRA news, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Dwight covered his trip to the convention, so if you’re interested in that, head over there and just keep scrolling.
Here’s news that will be catnip to conservative activists.
Former President Donald Trump has strongly hinted at considering Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for a cabinet spot should he win in November, but now he’s made it explicit.
Over the weekend at the National Rifle Association’s convention in Dallas, Trump was asked by Fox 4’s Steven Dial whether Paxton is a name worth considering for U.S. attorney general. He told Dial, “I would, actually [consider Paxton]. He’s very very talented. We have a lot of people that want that one and will be very good at it.”
“But he’s a very talented guy. I fought for him when he had the difficulty [in impeachment] and he won. He had some people after him and I thought it was very unfair. He’s been a great attorney general.”
Paxton’s legal team defeated the impeachment effort last year, and then the long-running case against him over alleged securities fraud was dropped just before he was set to go to trial. The Whistleblower case against the Office of the Attorney General, which served as a basis for impeachment, remains underway, though depositions were paused.
This isn’t the first time Trump has gestured about a Paxton appointment should he win another term in the White House. Back in November, he mentioned Paxton among others in an interview with The Texan. The former president also mentioned Paxton in a February interview with Fox News alongside Gov. Greg Abbott, during which he noted the governor as a potential candidate for vice president. Abbott has since said he’s not interested.
The Texas attorney general has long been an ally of Trump, most notably filing the 2020 challenge against four states for changing their election laws without permission from their respective legislatures — something Texas did too, but which wasn’t included in the suit.
Paxton was ultimately endorsed by Trump for re-election in 2022, though the former president dragged out the process, considering both Paxton and his eventual runoff opponent George P. Bush.
Last month, Paxton flew to New York City to join Trump at his ongoing criminal trial — a proceeding that Paxton called “a sham of a trial” and a “travesty of justice.”
At the same event, Trump also reiterated his endorsements of challengers to Texas House incumbents David Covey, Alan Schoolcraft, and Helen Kerwin, along with Texas Senate candidate Brent Hagenbuch.
It would be quite satisfying to watch Paxton help undo the radical agenda of the Biden Administration and carry on the campaign against federal overreach from within the federal government.
A lot of possible appointments get floated during campaign season, and there’s no shortage of potential Attorney General candidates. But a whole lot of conservative names floated as possible appointments during Trump’s presidential run (Brett Kavanaugh, Neal Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett being three that most readily come to mind). So there’s a definite possibility that this could come to pass in Trump’s second term.
