EXCLUSIVE: Stanford epidemiologist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, one of the most prominent health experts who came out against the government’s indiscriminate COVID-19 policies, minced no words when discussing rampant censorship targeting Americans. During an interview on Friday’s installment of the MRC UnCensored podcast, Bhattacharya delivered a categorical rebuke of censorship, telling host and MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider: “It's so fundamentally un-American to censor speech.”  Bhattacharya, one of the architects of the Great Barrington Declaration, hinted that pulling back the curtain on the Censorship Industrial Complex “will lead to the death of it” and highlighted the urgent need for legislation to tackle the assault on free speech. “We need legislation, I think, to fix that. … I think there's there's work to do. But the forces of censorship in the United States are on the backheel, and we need to keep pushing really hard on it,” he said. This response came after Schneider asked Bhattacharya about his thoughts on the global crackdown on free speech, including a Canadian law regulating speech online and Brazilian court orders threatening X’s operation in the country. Drawing a parallel from the Cold War-era Iron Curtain, Bhattacharya warned of a global “silicon curtain” between free speech and censorship. “The basic civil right of free speech has been essentially, by design, curtailed,” he lamented, rebuking social media platforms efforts to silence its users under the guise of fighting so-called misinformation. This, Bhattacharya warned, constituted a “dystopian” plan. Expanding on this topic, Bhattacharya described the United States as the “bulwark” against foreign-led censorship schemes. “It's very difficult for a country to impose restrictions on speech … if the United States doesn't cooperate,” he said. “I mean, imagine if we had, an American president that actually spoke in that way, it would be very difficult for all these countries to like to act in the way that they have.” Bhattacharya can confidently speak on censorship as he and his ideas were targeted by social media platforms. According to MRC’s CensorTrack database, Bhattacharya was shadowed-banned by Twitter (now called X). Similarly, Facebook disabled the Great Barrington Declaration’s page, which exposed the imminent dangers of pandemic-related lockdowns. “It was pretty terrible. It was like the entire sort of Censorship Industrial Complex machine was aimed at defaming me and anyone who agreed with me on, for instance, keeping schools open,” he recalled during the podcast. MRC UnCensored has previously hosted some of the most influential figures in the free speech movement, including Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA), Mike Benz, and journalists David Marcus, Miranda Devine and Emma Jo-Morris. Watch Bhattacharya’s interview and others here:  Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable

Polling expert Frank Luntz heavily criticized the performance from Kamala Harris on Thursday in the Democratic candidate's first sit-down interview. He made the comments while appearing Friday on "Squawk Box" on CNBC. After offering numerous examples of Harris' failures, Luntz concluded that Harris would lose a debate with former Donald Trump based on her interview performance. 'I was not impressed.' "What's gonna happen in this debate is that they're gonna see them side by side. And based on last night's performance, Harris is gonna come up wanting," said Luntz. "In the end, the voters are comparing them. It is not a race in a vacuum," he continued. "And she did not do what she needed to do to put those concerns to rest, in fact, by focusing on her values rather than our priorities; that's a pretty big communication mistake." Luntz graded the performance a C and said Harris is going to need to do far better in the debate if she wants to compete in the election. "I was surprised," he said. "I was not impressed as an observer and someone who was expecting more from her with this much time to get prepared." Luntz went on to say she seemed unprepared for the question about what she would do in office and went on to criticize her on seven other points. "She talked as though it was a convention speech; she did not itemize exactly what the people of the United States deserve in terms of their president, in terms of her policies," he said. Luntz also criticized Harris for her answer about how she felt when President Joe Biden called her to say he was dropping out and endorsing her for president. "She needs to be authentic; she needs to be honest," Luntz said. "She's had an issue with authenticity going [back] to the 2018 campaign." On Walz's response to the charges that he lied about his military service, Luntz also gave him very poor marks for deflecting and not really offering an apology. The entire segment with Luntz can be watched on CNBC's YouTube channel. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Two astronauts finally know their fate after NASA formally announced it would send them back to Earth on a SpaceX craft.NASA launched Boeing's Starliner spacecraft in early June 2024, crewed by astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. The mission to the International Space Station was originally meant to take around eight days to complete in a best-case scenario. It didn't take long for helium leaks and thruster-control problems to quickly put that timeline in jeopardy as the astronauts were unable to fix the Starliner's issues.'Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and most routine.'Now, after more than two months with their astronauts stranded at the ISS, NASA finally announced it will accept help from Elon Musk's SpaceX Dragon Crew-9 to bring Wilmore and Williams home safely.However, the SpaceX craft hasn't even launched yet. Crew-9 was initially meant to launch for the ISS on August 18, 2024, but has since been pushed back to no earlier than September 24, 2024, per Spaceflight Now.As well, the mission operated by the rival company will not be returning until February 2025 at the earliest. This means the NASA astronauts will have spent at least eight extra months in space than originally intended.Boeing representatives did not appear at a NASA press conference, CNN reported, but later released a statement:"We continue to focus, first and foremost, on the safety of the crew and spacecraft. We are executing the mission as determined by NASA, and we are preparing the spacecraft for a safe and successful uncrewed return," the defense and space contractor wrote on X. — (@) NASA, on the other hand, was more forthcoming in its statements:“Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and most routine. A test flight, by nature, is neither safe, nor routine. The decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring Boeing's Starliner home uncrewed is the result of our commitment to safety: our core value and our North Star," NASA administrator Bill Nelson said at the presser. "I'm grateful to both the NASA and Boeing teams for all their incredible and detailed work."These comments were quite a jump from NASA's statements in early August 2024, which made it seem like they were hoping to avoid a crossover with SpaceX."Our prime option is to complete the mission," NASA program manager Steve Stich said at the time. "There are a lot of good reasons to complete this mission and bring Butch and Suni home on Starliner. Starliner was designed, as a spacecraft, to have the crew in the cockpit."Boeing even said in a blog post on August 2 that the company's "confidence remains high" that the Starliner would make its return trip with its crew."We remain confident in Starliner and its ability to safely return to Earth with crew based on an abundance of testing conducted by our teams and NASA in space and on the ground," Boeing wrote on X.Of course, NASA and Boeing eventually agreed with the situation and accepted the ride home from the Musk-owned craft. SpaceX had reportedly been testing for scenarios with additional astronauts in early August, anyway.The Crew-9 flight will leave two empty seats and a pair of space suits for Williams and Wilmore so they can join the ISS mission and then eventually return home.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

