Monthly Archives: January 2024

The nerve center of the federal governments censorship operations admitted ahead of the 2020 election that mass mail-in voting comes with risks but flagged online posts highlighting such insecurities to Big Tech companies for censorship anyway.

A series of internal documents obtained via open records request by America First Legal (AFL) show that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which falls under the Department of Homeland Security, was aware of the risks associated with unsupervised mail-in voting in the months leading up to the 2020 election. It was during this same time that the agency was classifying social media posts highlighting these risks as disinformation and flagging them for censorship.

The communications unearthed by AFL reveal that by September 2020, CISA officials knew there was no evidence to support the claim that in-person voting increase[d] the spread of COVID-19 and were aware that mass vote-by-mail schemes presented difficulties to election officials. Among the major challenges highlighted by the agency were the process of mailing and returning ballots, high numbers of improperly completed ballots, and the shortage of personnel to process ballots in a prompt manner.

By October 2020, CISA had crafted a six-point list titled, Mail-In Voting Risk: Infrastructure and Process, which detailed insecurities present in mass mail-in voting operations and offered compensating controls election officials could use to manage them.

One of these risks is that Inbound mail-in ballot processes and tabulation take longer than in-person processing, causing tabulation of results to occur more slowly and resulting in more ballots to tabulate following election night. Under the compensating controls section accompanying that specific issue, CISA noted that Election officials, media, candidates, and NGOs are educating voters and setting the expectation that it will take days, if not weeks, to determine the outcome of many races.

Recall that it took several days after the Nov. 3, 2020, contest before Joe Biden was declared the winner. This was in large part due to states such as Pennsylvania and Nevada still counting ballots days after Election Day.

But it wasnt just CISA officials who were informed of such risks. An Oct. 30, 2020, email indicates the agency shared the aforementioned concerns regarding mail-in voting with members of the corporate press during an unclassified media tour that same day.

Rather than report this information to the American public, self-professed news organizations such as The Washington Post which had staff attend the tour published articles in the days following the Oct. 30 briefing dismissing mail-in ballotings many liabilities and praising CISA for its independence from [President Donald] Trump.

Officials including Krebs have also scrupulously avoided criticizing or even explicitly correcting Trumps unfounded attacks on the elections legitimacy even as their own assessments oftendirectly contradicthis statements about the security of mail ballots and other topics, the Posts Joseph Marks wrote.

Despite its own admission that mail-in voting presented challenges and potential hazards to effective election administration, CISA worked extensively to compel Big Tech platforms to censor posts underscoring such points leading up to the 2020 election. According to AFL, the agency contracted consulting firm Deloitte to report on Daily Social Media Trends relating to the U.S. Election including narratives relating to Vote-By-Mail and to flag specific social media posts for CISAs awareness and attention.

Included in the posts Deloitte sent to CISA was an Oct. 30, 2020, tweet issued by Trump, in which the then-president claimed there were Big problems and discrepancies with Mail In Ballots all over the USA. Deloitte also flagged a post from an unnamed conservative pundit who, as the consulting firm described, accused Twitter of SUPPRESSING a story about the Democratic presidential nominees son to help the nominee win the election.

That post was in reference to Big Techs censorship of the New York Posts Hunter Biden laptop story. OnTwitter (now known as X), users were not permitted to share the story, even via direct message. The platform further removed links and issued alerts that it may be unsafe. Meanwhile, Facebookannouncedshortly after the story broke that it would be reducing [the storys] distribution pending verification by third-party fact-checkers.

Despite having authenticated the laptop in late 2019, the FBI was also heavily involved in these platforms suppression of the story.

CISAs use of Deloitte to flag so-called disinformation online further confirms the findings unearthed in aninterim reportreleased by House Republicans in November. According to that analysis, CISA along with the State DepartmentsGlobal Engagement Center (GEC) colluded with Stanford University to pressure Big Tech companies into censoring what they claimed was disinformation during the 2020 election. At the heart of this operation was theElection Integrity Partnership (EIP), a consortium of disinformation academics spearheaded by the Stanford Internet Observatory that coordinated with DHS and GEC to monitor and censor Americans online speech ahead of the 2020 contest.

