Category Archives: Federalist

Its not just Google that has negativelyaffectedconservatives through its online services orabusedits platforms to favor itself.Apple is another global tech behemoth that is exercising excessive and undue content moderation on its platform.

Without notice, Apple removed thousands of episodes of The Glenn Beck Program from Apple Podcasts on the morning of Aug. 16. Apple restored the popular show to its platform five hours later, blaming the removal on a trademark dispute. Host Glenn Beck said he received a notice from Apple about an issue with the show, but a link to more information contained therein simply informed him that Apple had removed his show.

This episode illustrates the harm that Apples monopoly is causing to a flourishing internet. From the excessive fees and gatekeeping of its App Store to its greed-fueled support of the totalitarian Chinese government, Apple has shown it is abusing its monopoly power, which runs counter to Americas best interests as well as a free and open internet.

When a consumer wants to download an app on his iPhone, there is only one shop in town the Apple App Store. App developers must also play by Apples exploitative rules if they want to sell their services on the App Store. Once a developer earns $1 million in revenue, it must fork over 30 percent in fees. X CEO Elon Musk correctly labeled this fee a 30% tax on the Internet.

Presumably, having exorbitant fees and complete control over access to the App Store would mean Apple is equipped to prevent abuse of its platform. In reality, Apples App Store is consistently in the news for the opposite.

Back in 2022, it was reported that cybersecurity researchers found TikTok bypassed certain security audits of its code run by Apples App Store. In 2019, cybersecurity company Trend Micro published a report showing it found hundreds of fake applications in the App Store, some ranking in the top 100, that could hide their true behavior during Apples review process. Even Pro-Big Tech outfit AEI had to cover the fact that the App Store was hosting Pure Spyware on the Chinese-built app My2022 for Olympic athletes, including useful hidden features like continuous voice monitoring.

A man named Kosta Eleftheriou single-handedly exposed Apples inability to properly police its App Store by identifying high-revenue scam apps that Apple had overlooked. In 2015, cybersecurity firms found malware in more than 300 apps due to an issue with Apples developer tools, causing personal information to leak from Chinese-developed apps. The notion that Apples App Store is an impenetrable walled garden where no malicious app can enter is a falsehood.

Apples faults go far beyond its App Store drama. In August 2021, it announced that photos stored in iCloud would be scanned for child sexual abuse material (CSAM). While the pursuit of such a mission may be admirable, the obvious privacy implications caused such an outcry that Apple ultimately walked back the decision. The widespread concern about this tools misuse is well warranted given Apples subservience to the Chinese Communist Party.

In the wake of the Hong Kong protests, Apple rolled out an update to Chinese iPhones that would restrict the Everyone mode of AirDrop after 10 minutes, making it harder for Chinese dissidents to use one of the few uncensored communication mediums in China. During the zenith of the protests, Apple removed an app that allowed protesters to track the movements of police after an official CCP newspaper called out Apple for allowing it on the App Store. Apple lobbyists have also tried to prevent efforts to end forced labor in China, and CEO Tim Cook visited China multiple times to orchestrate a $275 billion investment deal that would help the company avoid CCP regulations.

Apples dominance of the smartphone and app store industry combined with its high fees, lack of oversight, and exclusionary practices is making the internet a worse place for both innovation and freedom. Apple has consistently proven itself to be driven by greed and a dangerous political agenda. To hear firsthand, just ask Beck, the protesters in Hong Kong, or those harmed by predatory apps allowed on the iOS App Store.

Apples monopolistic abuses should not dictate the freedoms of Americans online. Consumers deserve options in the application marketplace without sacrificing quality or bearing greater costs.

That is why Congress should pass vital legislation, such as the Open App Markets Act. This legislation would remove restrictions on consumers that stop them from downloading apps of their choice, while also preventing app stores from forcing their in-app payment systems on developers. Doing so would help to curb Big Tech interests and restore market balance for both consumers and competitors. Its time to unshackle the online space from Big Tech and restore a free and open internet for its users.

Caleb Larson is a cybersecurity researcher, policy analyst with the Internet Accountability Project, Heritage Foundation alum, and contributor at The Daily Caller, where he writes about cybersecurity-related issues facing the United States.

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Apple Will Curb Your Freedom 'Til Congress Crushes Its Monopoly - The Federalist

Its not true. It wasnt closed down, William Barr told The Federalist on Tuesday in response to Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskins claim that the former attorney general and his handpicked prosecutor had ended an investigation into a confidential human sources allegation that Joe Biden had agreed to a $5 million bribe. On the contrary, Barr stressed, it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.

Former Attorney General Barr went on the record with The Federalist following statements Raskin made to the press Monday afternoon. Soon after attending a closed-door meeting with House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer and the FBI at which lawmakers reviewed the FD-1023 form summarizing a CHSs detailed allegations that then-Vice President Joe Bidenagreed to accept money from a foreign national to affect policy decisions Raskin spoke to the media.

What I learned, Raskin claimed, was that Attorney General Barr named Scott Brady, who was the U.S. attorney for Western Pennsylvania, to head up a group of prosecutors who would look into all the allegations related to Ukraine.

After Rudy Giuliani surfaced these allegations, Raskin continued, Bradys team looked into the FD-1023 and in August determined that there was no grounds to escalate from an initial assessment to a preliminary investigation, and so they called an end to the investigation.

The Maryland Democrat then reiterated his claim that this was under Attorney General William Barr and his handpicked prosecutor Mr. Brady, who was a Trump appointee. They were the ones who decided there were no further grounds for investigation, Raskins claimed, adding: If there is a complaint, it is with Attorney General William Barr, the Trump Justice Department, and the team that the Trump administration appointed to look into it.

