A brand new elephant calf made his grand entrance into the world at the Columbus Zoo on October 21. This baby elephant was a big boy, and the zoo couldn’t wait to show him off. They shared the first peek on October 23. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Columbus Zoo and Aquarium (@columbuszoo) “Weighing in at 222 pounds at birth, both baby and Mom are doing well and are under the watchful care of the Animal Care and Conservation Medicine teams,” the zoo shared on Instagram. To mark the joyous occasion, the zoo decided to make naming the baby elephant a contest. They narrowed the choices down to the top four: Frederick, Oliver (Ollie for short), Ozzy, and Theodore (Theo). Fans voted until only one name remained. The Zoo Announced the Baby Elephant’s Name and It’s Darling The Columbus Zoo shared the preciosos baby elephant’s name on Instagram, and we think it suits him just perfectly. “He has a name! Walking away with almost 40% of the 20,000+ votes we received, a name has been chosen by YOU for our newest elephant calf…Meet OLIVER!” The announcement reads. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Columbus Zoo and Aquarium (@columbuszoo) Fans loved the choice. “Yay! I submitted the name Oliver for his name. Maybe others did too but excited it was the one chosen,” someone wrote. My momma submitted the name!!!! you did it momma!” Another excited Elephant lover wrote. Some had other ideas for Ollie the baby elephant and made some silly jokes. “His name may be Oliver aka Ollie, but as Bindi Irwin put it years ago….by the way he looks Ill call him Frederick,” someone wrote referring to Bindi calling newborn brother Robert Brian in the hospital. “That’s perfect! He looks like an Ollie,” someone suggested. We have to agree. Ollie the baby elephant sounds like something from a fairytale. We love it. You can find this story’s featured image here.

Florida’s medical examiner revealed that Elden Campbell’s cause of death was accidental drowning. The 5-7-year-old former Los Angeles Lakers center was declared dead Dec. 1 at 8:03 p.m., TMZ reported, citing the medical examiner based in Florida. No further information about the circumstances surrounding the fatal incident was publicly disclosed. “Elden was a man of […]

'Israel deserves to be represented on every stage around the world'

The Trump administration could have a tough time making all of former President Joe Biden’s autopen actions “null and void,” which likely means he will face litigation, legal experts warn. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, “Any and all Documents, Proclamations, Executive Orders, Memorandums, or Contracts, signed by Order of the now infamous and unauthorized ‘AUTOPEN,’ within the Administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr., are hereby null, void, and of no further force or effect. Anyone receiving “Pardons,” “Commutations,” or any other Legal Document so signed, please be advised that said Document has been fully and completely terminated, and is of no Legal effect.” Clemency may be the only question, since Trump can overturn any Biden executive order whether the president signed it personally or by autopen.  “The autopen is only the instrumentality of fraud,” Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, told The Daily Signal. The Oversight Project began analyzing and investigating Biden’s use of the autopen while he was still in office.  “The president has caught the ball and is pushing as hard as possible,” Howell added. “The Department of Justice is the last missing link to take action. This could be an important step in meeting the promise for more accountability.” The office of Joe Biden did not respond to a request for comment. Here are three keys to know what’s next.  1. ‘Proving That Biden Didn’t Know’ When matters are litigated, the burden will be on the Trump administration to prove Biden was unaware of actions taken in his name, warned Stewart Whitson, director of federal affairs for the Foundation for Government Accountability, a watchdog group.  “The challenge for the Trump administration is going to be proving that Biden didn’t know,” Whitson told The Daily Signal. “That could be proven through eyewitness testimony. It could also be proven through accessing documents, such as emails, that might suggest the president didn’t know.”  A strong starting point for the Justice Department to gain search warrants and compel testimony would be the evidence obtained by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Whitson said.  In October, the committee issued a report titled, “The Biden Autopen Presidency: Decline, Delusion, and Deception in the White House,” based on interviews with 14 senior Biden White House staffers.  