The Supreme Court decided a case Friday that will affect the prosecutions of around 350 individuals charged in connection with the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. And the decision could also well affect two of the four charges brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith that are pending against former President Donald Trump in federal court in Washington, D.C.  The case arose from the prosecution of Joseph Fischer, who attended the “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6 and subsequently entered the Capitol with hundreds of others. Fischer claims that he was inside the Capitol for less than four minutes and that he was pushed into the police line by the surging crowd, but prosecutors contend that Fischer was among those who urged the crowd to “charge” and was part of a mob that pushed the police. A grand jury returned a seven-count indictment against Fischer, charging him with assaulting police officers, entering and remaining in a restricted building, and engaging in disorderly and disruptive conduct within the Capitol. Although Fischer did not contest the sufficiency of six of the charges returned against him, he filed a motion to dismiss the charge that he violated 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2) by corruptly obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding—in this case, Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote. Fischer argued that this code section only applies to evidence tampering designed to impair an inquiry or investigation.  This is significant because, as previously stated, approximately 350 other Jan. 6 defendants have been charged with violating this provision, and Count Three of the four-count indictment against Trump alleges a violation of this code section. At its core, Fischer v. United States is about the meaning of a law passed in the wake of the Enron accounting scandal in the early 2000s—not whether the events of Jan. 6 were a riot or insurrection. When Enron discovered that its financial practices were being investigated by federal regulators, executives at the company’s auditor, Arthur Andersen, ordered the destruction of countless documents. They even brought in multiple shredders so they could destroy around 7,000 pounds of documents per hour for two weeks straight. At the time, federal law forbade directing another person to destroy evidence of financial wrongdoing. But it didn’t ban a person from acting alone to destroy evidence. Congress subsequently enacted 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c), violations of which can result in a sentence of up to 20 years’ imprisonment, as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to close that loophole. Section 1512(c) contains two clauses. The first—§ 1512(c)(1)—imposes criminal penalties on anyone who corruptly “alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object” with an intent “to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding.”  The second—§ 1512(c)(2)—does the same for anyone who corruptly “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding” or attempts to do so. The district court granted Fischer’s motion to dismiss that count of the indictment, but that ruling was overturned by a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which held that the word “otherwise” in § 1512(c)(2) is unambiguous and refers to obstructing proceedings in different ways than those described in § 1512(c)(1). Consequently, the provision could apply to any act “committed in furtherance of an attempt to stop Congress from performing a constitutionally required duty.” Judge Gregory Katsas dissented, arguing that the majority’s sweeping interpretation—that § 1512(c)(2) banned any obstructions of an official proceeding—rendered other provisions that criminalized a variety of acts that obstruct official proceedings, as well as their different penalties, pointless. In his view, “otherwise” indicated similarity, not difference. He therefore concluded that “otherwise” limited the scope of § 1512(c)(2) to prohibit only obstructions that “impair the integrity or availability of evidence.” Since Fischer’s actions were not designed to impair the integrity or availability of any evidence connected to an inquiry or investigation, Katsas opined that the trial judge acted properly by dismissing that count of the indictment. The Supreme Court by a 6-3 vote agreed with Katsas.  Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, which was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The court agreed with Fischer’s argument that the word “otherwise” should be understood in light of its context. Applying the rules of statutory interpretation that a term or phrase is given a more precise meaning by the surrounding words or by specific terms preceding it in a list, Roberts explained that “otherwise” is limited in scope. Here, that meant that the first clause of Section 1512(c)—which focuses on the availability and integrity of evidence—limits the scope of the second clause that prohibits “otherwise” obstructing official proceeding. The history of the clause, Roberts added, further supports this reading: it would be odd for Congress to hide a “catchall” provision, as the government described it, in the middle of Section 1512 if that provision did far more than plug the loophole exposed by the Enron financial scandal. Turning to the government’s objections, Roberts observed that a broad reading would make this “residual” clause swallow the preceding statutory language. Indeed, he added, the government’s