Raskin would then double down on his claim that it was Barr and Brady who closed down the investigation, issuing a press release saying that in August 2020, Barr and his hand-picked U.S. Attorney signed off on closing an assessment into the FD-1023 form that memorialized the CHSs claims.

But thats just not true, according to the former attorney general. Instead, the confidential human sources claims detailed in the FD-1023 were sent to the Delaware U.S. attorneys office for further investigation, according to Barr.

That, however, was just one of Raskins deceptions: The ranking member of the House Oversight Committee also falsely suggested the CHSs allegations were related to the investigation of information Rudy Giuliani had unearthed of the Biden family corruption in Ukraine.

Not so, according to an individual familiar with the investigation who told The Federalist that the CHS and the FD-1023 summary of his statement were both unrelated to Rudy Giuliani and not derived from any information Giuliani provided. This corroborates the House Oversight Committees representation that the June 30, 2020, FD-1023 stands on its own and was not part of the documents Giuliani provided the FBI in January 2020.

In fact, according to the House Oversight Committee, the FD-1023 in question contains information from the FBIs confidential human source dating back to another FD-1023 generated in 2017, which completely removes Giuliani from the mix.

Raskins office did not respond to a request for comment.

These new revelations prove significant for two reasons. First, theres the underlying scandal of the FBIs alleged failure to investigate the FD-1023 and FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Autens opening of an assessment in August 2020 to discredit that information, which caused investigative activity to cease.

Knowing that the FD-1023 originated in Bradys Western District of Pennsylvania proves explosive because Grassleys whistleblower alleged that in September 2020, FBI headquarters placed the information contained in Autens assessment in a restricted-access sub-file that only the particular agents who uncovered the CHSs info could access.How then could the FBI agents in Delaware further investigate the allegations?

And those allegations, further detailed by Comer on Tuesday, are shocking. A trusted confidential human source obtained information from a foreign national who claimed to have bribed then-Vice President Biden, Comer told The Federalist. So the CHS didnt just pass on information from some random third party: He spoke directly with the individual who claimed to have bribed Biden.

FBI headquarters branding that information as disinformation without undertaking an appropriate investigation is outrageous especially since the Delaware U.S. attorneys office was directed to further investigate the FD-1023.

The second scandal is equally as large because it reaches the top of the FBI: Director Christopher Wray.

Wray may well have been in the dark about FBI headquarters falsely labeling the FD-1023 as misinformation and secreting it away from other agents. But framing the intel from the highly credible longtime FBI CHS as coming from Giuliani reeks of a cover-up. And suggesting that Barr and Brady closed down an investigation into the FD-1023 when it was instead sent to Delaware for further investigation is a cover-up.

The more the FBI leak and coverup machine spins for President Biden, the worse the bureau looks, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told The Federalist upon learning of Barrs statement. Enough is enough. Its past time for the FBI to come clean and show their work if they have any hope of salvaging their own credibility.

Comer went further, telling The Federalist, The FBI is attempting a coverup, and Democrats are doing their bidding by lying to the American people.

The FBI must produce this record to the House Oversight Committees custody, Comer continued, and if not, we will take action on Thursday to hold Director Wray in contempt of Congress.

Given Barrs statement, that should be the least of Wrays concerns.

Mollie Hemingway contributed to this report.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist's senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prizethe law schools highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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EXCLUSIVE: Barr Confirms Raskin Lied About Biden Bribery Probe - The Federalist

Long before the left invented pride month, the Catholic Church dedicated June to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a tradition originating from the 17th-century visions of Christ received by French nun St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. Enter Ross McKnight, a Louisiana Catholic father of five and owner of Backwater Foie Gras, whose business is now under attack after he made an Instagram post on Sunday commemorating the Sacred Heart of Jesus that provided his followers with ways they can protect themselves from false pride and counter the attempted coup of the month of June.

McKnights post was fairly innocuous, encouraging his followers to adhere to the traditional liturgical calendar instead of the new secular one and to hold onto their French Catholic identity by enthron[ing] the Sacred Heart in your home this month, Wear[ing] the Sacred Heart as a badge wherever you go, Pray[ing] the Rosary in French, and reading his blog post titled, This Tremendous Weight.

The push to have every mainstream value and holiday represented in some way in our Louisiana ought to make no sense at all to any Louisianais or Louisianaise, unless recognized as a forward offensive by an ever-encroaching enemy that has sought for generations to destroy our unique culture which is so intimately tied to our Catholic identity, wrote McKnight.

Within a few hours of his Instagram post, several of McKnights customers, some of whom he had a personal relationship with, began canceling their orders. This included McKnights biggest clients two high-end New Orleans restaurants that previously committed to buying from him throughout the summer.

While weve never required our customers to pass a litmus test before serving them, it seems our values, which come from lives lived as Louisiana Catholics, are considered unacceptable by some, McKnight wrote in a second Instagram post following the backlash.

McKnight supports his family exclusively through their pasture-based family farm. Harrison Weinhold, a patron of Backwater Foie Gras and friend of McKnights, told The Federalist that the canceled orders are costing the family somewhere between $6,000 to $10,000 a month in total revenue.

He really sells just enough sort of to get by, Weinhold said in a separate interview. [The McKnights are] really homesteading out there. They live off of what they make.

Were a tiny artisanal operation, McKnight told The Federalist.