The investigation found that senior Biden staff exercised presidential authority or facilitated executive actions without direct authorization from President Biden himself, including through misuse of the autopen. The committee found instances where executive actions were executed without clear record of the president’s approval. The committee also identified questions surrounding the issuance of pardons and commutations during the final days of the Biden presidency. This included pardons for Biden family members where the autopen was used without confirmed presidential authorization. Former White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients told the committee he didn’t know who was in charge of the autopen.  “Without sufficient recordkeeping, it is impossible to verify that the autopen was used properly,” the oversight committee report says. “Further, recently uncovered documents and witness testimony indicate that even when a verbal decision was ‘memorialized’ in an email, it does not prove that President Biden had made the decision himself.” 2. Clemency ‘Easiest to Undo’ During his Biden’s four years in office, the White House issued 4,245 acts of clemency. That’s more than the previous record of 3,796 held by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Of those, 96% were granted between Oct. 1, 2024, and Jan. 20, 2025.  These included pardons of five Biden family members, along with pardons for former National Institutes of Health official and former White House advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, and House members on the Select Subcommittee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. A Biden Justice Department attorney raised concerns about what he called “highly problematic” pardon review process for what the White House characterized as nonviolent offenders.  Biden’s own words during a New York Times interview published in July, reveal that he was aware of “categories” of people with clemency, but not individuals. He did say he was aware of some pardons for Milley and the Jan. 6 committee members. Biden’s comments to the Times should make the clemency “the easiest to undo,” said Howell of the Oversight Project.  “You don’t need to take the Oversight Project’s word for it. Biden told The New York Times after the Oversight Project forced him out of the basement, that he authorized broad categories for pardons, and the staff picked the names. So that was definitely not done by Biden,” Howell explained. It could depend on the definition of categories, said Paul Kamenar, counsel for the National Legal and Policy Center, a watchdog group.  “If Biden told someone ‘pardon everybody on the January 6 Committee,’ that’s a broad category but it’s also finite,” Kamenar told The Daily Signal. “To say, ‘all or most nonviolent drug offenders’ would be more of a problem.” 3. What Will Litigation Look Like? To reverse the pardons, the Justice Department would have to act, and then courts would resolve the question, legal experts said.  “If Biden never authorized it, it’s an invalid pardon anyway,” Kamenar explained. “The way this gets settled is if Adam Schiff or someone pardoned gets arrested, and he comes back to say, ‘I was pardoned.’ The government could then come back and produce evidence that, ‘No, Biden didn’t authorize the pardon.’” Schiff, now a California Democrat senator, was previously a member of the House Jan. 6 committee.  Other clemency issues will be more difficult to litigate if it means reincarceration or returning old penalties, said John Malcolm, director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.  “This is totally unprecedented territory,” Malcolm told The Daily Signal. “Normally pardons and grants of clemency, for example, are not subject to challenge since a president’s pardon power is plenary.” “Here, the issue will be litigated when Trump takes some action that runs contrary to what Biden did–such as seeking to reincarcerate someone who was pardoned or granted clemency or setting an execution date for one of the 37 death row inmates whose sentences Biden commuted–and then we’ll see what a court does,” Malom added.  Trump’s move is a key first step, said Whitson of the Foundation for Government Accountability.  “The bigger threat that President Trump has brought to the public’s attention is the idea of unelected staffers exercising power they don’t have,” Whitson told The Daily Signal. “It could be at the behest of a well-funded organizations or even foreign funding pushing unelected bureaucrats to act.”  The post What’s Next After Trump Voids Biden Autopen Orders? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Robert F. Kennedy’s hand-picked vaccine advisory board unexpectedly delayed its vote on the hepatitis B vaccine’s future in the childhood immunization schedule. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, met Thursday, the first of two days, to hear presentations and vote on the universal hepatitis B vaccine recommendation for infants. The board voted 6-3 to delay the vote to give advisers time to examine last minute changes to the hepatitis B vote wording. There was a split between some of the attendees who support changing the recommendation and others who don’t. The panel plans to revisit the issue on Friday. Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy has signaled his support for changing the recommendation, claiming that the hepatitis B birth dose is a “likely culprit” of autism in an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s podcast in June. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., an OBGYN, says there is no need to get the hepatitis B vaccine if the mother tests negative for it during pregnancy. Hepatitis B is mostly transmitted through sex or sharing a needle with someone with hepatitis B, and mothers exposed to the disease are likely to pass it to their babies. Marshall told The Daily Signal in an exclusive interview that removing the hepatitis B vaccine from the schedule would help restore the patient-doctor relationship and give families more choice in their children’s healthcare. “If you as a mother said, I want my baby to have the vaccine, I’m definitely OK giving it,” he said, “but I really want to put that decision back into the hands of mom and dad, and not in the hands of a bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., that’s never delivered a baby, never taken care of a newborn.” The removal of the vaccine from the schedule means insurance companies may no longer be required to cover it. But Marshall said ACIP shouldn’t make its decision based on what an insurance company is going to do “I certainly have the empathy, but I think regardless, the health departments are going to carry it and they’re going to give free vaccines to everybody, regardless of what the insurance company does. And a lot of people go to health department anyway, the county health department,” he said. Marshall said he worries that offering the hepatitus B shot on day one of the baby’s life unnecessarily interferes with its immune system. “There is more we don’t know about immune systems than we do,” he said. “I’m just afraid giving a baby a vaccine this early interferes with its own immune system.” Marshall proposed letting the baby’s immune system develop before giving the hepatitus B vaccine. “Now, if that mom is a prostitute, if she has multiple sexual partners, if she’s doing IV drugs, if she’s got a positive drug test, if we don’t have a hepatitis B screen on her, then sure, I would probably get that baby the vaccine,” he said. “So there’s a way the [Centers for Disease Control] could recommend it without being on day number one.” To Marshall, ACIP’s biggest challenge will be determining the right age to give the hepatitus B vaccine to babies with minimal impact. “I’m concerned about the impurities that we that are getting these vaccines, all the nonessential substances… And just the quality of where it’s made even bothers me,” he said. “They should probably be American made vaccines, until proven otherwise. And then it’s the interaction when you start giving multiple vaccines at the same time, it’s really hard to figure out, is that impacting the baby, the child’s immune system as well.” After the vote, ACIP will make its recommendation to the CDC, which will ultimately decides the future of the childhood immunization schedule. “I think that’s the research we should be focused on, is trying to sort out the best timing of it,” Marshall continued. “By the first year of life, I think a baby’s going to receive 20, 25 jabs, and it just seems like it’s too many to me. My gut feeling as a doctor is, we try really hard not to mix medicines.” Similarly, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has said on X that there is “no medical reason to give newborns” the hepatitus B vaccine if the mother “is not infected.” President Donald Trump’s pollster Tony Fabrizio found that 80% of voters say it’s important to people to receive the hepatitus B vaccine. That includes 70% of Trump voters. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., a physician who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, has said he is “very concerned” about the possibility of changing the hepatitis B vaccine schedule. “This is policy by people who don’t understand the epidemiology of hepatitis B, or who have grown comfortable with the fact that we’ve been so successful with our recommendation that now the incidence of hepatitis B is so low, they feel like we can rest on our laurels,” he told CBS News’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.”  Since 1991, ACIP has recommended that all babies receive the vaccine.  