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In NCLA Win, Federal Judge Rejects Motion to Dismiss Government ... - El Paso Inc.

So far, thankfully, schools and libraries on the East End have not been targeted by self-appointed watchdogs who take it upon themselves to tell librarians to remove objectionable books from the shelves.

But in other parts of the country, this is happening with increasing regularity. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantiss actions against education have led libraries and school districts to respond with a broad censorship effort profoundly contradicting how America is supposed to work.

One Florida county recently released its list of books it wants removed from school libraries. Among the authors to be censored: Jodi Picoult, Toni Morrison and James Patterson, according to a story in The Washington Post.

On the list was Picoults The Storyteller, in which the grandchild of a Holocaust survivor encounters an elderly SS veteran. In an interview with the Post, Picoult said the proposed ban is a shocking breach of freedom of speech and freedom of information.

The American Library Associations list of books targeted by censors around the country includes To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck and The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison. A picture book, Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates has been removed from a number of school libraries in Florida. Someone, or some group, has found something objectionable in Clementes experiences as a Black Latino working his way up in baseball during the civil rights era.

Last week, Ken Burns, the celebrated documentary filmmaker who specializes in the American story, sharply criticized bills before the Florida legislature as a threat to our republic.

According to media reports, Burns said, These bills that DeSantis and others are doing limit our ability to understand who we are and are not inclusive. They are exclusive. Their narrowing the focus of what is and isnt American history is terrifying. It feels like a Soviet system.

American history is often said to be complicated. It actually isnt. The story is there for all who want to study it. But it is multi-layered and needs to be taught as such. The Founding Fathers fought Great Britain to create an independent country where all men are created equal, yet about half of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention collectively enslaved more than 1,000 men, women and children. Studying this contradiction between the ideal of individual freedom and allowing slavery to continue and talking about it in a high-school history class, is enriching. It is America, after all. This is who we are. We are better for knowing it, as is the country itself.

Who is being served if we censor the parts that the deliberately uninformed call critical race theory and say are hurtful to teach? Hurtful to whom? What, exactly, do they think critical race theory is?

And why do these people want government to make decisions on what American history is and isnt? It is illustrative about where we are in America when people who long railed against government intervention in various aspects of American life now advocate for government intervention into history curriculum.

In America today, many politicians talk all day long about culture issues. They need to focus on the country and its people. It is often said a rising tide raises all boats. That is a good ideal to follow for how to govern. Banning books, limiting the conversation about American history and outlawing drag shows wont get us there.

If you have been following the environmental disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, caused by the derailment of a train carrying highly toxic chemicals, you know there are places in our country in desperate need of help.

If a politician pushing culture war issues went there and asked a family who has lost their home and cant drink their water what issues are important to them, it is doubtful banning books from their childrens school libraries would make the top 20.

Communities like East Palestine dont need to know which state in the union is where woke goes to die. They need to be reassured their communities are where hope will live.

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Editorial: Censorship won't create the America that lives on hope ... - Riverhead News Review

Washington, D.C. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chair Bob Latta (R-OH) today announced a hearing titled Preserving Free Speech and Reining in Big Tech Censorship.

Big Tech is shutting down free speech. In many cases, this has included colluding with the Biden administration and corrupt government bureaucrats to silence voices who dare to question the Left's narrativewe have the receipts. Big Tech's authoritarian actions violate America's most fundamental rights to engage in the battle of ideas and hold the politically powerful accountable. House Energy and Commerce Republicans have repeatedly condemned these censorship actions. Next week, several people whove been silenced by Big Tech will have a voice before our subcommittee. We look forward to hearing from them and discussing how to protect the spirit of the First Amendment and the American people's right to free speech online.

Subcommittee on Communications and Technology hearing titled Preserving Free Speech and Reining in Big Tech Censorship.

WHAT: Communications and Technology Subcommittee hearing on protecting Americans from Big Tech censorship.

DATE: Tuesday, March 28, 2023

TIME: 10:30 AM ET

LOCATION: 2322 Rayburn House Office Building

This notice is at the direction of the Chair. The hearing will be open to the public and press, and will be live streamed online at https://energycommerce.house.gov/. If you have any questions concerning the hearing, please contact Noah Jackson at Noah.Jackson@mail.house.gov.If you have any press-related questions, please contact Sean Kelly atSean.Kelly@mail.house.gov.