Image CreditUsed with permission

In a Twitter thread, Weinhold wrote that the restaurant owners who canceled their committed order are not from Louisiana; they are transplants that [are] ruin[ing] the culture of a once great community, and are the type of virtue signaling leftists that are more than happy to persecute and ruin the lives of a native son and his family in the name of celebrating pride.

McKnight told The Federalist that he frequently makes religious posts in commemoration of church solemnities and feast days. However, this time he felt particularly compelled to post about the Sacred Heart because the food and beverage industry, of which he is a part of, has gone all-in on pride month, something McKnight views as antithetical to his faith and cultural heritage as a French Catholic.

One of the farmers markets that McKnight is a member of put out a statement celebrating pride month and refused to take it down even after McKnight pointed out that statement could be interpreted as an endorsement of pride by all the individual vendors. In response to the farmers markets pride statement, McKnight told The Federalist that he put out a little sign that says, celebrate humility with an image of the Sacred Heart.

Image CreditUsed with permission

Since his Instagram post, nearly two-thirds of McKnights business has evaporated, putting him and his family in a dire financial situation. Yet when interviewed by The Federalist, McKnight expressed a baffling sense of peace and even joy. Theres that animal need to have food and shelter and clothing certainly, and Im concerned, said McKnight. But I dont know how to precisely explain myself Ive lost everything overnight, but the suffering is valuable, he said.

If we dont stand here, on the last assault of the family, then theres no more ground left behind us, McKnight explained. For him and his wife and children, defending the traditional family unit, their culture, and their faith is more important than anything.

Its a simple and hard truth, McKnight wrote in his recent blog post on the family farm website. If we lose our Faith (as we are now quite effectively doing), we will lose our ability to identify with the ancestors whose very Faith brought them here and whose very Faith inspired them to have many children, and so here you are. Here we are.

McKnights courage and Catholic zeal runs in his blood. His Acadian ancestors first came to Louisiana after facing political and religious persecution from the Protestant king of England. Ut in omnibus glorificetur Deus, said McKnight, which is Latin for That in all things God may be glorified. So whether we rise to the top or we sink to the deepest depths, no matter what, God will be glorified.

In his most recent Instagram post, McKnight does not plead for mercy from the people who, as Weinhold said, hold his livelihood in their hands. Instead, he is standing strong. We count it a privilege to have lost much, McKnight wrote on Instagram. It is an honor to participate, through the suffering of our family, in the triumph of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, he wrote. If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated me before you.'

You can support McKnight and his family by buying from Backwater Foie Gras or donating to his GiveSendGo.

Evita Duffy-Alfonso is a staff writer to The Federalist and the co-founder of the Chicago Thinker. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, and her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evita@thefederalist.com.

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Gay Pride Launches Economic Warfare On Catholic Father Of Five - The Federalist

Last year, we released a study for the Federalist Society predicting The Coming Onslaught of Algorithmic Fairness Regulations. That onslaught has now arrived. Interest in artificial intelligence (AI) and its regulation has exploded at all levels of government, and now some policymakers are floating the idea of licensing powerful AI systems and perhaps creating a new FDA for algorithms, complete with a pre-market approval regime for new AI applications. Other proposals are on the table, including transparency mandates requiring government-approved AI impact statements or audits, nutrition labels for algorithmic applications, expanded liability for AI developers, and perhaps even a new global regulatory body to oversee AI development.

Its a dangerous regulatory recipe for technological stagnation that threatens to derail Americas ability to be a leader in the Computational Revolution and build on the success the nation has enjoyed in the digital economy over the past quarter century.

The Coming Avalanche of AI Regulation

The Biden Administration set a dour tone for AI policy with the release last October of its 73-page Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights. Although touted as a voluntary framework, this Bill of Rights is more like a bill of regulations. The document mostly focused on worst-case scenarios that might flow from the expanded development of AI, machine learning, and robotics. On May 23, the White House announced a new Request for Information on national priorities for mitigating AI risks.

The Department of Commerce also recently launched a proceeding on AI accountability policy, teasing the idea of algorithmic impact assessments and AI audits as a new governance solution. Meanwhile, in a series of recent blog posts, the Federal Trade Commission has been hinting that it might take some sort of action on AI issues, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last week announced new guidance on AI and employment issues. At the state and local level, over 80 bills are pending or have been enacted to regulate or study AI issues in some fashion.

In Congress, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is readying a new law requiring responsible AI, which is likely to include some sort of AI transparency or explainability mandate. In the last session of Congress, the Algorithmic Accountability Act of 2022 was proposed, which would have required that AI developers perform impact assessments and file them with a new Bureau of Technology inside the FTC.

On May 16, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on, Oversight of A.I.: Rules for Artificial Intelligence. Senators and the witnesses expressed a variety of fears about how AI could lead to disinformation, discrimination, job loss, safety issues, intellectual property problems, and so-called existential risks.

The hearing was memorable for how chummy OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was with members of the committee. Many members openly gushed about how much they appreciated the willingness of Altman and other witnesses to preemptively call for AI regulation. In fact, Sen. Dick Durbin used the term historic to describe the way tech firms were coming in and asking for regulation. Durbin said AI firms were telling him and other members, Stop me before I innovate again! which gave him great joy, and he said that the only thing that mattered now is how we are going to achieve this.

Many regulatory ideas were floated by Senators and embraced at least in part by the witnesses, including a formal licensing regime for powerful AI systems and a new federal bureaucracy to enforce it.

The Problem with a New AI Regulator

Is another regulatory agency the answer? Its not like America lacks capacity to address artificial intelligence developments. The federal government has 2.1 million civilian workers, 15 cabinet agencies, 50 independent federal commissions, and over 430 federal departments altogether. Many of these bodies are already contemplating how AI touches their field. Regulatory agencies like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission also have broad oversight and recall authority, allowing them to remove defective or unsafe products from the market. Consumer protection agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and comparable state offices will also police markets for unfair and deceptive algorithmic practices.