On Friday, ACIP will vote on if the government should drop its birth dose recommendation for hep B vaccination for babies whose mother tested negative. The guidance would remain for babies whose mother is positive or whose infection status is unknown. The earlier version of the guidance said parents of children whose mother’s infection status is unknown should make the decision in consultation with a doctor. The post Robert F. Kennedy’s Immunization Board Delays Decision on Future of Hep B Vaccine appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Democrat Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has called out former Vice President Kamala Harris over her campaign memoir’s characterization of him, which he says are “blatant lies.” In Harris’ book titled “107 Days,” which recounts her failed presidential campaign, the former vice president explained why Shapiro was snubbed as her running mate. She alleged that Shapiro was focused on the features of the vice-presidential residence during the vetting process and seeking too much power for the office. She claimed he wanted “to be in the room for every decision” she made. “That’s complete and utter bulls–t. I can tell you that her accounts are just blatant lies,” the governor said in response to passages read aloud to him from Harris’ book, according to a recent interview by The Atlantic’s journalist Tim Alberta.  “I mean, she’s trying to sell books and cover her a–,” Shapiro told The Atlantic of Harris. “I shouldn’t say ‘cover her a–.’ I think that’s not appropriate. She’s trying to sell books. Period.” Shapiro, who was a leading candidate to become Harris’ vice-presidential running mate before the selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, campaigned on Harris’ behalf in the Keystone State in 2024. In the interview, Shapiro also attempted to explain the shortcomings which led to his party losing ground in recent years. “Democrats lost ground in some of these communities by failing to show up and failing to treat people with a level of respect that they deserve,” Shapiro said. “Donald Trump has been a once-in-a-generation political figure who’s managed to connect on a deeper cultural level.” Harris’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The post ‘BLATANT LIES’: Josh Shapiro Slams Kamala Harris’ Book appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson, for The Daily Signal. I’d like to talk about Democratic talking points. By that, I mean, these memes, these topics, these themes that they use. But they seem to be divorced from reality. Take the Epstein files. Remember, Epstein files? Epstein files. Epstein files. Gotta have the Epstein files released. They all said that Trump was hiding things. And rational people said the Democratic administration had the files for four years. Given what they had done to Trump with lawfare, you would’ve thought that if there was anything incriminating, they would’ve released it. And then, of course, there were rumors that 80% to 90% of the people mentioned in the files were Democrats. And then there was also an investigation, through leaks, that Donald Trump ostracized Jeffrey Epstein—and here’s the key point—before he was convicted of sexual crime. So, there was nothing there. And yet, as soon as Trump comes in, Epstein files, Epstein files. Epstein files. So, he releases them. And what does it show? Exactly what everybody knew and what the Democrats, themselves, knew. Did they say, “We’re sorry, we cooked this all up, there was nothing in the files”? No. They went on right to Obamacare. Affordable Care Act. Let’s shut down the government. Republicans will not give us all this money. Multi-billion-dollar subsidies. And then people said, “Well, come on, you guys. You publicize it as the new health care plan. Only 25 million Americans are in it. A small fraction. It doesn’t work. You, yourself, said that they needed subsidies. And you were willing to put a time limit on it. And the subsidies ran out. And they weren’t even enough.”It’s just constant, constant, constant. This isn’t the issue. Yes, it is. Affordable Care Act. Affordable Care Act. That’s all that matters. Affordable care—and then the government was shut down, for the longest time in history. Forty days. And now it’s open. Has anybody heard anybody talk about the Affordable Care Act? I haven’t. And then it was Trump’s health. Trump’s health. Trump’s health. He’s got spots on his arms. He has cankles. He’s limping. He looks bad. He’s losing his mind. Everybody said, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You people hid the demonstrable cognitive decline of Joe Biden for four years with a very strange White House media conspiracy. Now you’re suggesting that Trump is non compos mentis? But he just took a health exam. An MRI body scan.” No, no, no, no. He’s cognitively declined. So then, he releases it. It shows that he is in perfect health for someone his age. Does anybody talk about Trump’s health? No. No. No. And then it’s affordability. Affordability. Affordability. That’s what it’s all about. Affordability. Well, wait a minute. During the Biden administration, there was a cumulative inflation of 21%. That averages out to 5.2% per year. Per year. When Donald Trump came in, Jan. 20th, 2025, it had dipped to 3%. But given all the things that Trump has done, it’s still 3%. He has not increased inflation. He has brought in $10 trillion, at least, of foreign investment. There’s going to be enormous stimuli next year, as far as oil and gas production at record levels, the Big Beautiful