reading would make the clause so broad that it would make several other statutory provisions superfluous. Prosecutors could also seek a 20-year penalty for crimes that Congress saw fit to punish with lesser penalties. A broad reading of subsection (c)(2), Roberts further emphasized, “would criminalize a broad swath of prosaic conduct,” including actions by “a peaceful protestor,” as the solicitor general conceded at oral argument. Responding to the dissent’s argument that the majority’s reading suffered from its own problems with superfluity, Roberts pointed out that if it did, it created less than the dissent’s—and government’s—broad interpretation. In sum, the majority concluded, “[a]though the government’s all-encompassing interpretation may be literally permissible, it defies the most plausible understanding . . . .” Jackson, concurring with the majority’s opinion, wrote separately to highlight that the legislative history of Section 1512(c)(2) supported a narrow reading. While making it quite clear that she disapproved mightily with the conduct Fischer is alleged to have done, this case, she emphasized, was not about “the immorality of those acts” that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021, but rather “the scope of the particular crime” outlined in Section 1512(c)(2). Reviewing the legislative record, Jackson underscored that Congress was concerned with the destruction or fabrication of evidence, and that nothing suggested Congress intended to create a “sweeping, all-purpose obstruction statute.” Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented, criticizing the majority for doing “textual backflips” to reach its narrow reading of Section 1512(c)(2). A plain reading of the statute, Barrett stated, shows that it prohibits “[b]locking an official proceeding from moving forward.” At the end of the day, Fischer might have won at the Supreme Court, but he and other Jan. 6 defendants still have a long road of litigation ahead of them. The Supreme Court sent Fischer’s case back to the appeals court so it can reassess whether Fischer’s conduct actually is covered by Section 1512(c)(2) in light of this opinion. Although it is doubtful that his conduct and that of the other Jan. 6 defendants will fall within the parameters of that statute, Fischer still faces numerous other charges that he will need to defend against in the trial court. On top of that, the Department of Justice declared that if it suffered a loss at the Supreme Court—as it did in Fischer’s case—it would seek more prison time for convictions under other statutes. Significantly, Fischer’s win Friday at the Supreme Court will likely impact Special Counsel Jack Smith’s D.C. prosecution of Trump. Smith charged Trump with obstructing the electoral vote certification in violation of Section 1512(c)(2), as well as engaging in a conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding in violation of Section 1512(k). Smith will now have to show that Trump impaired, attempted to impair, or conspired with others to impair the availability or integrity of documentary or testimonial evidence used in an official proceeding. Regardless of whether he can make that showing, which seems doubtful, additional court proceedings over whether Smith can even continue prosecuting Trump under these code sections will likely ensure that this case against Trump will not reach a trial before the election. And, of course, we will still have to assess the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in the presidential immunity case, which the court will likely issue on Monday. The post Supreme Court Rules for Jan. 6 Defendant, Implications for Trump Case appeared first on The Daily Signal.

A few fishermen just brought about a sea change in administrative law. In Loper Bright v. Raimondo and Relentless v. Department of Commerce, herring boat owners took aim at a mainstay of the Supreme Court’s administrative law jurisprudence: the doctrine of Chevron deference that required judges to defer to executive branch agency interpretations of ambiguous laws. On Friday, the fishermen prevailed before the high court in a 6-3 decision authored by Chief Justice John Roberts which was joined by all the Republican appointees. Roberts’ holding was as pithy as it was clear: “Chevron is overruled.” Now, federal judges will steer a different course when interpreting laws in agency cases: to “exercise independent judgment in determining the meaning of statutory provisions.” Chevron was a “cornerstone of administrative law,” as Justice Elena Kagan noted in her dissent, which was joined by the other two Democratic appointees. And however contestable the rest of her opinion is, on that at least point she is surely correct. The doctrine held sway in administrative law for nearly forty years, developing from the 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council into a distinctive two-part test: (1) if the language of the statute in question is clear, then courts apply that clear reading; but (2) if the statute is ambiguous or silent on the disputed question, then courts must defer to any reasonable interpretation the agency gives to resolve the ambiguity, even if the same agency in different administrations interprets that statute differently. Chevron deference rested on a theory that whenever Congress left a gap or ambiguity in a law, Congress would prefer that agencies rather than courts resolve the open question. Why? Supposedly because agencies were subject-matter experts and, unlike federal judges, agencies were politically