[RELATED:State Of Texas Joins The Federalist, Daily Wire In Suing The Federal Censorship-Industrial Complex]

Created at the request of CISA, EIP allowed federal officials to launder [their] censorship activities in hopes of bypassing both the First Amendment and public scrutiny. As documented in the interim report, this operationaimedto censor true information, jokes and satire, and political opinions and submitted flagged posts from prominent conservative figures to Big Tech companies for censorship. Among those targeted were The Federalists Mollie Hemingway and Sean Davis.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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CISA Admitted 'Risks' Of Vote-By-Mail In Internal Docs From 2020 - The Federalist

Democrats who want to stifle oversight and regulation of Big Fertility introduced legislation this month to protect the multi-billion-dollar assisted reproductive technology (ART) industry and punish states and health institutions that try to limit third-party child manufacturing.

Democrats Sen. Tammy Duckworth, Sen. Patty Murray, and Rep. Susan Wild introduced the Access To Family Building Act (AFBA) under the guise of protecting in vitro fertilization (IVF) for hopeful parents. In reality, the legislation seeks to ensure the unlimited creation and destruction of healthy eggs, sperm, and most importantly embryos in all 50 states by punishing any entity that tries to unduly restrict access to a range of reproductive technologies.

Duckworths bill refuses to specifically define ART. Instead, it points to Section 8 of the 1992 Fertility Clinic Success Rate and Certification Act (FCSRCA). which lists all treatments or procedures that include eggs, sperm, and embryos; IVF; and surgical reproduction procedures like gamete and zygote intrafallopian transfer (GIFT and ZIFT) as eligible for protection under the Democrats latest legislation.

The FCSRCA also includes a provision empowering the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services to expand the definition of ART to such other specific technologies as long as he publicizes his intent in such manner as to facilitate comment from any person (including any Federal or other public agency).

The sweeping and subjective categorizations in the FCSRCA mean that while manufacturing lifelongmotherless and fatherless children, surrogacy, and experimental transhumanist technologieslike artificial wombs,gene editing, and sidelining women in reproduction are not explicitly mentioned in Duckworths bill, they could easily be construed to fit within the parameters of protection.

If passed, Duckworths bill would permit individuals and Big Fertility facilities to sue if any state moves to impose even globally accepted common sense limits on procedures like IVF, surrogacy, and oocyte sales. It would also give President Joe Bidens Department of Justice the justification to pursue action against any state, facility, or individual that tries to limit or regulate the use of past, present, and future babymaking tech.

IVF is responsible for the millions of embryos sitting in frozen storage across the United States and the millions more that, despite the possibility of yielding asuccessful pregnancy, are destroyed during and after the procedure. ART such as preimplantation genetic diagnosisoften yields incorrect resultsand leads topremature disposal of viable embryos. Similarly, embryo freezing reduces the chance of an embryo surviving.

Statistics and science say that fundamentally revamping what it means to be a family or even human harms both women and babies because it sidelines childrens natural right to their natural mother and father to accommodate the desires of adults. Yet its an ideal all ART procedures often promote or aid.

Further, business for the reproduction for all fertility industry is booming and winning over the hearts, minds, and pens of leftist legislators.

Duckworth and Co. tried and failed to get a unanimous consent vote on their Right to Build Families Act in 2022. They also threw their weight behind California Rep. Adam SchiffsEqual Access to Reproductive Care Actwith the hopes of subsidizing ART and commercial surrogacy through a tax break.

Now, more than one and a half years after the Supreme Courts Dobbs v. Jackson decision, Democrats are revivingarguments that states will crack down on Big Fertility in hopes of jamming their legislation through Congress before the 2024 election.

Laws designed to hold the baby manufacturing market accountable remain largely nonexistent, save a few states that ban commercial surrogacy. Yet Duckworth, who conceived a child at 49 years old via IVF, complains that Republicans strong pro-life showing in state legislatures will severely limit their residents right to access basic reproductive carebut also pushing proposals that would jeopardize access to IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies that millions of Americans need to start or grow their families.

