Thanks to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and his leadership in the promotion of weaponization, disinformation inundates the United States in the conservative campaign opposing research programs to block its spread. Stanford University, facing litigation, is searching for ways to track election-related disinformation through the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP). After legal threats, the National Institutes of Health froze a $150 million program to advance the communication of medical information including topics of nutritional guidelines. Employees were told to not flag misleading social media posts and limit communication to answering medical questions.
Probing an imaginary collusion between the Biden administration and Big Tech, Jordan issued subpoenas and demands for researchers’ communications between the government and social media platforms regarding the Russian disinformation for the 2016 election. Ironically, a claim of free speech prevents the scientific community from speaking. As Russia, China, and Iran expanded influence campaigns, social media platforms stopped content moderating. Twelve major media accounts from those countries had likes and reposts on X almost double since owner Elon Musk removed the label government-affiliated, and artificial intelligence produced widespread voter manipulation.
In Missouri v. Biden, now before the Supreme Court, the current administration seeks to block a 5th Circuit ruling that the White House, the FBI, and top federal health officials violated the First Amendment by improperly influencing tech companies’ decisions to remove or suppress posts on the coronavirus and elections. Judge Terry Doughty, appointed by former Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) made a broader ruling that also barred government officials from working with academic groups, including the Stanford Internet Observatory.
Jordan has also sent a new round of record threatening requests to at least two grant recipients, and researchers face online death threats. Disinformation scholars, many of them tracking both covid-19 and 2020 election-rigging conspiracies, face an onslaught of public records requests and lawsuits from conservative sympathizers echoing Jordan’s probe. As George Orwell wrote in his 1949 book, 1984, about his vision:
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
Again thanks to Jordan’s leadership, the burgeoning conspiracy theories about Covid will result in far more deaths. Anti-vaxxers with fear of masks increased as cases spiked since early July. Alex Jones, who refuses to pay court-ordered awards and fees for his lies about the Sandy Hook massacre of small children and their children, originated the evidence-free theories about the return of strict precautions.
Far-right activists are selective, however, in their First Amendment rights. They support undemocratic lies about elections, death-causing medical information, and threats calling for violence, but Matthew Kasmaryk, a DDT-appointed federal judge in Texas, has made another un-Constitutional ruling since blocking the use of abortion drug mifepristone for the entire U.S. This one blocks drag shows, never seen to cause any problems, after West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler canceled a campus drag show raising funds for The Trevor Project, a nonprofit to reduce LGBTQ+ youth suicides. In a lawsuit, students stated that Wendler violated their free speech rights by banning the show. Federal judges, even one appointed by DDT, in Florida, Montana, and Tennessee have blocked laws banning or limiting drag shows from going into effect, meaning that Kacsmaryk made an extreme departure from precedent.
While Jordan pushes disinformation across many topics, Elon Musk has become the king of climate change disinformation after purchasing Twitter. A report gave him one point out of 21 in assessing policies to reduce inaccurate information, the worst of the five major tech platforms. His one point was for an accessible and readable privacy policy, but X, the new name for Twitter, is the only platform to lack a clear reporting process for flagging harmful or misleading content for higher review.
Musk is using Texas as his personal dumping ground for wastewater. SpaceX wants to dump 200,000 gallons of treated wastewater into the South Bay at Port Isabel. Although contaminants are supposedly removed, the wastewater can destroy the salt balance of the bay, a popular fishing place and unique ecological location.
In another Texas location, Musk wants to dump 142,000 gallons of wastewater every day until he finishes a nearby Bastrop water treatment in 2025. The dump would go into the threatened Colorado River, the primary water source for nearby communities, including farms and ranches producing food. Musk’s Boring Company bought the land to build his company town near Austin, Snailbrook, like those in the 19th century for industries such as mining, textiles and steelworks.
Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee are investigating the accusation that Musk blocked Ukraine from Starlink, the satellite network he gave them, preventing Ukraine from attacking Russian warships. Committee chair Jack Reed also said that the committee is probing recent revelations related to Starlink that exposed “serious national-security liability issues.”