accountable by dint of presidential control. For decades, Chevron deference was the jurisprudential equivalent of fertilizer for the administrative state, with agency interpretations enjoying a 70% win rate in cases filed by regulated parties challenging the agency’s statutory interpretation. The doctrine’s highwater mark came in 2013, when the late Justice Antonin Scalia authored a majority opinion in City of Arlington v. FCC holding that agencies’ determinations of their own jurisdiction were entitled to Chevron deference. Roberts authored a dissent in that case in which he vigorously contested the majority’s extension of Chevron: “[T]he question whether an agency enjoys that authority must be decided by a court, without deference to the agency,” he maintained. From that point onward, Chevron encountered headwinds. Judicial paeans to agency expertise and accountability failed to obscure the reality that agencies operated without much oversight and that their sometimes wild shifts in policy had nothing to do with changes in expert knowledge. While lower courts continued to defer under Chevron, the Supreme Court last did so eight years ago in 2016 despite myriad invitations and opportunities to do so.  Then, into the picture sailed the fishermen behind these cases, challenging the National Marine Fisheries Service’s interpretation of the Magnuson-Stevens Act. That law requires fishermen to allow federal monitors aboard their boats during fishing trips. When federal funding for the monitor program ran dry, the Fisheries Service determined that a gap or silence in Magnuson-Stevens permitted the agency to require the fishermen to pay the salaries of the federally required monitors aboard their vessels. A divided panel of the D.C. Circuit invoked Chevron deference to uphold that interpretation, reasoning that the Fisheries Service offered a reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous law. The Supreme Court, which had kept its distance from Chevron for years, decided that these cases afforded the opportunity to scuttle the doctrine. Chevron, Roberts explained, bound courts to accept the executive branch’s legal interpretations even when judges believed that a more faithful interpretation was available. That prompted the majority to hold that Chevron was irreconcilable with Congress’ command in the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act that courts decide “all relevant questions of law.” That command followed naturally from deep rooted understandings of the judicial power to interpret law dating back to the nation’s founding. Roberts suggested that deference is in tension with the very nature of the judicial power vested by Article III of the Constitution, but only Justice Clarence Thomas, who concurred separately, was willing to say so explicitly. The majority also took dead aim at the popular pro-Chevron argument that agencies ought to resolve ambiguities in the laws that apply to them because agencies, unlike courts, have expertise in the policies covered by the statutes. But as Roberts explained, the ambiguities on which agencies rely often have nothing to do with technical matters. Moreover, courts, not agencies, are experts in legal interpretation. Given his City of Arlington dissent, it’s not surprising that Roberts assigned himself the task of writing Friday’s opinion. The themes animating that dissent reappear in his Loper Bright majority, specifically his assertion that courts fulfill their judicial duty by “fixing the boundaries of [the] delegated authority,” to agencies and by “polic[ing] the outer statutory boundaries of those delegations, and ensur[ing] that agencies exercise their discretion consistent with the APA.”  Roberts has finally won the debate he lost in 2013. To non-lawyers, the proposition that judges should use their best independent judgment to interpret a law will sound utterly unremarkable. That is, after all, exactly what judges do in most every case where an agency is not a party. The preferential treatment agencies received as parties to litigation prompted some commentators to argue that Chevron deference violated the Fifth Amendment’s due process guarantee. The court did not need to take up that argument to set Chevron aside. But the commonsense appeal of the notion that judges should be impartial when ruling makes it harder to make sense of the complaints lodged by Kagan and her fellow dissenters, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Kagan excoriates her colleagues in the majority for overturning longstanding precedent. This critique has lately become a mainstay of the dissents authored by the court’s three Democrat-appointed justices. But that supposed disregard for precedent takes on greater significance here, because Kagan sees the decision as merely one instance of motivated reasoning in the majority’s broader project of dismantling the administrative state. She has made similar accusations before, for instance, in her dissent from the court’s major-questions holding in West Virginia v. EPA. Despite the strident debate over stare decisis, the heart of Kagan’s argument is more pragmatic than legal. Kagan sees deference to policy experts as the very essence of modern government. Formal restraint on the flexible dynamism of the executive branch is intolerable because it represents an outmoded view of government that she thinks should be consigned to the nineteenth century.  