Bill’s deregulation, tax cuts. And do we hear about affordability? Affordability? Affordability? Not really. I mean, there’s no real issue. The inflation rate is lower, this year, than in any year on average of the Biden administration. And it’s going get better next year. So, what am I trying to get at? What’s going on? Why do they fixate on these themes, and then they just drive it, drive it, drive it? And the fact is, their acts of commission and omission, they feel that they can create chaos. They can make people angry. They can bomb Tesla dealerships. They can shut down the government. They can stop ICE. They can tell soldiers to disobey orders. But that’s a negative message. What is omitted? That’s the committed message. But what is omitted? Do they say, “Here’s my alternate plan for immigration. I want one million, two million, three million illegal. I want to go back to the Biden [administration], two million illegal aliens a year”? No, nothing. “Obamacare: Here’s how we’re going to solve it so we don’t need subsidies. A, B, C.” Nothing. Trump’s health: “We introduce legislation that every president has to have an annual physical, every year. And everything has to be transparent.” If that had been true, Biden would’ve been 25th Amendmented the first year of his term. Do they have a crime initiative? Do they have a foreign policy initiative? Do they have any initiative? No. So, what they try to do is: A, create chaos so we’ll all lay down in the fetal position, say, “Please stop it. I don’t want it.” Or they’re going to talk about affordability, affordability, affordability, without ever mentioning that under their auspices, the DEI, the ESG, The Green New Deal, it was all regulate, regulate, restrict, slow down. And we had 21% inflation. We had low GDP. Do we want to go back to that? So, they don’t talk about it. So don’t pay any attention to Epstein files, Obamacare, Trump’s MRI, affordability. These are all just excuses for the absence of 51% on the issues. And a lack of a systematic, comprehensive, alternate agenda, that they can present to Donald Trump. That all this is absurd does not mean it doesn’t work. I mean, we have a candidate who, in Virginia, running for attorney general, said that he wanted his opponent dead and his children dead. And he won. He won. We had a candidate for the mayoral race who said he wanted to seize the means of production. And [Zohran] Mamdani won. We have all these races where crazy things happen. But that doesn’t mean that we have to accept them, as not crazy. They’re crazy. And don’t pay any attention to them because it’s just an excuse for the lack of a serious agenda. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post These Democrat Narratives Are a Lame Excuse for an Agenda appeared first on The Daily Signal.

America is in a new Cold War with China and ports are at the center of the conflict, according to foreign policy experts.   “China has truly a global portfolio of ports worldwide,” said Alex Wooley, communications director for a research lab at William and Mary that does in-depth research on Chinese investments.   China is currently financing over 180 port projects around the globe at 93 unique ports that are worth about $32 billion, Wooley explained at an event at The Heritage Foundation in the District of Columbia on Thursday. Among these ports that AidData has identified, a third are in high income countries, he said, and 40% are in Europe.   The large amount of port projects are evidence of China’s “long game” strategy, according to Wooley.    “While the U.S. was largely paying attention to other areas of the world, China was patiently building these long-term relationships with countries to build ports,” he said.  China is “everywhere,” Wooley said, adding that he and the researchers at AidData have discovered an interesting shift in China’s foreign investments.   “There’s an increasing decline of Chinese aid, what would traditionally be called foreign aid, and instead, there’s a movement toward financing, typical sort of loans and commercial interest rates, to high income countries,” Wooley said. The trend reveals that China is “moving to very exotic financing instruments, in part because that evades detection, evades transparency.”   The research institute has also found that China is working to gain a stake in “critical infrastructure assets,” such as airports and critical minerals. To this end, port assets are a “double win” for China, he said.  “The ports are an end in itself because it sort of reaffirms China’s maritime dominance, or attempt to being dominant, and also provide for means by which they get these critical commodities and minerals, etc., to China,” Wooley explained.   China, according to the researcher, is likely driven by a desire for profit in building the ports, but even more so, a motive for strategic geopolitical power. China could use the ports as naval facilities in the future.   