Daily Archives: March 8, 2022

Mark Sherman| The Associated Press

Gorsuch new book calls for civility and better legal access

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch's new book calls for civility, and better access and understanding of the legal system for Americans.

Hannah Gaber, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON Justice Neil Gorsuch is speaking this weekend to the conservative legal group that boosted his Supreme Court candidacy, in a session at a Florida resort that is closed to news coverage.

Gorsuch is billed as the banquet speaker Friday at the Florida chapter of the Federalist Societys annual meeting, which is being held at the Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista.

The schedule on the organizations website notes, The banquet is closed to press. Neither the Federalist Society nor the Supreme Court immediately offered any explanation.

More coverage from USA TODAY:

The two-day meeting also will feature former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, as well as a session billed The End of Roe v. Wade? that will be moderated by a federal judge appointed by former President Donald Trump.

The high court is weighing a major rollback of abortion rights, and could overrule the 1973 Roe decision.

Abortion debate: Speakers debate abortion in 30-second chunks as Florida's controversial bill gets early OK

The Federalist Society typically allows reporters to cover its meetings. That was the case in 2017, whenGorsuch addressed more than 2,000 peopleat a black-tie dinner at Washingtons Union Station, seven months after he joined the Supreme Court.

Gorsuchs ascension to the nations highest court owes at least in part to his inclusion on a list of possible nominees that the Federalist Society helped compile and that Trump issued during his 2016 campaign for the presidency.

Shortly after taking office, Trump nominated Gorsuch for the seat left vacant bythe death of Justice Antonin Scaliain February 2016. Republicans who controlled the Senate refused to confirm former President Barack Obamas nominee, Merrick Garland.

With DeSantis and Gorsuch on the schedule, the meeting features two prominent public figures who have made a point of not wearing masks during the coronavirus pandemic.

At high court arguments in January,Gorsuch was the only justice who did not wear a mask on the bench. His seatmate, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, has had diabetes since childhood and did not attend arguments in person, although she did not ascribe her absence to Gorsuchs decision.

Disneys website says, Face coverings are required for all Guests (ages 2 and up) in all indoor locations, regardless of vaccination status.

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Justice Gorsuch in Florida for Federalist Society talk ...

Updated Mar. 8, 2022. One hundred forty lies and counting.

More than one year into President Joe Bidens time in the White House and the end to his lies is nowhere in sight. Here is part three of The Federalists rigorous coverage keeping the Biden administration accountable with substantive fact-checking throughout the presidents tenure.

You can find part two of The Full List Of Every Lie Joe Biden Has Told As President here.

Shortly after he announced Russian oil would no longer be imported into the U.S., Biden claimed that he never stifled the U.S. oil and gas industry.

Its simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production. That is simply not true, Biden insisted.

The truth is, Biden has done nothing but sabotage the U.S. oil and gas industry and replaced it with his green energy policy agenda. The president used his first year in office to wreck domestic production by suspending oil and gas leases, axing projects such as the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office, canceling Arctic drilling leases, and pushing a cascade of taxes and regulation on the industry.

As a result, domestic gas prices were rising dramatically well before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Painful prices at the pump have quickly become asore spot for Americans, many of whom have indicated theyre looking for a change in the November midterms.

Originally posted here:

The Full List Of Every Lie Biden Has Told As President: 140 And Counting - The Federalist

U.S. Capitol Police lacked guidance and training to handle the rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a new report says.

The report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that most of the 315 officers interviewed felt severely unprepared to handle any unauthorized breach of Capitol property. The report reaffirms what multiple other watchdog organizations labeled as a massive security failure by the Capitol Police and House of Representatives leaders, who failed to give the officers clear direction and autonomy to make security decisions.

At least 211 of the officers testified to GAO that they had little to no guidance from leaders in the force before the events despite intelligence indicating there would be a major demonstration and possibly rowdy crowd. Even during the height of the Capitol riot, at least 209 officers admitted that instructions were slightly clear, not at all clear, or not provided.

At least 80 respondents also claimed they were hesitant to use force against violators due to fear of disciplinary actions from the department and a lack of understanding about what kind of force would be appropriate to use against rioters. As a result, more than half of the officers questioned by the GAO, 180, said they desired more training that is realistic and gives practical steps to control a crowd.