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House Committee on Energy and Commerce - Energy and Commerce Committee

by Tan Liwei

Last week, netizens in China started making a surprising discovery. They could not search 2952 through Chinese search engines (Google is banned in China) or social media. At first, they believed it was a technical problem. They tried other numbers. They worked. Even 2951 or 2953 were searchable. But not 2952.

It was a show of effectiveness of the Chinese censorship, but at the same time it demonstrated the paranoia and fear of any criticism by the regime or perhaps Xi Jinping himself.

Xi was re-elected as President of China on March 10. The results of the vote were: favorable, 2,952: contrary, zero; abstained, zero. In the following hours, 2952, often posted without comments, became a way for the oppressed Chinese netizens to poke fun at Chinas pseudo-democracy, without posting criticism or sentences that may land them in jail.

This was annoying for a President whose agenda prominently includes putting an end to what he calls the Internet chaos and eradicate any criticism of the CCP from the web. Almost immediately, searches for 2952 were blocked. Those who tried them received a message that According to the relevant laws, regulations and policies, the page is not foundan elegant formula to indicate that the search engine was capable of performing its job but was prevented from doing it by the law.

The censors work was just beginning. Certainly by mere coincidence, Xis historical third-term re-election took place on the same day, March 10, when the infamous. Yuan Shikai was elected President of the Republic of China in 1912. Yuan later tried to proclaim himself Emperor, betraying the Republican ideals, and is generally vilified by Chinese historians.

After Xi Jinpings re-election, censors noted an uncommon proliferation of posts simply reading , usually indicating the two-dimensional space of anime, comics, and games (ACG), which are connected and part of the same youth subculture. If you believe there was nothing wrong about it, you are not smart enough to join the ranks of the CCP censors. They understood that for a linguistic phenomenon that is rare but not unique, can also be read as the second coming of Yuan Shikai. By the way, censors were right. Some netizens really played with the two meanings of to quietly criticize Xis re-election.

Others posted links to an old essay on Yuan Shikais passion for steamed buns. Again, this was not difficult to understand for the average Chinese, who knows that Xi Jinping is fond of steamed buns too. Actually, Xi made a steamed bun restaurant chain called Qingfeng famous in 2013 when he went there to enjoy his favorite dish. However, calling him Xi Baozi (Steamed Bun Xi) was later also forbidden, after some netizens compared his face to a steamed bun, which was deemed even more irreverent than comparing him to Winnie the Pooh.

Finally, censors and their machines became so confused that for several hours last week searches for Xi Jinping himself were blocked in China.

While all this may seem hilarious, it also deserves a more serious comment. It shows two features that tells us a lot about contemporary China. First, fueled by fear, censorship is all-expanding. Second, Chinese should adopt desperate and oblique ways to express criticism. But they succeed. Their humor is an expression of freedom, and is stronger that the censors stupidity.

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Censorship Frenzy: Do Not Search for 2952 in China or You Will ... - Bitter Winter

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as theyre published.

March 22, 2023: This storys headline has been corrected to remove an inaccurate description of Rep. Jim Jordans requests for information, which were not subpoenas.

House Republicans have sent letters to at least three universities and a think tank requesting a broad range of documents related to what it says are the institutions' contributions to the Biden administrations censorship regime.

The letters are the latest effort by a House subcommittee set up in January to investigate how the federal government, working with social media companies, has allegedly been weaponized to silence conservative and right-wing voices. So far, the committees investigations have amplified a variety of dubious, outright false and highly misleading Republican grievances with law enforcement, many of them espoused by former President Donald Trump. Committee members have cited supposed abuses that include the FBIs search of Mar-a-Lago, its investigations of Jan. 6 rioters and the Biden administrations purported use of executive powers to shut down conservative viewpoints on social media.

Now, universities and their researchers are coming under the spotlight of the committee, which the Republicans have labeled the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The letters, signed by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who is chair of both the House Judiciary Committee and the subcommittee, were sent in early March.

They cover an investigation into how certain third parties, including organizations like yours, may have played a role in this censorship regime by advising on so-called misinformation, according to a copy of one of the letters obtained by ProPublica.