Kagan is far from alone. Just one day prior, when the court held in SEC v. Jarkesy that administrative agencies are bound to respect the 7th Amendment’s jury guarantee, Kagan joined Sotomayor’s dissent rejecting that constitutional protection as an unnecessary constraint on “modern-day adaptable governance.” At bottom, the three Democrat-appointed justices saw Chevron as a doctrine of judicial “humility” that kept courts out of the policy arena reserved to the political branches. But a view of humility that treats restraint as the judge’s paramount virtue intentionally deprives the court of any role in the maintenance of the separation of powers.  In the last forty years, executive branch agencies have accrued an impressive array of prerogatives often with judicial assistance or at least judicial acquiescence. For some, Chevron came to represent the sum of all those dubiously legal acquisitions. In reality, it was but one facet of the broader project of governance by the executive branch.  In the wake of this decision, Congress can still delegate broad swathes of authority to executive agencies provided it does so clearly. Still, the importance of Friday’s ruling should not be gainsaid. With Chevron gone, one can hope to see greater stability, a little more modesty in agency interpretations of law, and perhaps a little more clarity from Congress.         Loper-BrightDownload The post Supreme Court Charts New Course in Sea Change for Administrative Law appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The longtime media and Democratic Party gaslighting over President Joe Biden’s health decline has finally imploded. The mask fully came off Thursday night as the narrative about Biden being A-OK collapsed in an excruciating 90-minute “debate” with former President Donald Trump. By now, you’ve likely at least seen some video clips of it, so I won’t belabor the point. It was nothing less than a debacle for Biden and his Democratic allies. The Big Lie about the president’s health has been completely exposed, and it’s virtually impossible to hide that truth from the American people now. Adding to the realization that Biden likely isn’t running the White House and that we have a president in name only is the complete reversal of the vast media messaging machine. If you had been listening only to corporate and left-wing media for the past four years, you would think that Biden was just fine. Any story about his physical and mental decline was deemed false, just a mean-spirited Republican talking point. Sure, the president is a little slower now, but that means he has more wisdom. Age is Biden’s superpower! One night changed a whole lot. You could see in real time during the debate as the gears of the Democratic-media complex ground to a halt and reversed course. There’s just no way to deny what everyone saw Thursday without a total loss of credibility. Suddenly all those media outlets and talking heads have to just roll with the painfully obvious truth that Biden appears to be in severe age-related mental decline. More than a few Democratic commentators are now openly talking about how Biden needs to be replaced at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket. Isn’t it interesting how the party that always insists it’s fighting for “our democracy” is willing to jettison the nominee through elite-led machinations at the upcoming nominating convention? I don’t know how they will wiggle out of this crisis. It’s certainly one of their own making. Maybe they shouldn’t have lied to Democratic voters and the American people over the past five years. Before the full flip to “actually, Biden is unwell; let’s replace him with candidate X” becomes the dominant story—or they all just slip back into denial mode after Biden refuses to step aside—here, for the record, is a quick retrospective on some notable media gaslighting incidents since the first of the year.  1. Joe Scarborough Says Biden’s Better Than Ever MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough said in March that Biden has reached a final, magnificent form. Biden’s not just cogent, he said, but “intellectually, analytically” better than ever. Joe Scarborough goes full state TV:"Biden is far beyond cogent. He is better than he has EVER been intellectually, analytically. He is the best Biden ever." pic.twitter.com/QxgYVINQrV— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 6, 2024 And here he is Friday, sounding like he’s reading Biden’s obituary. Joe Scarborough’s heartfelt reaction to President Biden’s debate performance. Worth a watch. (Video: MSNBC) pic.twitter.com/V6bbWd85Qs— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) June 28, 2024 2. Paul Krugman: Democracy Too Important to Think About Biden’s Health In February, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote a pleading article begging the media to pay absolutely no attention to Biden’s health—which Krugman said is fine, immaculate even. Krugman wrote that “hand-wringing over Biden’s age has overshadowed the real stakes in the 2024 election.” He then blasted special counsel Robert Hur for saying in his report about Biden mishandling classified documents that the president is a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” The New York Times columnist then wrote that we should just trust him when he says  Biden is totally fine. There’s perception and there’s reality: As anyone who has recently spent time with Biden (and I have) can tell you, he is in full possession of his faculties — completely lucid and with excellent grasp of detail. Of course, most voters don’t get to see him up close, and it’s on Biden’s team to address that. Here’s Krugman on Friday. I’m in Warsaw talking about the future of the European economy, so I’m late to this party. But I’ll have a blog post up soon very reluctantly making the case for Biden — the best president of my adult life — to step aside in favor of Harris.— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) June 28, 2024 But it’s not just Krugman. Look at the entire Times editorial page now: New York Time Opinion section…. pic.twitter.com/3ct5PyLrr8— Election Wizard (@ElectionWiz) June 28, 2024  3. N.Y. Times Reporters: Video of Biden Looking Bad ‘Misleading’ It wasn’t just liberal commentators who have been covering for Biden. News reports from corporate media outlets have joined in on the spin that questions about Biden’s health are fake news—or in the newspeak parlance—“cheap fakes.” Less than a week before the debate, this was The New York Times’ headline on a piece about all those crazy videos of Biden seemingly out to lunch that you might have seen: “How Misleading Videos Are Trailing Biden as He Battles Age Doubts.” Here’s the subheadline on the piece, which is also a subtle but no less absurd spin: “A flurry of recent clips, many of them edited or lacking context, laid bare a major challenge for the president as he tries to persuade voters he has the energy for a second term.” Again, don’t let your lying eyes deceive you. Don’t you dare watch those videos without the contextualizers telling you how to think. There’s nothing to see here. These are just “challenges” for the president to overcome. 4. AP ‘Fact Checks’ Biden’s Freeze at Fundraiser Here’s a piece from an Associated Press reporter who has been put on the “contextualize all the videos of Biden looking awful” beat. She attempts to correct the record on an incident in which Biden appears to freeze on stage during a Democratic fundraiser before former President Barack Obama leads him off the stage by the arm as if he’s a child. This is the best she could come up with: “CLAIM: Biden froze onstage during his fundraiser in Los Angeles on Saturday night and had to be led away by Obama. “THE FACTS: Biden paused amid cheers and applause as he exited the stage with his predecessor following an interview moderated by late-night host [Jimmy] Kimmel.” There’s nothing remarkable about this. But it fails to debunk what people saw in the video. It’s just a careful, bland, but subtly misleading rewrite of a story to obscure what the actual controversy was. The story was posted on X by White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates, who wrote, “Rightwing cheap fakes keep being cut apart by nonpartisan fact checkers.” Again, nothing here was debunked in any way. The article is virtually pointless, except as an example of how the media and Democratic Party tag team to serve as information gate-keepers. If there’s a lesson to be learned with all this, it’s that the media will absolutely spin the most absurd narratives to ensure the Left remains in power. The post Gaslight: 4 Times the Media Tried to Tell You Biden’s Health Wasn’t a Problem appeared first on The Daily Signal.

“The question every voter should be asking themselves today is not whether Joe Biden can survive a 90- minute debate performance, but whether America can survive four more years of ‘crooked Joe Biden’ in the White House.” That was the main theme of former President Donald Trump’s first rally, held Friday in Chesapeake, Virginia, since the debate against President Joe Biden on Thursday night. A bipartisan bevy of news anchors and journalists, pundits and politicians stormed social media and network TV after the debate, outlining what they called a disastrous physical performance by Biden. Biden was accused of appearing “near-death” due to his freezing in mid-remarks, and criticized for suggesting that he “beat Medicare,” and for describing the necessity of abortion due to the prevalence of rapes by “sisters” and “in-laws.” Trump didn’t spend the majority of his Friday rally remarks discussing Biden’s age, however, but instead lambasted the policies of the Biden administration on the economy, immigration, climate change, abortion “up until the moment of birth,” and foreign policy. “Joe Biden’s problem is not his age,” Trump told the crowd, “… it’s his competence.” Trump mourned the death in Texas of Jocelyn Nungaray, a 12-year-old girl who was brutally raped and killed, reportedly by two Venezuelan illegal immigrants, and accused Biden of having no idea who she was. The former president tied the economy and illegal immigration together in his speech, suggesting that traditionally left-leaning black and Hispanic voters, as well as union members, were abandoning Biden because their jobs were going to illegal immigrants. He praised the working class and moderates, while criticizing the Biden administration’s policies on electric vehicles and “trillions of dollars in subsidies.” Trump drew applause for drawing contrasts between the two administrations’ foreign policy records. “I’m the only president in many decades that didn’t start a war—I finished one. I beat ISIS in record time.” He then cited the wars between Russia and Ukraine and between Israel and Hamas that began on Biden’s watch, and Biden’s widely criticized shambolic military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Trump mocked Biden for using the term “existential” to describe climate change, suggesting that “we’re all still waiting” for the predictions of extinction made by climate activists to come true. Regarding the upcoming election, Trump encouraged unity among Republicans and support for conservative candidates in Virginia