After the 2020 summer of destructive riots, when polls showed a lack of confidence in law enforcement, its no surprise that understaffed police departments would urge their officers to cut back on potentially controversial actions to avoid becoming a target for racial justice rioters. At the time of the Capitol riot, the departments force policy stated that officers are only authorized to use the level of force that appears reasonably necessary to bring a subject under control while protecting the lives of officers and others.

One officer even testified in the GAO report that the Capitol Police department is always worried about optics and never really want[s] us to go hands on with the public.

Several respondents stated that the concern with optics was related to leaderships perception of the desires of Members of Congress, the report clarified.

The last time we heard about bad optics related to Capitol law enforcement was when former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who resigned from his leadership post shortly after Jan. 6, toldThe Washington Post that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who is ultimately responsible for the security of the Capitol, denied his request for the National Guard to assist his officers. Sund specifically noted that PelosisHouse Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving claimed that deploying the Guard would be bad optics, especially for House leaders who previously shunned using the military against civilian rioters.

As a result, at least 151 respondents claimed there was a lack of leadership and communication surrounding the events on Jan. 6. Approximately 55 officers agreed that the leadership in the Capitol Police department needs to be changed or improved.

Capitol Police officials and evenD.C. Mayor Muriel Bowserhaveadmittedthat Jan. 6 exposed key failures of the law enforcement department, but so far, the department has largely failed to implement the recommendations made by the Capitol Police Inspector General and others.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordangdavidson.

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Report: Capitol Police Were Severely Unprepared To Handle Events Of J6 - The Federalist

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has proven thus far to be a difficult puzzle for the American right. The reaction of conservatives to the foreign policy of the Barack Obama years was to slam his decisions as unserious, naive, or weak, inviting Americas enemies to exploit us.

This is their natural posture, and one that has largely held despite Donald Trumps very different approach to foreign policy. President Joe Bidens administration has allowed conservatives to return to this posture in its first year, particularly in the misbegotten Afghanistan exit, which went so terribly and embarrassed Americans, even those who supported an end to the war.

The trouble with Ukraine for the right is that it cuts in several different directions, and leaves their leaders uncertain as to the proper and politically justifiable response. As I predicted last week, Trump himself is facing this difficulty today. But there is a path forward for conservatives that rejects both the reflexive anti-interventionism of the New Right and the reflexive interventionism of neoconservatism.

In illuminating that path, it must be acknowledged that the latter approach set the conservative national security agenda for a disastrous 20 years. Incepted in the debates over whether America should go to Baghdad in the 1991 war, the neoconservative domination of the rights national security vision was rooted in two premises.

One was that America was positively obligated to advance the world toward the broad sunlit uplands of liberal democracy. (You might call it a progressive ethic.) The other premise was that America could do pretty much anything. This was an easy sell in the 1990s, in the golden moment when America actually could do nearly anything outside the Mogadishu city limits, anyway. The reality of American power, the fact of what America could do, obscured the need for a debate on what America should do.

Sometime around the April 2004 battle for Sadr City, the limits of what America could do came into focus. That focus became increasingly sharp through the next decade, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dragged on to no discernible purpose, as the ISIS threat flared up, as America involved itself in the Yemeni war, and as Americans found themselves fighting and dying in the remote Sahel.

Whatever sense of purpose attached itself to the post-9/11 wars ebbed away as Americans grasped that they were effectively locked into small and bloody conflicts, endless scraps with ferocious tribesmen and motivated fanatics, in faraway places of which they knew little and cared less. One of the neoconservative pillars was eroded, and eventually fell.

The other pillar asserting an American mission to remake the world experienced its apogee in January 2005, with George W. Bushs second inaugural. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world, said the president, and he committed America to [t]he great objective of ending tyranny. That commitment lasted just under 24 months. By the close of that presidents second term, American objectives had diminished from ending tyranny worldwide to pacifying Anbar.

As John Agresto wrote in a piece in Commentary magazine a decade ago:

Dont all people yearn for freedom? we have asked. And we assume the answer is yes. But the answer is no. Some people, perhaps most people, prefer other goods. Indeed, some people would rather be holy than free, or safe than free, or be instructed in how they should lead their lives rather than be free. Many prefer the comfort of strong answers already given rather than the openness and hazards of freedom. There are those who would never dream of substituting their will for the imams or pushing their desires over the customs and traditions of their families. Some men kiss their chains.

