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Getting down to the specifics of these bills, they range from bad to ugly, said Patrick Hedger, vice president of policy for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, which is funded in part by groups connected to the Kochs. Americans for Prosperity, a Koch group, called the antitrust package a jumble of legislative proposals [that] targets American companies [and] treats them as guilty until proven innocent.

The critics are arguing, in part, that the bills are antithetical to GOP values, which traditionally emphasize the free market and oppose regulatory intervention.

These bills represent a huge intervention into the U.S. economy, said Jessica Melugin, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institutes Center for Technology and Innovation, which has received tens of thousands of dollars from Koch foundations in recent years as well as funding from the major tech companies. This is not on-brand for Republicans.

The Houses top Republican, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, weighed in against the legislation on Wednesday, saying it only gives Democrats in the federal government more power to tip the scales. McCarthy, a California lawmaker, has received tens of thousands of dollars from Google, Amazon and Facebook, as well as the Koch Industries PAC, in recent years.

But traditional Republican aversion to meddling in big business saw serious erosion under Trump, whose Justice Department filed a major antitrust suit against Google. The antitrust bills right-leaning supporters say the Koch groups are simply out of touch with a populist GOP base that feels censored and silenced by the tech giants.

The Koch group and all of these pro-big tech people on the right, they do have an advantage, which is inertia, said Jon Schweppe, the director of policy and government affairs at the populist American Principles Project, which has received money from the Mercer family. The Republican Party for a long time has been a party opposed to any antitrust or concern about concentrated power. But the divide here is that the base definitely wants to break up Big Tech.

One sign of the anti-tech messages growing appeal among the GOP caucus: Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, the top Republican on the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, co-sponsored all five of the antitrust bills, along with North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn and Texas Rep. Lance Gooden.

Buck said he believes that the legislative efforts are an extension of his outreach to blue collar voters.

When I go back to my district, I hear a lot of people talk about the fact that what Big Tech doing is wrong, he said. They dont necessarily know they cheated this particular company in this way, but they have this gut feeling that these companies are too big and theyre cheating. So I do think that we will reach out to a broad spectrum [with these bills].

Democrats behind the legislation have welcomed the support from Republicans, seeking to ride the populist wave to garner lasting support for their agenda.

Ultimately, its a fight for the future of the Republican party Trump-style populism vs. traditional conservatism and the Koch network isnt going down without a fight. As soon as the bills were introduced last week, Koch-backed groups including Americans for Prosperity, the American Enterprise Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, the Open Competition Center, TechFreedom and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation came out with statements and campaigns condemning the legislation.

Aside from the tech companies themselves, the Koch groups and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have been some of the loudest voices blanketing Capitol Hill urging Republican lawmakers to oppose the legislation, according to two aides familiar with the conversations who asked to remain anonymous in order to discuss private conversations. (Many of the groups that receive Koch funding also receive money from Facebook, Google or Amazon.)

I dont think Koch is out on their own on this, said Zach Graves, head of policy at the Lincoln Network, a right-of-center tech advocacy group. I think they have a lot of alignment with relatively powerful industry groups not just tech, but also just general Chamber of Commerce types who dont want to see massive expansion of the antitrust regime and giving big new powers to the [Federal Trade Commission] and DOJ.

Each of the bills has at least one Republican co-sponsor, but the legislation will need more GOP support to push through the Senate. Thats left undecided Republicans in the middle of a tense debate.

For instance, the Heritage Foundation, which is building out its tech policy apparatus, has chosen to stay out of the public conversation for now as it weighs how to thread the needle between taking on Big Tech and maintaining a hands-off approach to government regulation.

As with any other meaningful policy debate, Heritage is carefully looking at the issues inherent to the Big Tech debate in order to come up with policy recommendations that address legitimate concerns about censorship and the growing influence of Big Tech platforms, said John Cooper, the Heritage Foundations associate director for institute communications. To argue that these are issues that dont require some sort of action is simply unrealistic at this point, though its important policymakers act in a way that doesnt give the federal government undue authority that Americans will regret giving to bureaucrats down the road.