She insists Access to IVF and other assisted reproductive technology is a right. Murray similarly quips that Its hard to comprehend GOP attacks on technologies like IVF that help women have MORE childrenuntil you remember: the bottom line for the anti-choice movement is & has always been about control.

Today, anything an adult really wants is conveniently framed as a right, Them Before Us founder Katy Faust told The Federalist. But there is no right to artificially and commercially manufacture children in a laboratory, nor a right to separate them from one or both biological parents, both of which this bill would facilitate.

Outsourcing reproduction is no more a legal or human right than killing unborn babies. Unsurprisingly, the same women touting the AFBA are staunch supporters of abortion who voted in favor of legislation that would have codified ending life in the womb through all nine months of pregnancy.

The baby-making and baby-taking industries that Democrats support are both driven by adults selfish desires, not a childs right to life.

No matter which way you slice it, Democrats latest ART legislation is not protecting womens rights. They are protecting a global business that routinely exploits and profits off of the misfortunes of others.

If you want to talk about legitimate rights, a childs natural right to life and right to be known and loved by the two people responsible for [his or her] existence tops the list, Faust continued. Both child rights would be threatened by this legislation. Neither you, nor I, nor the government should be financially complicit in sacrificing the fundamental rights of children on the altar of adult wants.

As interest in reproductive tech as a means to parenthood skyrockets, ART deserves oversight and regulation. That wont be possible if Duckworths bill passes.

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, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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Democrat Bill Aims To Stifle Regulation Of Big Fertility Market - The Federalist

On Wednesday, in an email sent to a network of election officials and nonprofit organizations, theCenter for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) announced it would begin efforts to facilitate applications to a massive federal government grant program administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This program could potentially funnel more than $700 million to election offices during the 2024 election under the auspices of CTCL officials and their partners in the nonprofit world of left-wing election activism. CTCL is the organization that funneled hundreds of millions of Mark Zuckerbergs dollars into key election offices to increase Democrat turnout in the 2020 election.

CTCL announced in ELECTricity, its regular e-newsletter sent to thousands of election officials who are part of its network, that it will host a webinar on Jan. 25 to assist those officials in applying for FEMAs 2024 Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program.

According to FEMA, BRIC is intended to support[s] states, local communities, tribes and territories as they undertake hazard mitigation projects, reducing the risks they face from disasters and natural hazards. FEMA states on its website that BRICs available funding is $1 billion (for this grant application cycle), and for Flood Mitigation Assistance, the available funding is $800 million. These funds are intended to help state, local, tribal, and territorial governments address future risks to natural disasters, foster greater community resilience, and reduce disaster suffering.

During the 2021 BRIC grant cycle (the last year for which figures are available), the programs two top project types by total project cost were flood control at $1.39 billion and utility/infrastructure protection at $1.26 billion.

The BRIC program, with total spending expected to amount to $1 billion in 2024, presents a unique funding opportunity for election offices, according to CTCL Communications Manager Andra Abbate in an email obtained by the Caesar Rodney Election Research Institute. All previous BRIC grants appear to have been for some form of natural disaster relief.

Nevertheless, CTCL asserts in its email invitation that it will assist election offices in applying for BRIC grants. According to its creative interpretation of the new Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, elections should be classified as a critical service deserving of competitive FEMA grant funding. According to the email, As a core element of government function, elections are a critical service and eligible for this government funding. The webinar plans to cover the application process, and will include sample content, as well as inspiration for what the grant funds can be used for.

CTCL burst into the public spotlight in 2020 with its highly controversial $332 million Covid-19 Response Grant Program (Zuckbucks), which was aimed at gaining control of election offices in areas that were of critical importance to Democrats in the 2020 election through large, strings attached grants to election offices.