As good Americans, we may wish to say that all people deserve freedom. But to say that all people desire it is flat-out wrong.

Set against this record of squandered lives and opportunity, the New Rights reaction to it a full-on descent into anti-interventionism that would be familiar to a prairie populist of 1937 is completely understandable. Whatever the objective merits, their reaction is a rational one. The New Right anti-interventionists note, correctly, that they bear little responsibility for the parlous state of Americas national security now. But they err in their belief that their policy and ideological preferences represent a road not traveled.

The destructive arrogance of neoconservatism is matched by the abysmal historical record of American isolationism and anti-interventionism, which took America out of the European tumult of the 1920s and 1930s, to no ones benefit; and which also sank America into a brief period of quasi-isolationism in the post-Vietnam 1970s, culminating in real existential danger to America by that decades end.

If the twin premises of neoconservatism have been shown wrong by events, then the twin premises of the anti-interventionist New Right that America will be fine without any engagement abroad, and the world will allow us a peaceful withdrawal from the same are being proven wrong this very moment.

There is no purpose in recapitulating the scope and meaning of the Ukrainian war here. Suffice it to say that if a border dispute between Russia and Ukraine to borrow a phrase deployed by the New Right in its arguments against American involvement proceeds in less than a week to the Russian dictator obliquely threatening nuclear war upon the United States, then we may have no real choice but to be involved.

I dont mean going to war: That would be insane, futile, and disastrous, and the chances for an actual nuclear exchange, whatever it is, would be unacceptably high. I do mean doing things the New Right doesnt wish to do: taking sides, rendering moral judgments, and sending guns and ammunition to the people of Ukraine.

The American people agree with me. They didnt one week ago. They do now. They do because the policy space in this sphere is shifting rapidly right out from under the feet of everyone who believed that the inevitable conservative stance on national security was henceforth anti-war, anti-intervention, and isolationist. The New Right, focusing upon ideological and policy battles, failed to address the real arena where policy is made. It accurately took the measure of neoconservatives and failed to take the measure of Americans.

It turns out that Americans grasp that its foolish to try to make people like themselves but they sure are happy to lend a hand when they see people who are like themselves. It also turns out that Americans have a pretty good grasp of the national interest, and factor both sentiment and calculation into their preference on what ought to be done.

What we see illuminated in the rapid shift of Americans on Ukraine is actually the pathway toward a moderate, realist, interest-based American national security approach that falls into neither the cul de sac of the New Right, nor the dead end utopianism of neoconservatism. An America that has no messianic mission, does not automatically assume that it can do anything, and also possesses the self-confidence and competence to act as a force for good in the wider world, is an America that reflects what Americans actually want. It is an America where a real discussion of the national interest can be had, without the obscuring and distorting priors inflicted by neocons and New Right alike.

The signal quality of this approach not non-ideological, but perhaps prudentially ideological is its ability to allow circumstance to shape American engagements. Pull away the millennial ambitions of a perfected world, and it becomes possible to grasp that America need not squander blood and treasure in Niger, or Yemen, or Helmand. Discard the rigid strictures of a belief that America can do no good, and it becomes possible to understand that America can see to its own interest and be a force for freedom in places like Ukraine, Korea, and Taiwan.

What does this prudentially ideological, interest-based national-security conservatism look like now? It is probably a singular focus upon the threat from the Peoples Republic of China our only true peer competitor and existential threat coupled with an understanding that the peace of Europe, frayed as it is, must be maintained so we can keep that focus.

It is probably a renewed attention to our southern border, where state collapse has rendered Mexico more antagonist than friend. It is probably the defense of a global order where America is the security hegemon, and the American dollar the currency of choice not because we seek to rule, but because the benefits to Americans are so manifest, and so bountiful.

As in so many areas of American life, in the realm of foreign policy we have placed our trust in the experts, and see them squander and abuse it, leaving Americans feeling ignored and disrespected. It is time to listen to them, and in so doing, chart a path toward a clear-eyed foreign policy that maintains order, security, and peace, while seeking our national interest above all.