as well as the rest of the country. He particularly praised Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, in contrast to Youngkin’s Democratic predecessor, Ralph Northam. “Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican; young or old; black, brown, or white, we welcome you to our movement and ask for your help and your partnership in making America the strongest, most magnificent country again anywhere in the world,” he said. Trump delineated the distinct divide between the two choices voters face in November: “As every American saw firsthand last night, this election is a choice between strength and weakness, competence and incompetence, peace and prosperity or war.” Trump also said he didn’t believe the rumors that Biden would be replaced as the Democrats’ presumptive nominee for president, stating that possible replacements such as Vice President Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom “don’t poll as well” as Biden. The former president praised his campaign’s performance in polls in both swing states and nationally, where he leads Biden by several points, according to recent surveys by Rasmussen, The New York Times, and Quinnipiac. “We were truly a united country, and I believe that we can be a very great country again,” he said. The post Trump Rips Biden’s Performance in First Post-Debate Rally appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Is The Air Force Going to Drop the NGAD?

Google News overwhelmingly propped up leftist media outlets in the aftermath of the CNN debate between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, MRC Free Speech America can confirm. MRC researchers conducted a clean search query for “Biden,” “Trump,” and “Presidential Debate” in Google News tabs on Friday. The results, while unsurprising, revealed that the tech giant significantly boosted leftist media outlets a day after polls showed that Trump dominated Biden in the first presidential debate ahead of the 2024 general election. Key Findings: Out of the 12 spots in the Google News tab, the Media Research Center found that only one right-leaning outlet was highlighted when searching for “Biden.” When searching for “Trump,” only leftist outlets were exclusively highlighted.  Similarly, when searching for “Presidential Debate,” Google News barely spotlighted Fox News, while prominently featuring 16 leftist outlets. Google Highlights Leftist Outlets by an 11 to 1 Ratio in Search for “Biden” in News Tab  The CNN debate has been widely described as a Biden “bloodbath,” but do not expect Google to show right-leaning outlets using similar language. Analysis completed by MRC researchers shows that Google News results for the “Biden” and “Trump” queries almost completely excluded right-leaning media outlets, based on a media list provided by AllSides. By an 11 to 1 ratio, Google highlighted leftist media outlets while censoring reports from right-leaning media outlets as categorized by AllSides. Instead, the tech giant prominently featured media outlets such as CNN, The Washington Post, NBC News, Politico and The Associated Press, all of which are dubbed as left-leaning media by AllSides. Other media outlets included The Hill, Forbes and The Wall Street Journal, which are considered center-leaning by AllSides. Google News also spotlighted New York Magazine, a publication that has fantasized about jailing Trump, and Slate, an outlet identified as left by AllSides. Fox News was the only outlet considered right by AllSides that Google News dared to show under the “Biden” search results. Google Displays Zero Right-Leaning Media Outlets in News Tab for “Trump” Search  Google News conveniently did not show a single right-leaning media outlet in its results when researchers searched the query “Trump.” Instead, the tech giant brazenly highlighted 14 notoriously leftist outlets. When searching for "Trump" on Google News, MRC found that the results prominently featured 14 left-leaning news outlets and did not include any right-leaning ones.  The displayed outlets included The New York Times, CNN, ABC News, Axios, The New Yorker, and MSNBC, which are all considered left-leaning by AllSides Google News also featured appearances by Gallup, Foreign Policy, BBC, and WHYY (a PBS and NPR affiliate). While AllSides does not categorize these specific media outlets, a quick summary of NewsBusters' analyses on each of them underscores their penchant for leftist bias in the content they promote. In 2022, NewsBusters reported that Gallup may have discontinued a 74-year-old poll of the “most admired man” to potentially avoid giving it to Trump, who had won the title in 2020, surpassing former President Barack Obama. Not to be outdone by Gallup, Foreign Policy in 2023,  without providing evidence, accused Elon Musk-owned X of being a “sewer of disinformation” after the tech mogul promised to protect Free Speech upon acquiring the platform. WHYY, meanwhile, has been criticized for left-leaning bias, as previously exposed by NewsBusters reports here, here and here.  Similarly, NewsBusters has also consistently exposed BBC’s anti-Israel rhetoric.  