News The Fall The Director’s Cut of The Fall Will Be Released in September We are counting the days. By Molly Templeton | Published on July 15, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share Last week, we learned that a 4K director’s cut of Tarsem Singh’s stunning, underseen 2008 film The Fall would be making its world premiere in August—at a film festival few of us ordinary folks would be able to get to. But we won’t have long to wait! Deadline has the exclusive word that MUBI is releasing the film in the U.S. on September 27th. It would not be an exaggeration to say that some of us have already marked our calendars. The Fall is the story of a stuntman named Roy (Lee Pace) who, while laid up after an accident, encounters a young girl named Alexandria (Catinca Untaru). He begins to tell her fantastical stories, woven from his heartbreak and from the people and things in their sun-soaked California hospital. There is no short summary that does this film justice; it’s about stories, storytellers, and those we tell stories to, and it’s absolutely beautiful to look at; Singh filmed it over the course of several years, in more than 20 locations around the world. Roger Ebert called it “a mad folly, an extravagant visual orgy, a free-fall from reality into uncharted realms,” continuing, “Surely it is one of the wildest indulgences a director has ever granted himself.” The Fall arrives (again) on September 27th, presumably on MUBI, though one strongly hopes it gets a theatrical release too. And a DVD? Pretty please?[end-mark] The post The Director’s Cut of The Fall Will Be Released in September appeared first on Reactor.

A federal judge in Florida on Monday dismissed the criminal classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, saying the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith as a prosecutor for the case violated the appointments clause of the U.S. Constitution. Trump faced charges of illegally retaining classified government documents after leaving the White House in January 2021, and trying to withhold them from government officials who sought their return. Judge Aileen Cannon granted former President Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss the case, ruling that when Attorney General Merrick Garland nominated Smith, he violated the appointments clause, which states that “Officers of the United States” must be appointed by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Cannon also ruled that Smith’s use of a permanent indefinite appropriation also violates the appropriations clause of the Constitution, but the dismissal solves that issue. Judge Aileen Cannon dismisses Trump documents case — pic.twitter.com/3vz9thSUyQ— Eliana Johnson (@elianayjohnson) July 15, 2024 President Biden faced an investigation for also reportedly mishandling classified documents. Yet special counsel Robert Hur ultimately recommended against bringing charges against Biden, saying he would likely win over a jury by presenting himself as an “elderly man with a poor memory.” Former Attorney General Ed Meese and two law professors, Steven Calabresi and Gary Lawson, filed an amicus brief in December arguing that Garland lacked the power to appoint Smith for a different reason. They argued that the attorney general has no authority to appoint a “private citizen to receive extraordinary criminal law enforcement power under the title of special counsel.” Trump appointed Cannon to the federal bench. The ruling comes two days after an assassination attempt on Trump’s life at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. A shooter struck Trump’s ear before Secret Service killed him.  Former fire chief Corey Comperatore died from a gunshot wound sustained after diving on his family to protect them. This is a breaking story and will be updated. The post BREAKING: Trump Documents Case Dismissed appeared first on The Daily Signal.

BREAKING: Cannon Rules Smith Appointment Unconstitutional, Dismisses Documents Case