Another crucial dynamic is the fact that the Koch network and the Chamber of Commerce, once two of the most important forces in the Republican Party, fell increasingly out of favor with GOP backers during the Trump era. The Koch network alienated a huge swath of formerly devoted Republican followers as its political arm expressed new openness last year to backing Democrats, and the Chamber drew fire for backing several Democrats as well.

The Koch network and Chamber crowd have zero influence right now, said one House Republican aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly. Most of the House Judiciary members and their staff couldnt pick out their people from a police lineup.

But on the other side of the schism, many traditional conservatives and libertarians feel theyre defending the core of their party against Trumps influence. That includes growing GOP calls for a government crackdown on social media companies that they accuse of censoring conservatives, a theme that Trump pressed repeatedly during his time in the White House.

I reject the premise that this is the right is divided, said Berin Szoka, president of the tech- and Koch-funded think tank TechFreedom. People accusing tech companies of censorship, he added, are seeking to compel social media sites to host the most despicable people and content imaginable.

The Democratic-led bills H.R. 3816 (117), H.R. 3825 (117), H.R. 3826 (117), H.R. 3843 (117) and H.R. 3849 (117) dont include prominent anti-tech proposals that Trump and other Republicans had championed, such as stripping or reducing the online industrys protections against lawsuits over user-posted content. But anti-tech activists on the right have made it clear that they support the House antitrust bills in part to punish the major tech companies alleged censorship.

Conservatives are being canceled by Big Tech, we are being kicked off these platforms, we are being silenced and censored, said Mike Davis, founder and president of the right-wing Internet Accountability Project, which receives some funding from Oracle. Conservatives need to pick a side theyre either with everyday Americans or theyre with these Big Tech monopolists and their D.C. lobbyists.

Both sides agree that theres nowhere near as robust of an apparatus on the right for supporting antitrust changes. Whereas a swath of academics and groups on the left have taken up trust-busting as a priority policy area, only a few groups and figures are devoted to the issue on the right.

I think its going to take a new generation of folks, said the House Republican aide.

So far, most Republicans in Congress have not weighed in publicly on the legislation. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the pro-Trump ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee with a more libertarian bent, has been actively whipping against the bills, targeting their Democratic roots.

On the other side, lobbyists for News Corp. and fellow Murdoch-owned company Fox have been working Republican lawmakers to vote in favor, according to two people familiar with the dynamics. And the tech giants themselves some of the biggest lobbying spenders in Washington are caught in the middle.

There is going to continue to be a battle on this, and it parallels the realignment, Schweppe said. The Kochs have always been this more libertarian wing. I dont think thats the main thrust of the party anymore.

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How the Houses Silicon Valley smackdown is dividing conservatives - POLITICO

SACRAMENTO, Calif., June 17, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Louis Marinelli, an American political activistand California governor candidate, released a short filmexploring the issue of Vrbetice explosions in the light of the first Biden - Putin meeting.

The film was made in collaboration with Adam Kokesh, a libertarian activist who ran for USA presidency in 2020 and was aimed to present a perspective that is not widespread in the media today and discuss an alternative vision of the explosions in Czech Republic, sanctions against Russia and the current state of international relations prior to Putin - Biden meeting.

In 2014, a series of explosions destroyed an arms depot in the Czech Republic, causing two deaths. At the time, Czech authorities blamed the explosions on human error. But now, in the months leading up to the Biden-Putin meeting set for Geneva, the explosions have resurfaced as a topic of international concern - except now NATO allies and EU members are blaming Russia - and placing sanctions on Russia as a result, even though they lack any direct evidence of Russian involvement.

Louis Marinelli unravels the story and presents an alternative theory - is Europe's renewed interest in the 2014 explosions in Vrbetice really just a pretext to place sanctions on Russia and tarnish Russia's reputation before Putin's meeting with Biden? Or maybe the explosions are simply the result of a rivalry between two arms dealers - Emelian Gebrev, and Boyko Borissov, who, until recently, was also the Prime Minister of Bulgaria?

Additional information:

Louis J. Marinelli(born March 28, 1986) is an Americanpolitical activistof theCalifornia independencemovement organized under theYes CaliforniaIndependence Campaign, an umbrella organization representing the coalition of parties and organizations supporting the proposed California independence referendum. Marinelli is the former president of Yes California and the former interim chairman of theCalifornia National Party, under which he also ran forCalifornia State AssemblyinCalifornia's 80th State Assembly districtrepresenting southSan Diego,National City,Chula Vista,San Ysidro, and the surrounding communities.