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Ukraine, The New Right, And Defending The West - The Federalist

Everything Democrats and the experts got wrong and lied about for the past two years with Covid is not their fault. Its yours!

Thats the only conclusion to be drawn from the shockingly candid remarks made last week by Rochelle Walensky, the head of President Bidens Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I have frequently said, you know, were going to lead with the science, science is going to be the foundation of everything we do. That is entirely true, she said. I think the public heard that as, science is foolproof, science is black and white, science is immediate and we get the answer and then we, you know, make the decision based on the answer. And the truth is science is gray and science is not always immediate.

In other words, the certitude with which Walensky, Anthony Fauci, and their adoring media spoke should not have been interpreted by the public as actual confidence. How silly that we might have thought otherwise.

Walensky went on to say sometimes it takes months and years to actually find out the answer but you have to make, you know, decisions in a pandemic before you have that answer.

To be sure, those obnoxious Follow The Science and Listen to the Experts slogans popularized by Democrats were never a suggestion or a plea that everyone survey information about the coronavirus as it became available in real time. They were demands that we do as they said.*

*Subject to change at any moment and dont complain when it does!

Up until recently, The Science was an objective, ironclad concept beyond reproach and dissent. There was no debate over the dictates sent down from God himself, Dr. Fauci.

If he said dont bother with masks, its because The Science backed it up. If he said masks were imperative, its because The Science backed it up. If he said herd immunity from Covid could be reached when 60 to 70 percent of the public had antibodies, its because The Science backed it up. When that number changed to 75 percent, then 80 percent, then 85 percent, then went as high as 90 percent, its because The Science backed it up. (Just kidding! Fauci admitted he was manipulating the American people and confessed, We really dont know what the real number is.)

At the initial rollout of the Covid vaccines, the experts said all three in production were close to 100 percent effective in blocking infection and transmission of the virus. If you doubted The Science, you were putting the health of others at risk.

Then The Science supposedly changed and, well, vaccination prevented neither infection nor transmission.

When The Science is whatever they say it is, even as they admit they dont actually know if what theyre saying is true, its not science at all. Its deception.

When its okay for experts to be endlessly wrong no matter the disruption and cost, its not the science. Its the absence of accountability.

Its too late to admit that science is gray and its not the fault of the public that Walensky, et al. are just now getting around to it. The experts squandered their credibility and can never be trusted again.

Excerpt from:

It's Far Too Late For 'The Experts' To Admit That Science Is 'Gray' - The Federalist

Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, should be eating crow these days but is instead deflecting from her agencys litany of Covid failures. In keeping with her track record of getting things wrong, she got them woefully wrong again this time, not with regard to Covid but with regard to the people who disagree with her expert guidance.

During a visit to the Washington University School of Medicine on Thursday, Walensky threw a one-two punch at her critics, but it didnt quite land. It instead only broadcast more elitist hubris and reinforced why federal health bureaucrats havent retained a shred of credibility.

Talking about the vaccine, she said the following:

So many of us wanted to be hopeful. So many of us wanted to say, OK, this is our ticket out, right? Now were done. So I think we had perhaps too little caution and too much optimism for some good things that came our way. I really do. I think all of us wanted this to be done. Nobody said waning. You know, Oh, this vaccines going to work. [Nobody said,] Oh, maybe itll wear off. Nobody said What if its not as potent against the next variant?'

In response to a different question about risk-benefit assessments a few moments later, she said, chuckling snidely (or as she characterized it, a little bit tongue in cheek), I know Im going to be wrong for half the country, so now that Ive accepted that.

The obvious implication of her remark, of course, is that no matter what she says, half the country will disagree with her expert opinion. Throughout the pandemic, this half has included those who have resisted mask mandates for schoolchildren (which Walensky admitted have not been dictated by science but by teachers union demands), those who have hesitated to get the Covid shot, those who have gathered with friends and family, and those unvaccinated with natural immunity who declined to wear a mask, just to name a few.

But the irony is that this half the country also included the people who said precisely the same things Walensky now insists nobody said.

Countless Americans have remained unvaccinated for now, and anyone who has ventured into Middle America to talk to people outside the Beltway and the halls of academia knows that theyve declined the shot for many reasons. Some havent gotten it because they have never been at a significant risk of severe illness or death. Others havent gotten it for religious reasons.