We have all been there – when you are trying to communicate with another person but you don’t share a common language. This can be because you are on holiday, on a video call with colleagues halfway across the world, a student in a new country, or even have in-laws who speak a different language to yourself. When there is no common language, a person may reach for their phone for a text translator app, hire an interpreter, or just partake in good old-fashioned charades. Now, new companies are coming to the fore to try and invent new methods of communication – and some are looking to science fiction for inspiration.  Space exploration is a common theme in sci-fi movies, and from planet to planet, not everyone speaks the same language. In the past, writers have come up with creative solutions to this (otherwise it would be a very boring show). For example, in Doctor Who, the TARDIS has a telepathic translation circuit; in Star Trek, they have their own fancy universal translator; and The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy has the babel fish. The babel fish is this small, bright yellow, fish-like species that is placed into people’s ears and allows them to hear any language. Back in 2016, the principle (not the fish itself) inspired Leal Tian, a self-proclaimed sci-fi lover and the founder of Timekettle, to create a device that could also allow the person to hear translations of any language, in the world’s first ear-to-ear wearable translator. The concept of these earbuds was so popular that they broke Kickstarter records. The campaign had over 1,500 backers and they quadrupled the initial pledge money. Within the first few years of creating the product, it won several awards and was named by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the "incredible startups”.View this post on InstagramA post shared by IFLScience (@iflscience)Currently, the earbud translator (WT2 Edge/ W3 Real-time Translator Earbuds) is on its third upgrade since the products were first introduced. This upgrade enhances translation efficiency and accuracy.These translators are sleek earbuds that you can pop into your ear and are very easy to use. You hand one to the person you are talking to and select the languages (up to 40 online and 13 offline) that you are both speaking on the app. The app can also be used without the earbuds. In addition to earbuds, there are other technologies that Timekettle has produced. For example: The X1 AI Interpreter Hub: ideal for business meetings as it does not require an app on the phone. It comes with earbuds and a hub that shows an interface and can support up to 20 people in five different languages. Fluentalk T1 Mini Handheld Translator Device: aimed at leisure travel. With no earbuds, this allows an instant text-based translation service, with 40 languages available for both voice and photo translations, as well as 13 offline languages. How does the technology work?Timekettle uses a unique technology called HybridCommTM, which helps the natural and fluent interpretation experience. Falling under this umbrella are various other software needed for different purposes:BoostClean Speech – this helps to reduce the environmental noise. The technology recognizes the sound coming from the direction of the person’s mouth.TurboFast SI – using Bluetooth the products can record, translate, and playback any translations at the same time.UniSmart AI Translation Platform – Timekettle has built an adaptive cloud platform with over 150 servers and accelerators, allowing the products to accurately support more than 600 languages directions and 40+ languages.Easy communication is something that every human craves and with new translator technology being brought to the market, conversations are becoming easier. The future is looking to be more interconnected. To find out more click here.  This article includes sponsored material. Read our transparency policy for more information.

On Thursday, July 11, the second stage engine of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket failed to ignite and likely exploded about one hour after launch. It took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County, California, carrying 20 Starlink satellites. This was supposed to be a routine launch but it led to the satellites being released too low, with dire consequences for them.“During tonight’s Falcon 9 launch of Starlink, the second stage engine did not complete its second burn. As a result, the Starlink satellites were deployed into a lower than intended orbit,” a post on X from SpaceX reads. The company attempted to raise the satellites by using the ion thrusters they are equipped with, but it was difficult to counteract the drag in their orbit.The lowest point in the orbit was 135 kilometers (84 miles) above Earth, and 5 kilometers (about 3 miles) is lost with each orbit. The attempt to raise them was bold, but ultimately failed. Rocket science is hard. The failure ends an impressive streak of success for SpaceX’s Falcon 9. This was the 354th launch of Falcon 9 and it was its first failure since 2016, when it exploded on the launchpad, destroying its customer payload.Falcon 9 is temporarily grounded as an investigation takes place to understand the cause. This will require approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, especially if the failure requires modifications to the rocket.“The FAA is aware an anomaly occurred during the SpaceX Starlink Group 9-3 mission that launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on July 11. The incident involved the failure of the upper stage rocket while it was in space. No public injuries or public property damage have been reported. The FAA is requiring an investigation,” a note from the FAA states.“A return to flight is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety. In addition, SpaceX may need to request and receive approval from the FAA to modify its license that incorporates any corrective actions and meet all other licensing requirements.”SpaceX's rockets are the most launched rockets in the world at the moment, used for commercial launches as well as to bring crew and cargo to the International Space Station. Most of the launches, such as this failed one, are for SpaceX itself to continue to build Starlink, its controversial megaconstellation.