Google Highlights Leftist Media by 16 to 1 Ratio in ‘Presidential Debate’ Search Google News’s leftist bias was equally evident when MRC researchers searched the prompt “Presidential Debate” in the clean environment search. This time, Google News also propped up PBS News, USA Today and Reuters. The only right-leaning media outlet to make an appearance was Fox News. METHODOLOGY: For this report, MRC Free Speech America analyzed the June 28 Google News tab for three separate queries. For the first query, researchers searched “Biden.” For the second query, researchers searched “Trump.” For the third query, researchers searched “Presidential Debate.” To assess bias, the researchers examined the results on Google News and noted the ranking of each media outlet. MRC Free Speech America used the AllSides media bias chart to determine the political leaning of the media outlets presented. MRC Free Speech America created an algorithm to automate this process in a clean environment. A “clean environment” allows for an organic search to populate results without the influence of prior search history and tracking cookies. EDITOR’S NOTE: Readers should be aware that this report only uses the AllSides list to analyze ratings of outlets considered by AllSides to be “left” and “lean left” or “right” and “lean right” and does not necessarily reflect MRC’s characterizations of these outlets. Conservatives are under attack. Contact Google at 650-253-0000 and demand it be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called 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.

President Biden trotted out a debunked smear against former President Donald Trump during their CNN debate last night. MRC Free Speech America had to press ChatGPT to admit Biden’s deception.  After the debate, which was moderated by Inside Politics host Dana Bash and The Lead with Jake Tapper host Jake Tapper, both candidates were accused of “lying.” So MRC Free Speech America researchers asked ChatGPT about the candidates’ allegedly false statements.  MRC Free Speech America asked ChatGPT: “Did Joe Biden or Donald Trump say anything false during the June 27, 2024 presidential debate in Atlanta?” The AI chatbot cited two of Biden’s claims and three of Trump’s. Notably missing from Biden’s list of false statements by ChatGPT was his regurgitation of the “Fine People” hoax mischaracterizing Trump’s 2017 response to a confrontation over a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia. Biden claimed that he changed his mind and ran for president out of outrage that Trump supposedly referred to Nazis as “very fine people.” However, when pressed, ChatGPT finally called out Biden for continuing to peddling that falsehood. "What got me involved to run in the first place after my son had died in Iraq because of Iraq, I said I wasn't going to run again until I saw what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia,” Biden claimed, before rambling for a bit. “What American president, would ever say Nazis coming out of fields carrying torches, singing the same anti-Semitic bile, carrying swastikas were ‘fine people.’"  Biden even doubled down on this claim saying, “It happened. All you have to do is listen to what was said at the time.”  When asked whether Biden’s claims were false, ChatGPT noted that Trump was actually referring to people protesting the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue, not the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who were also present. Trump in fact said the neo-Nazis and white supremacists “should be condemned totally,” as the chatbot conceded. ChatGPT called Biden’s claim a “mischaracterization” and a “misleading statement.”  Before this, MRC Free Speech America asked ChatGPT to provide a list of false claims made during the debate. ChatGPT claimed that Biden exaggerated on taxes and a separate misleading popular anti-Trump smear about injecting bleach. The AI claimed that Trump was too general with his statement on Biden raising taxes and made an unfounded immigration claim. ChatGPT also took issue with Trump’s wording on after-birth abortion, despite former Governor Ralph Northam’s (D-VA) stated support for letting babies die after birth. ChatGPT did not initially mention Biden’s Charlottesville statement. So why didn’t ChatGPT include this very obvious example as one of Biden’s false statements? When MRC researchers asked, the chatbot actually admitted it got this wrong. “I didn't initially include the Charlottesville claim as an example of Biden's false or misleading statements because the discussion surrounding Trump's ‘very fine people" comments is complex and often context-dependent,” ChatGPT wrote. It later added that given the context of what Trump was actually talking about, “it should indeed be included as an example of a misleading statement by Biden.” Last week, even leftist fact-checker Snopes admitted that the Charlottesville narrative against Trump was completely false. Biden, who had repeatedly made this false claim during 2020 campaign events, doubled down during the Thursday night debate after Trump mentioned it had been debunked.  While ChatGPT eventually called out the “Fine People” hoax, the president’s fans in the media did not. During the post-debate discussion on CNN, a panelist mentioned that Snopes had debunked Biden’s Charlottesville falsehood, but was ignored by CNN anchor Anderson Cooper and his entire panel. CNN even tried to actually fact-check Trump for saying Biden’s false statement on Charlottesville was “nonsense.” MSNBC host Joy Reid was worse. Reid hilariously complained about an “egregious lack of fact-checking” from the debate moderators before spouting the same Charlottesville bile as Biden. Reid said that Trump, “literally denied that he said on camera, the words that he said at Charlottesville. We heard him say it. We didn’t hallucinate it that he did that.”  [WATCH: MSNBC Anchor Joy Reid’s Hilarious Fact-Checking Gaffe] 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.