China has spent decades building its global influenced through port projects and at this point, the U.S. will have to “pick and choose” how to compete with China on this front because “it’s difficult to catch up,” he said.   The U.S. needs to think strategically, including regarding where to establish new military bases, but most important is that the U.S. not waiver in the action it chooses to take to address the growing threat of China’s port control, Wooley says, because China is doubling down.   Brent Sadler, a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Security and author of “Naval Power in Action,” said the South China Sea is the most import location for the U.S. to prioritize its maritime presence right now, followed by the eastern Mediterranean.   “China has banked a lot of their future global vision in controlling or having access to Europe,” Sadler said. “It’s a huge economy. It’s also one in which could influence what happens in Eurasia, so they want to have that. That’s that Maritime Silk Road, … so if you can challenge that, you’re going to draw their attention, their resources, to that region,” which would be strategic for the U.S., Sadler explained.   From an economic perspective, it is critical that shipping “remains free and open,” the Heritage researcher said, “and so I think it behooves all of us that there is stability and strong governments that don’t threaten international trade.”   In the future, when entering into agreement with China, Sadler said the free world needs to see the country for what it is, a nation that is not interested in advancing democracy, or free markets for that matter.   The post Experts Warn of Tool China Is Using To Play ‘Long Game’ in New Cold War appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. This week, Sarah Rogers, the US Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, touched down in the UK not to sip tea or admire the Crown Jewels, but to deliver a message as subtle as a boot in the face: stop trying to censor Americans in America. Yes, really. According to Rogers, the UK’s speech regulator, Ofcom, the bureaucratic enforcer behind Britain’s censorship law, the Online Safety Act (OSA), has been getting ideas. Dangerous ones. Like attempting to extend its censorship regime outside the United Kingdom and onto American soil. You know, that country across the ocean where the First Amendment exists and people can still say controversial things without a court summons landing on their doormat. Rogers called this attempt at international thought-policing “a deal-breaker,” “a non-starter,” and “a red line.” In State Department speak, that is basically the equivalent of someone slamming the brakes, looking Britain in the eye, and saying, “You try that again, and there will be consequences.” To understand how Britain got itself into this mess, you have to understand the Online Safety Act. It is a law that reads like it was drafted by a committee of alarmed Victorian schoolteachers who just discovered the internet. The OSA is supposedly designed to “protect children online,” which sounds noble until you realize it means criminalizing large swaths of adult speech, forcing platforms to delete legal content, and requiring identity and age checks that would make a KGB officer blush. It even threatens prosecution over “psychological harm.” And now, apparently, it wants to enforce all of that in other countries too. Rogers was not impressed, saying Ofcom has tried to impose the OSA extraterritorially and attempted to censor Americans in America. That, she made clear, is outrageous. It’s more than a diplomatic spat. Rogers made it painfully clear the US isn’t going to just write a sternly worded letter and move on. There is legislative retaliation on the table. The GRANITE Act, Guaranteeing Rights Against Novel International Tyranny & Extortion, is more than a clever acronym. It is the legislative middle finger Washington can consider if the UK keeps pretending it can veto American free speech from 3,500 miles away. The bill, already circulating in the Wyoming state legislature, would strip foreign governments of their usual protections from lawsuits in the US if they try to censor American citizens or companies. In other words, if Ofcom wants to slap US platforms with foreign censorship rules, they had better be ready to defend themselves in an American courtroom where “freedom of expression” isn’t a slogan, it is a constitutional right. Rogers confirmed that the US legislature will likely consider that and will certainly consider other options if the British government doesn’t back down. Of course, the GRANITE Act didn’t come out of nowhere. Rogers’s warning didn’t either. It is a response to the increasingly unhinged state of free speech in the UK, where adults can be arrested for memes, priests investigated for praying silently, and grandmothers interrogated for criticizing gender ideology. “When you don’t rigorously defend that right, even when it’s inconvenient, even when the speech is offensive,” Rogers said, “you end up in