But others wondered how long vaccine immunity would last and if natural immunity might be stronger something the most rigorous studies have supported. Some non-vulnerable people wanted to see if the vaccines would really stop transmission or if they would only aid the individuals who got the shot. Others knew viral mutation was inevitable and wondered whether vaccinating against one variant would do them any good against the next wave, so they waited to find out.

Perhaps Walensky doesnt know these things were being said because her friends in the Biden administration were working overtime to ensure these unsavory opinions were slapped with a misinformation label and nuked from the internet. Big Tech got trigger-happy with their bans, issuing fake fact-checks against contrary opinions to keep them from seeing the light of day.

Meanwhile, dissenters had their opinions shouted out of the public square. The vaccine hesitant had their faith scrutinized and their employment terminated. And corrupt media churned out its daily dose of propaganda, which often featured disconnected pundits reinforcing the bureaucracys narrative that the wrongthinkers are selfish rubes, without ever bothering to ask them about their questions and concerns. So maybe Walensky really thinks nobody ever said these things.

It seems more likely, however, that Walensky knows full well that Americans have been saying these things since the beginning. Given the desperate scramble to improve poll numbers and recover their blown credibility, Walenskys remarks in context look more like a CYA attempt and a limited hangout operation.

How else are we to interpret her blameshifting to the public at large for believing The Science (TM) to be black and white? Its so incredibly irksome to hear Walensky now admit after Dr. Anthony Fauci declared that he is the science and Covid cultists chanted follow the science that the science is gray, as she did on Thursday. Its beyond annoying to listen to her say the pandemic could make masking a regular exercise because she hasnt had a cold in a really long time and we dont miss those.

None of it, however, is as infuriating as watching the director of our countrys premier public health agency backhand the half of Americans who are rightly skeptical of her pronouncements and then pretend that nobody said nor could have foreseen the outcome of Covid vaccine mandates after those same Americans did foresee and did say all of those things and were punished for it. Like elitist hubris, the gaslighting never stops.

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Half The Country Said The Correct Things Walensky Insists 'Nobody Said' - The Federalist

The Senate currently finds itself in the unusual situation of a tie evenly split between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans. As a procedural matter, a Senate tie requires some interesting maneuvering. A power-sharing agreement must be passed to hammer out how the majority-minority dynamics will play out. Also, in theory, the vice president must be on notice to break any tie votes that occur something that would be happening a lot more if so many Republicans werent happily voting for so many of Joe Bidens nominees.

But a tied Senate also creates opportunities. As Ive written previously, the Senates Rule 26 comes into play in a tied Senate in a way that would hardly matter otherwise. The rule requires that a majority of the committee be physically present to report a matter (either a bill or a nomination) out of committee. This is true regardless of what an individual committees rules say about minority members being present.

Normally, a single party can present a physical majority of members because the committee makeup reflects how the Senate is constituted. But in a tied Senate, the committee ratios are also tied meaning that if one party denies a quorum (that is, fails to show up), the committee cannot report matters to the floor of the Senate. A physical majority of members is not present. The bill or the nomination is stuck.

This is how the Senate Judiciary Committee could block Bidens nominee to the Supreme Court from reaching the Senate floor. But it also applies in every other committee. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Small Business Committee Republicans have been using this strategy for months to hold up the confirmation of deputy administrator of the Small Business Administration over illegally disbursed Covid relief funds to Planned Parenthood.

Most recently, Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Penn., and the Banking Committee Republicans denied a quorum in order to prevent the committee from reporting out the nomination of Sarah Bloom Raskin to the Federal Reserve.

Senate Republicans are primarily interested in Raskins lack of clarity in answers to committee questions related to revolving door issues, particularly how she used her influence following her tenure at the Federal Reserve and the Department of Treasury during the Obama years.

After leaving Treasury in 2017, Raskin joined the board of directors of the Reserve Trust Company, a financial technology (fintech) firm which provides payment processing and other services for business-to-business payment companies. While there, Raskin appeared to use her connections at the Fed to help secure Reserve Trust a Federal Reserve master account, making them the only nonbank fintech company to have access to the Fed payment system.