But now some policymakers and advocates want to add yet another federal bureaucracy. The idea of a new digital technology regulator has been proposed before. In fact, the idea was something of a fad in 2019 and 2020, a peak of political outrage over social media. One of us wrote a report chapter analyzing and addressing the most prominent of the digital tech regulation proposals. That same analysis applies to more recent calls for an AI regulator, especially since at least one of the recent legislative proposals is practically identical to earlier proposals.

Creating a new regulatory agency for AI would be a dramatic change in the U.S. approach to technology regulation. The U.S. has never had a regulator for general purpose technologies such as software, computers, or consumer electronics. Instead, governance over these technologies has been through a mix of common law, consumer protection standards, application-specific regulation (such as health care devices and transportation), and market competition.

There is a good reason why we havent established a general purpose technology regulator, and those reasons extend to an AI regulator. Any proposal for a new regulatory agency for AI faces two substantial challenges: identifying the area of expertise that would justify a separate agency, and avoiding regulatory capture.

What Expertise? The generally accepted reason for creating a new agency is division of labor by expertisein a word, specialization. To justify a new agency, then, one must identify an unsatisfied need for unique expertise. An agency has no comparative advantage over Congress if the knowledge to solve the problem is widely available or easily accessible. On the other hand, assigning unrelated problems requiring different expertise to the same agency is inefficient; itd be better to delegate such issues to different agencies already possessing the relevant expertise.

When it comes to AI, there is a common core of technical knowledge. But AI is a general purpose form of computation. The applications span every industry. The risk profiles of applications in, say, transportation or policing are quite different from the risk profiles in, say, music or gaming. While there may be some advantage in collecting the technical expertise in one place, the policy expertise to judge whether and how different uses of AI should be regulated gains little or nothing from being consolidatedand in fact, the relevant policy expertise on various applications already resides in dozens of existing agencies.

Another way to say this is that an agency with jurisdiction over all uses of AI would be an economy-wide regulator. The result would not be a specialized agency to supplement Congress, but a shadow legislator that would replace Congress (as well as parts of dozens of other agencies).

Risk of Regulatory Capture. All agencies tend toward regulatory capture, where the agency serves the interests of the regulated parties instead of the public. But industry-specific rulemaking regulators have the highest risk of regulatory capture in part because the agency and the industry have a shared interest in not being disrupted by new developments. In the fast-paced and highly innovative field of AI, incumbents who help develop the initial regulatory approach would benefit from raising rivals regulatory costs. This could stifle competition and innovation, potentially leaving the public worse off than if there were no dedicated AI regulatory agency at all.

A new AI-specific regulatory body is would not be justified by specific expertise, and the risk of regulatory capture would be high. There is no specific policy expertise that could be concentrated in a single agency without the agency becoming a miniature version of all of government. And doing so would most likely favor todays leading AI companies and constrain other models, such as open source.

The Transparency Trap

For these and other reasons, devising and funding a new federal AI agency would be contentious once Congress started negotiating details. In the short term, therefore, it is more likely that policymakers will push for some sort of transparency regulatory regime for AI. The goal would be to make algorithms more explainable by requiring the revelation of information about the data powering them or the specific developer preferences regarding how tools and applications are tailored. This would be accomplished through nutrition labels for AI, mandated impact assessments prior to product release, or audits after the fact.

But explainability is easier in theory than reality. Practically speaking, we know that transparency mandates around privacy and even traditional food nutrition labels have little impact on consumer behavior. And AI has the additional difficulty of figuring out what exactly can be disclosed accurately. Even the humans who train deep networks generally cannot look under the hood and provide explanations for the decision their networks make, notes Melanie Mitchell, author of Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans. This confusion would be magnified if policymakers enforce AI transparency through mandated AI audits and impact assessments from those who develop or deploy algorithmic systems.

Companies are motivated to produce useful and safe services that their users desire. Industry best practices, audits, and impact assessments can play a useful role in the market process for AI companies, as they already do for financial practices, workplace safety, supply chain issues, and more.

What we ought to avoid is a convoluted, European-style top-down regulatory compliance regime, the kind already enshrined in the E.U.'s forthcoming AI Act, which includes costly requirements for prior conformity assessments for many algorithmic services. Such approaches fail for a number of reasons:

Algorithmic auditing is inherently subjective. Auditing algorithms is not like auditing an accounting ledger, where the numbers either do or do not add up. Companies, regulators, and users can have differing value preferences. Algorithms have to make express or implied tradeoffs between privacy, safety, security, objectivity, accuracy, and other values in a given system. There is no scientifically correct answer to the question of how to rank these values.

Rapid iteration and evolution. AI systems are being shipped and updated on a weekly or even daily basis. Requiring formal signoff on audits or assessmentsmany of which would be obsolete before they were completedwould slow the iteration cycle. And converting audits into a formal regulatory process would create several veto points that opponents of AI could use to slow progress in the field. AI developers would likely look to innovate in other jurisdictions if auditing or impact assessments became a bureaucratic and highly convoluted compliance nightmare.

Finally, legislatively mandated algorithmic auditing could also give rise to the problem of significant political meddling in speech platforms powered by algorithms, which could have serious free speech implications. If code is speech, then algorithms are speech too.

More Constructive Approaches

Rather than licensing AI development through a new federal agency, there is a better way.