Adam Charles Kokesh(born February 1, 1982) is anAmericanlibertarianpoliticalactivist, radio host, and author. Kokesh was a U.S.2020 Libertarian presidential candidaterunning on thesingle-issueplatform of an "orderly dissolution of thefederal government."

Kokesh is a formerU.S. Marine Corpssergeant, serving in theIraq Warin 2004. Upon his return from Iraq, he became ananti-waractivist and an advocate forIraq Veterans Against the War.

Media contact:Louis Marinelli[emailprotected]+79859426240

SOURCE Louis Marinelli

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Louis Marinelli: Is Europe's interest in the 2014 Vrbetice Explosions driven by the Biden-Putin meeting? - PRNewswire

There are now numerous well-documented examples of wealthy right-wing and libertarian donors using their wealth to transform higher education in their own image. Between 2005 and 2019, for example, the Charles Koch Foundation has spent over $485million at more than 550 universities. As demonstrated by Douglas Beets and others, many of these grants include considerable donor influence over what gets taught and researched and even who gets hired. It should therefore come as no surprise that conservative megadonor Walter Hussman Jr. lobbied hard to deny the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones a tenured professorship at the University of North Carolina journalism school that bears his name. Nor that her offer of tenure, awarded through the normal channels of faculty governance, was ultimately revoked by a far-right board with a long track record of hostility toward academic freedom and faculty autonomy.

The denial of tenure to Hannah-Jones is not an isolated incident, but rather one example of a highly organized, well-funded attack on those academics seeking to research and teach the actual legacy of American racism. This culture war onslaught has included concocting the boogeymen of critical race theory, cultural Marxism, identity politics and other supposed apocalyptic ideas that nihilist leftist academics dreamed up to destroy America and Western civilization. This attack was on full display in Donald Trumps executive order banning implicit bias training and is regularly trotted out in an incessant hand wringing over safe spaces, trigger warnings and campus free speech. It is now enshrined in legislation in Florida, Tennessee and elsewhere preventing the teaching of critical race theory (CRT). By which, I assume -- and doing the rights work for them -- they actually mean critical race studies

Where does this bizarre attack on CRT come from? Most recently it has taken the form of a frontal assault on Hannah-Joness "1619 Project." The Trump administration even established the 1776 Commission to respond to Hannah-Joness claim that slavery must be recognized as central to the nations founding. Published two days before Trump left office, the 1776 Commission report was swiftly condemned as highly inaccurate, incoherent and regurgitating an outdated and false narrative of American exceptionalism.

It might be tempting, therefore, to read this report as merely clumsy revanchist nonsense forced upon society by the Trump administration. However, the 1776 Commission report should also be read as encapsulating the cottage industry among conservative and libertarian think tanks that specializes in stoking culture war outrage against those engaged in the critical study of race.

For example, the 1776 Commission was chaired by Larry Arnn, the executive director of the Aequus Foundation, which gives money to right-wing think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the State Policy Network (which networks Koch-funded think tanks). Arnn also serves as president of Hilldale College, itself funded primarily by right-wing libertarian think tanks.

Another commission member, Thomas K. Lindsay, is currently a fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), which works closely with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to pass bills attacking renewable energy, denying climate change and undermining environmental protections. TPPF is funded by a whos who of Texas polluters, giant utilities and big insurance companies. TPPF has received $4.1million from Koch family foundations, millions in contributions from the Koch networks donor-directed pass-through funds, Donors Capital Fund and DonorsTrust, as well as six-digit donations from the State Policy Network, the Bradley Foundation, Exxon Mobil, the Hartland Institute, the Cato Institute and many other prominent libertarian donors and organizations.

Victor Davis Hanson is a retired California State University, Fresno, classics professor and visiting lecturer at Arnns Hillsdale College. He is also a fellow at the free market Hoover Institution, which receives its funding from right-wing and libertarian donors (including the Sarah Scaife, Olin, Bradley and Shelby Cullom Davis Foundations). He has attended at least one Koch donor summit and serves on the board of the Bradley Foundation.