Raskin not only appeared to help Reserve Trust secure the coveted status, which gives fintech companies direct access to Federal Reserve clearing, payment, and settlement systems, she did so by helping overturn the denial of their initial application. Several applications for fintech companies were either stalled or denied at the Fed, seemingly due to Fed Chair Jerome Powells hesitancy about granting access to these firms. Reserve Trust was initially denied its application until Raskin intervened.

The master account designation later led Reserve Trust to receive more than $30 million in venture capital funds from QED investors a fund led by Raskins former Treasury Department colleague, Amais Gerety. Following the infusion, Raskin cashed in her shares of Reserve Trust for close to $1.5 million.

Yet, when pressed, Raskin told the Senate Banking Committee she didnt know why Reserve Trust wanted a master account, and reportedly couldnt recall querying the Kansas City Fed on their behalf, even though the Kansas City Fed confirmed that a call on the matter did indeed take place.

There remain other outstanding issues with Raskins nomination, particularly her previous engagement in campaigns to use the Federal Reserve to pressure banks into choking off credit to traditional energy companies. This, as U.S. energy prices soar, the Russia-Ukraine conflict threatens U.S. crude sources and we remain overly reliant on international sources of energy. Considered in this light, Raskins nomination not only has ethical concerns but serious domestic policy problems as well.

Senate Banking Committee Republicans have since submitted follow-up questions to Raskin about her role at Reserve Trust. Raskin has refused to answer, choosing instead to respond to written questions submitted by the committee claiming she could not recall or was unaware no fewer than 36 times.

As a result, the Banking Committee Republicans have simply used the Senate rules to their advantage. In failing to provide a quorum, the conditions of Rule 26 (which supersedes any committee rule) make it impossible for Raskins nomination to move forward.

Ironically, the same tactic was tried by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, now Banking Committee chairman, in the Senate Finance Committee in 2017 over Trump Treasury nominee Steven Mnuchin and Health and Human Services nominee Tom Price. Brown and his Finance Committee colleagues led a boycott on the nominees, holding a press conference down the hall from where the vote was taking place. The concerns they felt justified the boycott were the same as what Republicans are taking issue with now: unanswered questions about the nominees business dealings.

Ultimately their gambit failed because, regardless of committee rules that require participation of the minority, Rule 26 only requires that a physical majority be present to vote out a matter, regardless of party affiliation. Republicans, who then held a clear Senate majority, were able to provide that. (Its the same reason Sen. Lindsay Graham was able to overcome a Democratic boycott of Amy Coney Barretts nomination to the Supreme Court.)

But what doomed Democrat efforts in 2017 and 2020 is what makes Republican efforts in 2022 successful. A tied Senate (and the corresponding tied committee membership) prevents a physical majority from being present, and keeps the nominee bottled up in committee.

Toomey and his members have made clear that, while they wildly disagree with Raskins ideology on climate change, their blockade of the nomination is solely related to her refusal to answer their questions. [O]ur actions to deny a quorum were not the result of Ms. Raskins radical public comments and beliefs about using federal financial supervisory power to advance climate change policy, the senators wrote in a letter to President Biden. Rather, it was the continual evasion and lack of candor about her time on the board of Reserve Trust.

Republicans have also stated their willingness to report out the four remaining Federal Reserve nominees considered alongside Raskin. Committee Chairman Brown, however, refuses to separate them.

The Senate is a body of parliamentary equals, and this is especially true when the chamber is tied 50-50. A tied Senate gives Republicans a uniquely powerful position to express their will. Thus far Sens. Paul and Toomey, and the Republicans they lead on their respective committees, have been the only senators willing to use the leverage available to every Republican senator. Who will be next?

Rachel Bovard is The Federalist's senior tech columnist and the senior director of policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute. She has more than a decade of policy experience in Washington and has served in both the House and Senate in various roles, including as a legislative director and policy director for the Senate Steering Committee under the successive chairmanships of Sen. Pat Toomey and Sen. Mike Lee. She also served as director of policy services for The Heritage Foundation.

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GOP Is Blocking Biden Nominees, And His SCOTUS Pick Could Be Next - The Federalist

Former President Donald Trumps Truth Social wants to make itself cancel-proof against leftist demands that Big Tech preemptively deplatform it.