First, politicians and regulators ought to drill down. Policymakers should understand that AI isn't a singular, overarching technology, but a diverse range of technologies with different applications. Each specific area of application of AI should be assessed for potential benefits and risks. This should involve a detailed examination of how AI is used, who is affected by these uses, and what outcomes might be expected. A balance should be sought to maximize benefits while minimizing risks.

An important part of evaluating a specific use is understanding the role markets, reputation, and consumer demand play in aligning each use with the public interest. Each area of AI application could have unique market pressures and mechanisms for dealing with that pressure, such as user education, private codes of conduct, and other soft law mechanisms. These established practices could obviate the need for regulation or help identify where gaps remain.

After assessing the various AI applications and market conditions, regulators should prioritize areas where high risks are not effectively addressed by norms or by existing regulatory bodies such as the Department of Transportation or Food and Drug Administration. This prioritization would ensure that the most urgent and potentially harmful areas receive adequate regulatory attention. In addressing these gaps, policymakers should look first to how to supplement existing agencies with experience in the industry area where AI is being applied.

We do not need a new agency to govern AI. We need a better, more detailed understanding of the opportunities and risks of specific applications of AI. Policy makers should take the time to develop this understanding before jumping to create a whole new agency. There is much to be done to ensure the benefits and minimize the risks of AI, and there is no silver bullet. Instead, policy makers should gird themselves for a long process of investigating and addressing the issues raised by specific applications of AI. Its not as flashy as a new agency, but its far more likely to address the concerns without killing the beneficial uses.

Note from the Editor: The Federalist Society takes no positions on particular legal and public policy matters. Any expressions of opinion are those of the author. To join the debate, please email us atinfo@fedsoc.org.

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The Problem with AI Licensing & an FDA for Algorithms - The Federalist Society

I have never been one to jump on the boycott bandwagon. Sure, if I have a choice between a seller that shares my values and one that doesnt, I will choose to do business with the former. And if I turn on a program or walk into a store that assaults me from every side with the demand that I embrace something I cant, I will turn around and leave.

However, until recent backlash efforts like those against Bud Light and Target, I havent seen boycotts accomplish much.And I find it impossible, as a consumer, to keep all my choices pure. The world is too complex.

So when a report surfaced last week of a pride flag on the set of The Chosen, followed by a call for a boycott, I shrugged (setting aside my sadness that rainbows now more immediately stand for LGBT pride than Gods promise to Noah). Its a movie set, for Petes sake. I would be surprised if there were not someone working on the set who is celebrating pride month. As long as the show itself isnt explicitly pushing the agenda, I dont care what individuals on the set do.

I was also satisfied with the initial response from The Chosen creator Dallas Jenkins:

Weve made it clear from the beginning we dont have a religious or political litmus test for who can work on our show. I love our cast and crew, especially because even though they all come from different backgrounds and beliefs, they work their butts off for the show and the viewers. The shows official stance on anything is to be found in the content of the show.

That was good enough for me. It doesnt impede my viewing that someone on the set was displaying a pride flag any more than it has impeded my enjoyment of any number of presentations over the years that the people who worked on them probably engaged in all manner of behaviors I would not condone. I can appreciate an artistic creation without expecting every individual behind it to share my belief in the Bible as the actual Word of God.

But while the show says it doesnt have a litmus test for those it hires, several Chosen actors made clear, as the week went on, that it does have one for viewers:

Tolerance is apparently a one-way street.

In a nearly 20-minute video released Sunday, Jenkins responded to the weeks events, saying that nothing has changed with the show and that it has always followed a hands-off policy regarding its contracted workers personal lives.

Our cast and crew sometimes wear T-shirts and hats that go across the entire spectrum, from a pride flag or a MAGA hat or a Jesus saves shirt, he said. No one on our set minds.

Regarding the actors comments, Jenkins said, They said some things I wouldnt have said. But he stopped short of condemning the actors words or calling for them to apologize. He also said that the actors werent responding to all viewers who expressed concerns, only those who were being mean.

For the record, here is a sample tweet from Jon Root, whom Jordan Ross accused of hate, homophobia and ignorance:

Whos actually being hateful here?

I have some sympathy for Jenkins. A self-identified libertarian and conservative evangelical, he seems like a faithful Christian and a genuinely nice guy. I wouldnt want to be in his position right now.

But since he is in this position, its time for him to rise to it. The Chosen has so far been crowd-funded by tens of thousands of fans, who have given millions of dollars to a cause they believed in. Jenkins owes those people more than looking the other way when a few of his actors spit in their faces. He owes them the courage to say that calling sin sin is not hate. Its love, and its exactly what Jesus did throughout His earthly ministry and what He still does today in His Word.

As with pretty much everything I watch these days, I came to The Chosen late. However, once I started watching, I found much to appreciate. I have recommended the show to others. I have defended it against some of the concerns expressed by my fellow Christians.

But right now, Im not sure if I can go back. If I dont, it wont be because I have decided to join a boycott. It will be because watching simply makes me too sad.

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I Don't Want To Boycott 'The Chosen,' But I'm About To Walk Away - The Federalist

News reports on Chris Lichts sudden but predictable firing as chairman of CNN make it sound like his relatively brief tenure was marked by a series of blunders that cumulatively led to his demise. Its nonsense.

Licht was fired for one reason, and its that he actually believed CNN was a place he could revert back to something of a major news-gathering operation without a complete overhaul of producers, correspondents, and, most of all, the anchors.