Charles R. Kesler, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College, is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute (CI), which states its mission as restoring the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life. CI has collaborated with the David Horowitz Freedom Center to host the Dutch Islamophobe Geert Wilders. John C. Eastman -- who wrote the birther essay about Kamala Harriss eligibility to serve as vice president -- is a senior fellow at CI, which receives funding from DonorsTrust, Donors Capital Fund, Bradley Foundation, the Aequus Institute and many other luminaries within the libertarian donor network.

Another commission member, Mike Gonzalez, is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, where he regularly writes about the coercive effects of identity politics and diversity initiatives. His primer on critical race theory accuses CRT of destroying classical liberalism and Western civilization and unleashing the Black Lives Matter insurgency on society. The report is chock-full of concern about postmodernists and a fear that Friedrich Nietzsche, Herbert Marcuse and Joseph Stalin lurk behind every bush. His piece on "The 1619 Project" argues that one should look toward the 1620 Mayflower Compact, which embodies a a new belief-driven American identity (read: white and Christian) and juxtaposes this against Hannah-Joness ugly view of the nations soul.

The Heritage Foundation, where Gonzalez works, is a libertarian think tank created by Paul Weyrich (who also founded ALEC). It receives funding from the Scaife, Olin and Bradley Foundations; Koch family foundations; and others within the libertarian donor network.

Another commission member, Gay Hart Gaines, is a Republican activist who has been a member of various think tanks within the Koch network, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Hudson Institute, and has been chair of the National Review Institute.

The commission also included Ned Ryun, the founder and CEO of American Majority, which works to elect pro-corporate candidates at the state level, and especially in Wisconsin. American Majority is funded by the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation as well as $7.9 million from the Koch networks donor-directed pass-through funds, DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund.

While not appearing in the final document, Trump originally announced that the commission would also include Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, who made his career attacking radical leftist academics. He calls universities islands of totalitarianism and claims in his book Campus Battlefield that universities have become leftist echo chambers that reinforce an anti-American, anti-freedom, pro-Marxist worldview. TPUSA receives much of its funding from DonorsTrust and Donor Capital Fund, as well as other libertarian donors within the Koch network, including the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, the Bradley Impact Fund, the Einhorn Family Charitable Trust, the Marcus Foundation and other influential Koch network donors. Kirk also co-founded the now disbanded Falkirk Center (i.e. Falwell + Kirk) at Liberty University, which specialized in ranting about cultural Marxists, critical race theory and other right-wing culture war tropes, including discredited claims of voter fraud.

This raises the obvious question: Why are so many members of the 1776 Commission -- and the anti-CRT onslaught more generally -- so closely tied to Koch network think tanks and political organizations? Answer: because academic, journalistic and movement efforts to critically interrogate the lasting impact of slavery and American racism fundamentally challenge the free market fundamentalist ideology this network has mass-produced for decades. Koch network libertarians have propagated the fantasy that we all do (or should) live in a radically free market, populated by unraced and ungendered free individuals, all pulling ourselves up by our proverbial bootstraps. In this world, individuals are wealthy (or poor) on their own merit (or because governments tried too hard to make everyone equal). The founding myth for plutocratic libertarians -- an American dream on steroids -- is essential in maintaining this deeply ideological, pro-corporate policy agenda. This mythical narrative, however, requires studiously avoiding the fact that the United States is not a radically free market but rather a country founded on both the genocide of Indigenous peoples and the racialized practice of chattel slavery. Starting from the actual historical record, however, makes it impossible to take the libertarian mythology seriously -- a myth created by rich, cis, white males to justify their own economic superiority.

Think tanks and political operations within the plutocratic libertarian network have therefore invested heavily in this culture war position. Because they advocate unpopular policy proposals, corporate libertarians see CRT, "The 1619 Project" and other antiracist intellectual and political movements as posing an existential threat to their governing ideology -- one that depends on an imagined, asocial understanding of unfettered individual liberty. As such, we should not assume that the nonsensical and obscene 1776 Commission report will simply fade under withering critical scrutiny. Nor that Hannah-Jones will ultimately receive fair treatment by the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees. Rather, political actors, with political motivations, and a well-funded infrastructure, are behind this onslaught. As such, having an honest conversation about race in America also requires exposing, and pushing back against, those monied interests that are economically, politically and ideologically opposed to that conversation taking place.