So far, the increasingly popular free speech platform has already survived attacks from the corporate media hellbent on smearing anything associated with Trump. Now, leftists are wielding Jan. 6 as an excuse to demand Big Tech companies such as Apple thwart Truth Social before it even becomes fully operational at the end of the month.

In Big Tech Could Save Us From Truth Social,' author Samuel OBrient, who has a history of demanding censorship because he believes Limiting Free Speech is Essential to Democracy, argues that Big Tech companies should preemptively nuke the anti-political censorship platform simply because it is associated with the former president.

Trump clearly wants to use Truth Social to rally his troops again and fire them up for another run at the White House. Theres almost no way that such a mission wont include inciting violence in some form, OBrient wrote this week. If Truth Social becomes a venue for hate-spewing and further insurrection-plotting, these big tech giants can buy themselves a lot of goodwill by honoring their credos and standing up to protect American democracy.

While corporate media are still largely focused on downplaying the number of people abandoning propaganda sites run by the political actors in Big Tech, leaders at Truth Social know that a war on their attempt to offer a family-friendly social media site is coming and they are prepared to stop it in its tracks.

The campaign by the left and the mainstream media to censor and suppress other viewpoints is a shocking threat to democracy, Devin Nunes, CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) in charge of launching Truth Social, told The Federalist. The fact that theres even a need and a demand for Truth Social a social media platform that wont censor content based on viewpoints is unsettling in itself. Once you begin censoring, the suppressions develop a momentum of their own. This naturally leads to demands for preemptive censorship, which until recently was a concept you only found in dystopian science fiction novels.

Despite the difficulties presented by a market largely controlled by Big Tech monopolies, Truth Social built most of its platform from the ground up. Parler previously tried a similar strategy but was eventually nuked by dozens of companies who wanted the platform gone for political reasons. Unlike in Parlers case, Apple is really the only Big Tech company that has the power to remove Truth Social from its app store and the new social media platform is already working to keep the illegal activity that censors use to justify suppression off of the platform.

While some are calling for Truth Social to be wiped off of the web, the leaders of the social media company are confident that their lack of reliance on corrupt, political actors for web services will guard them against sudden deplatforming.

Were building as much of our own infrastructure as possible from scratch. We wont be relying on Big Tech firms to keep our website on the internet, and were partnering with companies that are fundamentally committed to free speech, such as Rumble, Nunes said.

Big Tech is filled with political entities that have used their influence and authority to suppress narratives about Covid-19, biological sex, and political stances they dislike. During the 2020 election alone, social media oligarchs did their best to alter the election outcome in favor of now-President Joe Biden. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was caught red-handed funneling money into poor election practices that benefit Democrats and Twitter, aided by the corrupt corporate media, deliberately blacked out any coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story. After the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Facebook, Twitter, and others justified wiping Trump off of their platforms for inciting violence but have let actual warmongers like Russias Vladimir Putin stay on.

Users are hungry for a social media platform that doesnt threaten them when they think or speak differently than the regime desires and Nunes said they will find it with Truth Social.

The Big Tech companies generally did not begin as leftwing propaganda projects. In fact, the founders of a lot of these companies were idealistic proponents of free speech. But over time, they got corrupted and transformed their platforms into appendages of the Democratic Party and the left, Nunes said. Truth Social wont do that, no matter the pressure from the media, the government, the left, or anywhere else. President Trump, myself, and others here have spent years fighting back against the lefts ridiculous attempts to silence us.

Nunes is all too familiar with political censorship that is strategically used to justify false narratives circulated by the corrupt corporate media. When he served as the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Nunes was quick to call out the fraudulent stories about Trump colluding with Russia which were repeatedly promoted by the dishonest press. Nunes also helped expose Twitter for shadowbanning conservatives like him.

You cant eliminate one side from the public debate and expect to keep a healthy democracy. Everyone is entitled to have their say, and were not going to hire a bunch of Big Tech-style politicalenforcers and ideological goons to force-feed you the viewpoints we decide you should be reading. Thats condescending and unfair, and we wont do it, Nunes said.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordangdavidson.

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Leftists Demand Big Tech Preemptively Censor Trump's Truth Social - The Federalist