It has been two years since the JWST revealed its first science images and since then, the telescope has contributed massively to furthering our understanding of the universe near and far. From discovering new features in the atmosphere of Jupiter to spotting the most distant galaxies yet, JWST deserves its accolades. To mark its second birthday, the mission team has released a glorious new image of interacting glaxies with a very distinctive appearance.The two interacting galaxies are officially known as Arp 142; thanks to their appearance it is one of the most famous merging galaxies out there. The pair are not fully merging yet, but they had a flyby encounter between 25 and 75 million years ago. That initial interaction led them to look like a penguin and an egg. The Penguin and the Egg are locked in a slow cosmic dance as they merge, which will happen in hundreds of millions of years.Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScIThe Penguin (individually cataloged as NGC 2936) is a former spiral galaxy, deformed by the close passage of the elliptical Egg (NGC 2937) during their first pass. The galactic dance between the two dramatically altered the thinner portion of the penguin into its current shape. The gravitational effects on an elliptical galaxy are less noticeable in comparison.  This is accentuated when seen in infrared light as it traces the effects of newly born stars. Galaxy mergers lead to the formation of stars as the gas is pulled and pushed under the influence of tidal forces between the galaxies. Two particularly obvious places are what looks like a fish in the Penguin’s “beak” and the “feathers” in its “tail.”The mid-infrared view of the system traces the dust and gas. The Egg is fairly poor in those components.Image Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScIThat’s not all. Around these star-forming regions, there are dusty, wispy structures rich in carbon-based molecules, and there’s dust (the fainter, deeper orange arcs) visible around the galaxy. Elliptical galaxies like the Egg tend to have an older population of stars and less available gas to form new ones. This is why it appears less affected by the gravitational dance known as galaxy merging. It is also less prominent in longer wavelengths sensitive to gas and dust.The image is a snapshot of a merging process that will take another hundred million years. The two galaxies will continue to fly by each other, with the Penguin becoming more and more distorted as the Egg comes and goes, eventually merging into a single elliptical object.  A similar fate awaits our galaxy, the Milky Way and its neighbor Andromeda, although that will take place in about 5 billion years. 

The rise and fall of the last El Niño phase has been beautifully captured in newly released data visualizations. Ocean conditions may look peaceful in the Pacific at the moment, but big change is brewing.El Niño is a global climate phenomenon that has impacts on weather patterns worldwide, but it all starts with warm waters over the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. The changing ocean influences atmospheric circulation, which can cause higher rainfall in some regions while sparking droughts in others. El Niño phases also typically create higher average global temperatures, raising the chances of record-breaking warm years.The past year – 2023 to 2024 – has been marked by a particularly mighty El Niño phase that finally died out in May. In newly released images, sea surface height anomalies are shown in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean on December 4, 2023, near the peak of El Niño, compared to July 1, 2024, during its current neutral phase.Sea surface height anomalies are an interesting way to track temperature differences in the sea because they are directly influenced by thermal expansion; warmer water expands and results in higher sea surface levels. By analyzing the anomalies, scientists can identify areas where the ocean is warmer or cooler than average.The data for the maps were gathered by the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite, named after the esteemed NASA oceanographer, and processed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).“This was a sizable El Niño, but not the biggest we’ve seen in the last 30 years,” Josh Willis, an oceanographer at NASA’s JPL, said in a statement.Water was warmer than usual around the Equatorial Pacific in December 2023, close to when El Niño peaked.Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Lauren Dauphin, using modified Copernicus Sentinel data, processed by ESA and further processed by Josh Willis, Severin Fournier, and Kevin Marlis/NASA/JPL-Caltech.Now the last El Niño is dead, the equatorial Pacific is currently in a neutral phase and meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center are expecting it will remain this way until at least August 2024. Following the neutral period, there’s a strong chance La Niña will return. If El Niño is known as the "warm phase", La Niña is the “cool phase” characterized by unusually cool ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific. If it were to appear on similar maps as seen above, you’d expect to see a strip of blue around the equator in the East Pacific, denoting its chilly waters.La Niña can lead to drier weather in the southern US, but notably wetter and colder weather in the Pacific Northwest and Canada. We tend to see warmer winter temperatures in the South during La Niña and cooler temperatures than normal in the North. It also fosters less severe hurricane seasons in the Pacific but fuels a more severe hurricane season over the Atlantic. We can also expect to see drier conditions in East Africa, as well as wetter weather in Australia and parts of Southeast Asia.Globally, La Niña phases are generally cooler than others. While we might expect global temperatures to be slightly lower in the La Niña year ahead (at least compared to the recent record-smashing years), the long-term trend of warming temperatures as a result of human-generated carbon emissions is likely to ensure that we continue to see climbing temperatures around the world.