Isaac Kamola is an associate professor of political science at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. His research examines critical globalization studies, the political economy of higher education and African anticolonial theory. He is author of Making the World Global: US Universities and the Production of the Global Imaginary (2019) and co-editor of Politics of African Anticolonial Archive (2017) and The Transnational Politics of Higher Education (2016).

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Guest Blog: Where Does the Bizarre Hysteria About 'Critical Race Theory' Come From? Follow the Money! | Just Visiting - Inside Higher Ed

According to the Bangor Daily News, Rep. John Andrews of Paris, Maine agreed to sit out House work after he violated the mask mandate on Wednesday.

Tensions are high in the Maine Statehouse because masks are still required, but Gov. Janet Mills lifted the mandate in most of the state. Over the past week, the mask requirement has been criticized by many Republican lawmakers, along with Andrews who is the only Libertarian lawmaker in the state.

Democratic House Speaker, Ryan Fecteau asked that Andrews put a mask on after the opening ceremonies started, but Andrews told lawmakers that he was planning to defy the request. Fecteau consulted with the House ethics panel, and together they decided to bar Andrews from being able to vote the rest of the week. However, it was decided that if he chose to wear a mask, he may resume working.

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Libertarian lawmaker sits out House work for the week after violating the mask mandate | 1019por.com - 101.9 WPOR

Throughout my career, I have been proud to associate with three journals that promote conservative, libertarian, textualist, originalist, and classical liberal scholarship: the NYU Journal of Law & Liberty (on whose Board I sit), the Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy, and the Texas Review of Law & Politics. These outlets provide critical outlets for right-of-center authors. I've approached each of these journals to publish works that would not find a home in most progressive mainstream law journals. As law reviews continue to pursue inclusive policies, they will inevitably exclude conservative legal thought. Moreover, conservative law students will find it more difficult to join law journals, get their notes published, and become editors. Look no further than the Georgetown Law Journal.

The editors of the NYU JLL, the Georgetown JLPP, and TROLP have recognized this creeping problem. And they have adopted an important, forward-looking solution: a Tri-Journal Notes Exchange.

Earlier today, we, as Editors-in-Chief of the NYU Journal of Law & Liberty, the Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy, and the Texas Review of Law & Politics, formally announced the launch of a Tri-Journal Notes Exchange to our Members. As Editors-in-Chief of three of the country's student-edited law journals committed to publishing conservative, libertarian, textualist, originalist, and classical liberal scholarship, we believe this project is vitally important to not only our respective publications, but to the legal community at large.

The establishment of the Exchange is part of our cross-journal commitment to promoting a cross- campus culture of collaboration, marked by an emphasis on intellectual cross-pollination and the advancement of student scholarship. At this time, the Notes Exchange is only open to current student editors at the NYU Journal of Law & Liberty, the Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy, and the Texas Review of Law & Politics.

For now, the policy is only open to student editors at the three journals. But the editors extend an invitation to other schools to participate:

Our long-term ambition is to open this Notes Exchange up to current law students at all other law schools and dramatically expand our capacity to publish student scholarship. To this end, we look forward to welcoming journals that share our vision for advancing conservative, libertarian, textualist, originalist, classical liberal, and heterodox scholarship to the Exchange in the future. We strongly encourage motivated students and faculty members at institutions around the country to follow on the path the founders of our journals set out on decades ago and work to establish editorially and culturally independent publications on your own campuses.

I hope other schools can participate in this consortium. The Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, the flagship Federalist Society Journal, should join this movement. And other law schools with a critical mass of conservative students should establish new journals. The most likely candidates are Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Chicago, Penn, Virginia, Michigan, Northwestern, and Duke.

In the future, flagship law journals will become inhospitable to scholarship that challenges progressive orthodoxies. Savvy action today can build the institutions that maintain homes for conservative legal thought well into the future. Interested students should reach out to me with any questions. I am happy to help facilitate discussions.

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Announcing A Tri-Journal Note Exchange Between the NYU Journal of Law & Liberty, the Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy, and the Texas...