After a year of tinkering with the margins moving drama queen Don Lemon from nights to mornings, firing the on-camera masturbator Licht ultimately failed to do anything that would steer CNN away from its current status as a patronizing, angry propaganda outfit toward something less hysterical and more even-handed. That would require terminating Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper, Erin Burnett, and on and on. But for whatever reason, Licht thought he could get there instead with an endless series of internal memos on word usage and balance.

CNN, as a TV product, doesnt sell journalism or news, and it hasnt since 2015. CNN, as a TV product, sells made-up reasons for Americans to hate one another. The pandemic death ticker, the deadly BLM riots, the big lie, the violent insurrection all of it is promoted and repeated on air at CNN to give half the country a reason to hate their neighbors.

Its a large part of news journalism to cover political conflict. CNN doesnt cover political conflict. CNN creates it. CNN foments it. And then CNN tells its audience that violence from one political side is okay in order to resolve that conflict.

Making Don Lemon a morning show host wasnt going to change it. Getting rid of the on-camera masturbator wasnt going to change it. The only way to change it is to clean house.

Chris Licht did not clean house. Chris Licht assumed he was working with journalists who had simply made some shortsighted choices for ratings who could be guided back on track. There were no mistakes, and theyre not on the wrong track. This is CNN.

There is no other explanation for the calamity resulting from last months Trump town hall hosted by CNN. Donald Trump is a former president and is the leading candidate for the Republican nomination to be president again. Hosting such a figure should be seen as both a coveted opportunity and an obligation by any news operation. Licht probably thought he would be celebrated for the production. An article in The Atlantic said it was supposed to be the win Licht needed. Instead, CNNers denounced their own event.

Because CNN isnt a news operation. It doesnt want to be. Licht was hopelessly naive in thinking that it did.

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Chris Licht Was Fired For Being Hopelessly Naive About CNN - The Federalist

New York-based corporate media elites have flown into hysterics this week over Canadian wildfires creating a blanket of hazardous air over the Northeast United States. The ongoing wildfire health crisis is the focus of hourly updates, with articles fretting over everything from the poor air qualitys impact onmental health to thecancellationof Broadway shows.

Yet these same outlets, along with U.S. government officials like Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, shamefully either ignored or downplayed the arguably more serious health crisis caused by Februarys fiery derailment of a freight train along the Ohio-Pennsylvania line in East Palestine. The derailment and the subsequent decision to set the spilled chemicals on fire created a hazardous mushroom cloud over the area, impacting residents health and livelihoods to this day.

CNN senior national correspondent Miguel Marquez dismissed residents frustrations with the Biden administrations nonchalance about the disaster by characterizing the area as hardcore Trump country.

TheNew York Timesmisinformation and disinformation reporter Stuart Thompson tried to downplay the disaster by straw-manning concerns about the chemical spill as wild speculation from conservatives. For many commentators from across the political spectrum, the speculation has gone far beyond known facts,Thompson wrote in an article published in February. Right-wing commentators have been particularly critical, using the crisis to sow distrust about government agencies and suggest that the damage could be irreparable.

Media Matters for America was willing to admit that national television coverageof this story has been minimal, yet slammed the few commentators who were drawing attention to East Palestine. Right-wing media weaponize the East Palestine train derailment to claim white conservatives are being persecuted, read Media Matters headline.

The East Palestine crisis was not fabricated by right-wing fear-mongering. It is very much real, according to the people who live there. When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and local health officials told evacuated East Palestine residents it was safe to come home, breathe the air, and drink the local water two days after the burn, they began experiencing headaches and irritated eyes. Meanwhile, fish, pets, and wildlife were dying before their eyes.

Today, the residents in East Palestine are still suffering from the chemical spill. My stomach hurts. My face hurts. Its just constant pain, Courtney Miller, an East Palestine resident and mother of two told Environmental Health News (EHN). EHN reported that Miller left East Palestine in mid-March due to nausea and burning skin. With two bags of belongings, she is staying with a rotation of friends in neighboring counties.

Since February, the EPA has maintained that East Palestine is safe to live in, but residents like Miller are living proof that is not true. I cant answer all your questions. I certainly cant answer your health questions, the EPAs representative to the town reportedly told residents experiencing negative health effects during aMarch town hall.

Businesses are also suffering. My numbers were just heading to where they were pre-Covid, Susan Reynolds, an East Palestine tanning salon and gym owner, told EHN.

The East Palestine disaster was and continues to be a major news story, yet much of the coverage from self-interested corporate media either dismissed the disaster or blamed concerns about it on conservatives.

The propaganda press orbits stories that either are politically useful to Democrats or directly impact their coastal constituency. They will even purvey blatant falsehoods when it proves advantageous. Over the years, they peddled the Russia-collusion hoax, claimed the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, and lied about nearly everything related to the Covid-19 pandemic, beginning with itsorigin.

The Canadian wildfires are directly affecting New York journalists and are useful as another climate change talking point, so the media are covering them. The story of a chemical spill impacting the natural environment and health of people living in a little conservative village in fly-over America, however, is not quite as useful.

Evita Duffy-Alfonso is a staff writer to The Federalist and the co-founder of the Chicago Thinker. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, and her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evita@thefederalist.com.

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After East Palestine Snub, Media Panic Over Wildfire Haze In NYC - The Federalist

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday demanding documentation related to the FBIs raid of former President Donald Trumps Mar-a-Lago estate last year.

The raid which took place on Aug. 8, 2022 was reportedly aimed at retrieving any document Trump ever saw, read, or created for the entirety of his four years as commander-in-chief. Due to the unprecedented nature of the Biden DOJ conducting a raid on a former president and a potential 2024 rival, House Judiciary Republicans sent letters to Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and then-White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain demanding records pertaining to the execution of a search warrant and the decision to seek a search warrant for Trumps estate. The affidavit released by the FBI later that month justifying the agencys warrant application to raid Trumps Florida residence was nearly all redacted.