these absurd scenarios where you have comedians arrested for tweets.” This is the modern UK, where “hate speech” has been stretched to include everything from telling jokes to sharing news stories about immigration. And now, under the OSA, that censorious spirit has gone global. Rogers warned, the OSA “imposes on the whole world, not just Britain, and imposes on adults, not just kids.” If the UK’s censorship crusade weren’t already mad enough, Rogers also sounded the alarm over another disturbing development. The possible elimination of jury trials in certain speech cases. That is right. They want to replace twelve citizens with a judge trained to enforce every absurdity in the rulebook. Rogers wasn’t having it. Without juries, “you won’t have access to jury nullification of your absurd censorship laws,” she said. Rogers ended with an appeal to history, to principle, and, in the most ironic twist of all, to British tradition. The US, she said, is preparing to mark its 250th anniversary and plans to do so with celebrations honoring the Magna Carta and the principle of free speech. In a not-so-subtle jab, she urged the UK to “adhere to disciplines like the ones encoded in the First Amendment.” Imagine that. The United States of America, born from rebellion against British tyranny, now reminds Britain that they were the ones who proposed liberty in the first place. So here we are. Britain is trying to boss the world around with a censorship law so absurd it could only have been written in a panic about teenagers on TikTok. The US has responded with a verbal haymaker and a legislative bat named GRANITE. What happens next is up to Downing Street. But one thing is clear. If they think they can export their speech codes across the Atlantic, they’re in for a rude awakening. Because America has a little thing called the First Amendment, and if Britain keeps trying to override it, they’ll find out very quickly that the colonists didn’t throw tea in a harbor just so some unelected regulator in London could tell them what jokes they’re allowed to post online. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post US Under Secretary Warns Britain That the First Amendment Isn’t Negotiable appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Unless you’ve been following our reports, you may not have noticed that Missouri’s new age verification system quietly went live on November 30, reshaping how residents can access much of the internet. The rule orders websites and mobile apps to confirm users are adults if at least a third of their material might be deemed “harmful” to minors, a legal label covering some adult content that offers no “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” for young people. That simple-sounding formula has already proven confusing. Some sites that have nothing to do with explicit entertainment are suddenly demanding proof of age. One Reddit user pointed out that even a lingerie retailer now hides product images behind an ID prompt, writing, “Looks like it’s chilling speech to me.” This is exactly the kind of “mission creep” experts had warned about when the law was first announced. The rule landed the same weekend as Missouri’s legalization of online sports betting, which comes with its own separate age limit of 21. Because the gambling regulation and the new content rule do not overlap, businesses now face a tangle of verification systems that interpret “age-gating” differently. Aylo, the parent company behind Pornhub and numerous other adult sites, has cut off all access from Missouri. The firm said it could not comply without compromising user privacy and data security, an argument that has also led it to pull out of other states with similar rules. Anyone who still wants to view material that could be considered “harmful” now faces an identity check that can involve scanning a government-issued ID, uploading a selfie, or using a digital ID credential. Privacy advocates have warned that these steps create a high-value database of personal information, a gold mine for hackers and data brokers. Searches for VPN services in Missouri have at least doubled since the law’s launch. By encrypting internet connections and masking IP addresses, VPNs allow users to sidestep both regional blocks and data collection systems. Google trends data showing a sharp uptick on searches for “VPN” in Missouri since the new digital ID law came into effect. Unfortunately, shady providers have rushed to exploit the moment, flooding search results with unknown brands. Reliable VPNs exist, but few are truly private or free from logging practices, something Missourians are quickly discovering. Pornhub’s blackout in Missouri brings the number of affected states to 23, creating a near-continuous belt of blocked access stretching diagonally across the United States. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Adult Platforms Block Missouri, VPN Downloads Surge, Following Online Digital ID Law appeared first on Reclaim The Net.