The committee requested documents and information dating back to January 2015 between any employee, contractor, or agent of your organization and the federal government or social media organizations pertaining to the moderation of social media content. ProPublica confirmed the requests went to Stanford University, the University of Washington, Clemson University and the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

The letters have prompted a wave of alarm among those in the field that the congressional inquiry itself, no matter what it finds, will lead universities to pull back on this research just as the 2024 election gets underway. Recent efforts definitely have a chilling effect on the community of experts across academia, civil society and government built up to understand broader online harms like harassment, foreign influence and yes disinformation, Graham Brookie, who leads studies in this area at the Atlantic Council, told ProPublica.

The weaponization committee is being weaponized against us, another researcher told ProPublica. Like half a dozen others interviewed for this story, this person asked not to be identified because of the ongoing congressional probe.

Democrats have called the committee a modern-day House Un-American Activities Committee, akin to the congressional committee that pursued alleged communists during the McCarthy era.

Since Rep. Jordan took over the gavel of the judiciary committee in January, he has issued more than 80 subpoenas and requests for documents. Recipients have included the CEOs of social media companies, intelligence officials who signed on to a statement about Hunter Bidens laptop during the 2020 campaign and members of the National School Boards Association who asked the Justice Department to investigate threats of violence against school board officials. Jordan himself refused a subpoena to testify before the Democratic-led House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, prompting that committee to refer the matter to the House Ethics Committee.

Jordans missives were sent a day after a committee hearing on the Twitter files, leaked internal communications from the company that purported to show how right-wing accounts were sidelined and silenced. In written testimony, a panelist accused a broad swath of organizations and individuals of being members of the Censorship Industrial Complex, including, he implied, the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, CIA, Department of Defense and universities. The witness wrote disinformation researchers, working with the government, are creating blacklists of disfavored people and then pressuring, cajoling, and demanding that social media platforms censor, deamplify, and even ban the people on these blacklists.

A New York University study concluded in 2021 that social media had not silenced those on the right. The claim of anti-conservative animus by social media companies, the study said, is itself a form of disinformation: a falsehood with no reliable evidence to support it."

A spokesperson for Rep. Jordan did not respond to requests for comment.

Since the 2016 elections, Stanford, UW, Clemson and others have engaged in research, sometimes in partnership with social media platforms, government officials and each other, into ways that disinformation can pose threats to democracy and how such efforts can be meaningfully countered. The role of lies and disinformation leading to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol gave increased prominence to their work.

As ProPublica has previously reported, sustained accusations by congressional Republicans and right-wing influencers that the Biden administration is stifling dissent have caused the administration to back away from its efforts countering disinformation, including canceling research contracts and sending messages inside the administration that disinformation work is too hot to handle.

Those moves followed a bungled rollout of a clumsily named Disinformation Governance Board to coordinate efforts to counter what the administration had called dangerous conspiracy theories that can provide a gateway to terrorist violence. Following criticism, the administration disbanded the board and accepted the resignation of its executive director, Nina Jankowicz.

Jordan has subpoenaed Jankowicz, too. She is scheduled to testify April 10 and said she will happily testify under oath.

This sort of inquiry isnt something that belongs in the United States Congress, said Jankowicz. But given that this method of bullying has caused other institutions to fold to Republican pressure in the past, I fear we may see the blunt force of congressional committees continue to be used in ways that are in direct opposition to the safety, security and free expression of the American people.

DeSantis Privately Called for Google to Be Broken Up

Stanford did not answer a question about whether it stood by its research or make its researchers, the Stanford Internet Observatorys Alex Stamos or Renee DiResta, available for comment. The university referred ProPublica to an online fact sheet addressing inaccurate and misleading claims made in the congressional testimony about Stanfords projects to analyze rumors and narratives on social media relating to U.S. elections and the coronavirus. The German Marshall fund said it was working to address the request and Clemson Universitys media relations department did not respond to requests for comment.

The University of Washingtons Center for an Informed Public issued a statement that said Were incredibly proud of our work, adding that some of the projects CIP researchers have contributed to have become the subject of false claims and criticism that mischaracterizes our work, a tactic that peer researchers in this space are also experiencing. The statement did not specifically address the House requests.

A university spokesperson, Victor Balta, said in an email, The UW stands behind this important research aiming to resist strategic misinformation and strengthen our discourse. We have received a request for documents and information, and a response is in progress.

March 22, 2023: A headline on this story originally incorrectly described Rep. Jim Jordans letters to universities. They are requests for information, not subpoenas.

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Republican Rep. Jim Jordan Issues Sweeping Information Requests ... - ProPublica