In November, the DOJ appointedU.S. Attorney Jack Smith as a special counsel to investigate whether Trump violated federal laws related to the handling of presidential records.

The Judiciary Committee previously requested information and documents related to the FBIs raid on President Trumps residence and its subsequent investigation, Jordans letter to Garland reads. Because you have not provided this information, and in light of your appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel, we write to request an unredacted copy of the memorandum outlining the scope of Mr. Smiths probes regarding President Trump and any supporting documentation related to his appointment as special counsel.

In addition to the unredacted memo outlining the scope of Special Counsel Smiths investigations, Jordan is also seeking any other document describing, listing, or delineating the authority and jurisdiction of the special counsel. Garlands deadline for forfeiting such records to the House Judiciary Committee is June 20, according to the letter.

Jordans Tuesday letter to the DOJ is his second within the past week requesting additional information related to the FBIs Mar-a-Lago raid. On Thursday, Jordan sent a separate memo to Garland expressing concerns about the FBIs track record of bias and reckless disregard for truth, with the House Judiciary chair specifically referencing the report released by U.S. Attorney John Durham. Released last month, the bombshell report found the FBI possessed no real evidence that then-candidate Trump colluded with Russian government officials when it launched its investigation into the Trump campaign leading up to the 2016 election.

Meanwhile, House Republicans recently announced plans to hold contempt hearings for Wray later this week for allegedly violating a congressional subpoenaover an unclassified document that purportedly implicates President Joe Biden in a $5 million bribery scheme with a foreign national from Bidens time in the Obama administration.

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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Jim Jordan Demands DOJ Forfeit Docs On The FBI's Trump Raid - The Federalist

This week Apple unveiled the next big thing in tech: Vision Pro, a $3,500 headset that heralds the era of spatial computing where digital content blends seamlessly with your physical space.

This isnt quite the same as virtual reality, which blocks out the real world and swaps in a virtual one. Vision Pro is basically a set of digital goggles that work as a mixed-reality platform, allowing users to see and hear the physical world even as they interact and manipulate digital content in front of them.

Apple is putting all its clout into this idea of spatial computing, which the company has been reportedly working on for years. Announcing the new product, chief executive Tim Cook compared it to the way the iPhone introduced the concept of mobile computing. Its the first product you look through, and not at, he said. You can see, hear, and act with digital content just like its in your physical space. Youre no longer limited by a display.

Thats almost true. In fact, youre still looking at a display, its just a display of the real world, a digital projection of reality. The headsets cameras capture the world and display it on two small digital screens directly in front of your eyes. So users arent really lookingthroughthe headset at the world, theyre looking at a digital recreation of the world around them. The world you see through the headset might seem real, but it isnt.

Apple calls it the most advanced personal electronics device ever, which is true in more ways than one, especially the personal aspect. Put bluntly, Vision Pro appears to be nothing so much as an incredibly powerful isolation device a means of immersing yourself in a sea of digital content in a way that physically cuts you off from other people and the real world.

That is to say, Vision Pro is precisely the kind of technology that will exponentially increase the isolation and misery of everyone who uses it. Its been obvious for years now that the proliferation of digital tech is creating a populace thats addicted to smartphones, porn, and social media and doing so in a social environment of ever-increasing isolation, anxiety, depression, deracination, and collapsing community. Whatever benefits there are to digital tech, its not at all clear they outweigh the heavy human costs.

The introduction video for Vision Pro unintentionally highlights these costs. It features various people wearing and using the headset. All of them are indoors, and with the exception of a single, brief, real-world interaction, all of them are all alone.

But even then, the real-world exchange doesnt convey what Apple wished quite the opposite, in fact. In a rather farcical scene, a woman sits on a couch wearing the headset and watching a video, and another woman walks in. The voiceover says, Foundational to Vision Pro is that youre not isolated from other people. When someone else is in the room, you can see them and they can see you. But thats clearly not true, as the goggles obscure most of the womans face, even as the pair talk and laugh.

Its obvious, even from the promotional clip, that that kind of interaction, in which someone wearing the headset talks to someone else physically present in the room with them, is the last thing Apples designers and engineers had in mind when designing this. The entire purpose, it seems, is to throttle such real-world interactions.

In another scene, we see a man sitting alone in a dark house, watching video clips of his daughters playing and blowing out birthday candles. The voiceover tells us that Vision Pro is Apples first three-dimensional camera and lets you capture and relive your memories in 3D with spatial audio.

That means this father was awkwardly wearing the headset when he recorded the clips hes now watching, alone, in a darkened house. Are we to assume that capturing memories so you can relive them later, in 3D with spatial audio, means wearing creepy, face-obscuring goggles to your kids birthday party?

And why depict this father alone in a dark house? Where is his family? Ben Thompson, a tech commentator otherwise effusive in his praise of the headset,said, Ill be honest: what this looked like to me was a divorced dad, alone at home with his Vision Pro, perhaps because his wife was irritated at the extent to which he got lost in his own virtual experience. Exactly right.

Aside from the isolating effects of such technology is its invasiveness. Sterling Crispin, an engineer who spent years working on foundational elements of Vision Pro,explained on Twitterthat much of his work involved detecting the mental state of users based on data from their body and brain when they were in immersive experiences, what he called basically mind reading.