CTCL money financed the takeover of election offices at the city and county level by partisan activists and made those offices a platform to implement preferred administrative practices, voting methods, ballot harvesting efforts, and data-sharing agreements that were favorable to Democrat candidates. Many CTCL-funded election offices then became launching pads for intensive multi-media outreach campaigns and precisely targeted, door-to-door voter turnout and mail-in ballot-chasing efforts in densely populated urban areas packed with potential Democrat voters.

CTCLs interference in the 2020 election gave rise to a host of laws passed by state legislatures to ban the private funding of election administration. As of Dec., 27 states have passed laws that prohibit, limit, or regulate the use of private or philanthropic funding to run elections.

Democrat election activists are nothing if not ingenious, however. By tapping into a huge reservoir of potential federal funding, CTCL and its partners could skirt the prohibitions against private funding of elections, while gaining de facto control over a much larger funding source than could be provided by individual billionaires such as Zuckerberg, all the while using it to mount the same sort of technical, data-driven, and activist-led manipulation of the election system in favor of Democrats that they mounted in 2020.

If election offices are claiming to need extra multimillion-dollar grants on top of their normal public funding sources to the tune of CTCLs $332 million injection of private funding in 2020 (or even more in 2024), it is because they are planning to expand their activities into areas where election offices do not belong. Likely a significant part of the additional funding they will seek will be devoted to the shadowy (and costly) world of high-end data aggregation, statistical analysis, and the implementation of behavioral science solutions to mobilizing potential Democrat voters.

Furthermore, very few if any voter turnout operations are nonpartisan in their effect. An election official who acts to increase voter turnout in a D +40 district will expect, on average, to increase the vote margin of the Democratic candidate by roughly 400 votes for every additional 1,000 votes he encourages, since his actions will yield an average of 700 additional votes for the Democrat candidate and 300 votes for the Republican. Thats not baseless speculation; thats basic statistics. It makes no difference if the content or intent of his actions are nonpartisan.

The purpose of election offices is to maintain the polls and accurately count votes, not to get out the vote in their jurisdictions through leveraging extremely valuable inside information and providing system access to data analysts and partisan election activists to aid in voter canvassing or targeted ballot harvesting.

Lawmakers should be aware that CTCL and its partners in the Democrats shadow partyappear to be up to mischief once again and should subject their relationship with the BRIC grant program, and public election offices in general, to closer scrutiny, with an eye toward eliminating election interference in 2024 by yet another well-funded cabal of election fortifiers.

William Doyle, Ph.D., is research director at The Caesar Rodney Election Research Institute in Irving, Texas. He specializes in economic history and the private funding of American elections. Previously, he was associate professor and chair in the department of economics at the University of Dallas. He can be contacted at doyle@rodneyinstitute.org.

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Group Behind 'Zuckbucks' Is Now Meddling In The 2024 Election - The Federalist

Californias Democrat legislators are trying to make discrimination legal again. A bill called ACA7 seeks to go around the states constitutional ban on affirmative action and legalize discrimination. The state Assembly has passed the bill, and it is under consideration in the state Senate.

Californias voters passed Proposition 209 in 1996 with an overwhelming majority. The proposition banned affirmative action in the states Constitution and mandated that California shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.

Democrats predicted that Prop 209 would have detrimental effects on the minorities in the state. They thought that without racial preference in college admissions, minority students enrollment at the University of California (UC) system would drop significantly.

The Democrats fearmongering didnt come true.Research by Charles L. Geshekter, an emeritus professor of history at California State University-Chico, shows that since Prop 209s passage, minority students enrollment in the UC system has increased, and their graduation rates have also improved. Geshekter credited the ban on racial preferences in college admissions with leading to a redistribution of minority students among UC campuses. More of them achieved better academic outcomes when they attended a college that offered an apparently better match for their academic backgrounds and preparation.

Even the Los Angeles Times had to admit that UCs student body ismore racially diverse today. For example, UCs 2020 freshman class was composed of 36 percent Hispanics, 35 percent Asians, 5 percent blacks, and 21 percent whites.Additionally, about 44% of admitted students were low-income, while 45% were the first in their families to attend a four-year university.