Using records obtained from Musk’s Neuralink implant tests on monkeys, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) is investigating the trials. Musk denies that any monkeys died, but a dozen previously healthy monkeys, with average ages of 7.5 years, were euthanized in “gruesome” trials. Rhesus macaques can live to 40 years. PCRM described the process:
“Neuralink staff drilled holes into Animal 15’s skull, removed part of her skull and skin to expose her brain, and implanted two electrodes, one in each hemisphere of her brain. The surgery lasted five hours.”
After the surgery, medical problems included excessive itching, bloody discharge, and loss of balance as well as signs of pain or neurological impairment. Her eyes swelled half-shut, lab tests showed multiple bacterial infections on her implants, and a necropsy after her euthanizing found her brain “focally tattered” with “remnant electrode threads” in her brain. This investigation would be the third into Musk’s Neuralink testing.
Other Musk activities:
Musk plans to charge subscription fees for all X users.
Last weekend, Musk joined DDT to “celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, with strong antisemitic social media posts. Musk’s attack was on “the Soros organization [that] appears to want nothing less than the destruction of western civilization.” He is currently battling the Anti-Defamation League in an evidence-free accusation of destroying his ad revenue. Antisemitic tweets increased by 106 percent from June 2022 to February 2023, compared to the three months before and after Musk’s purchase of the company.
Anyone subscribing to X, formerly twitter, can count on his taking their data, including their face photograph plus employment and educational history to be used for advertising. In the future, X and AI may determine who gets a job.
Musk loves X for names. Other uses for the letter are a slang term for the drug MDMA also known as ecstasy; “the end” or “danger.” Labels of harmful and toxic substances throughout Europe; wrong answers, cancellations requiring a do-over; and other concepts of error and rejection.
With no shouts of “government weaponization,” Bob Menendez has been federally indicted for the second time. The New Jersey senator is a Democrat so Jordan doesn’t care. This time, his wife has also been indicted, both for bribes from three New Jersey businesspeople. Federal prosecutors accused them of accepting $480,000, gold bars worth over $100,000, a Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible, and home mortgages in exchange for benefitting the businesspeople, also indicted, and the Egyptian government between 2018 and 2022.
Menendez went on trial in 2017 for helping an eye doctor with federal officials in exchange for vacations at the doctor’s Dominican villa, flights on his private jet, and campaign donations. He went free because a hung jury resulted in a mistrial. In 2006, Menendez was investigated for allegedly doing favors for a nonprofit that paid him $300,000 in rent. He was reelected in 2018 and plans to run again in 2024 although he was dropped as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee because of Democratic bylaws.
[If Senator Bob Menendez and his wife can be indicted on bribery and corruption charges, why do Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni, go free?]
GOP legislators in several states are determined to overturn democracy. Alabama refused to redistrict after the Supreme Court sent the case back to the 5th Circuit Court. The state is re-appealing the case, hoping the high court will change its mind. North Carolina passed a law to permit GOP legislators to overturn the popular vote in elections. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled five times against the gerrymandered legislative maps, but the bipartisan commission assigned to draw fair maps hasn’t met since May 2022. The current conservative-led state high court will likely rubber-stamp whatever GOP lawmakers decide. Florida now has a study commission intended to change how prosecutors and judges are elected.
A classic rejection of democracy comes from Wisconsin as GOP legislators are considering the impeachment of both the state’s top election official and a state Supreme Court judge who has stated that the legislative districts are rigged. A 2020 Harvard study ranked Wisconsin’s legislative maps the worst, on par with Jordan, Bahrain, and the Congo.
One example of gerrymandering is the shift from a rectangular blob of the 73rd district in the northwest Wisconsin corner to a shape that locals called it the “T.rex.” It elected the first Republican in 50 years, an onion-shipper who never before held public office. She blasted the Black Lives Matter movement and cheered on January 7 insurrectionists. Of the 99 state Assembly districts, 55 contain “disconnected pieces of territory,” according to a recent complaint, and 21 of the 33 Senate districts have the same problem. A GOP state senator threatened to impeach the newly elected Justice Janet Protasiewicz before she won by 200,000 votes and again after she was sworn in if she didn’t recuse herself from the maps case.
Nel's New Day 