So, a user is in a mixed reality or virtual reality experience, and AI models are trying to predict if he is feeling curious, mind wandering, scared, paying attention, remembering a past experience, or some other cognitive state. And these may be inferred through measurements like eye tracking, electrical activity in the brain, heartbeats and rhythms, muscle activity, blood density in the brain, blood pressure, skin conductance, and more.

He adds there were a lot of tricks involved to make specific predictions possible, like monitoring eye behavior to anticipate when a user was going to click on something, or quickly flashing visuals or sounds to a user in ways they may not perceive, and then measuring their reaction to it.

What Crispin is describing, albeit not in these terms, is a concerted effort to monitor, manipulate, and potentially control the user, all under the guise of predicting his behavior. Its not hard to imagine a near future in which AI is able to translate monitored brain activity and other biometrics into images. A user could be wearing an Apple headset thats continuously transmitting brainwaves and images and thoughts to the cloud, where corporations could mine them for profit and government censors could monitor them for wrongthink.

This already happens now, so why would it not happen with even more powerful technology? Worse, these recorded thoughts and images could be archived the way phone and email records are now, under federal surveillance laws. Were talking about a permanent digital record of your inmost thoughts, recorded and archived by the worlds most powerful corporations and accessible by government agencies whenever they want.

The blunt reality about Apples new mixed-reality platform, then, is that its designed to increase the soul-crushing isolation and loneliness of modern life, thus amplifying the ability of Big Tech and hence, government to exert control over us. The vision of the future offered by Apple is one of solitary men and women sitting alone in the darkened rooms of empty houses, their faces hidden behind shining black masks, reliving memories that were digitally mediated to begin with.

Its a profoundly anti-human vision, and we should resist it with all our strength.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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Apple's New Headset Is Designed To Isolate And Control You - The Federalist

The president of the United States has been accused by a credible FBI informant of allegedly taking $5 million in a bribery scheme with a foreign national while he was the sitting vice president. That seems like a pretty big story, but what do I know?

Apparently, theres a document laying out the accusation in some detail and not one cooked up by an oppo-research firm for the RNC and then disseminated to saps in the media to try to delegitimize a presidential election. No, its in an unclassified FD-1023 form, used by law enforcement to record credible tips. Granted, its not in the possession of Buzzfeed, but rather the vaunted FBI, which refused to hand it to Congress for some reason. And there is little curiosity on the part of establishment media to find out what it says.

I know, I know, its getting tedious asking people to imagine the thermonuclear media blast theyd be swept up in if a Republican president had been accused of bribery by an FBI informant. This is the way of the world. To this point, the debate over the proper pronunciation of Ron DeSantis last name has gotten more coverage than the president possibly pocketing millions of dollars through shell corporations.

Though, I suppose thats not exactly right. Bidens Praetorian Guard have begun to preemptively frame the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, as some devious nut for demanding the FBI hand over documents. This is what they did to Devin Nunes, who turned out to be correct in his assessment of the Russia-collusion investigation.

There isnt a real journalist in the universe not a beat reporter or opinion writer or copy editor who wouldnt want to read an informants account of a sitting president taking a bribe. You can debunk it. You can prove it. But you want to see it. But therein lies the problem. There arent many journalists left.

Take Philip Bump, who contends that James Comers bribery allegations are out on a very shaky limb, even though Comer has never once made any bribery allegations. The House investigation is focused on the decision-making process that followed the informants accusation.

Last week, CNN ran a piece that might well have been sent verbatim from the FBI press shop. CNNs sources claimed that the form in question has origins in a tranche of documents that Rudy Giuliani provided to the Justice Department in 2020 and the investigation led nowhere. A big nothingburger.

Its this CNN story, and another version in The Washington Post (almost surely from the same sources), that allowed Jamie Raskin, ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, to claim that Rudy Giuliani surfaced these allegations, and that a team had looked at the document and in August determined that there was no grounds to escalate from an initial assessment to a preliminary investigation.

None of that, apparently, is true. As my colleagues Margot Cleveland and Mollie Hemingway report, former Attorney General William Barr told The Federalist that the investigation had never been closed, it had merely been sent to an office in Delaware. And the document did not emanate from Giuliani the same ploy used to undercut the New York Posts reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop story but from a 2017 whistleblower report that showed up in a 2020 search. No one has come forward to accuse Barr of lying, so I assume the above is true.

Who knows what this is all about? Ive learned not to make too many assumptions. For all I know, this all leads to a rickety accusation and a dead end.

There is, however, already tons of circumstantial evidence that Joe Biden participated in his familys shady business, which makes the existence of this document highly newsworthy. We know that the president lied about his knowledge of Hunters relationships with Ukrainian energy concerns and Chinese interests. We have emails implicating the president as a participant in Hunters schemes emails authenticated by forensic specialists. We have witnesses, including a retired Navy veteran, contending that Biden is the big guy Hunter is talking about in those emails. Even the Obama administration was alarmed about the Biden family business.

Almost a year ago, former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro was indicted and arrested by the FBI for ignoring a congressional subpoena by the Jan. 6 commission. He was handcuffed and reportedly denied permission to make a phone call to a lawyer. Today, its the FBI that is ignoring subpoenas. And there will be no one to arrest FBI Director Chris Wray for contempt.

There will also be no more sanctimonious speeches or grandstanding from Democrats regarding the sacred need for transparency and separation of powers. Democracy is no longer in danger, apparently. Of course, we expect jaw-dropping hypocrisy from politicians. We expect a politicized Justice Department to protect Democrats. Nowadays, we also expect the complete abdication of journalistic responsibility from a partisan big media. And thats a massive problem.

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Nothing To See Here But A Whistleblower Accusing Biden Of Bribes - The Federalist