Californias Democrats and their allies, however, never let inconvenient truths stand in the way. They insisted (without proof) that Prop 209 was a barrier to remedying the states systemic racism and tried to overturn Prop 209 through Prop 16 in 2020.

The Yes on 16 campaign had the support of Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom,tech billionaires in Silicon Valley, corporate media, and leftist organizations in the state. They demonized the No on Prop 16 campaign as awhite supremacist effort, though racially diverse groups, including Asians and African Americans, supported the No campaign. The Yes campaign also outspent the No campaign 14 to 1. Still, California votersrejected Prop 16 decisively.

Prop 16s defeat was not an outlier. In 2019, voters in Washington, another blue state,defeatedtheir Democrat-controlled legislatures attempt to repeal the states decade-long ban on affirmative action. Additionally,Pew Researchfinds that 74 percent [of Americans] think race and ethnicity should not be considered in admissions decisions. For gender, 82 percent think it shouldnt be considered. The results extend to every racial group and to Democrats as well as Republicans.

Californias Democrat legislators should have accepted defeat graciously, respected voters wishes, and shifted their energy and resources to other pressing issues. Instead, they couldnt take no for an answer. They chose to try to repeal Prop 209 again.

Last February, Assemblyman Corey A. Jackson, D-Perris, introduced Assembly Constitution Amendment 7, or ACA7. The bill would amend Prop 209 by authorizing the governor of California to issue waivers to public entities that wish to use state funds for evidence-based or research-informed and culturally specific programs to increase life expectancy, improve educational outcomes, and lift specific ethnic groups and marginalized genders out of poverty.

Clearly, ACA7 is a sly attempt to gut Prop 209 and make discrimination legal again in California. No wonder supporters referred to ACA7 as a skinnier affirmative-action measure.

Fellow Assemblyman Bill Essayli, R-Corona, voiced his objection to ACA7. He stated, We need to be treating each other equally, with dignity and respect, and stop the division. In response, Jackson referred to Essayli, the first Muslim member of the California Assembly, as a white supremacist.

Earlier this year, the California Reparations Task Force, a committee created by legislation and backed by Newsom, gave ACA7 a boost. The committee included the repeal of Prop 209 as one of its recommendations to the California Legislature in May 2023.

But a month later, the U.S. Supreme Courtruled that Harvard University and the University of North Carolinas race-based college admissions were unconstitutional, violating the 14th Amendments equal protection clause. The ruling effectively bans affirmative action.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote, The color of a persons skin is irrelevant to that individuals equal status as a citizen of this nation. To treat him differently on the basis of such a legally irrelevant trait is, therefore, a deviation from the equality principle and a constitutional injury. All racial stereotypes harm and demean individuals.

A Gallup pollfound that 68 percent of U.S. adults, including 63 percent of Asians, 68 percent of Hispanics, and 52 percent of black respondents, support the Supreme Courts decision.

Since the courts ruling, many state legislatures have considered bills restricting so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs at public colleges and universities. Five states Florida, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas passed legislation to ban some DEI programs, such as affirmative action in hiring and admissions, from their higher education institutions. Some American corporations have also begun to reevaluate their DEI initiatives. They have learned that these initiatives have reinforced stereotypes, worsened the division of the workforce, and failed to create an inclusive workplace. Tech giants such as Google and Meta havemade cuts to their DEI initiatives and laid off DEI-focused employees.

Jackson and his Democrat colleagues in the California Legislature should have dropped ACA7 into a recycle bin and focused on other issues voters prioritize, such as drug overdose deaths, rampant crime, a growing homeless population, unaffordable energy and housing, and the rising cost of doing business in the state. Instead, Democrats doubled down and passed the bill in the California Assembly last September. ACA7 has now advanced to the Senate. If the Senate approves it by June 2024, ACA7 will appear on the state ballot in November this year, and Californians must vote again on the same issue they rejected merely four years ago.

Gail Heriot, a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and a law professor at the University of San Diego, is a proponent of Prop 209. She believes that Proposition 209 says something fundamental that our laws should not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, or sex. Its not a matter of which groups get the benefit and which bear the burden. Its a matter of principle.