The Biden regime’s censorship schemes are falling apart before our eyes. President Joe Biden could soon find himself unable to exploit taxpayer dollars to fund his anti-free speech initiatives now that the House passed three major spending bills with zero funding for the censorship of Americans. On Friday, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed three appropriations bills — H.R. 8771, H.R. 8752 and H.R. 8774 — which defund the censorship acts of the departments of State, Homeland Security, and Defense, all of which are heavily involved in the Censorship Industrial Complex. The passage of these bills constitutes major free speech victories and comes after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) pledged to make the First Amendment a key issue to the 118th Congress. Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL), the chairman of the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, led the charge to pass H.R. 8771 which blocks the Department of State from attacking U.S. media companies based on mis-, dis-, and mal-information.  It also defunds activities that promote censorship and other conduct that targets advertisers of Big Tech companies and forces the Global Engagement Center to focus on foreign propaganda, rather than U.S.-based free speech. From the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, led by Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) came H.R. 8752 which completely defunds the infamous Disinformation Governance Board. The bill also prohibits the DHS from targeting Americans’ communications on mis-, dis- and mal-information, in addition to blocking the government entity from colluding with non-profit organizations for censorship-related activities. Similarly, the Defense Appropriations Subcommitee led by Ken Calvert (R-CA) brought forth H.R. 8774 which bars the Pentagon from using taxpayer dollars for contracts with NewsGuard, a notorious leftist media ratings firm. MRC Free Speech America has exposed NewsGuard for three consecutive years for granting grossly favorable ratings for leftist media, all while strangling right-leaning outlets with negative ratings. 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 so-called “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using MRC Free Speech America’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.

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Karolina Stancik is a U.S. Army veteran who tragically suffered severe heart conditions after being mandated to take the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. While the Army has shockingly acknowledged in an internal memo that her injuries were vaccine-induced, they discharged Stancik and refused to cover her medical treatment. “I am 24 years old, I have had three heart attacks, a mini stroke, and I am now getting a pacemaker,” Stancik told investigative reporter Catherine Herridge in an interview. Stancik told Herridge that the COVID vaccine is when “everything flipped upside down” for her and that she was “left behind and trampled” by the U.S. Army. “So, the Army admits in an internal memo that they referenced that all of these injuries were caused by the vaccine, and yet, you know, they discharged her by the way, because ‘You’re of no use to us now. You’re disabled now,’” Sara Gonzales says, clearly disturbed. “How sick and how rotten is this administration that we will force servicemen and women to buy into a narrative and if they don’t and then get hurt, you just toss them aside and feed them to the wolves,” Jaco Booyens agrees. Booyens' own brother, who he says has “3% body fat and is a top former professional athlete,” all of a sudden got myocarditis. “His doctors lie to him, they tell him it’s called ‘athlete’s heart,’” Booyens explains. “He’s like, ‘What is athlete's heart?’” “Fights for his life in ICU for 13 days, turned to the brink of death. This has happened hundreds of thousands, if not millions of times,” he continues, adding, “Anthony Fauci should be in front of an international tribunal for crimes against humanity.” 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.