After weeks of failing to appear in an interview, Vice President Harris finally sat down Thursday night for an interview with Biden-Harris-friendly CNN’s Dana Bash. However, there were a few caveats. The interview was pre-recorded, Harris’ VP pick Tim Walz was to join her, and it lasted a whopping 18 minutes. Former President Donald Trump, who has done multiple, much longer interviews alone — as has his running mate JD Vance — is thoroughly unimpressed. “I think it’s crazy she’s gone months without talking to the press. She’s not talking to anybody. She is copying — they would call it flip-flopping — on everything she believed in for the last 20 years,” Trump said in an interview with the Daily Mail. “She now says, well, she’ll frack, and well, she’ll do walls, but she doesn’t mean it because she’s a Marxist. I mean she’s absolutely a Marxist or beyond that, and nobody’s ever seen anything quite like it. She’s gone back on about 14 different policies all at once,” Trump continued. “She’s only doing it to get elected, and I think the public’s not going to stand for that,” he added. “The things that she isn’t going full communist on, she’s just taking from Donald Trump’s playbook,” Sara Gonzales of “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered” comments, noting that the duration of the interview is especially horrific. “My first initial reaction was wait, it’s only 18 minutes in the first place? You can’t go a full half-hour, I don’t know, maybe 45 minutes?” Gonzales asks, adding, “How much of a disaster are we talking about here?” “Well, without a doubt, this is pre-staged. So there’s probably a teleprompter there, she’s probably going to have notes because she asked for notes for the debate,” Dallas County Republican Party Chairman Allen West comments. “How shameful it is that this person cannot stand up on her own and she needs to have this crutch, or she needs to have a series of crutches, but yet she wants to be the commander in chief, she wants to be the president of the United States of America. So I think this is all going to just backfire and fall apart,” he adds.Want more from Sara Gonzales?To enjoy more of Sara's no-holds-barred take to news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

A Brazilian Supreme Court Justice ordered the X social media platform banned in the South American country, and the company responded by accusing him of political corruption. On Thursday, Justice Alexandre de Moraes warned Elon Musk, the owner of the platform, that it could be banned if he refused to name a legal representative in the country and followed through on his threat Friday. The decision was the latest in a months-long battle between Musk's companies and the judge. 'Free speech in America is special.' The company said in a statement on its Global Government Affairs page on Thursday that it was being punished for refusing to comply with the judge's "illegal orders to censor his political opponents.”The statement said that the judge threatened X's representative with imprisonment, and when she resigned he went on to freeze her bank accounts. “Our challenges against his manifestly illegal actions were either dismissed or ignored," the company statement continued. "Judge de Moraes’ colleagues on the Supreme Court are either unwilling or unable to stand up to him.”Defenders of the judge say that the orders are legal and necessary at a time when the country's stability is threatened. The judge has also shut down financial transactions for Starlink, the internet satellite company owned by Musk, in an attempt to force X to comply with his orders."This order is based on an unfounded determination that Starlink should be responsible for the fines levied—unconstitutionally—against X. It was issued in secret and without affording Starlink any of the due process of law guaranteed by the Constitution of Brazil. We intend to address the matter legally," said the company Thursday. "Many remote schools and hospitals depend on SpaceX’s Starlink! SpaceX will provide Internet service to users in Brazil for free until this matter is resolved, as we cannot receive payment, but don’t want to cut anyone off," Musk responded. Musk has previously likened de Moraes to a Harry Potter villain and cast the legal provocation as a battle about free speech. "A reminder that free speech in America is special and we need to do everything possible to preserve it," Musk wrote. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

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