Heriot has launched aNo on ACA7 petition at Change.org. Anyone, including non-California residents, can sign it. Heriot hopes to collect at least 26,000 signatures by next month and send a powerful message to the Senate: ACA7 is a bad idea, and senators should respect voters wishes by not moving the bill forward. In a state as diverse as California, it is all the more important that the government be prohibited from engaging in preferential treatment, Heriot said.

Since bad ideas that originate in California tend to spread to the rest of the country, any American who believes that all men are created equal ought to sign the No on ACA7 petition. Let California legislators know that racial discrimination in any shape or form is wrong and nothing can justify it.

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California Democrats Work To Make Discrimination Legal (Again) - The Federalist

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley thinks shes running in a two-way race. Shell have to win far more than just New Hampshire to turn that fantasy into a reality.

As the final votes were tallied in the first caucuses of the 2024 campaign, Haley declared that the primary contest had been narrowed down to between her and former President Donald Trump. Trump carried every county in the Hawkeye State except one, where the Republican frontrunner tied with his U.N. ambassador.

I can safely say tonight Iowa made this Republican primary a two-person race, Haley said.

The former two-term governor of South Carolina claimed to be triumphant despite a third-place finish with less than 20 percent of the vote. Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis was the runner-up with 21 percent, and Trump carried the contest in first with 51 percent.

[RELATED: Actual Republicans Want Nothing To Do With Nikki Haley]

On Tuesday, Haley defended her third-place finish as some sort of vindication that she was running against Trump, and no one else, in the Republican primary.

We came out with a strong showing. Thats what we wanted in Iowa, she said.

Haley dropped out of the ABC News debate in New Hampshire, refusing to stand on stage with anyone other than the former president.

Weve had five great debates in this campaign, Haley wrote on platform X. Unfortunately, Donald Trump has ducked all of them. He has nowhere left to hide. The next debate I do will either be with Donald Trump or with Joe Biden.

Haleys campaign now hinges on New Hampshire, where an electorate contaminated by Democrat and independent voters registered as undeclared may vote in what is allegedly a Republican primary. The states semi-open primary, however, is no small part of Haleys plan to pick up the advantage. Haley has openly professed to courting Democrats and independents to carry her over the finish line in New England.

If we get independents, if we get conservative Democrats, thats what the Republican Party should pursue, Haley told reporters last month. Our goal is to get as many people in the tent as we can.

Its a fine message for the general election in November, but its not the one to run on in a Republican contest when campaigning for the trust of conservative voters. Haleys cross-party appeal threatens to dilute any victory in New Hampshire. Her courting of Democrat support in the primary provides evidence that she is more of a lefty politician running in the shadow of ex-Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney than someone who carries the blessing of the GOPs base. Her third-place finish in Iowa was already buffered by Democrats who still plan to vote Democrat this fall. Haleys home state of South Carolina will vote just one month later, and polling shows Trump commands a consistent 30-point lead.

Of course, polls dont vote. People do. But a Haley win among Democrats in New Hampshire is unlikely to offer the former South Carolina governor the momentum she needs to convince home-state voters of conservative credentials that could out-Trump Trump. Voters are likely already suspicious of Haleys aggressive platform on foreign affairs as the establishments neocon favorite in the primary. While Haley routinely bangs the war drums over China and Ukraine, most Republican voters say the U.S. has already spent enough on Kyiv.

Haleys White House effort being bankrolled by Democrat megadonors, on the other hand, does little to shake off her brand as another Cheney in 3-inch heels. In December, LinkedIn Co-Founder Reid Hoffman gave $250,000 to Haleys super PAC. Who was another neocon Republican reliant on left-wing money to court Democrat voters in a GOP primary? Liz Cheney.

Victory in New Hampshire is far more validation that Haley is an imitation of the ousted Wyoming lawmaker than she is the incoming Republican standard-bearer.

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A Haley Win In New Hampshire Will Not Be The Victory She Thinks - The Federalist