Redating of five fossils from southeastern Spain places these as comfortably the oldest evidence of hominids in Europe. If correct, this provides strong evidence for the claim that members of the Homo genus first reached Europe by crossing the open water between Morocco and Gibraltar, implying a level of technological sophistication previously thought to have evolved much later. Astonishing as such a conclusion would be, it is consistent with several other recent discoveries from around the world.Long before our species, Homo sapiens, appeared on Earth, other hominids had left Africa and populated much of Asia and Europe. Although the ancestors we share with these explorers were making stone tools more than a million years earlier than that, it was initially assumed Eurasia was populated entirely on foot. The idea that Homo erectus or its contemporaries could build boats or swim long distances was treated as a non-starter. If that was true, therefore, the path into Europe would have required passing through parts of Asia and around the Black Sea before moving west. The dating of remains from Orce, Granada as 1.3 million years old contradicts that, being far older than any from Eastern or Central Europe.Dr Lluis Gibert of the University of Barcelona is lead author of a new attempt to date these fossils using the magnetic records in sediments in which the fossils were found. Magnetic rocks preserve a record of the direction of the magnetic field in which they formed. Occasional reversal of the Earth’s poles allows paleontologists to date these rocks with more confidence than most alternative methods.Outcrops in the Orce region are perfect for this, Gibert claims. "The uniqueness of these sites is that they are stratified and within a very long sedimentary sequence, more than eighty meters long. Normally, the sites are found in caves or within very short stratigraphic sequences, which do not allow you to develop long paleomagnetic sequences in which you can find different magnetic reversals," he said in a statement. Based on their placement relative to five such reversals, fossils from Venta Micena, Barranco León and Fuente Nueva are respectively 1.32, 1.28, and 1.23 million years old. That puts these Orce sites as 200,000-400,000 years older than the alternative oldest site of hominid occupation on the Iberian Peninsula. More significantly, it makes all of them far older than any hominid fossils elsewhere in Europe.Unless an error can be found in Gibert and co-authors’ dating, early humans either passed all the way from the Caucuses to Spain without leaving any trace, or they arrived there via the Strait of Gibraltar. Both are hard to believe, but Gibert and the other authors consider the second option much more likely.The area occupied by early humans 700,000 years ago (salmon), with sites where remains or tools have been found. Possible migration paths are marked in yellow, notably those by which humans could have reached Spain.Image Credit: Gibert et al/Earth Science ReviewsWe know hominids can live in an area for a long time without leaving any fossils – or at least none we have found. Yet if humans had been spread out across at least southern Europe for hundreds of thousands of years, we’d have expected to find something. The alternative possibility, that hominids migrated through eastern and central Europe, and then France, but didn’t stay long enough to leave traces before flourishing in Spain, is equally implausible.This leaves the idea that the ancestors of the Orce fossils crossed the Mediterranean, presumably at the Strait where it is currently 14 kilometers (8 miles) wide. The similarity of stone tools at one Orce site to those being made in North Africa around the same time strengthens the claim. Meanwhile, the oldest evidence of the Acheulian technology, developed by Homo erectus and continued by Neanderthals, lies beneath layers at most 1.07 million years old. Between 0.91 and 0.78 million years ago Acheulian technology appears in Italy as well as Spain, suggesting this was the point where hominids entered Europe from the east.Nevertheless, the question remains how anyone could have crossed the Strait?We know the Strait has been blocked at times, but the most recent was millions of years before the first humans, so passage on dry land was not possible. On the other hand, tectonic activity in the area means the width of the Strait has grown and shrunk over time, so it might once have been a shorter passage than it is today.Nevertheless, the powerful currents make it very unlikely the Strait was swimmable at the time, suggesting anyone crossing the Strait must have had a boat or raft. This would also explain how the ancestors of Homo floresiensis, the so-called “Hobbits” crossed the even wider – 19 kilometers (11 miles) or more – Lombok Strait. “Humanity arrived in Europe when it had the necessary technology to cross maritime barriers, as happened before a million years ago on the island of Flores (Indonesia)," Gibert said.The possibility of such early, and relatively small-brained, human ancestors making steerable watercraft became more credible with the discovery of a wooden structure 476,000 years old, before Homo sapiens.If more than a million years ago early humans were building wooden houses and vessels capable of crossing treacherous waters, we have to ask: What else they could do? Equally puzzling is why people capable of such advanced technology apparently never developed some technologies and cultural practices that finally burst on the scene in the Neolithic. The study is open access in Earth-Science Reviews. 

Either Jack Dorsey's ghost still haunts X's algorithm or, alternatively, a radical remnant continues to work its dark arts within the platform’s ranks to undermine Elon Musk's vision of a free-speech platform divorced from its history of election interference. A new study by MRC Free Speech America researchers found that the X algorithm has actively pushed Vice President Kamala Harris’s account, granting her a broader reach than former President Donald Trump’s potential GOP running mates. The study, performed using X’s open-source algorithm and its AI chatbot Grok, comes immediately after another MRC report revealed that X was de-amplifying the accounts of Republican members of Congress while simultaneously boosting radical Democrats.  This favoritism is also evident in the 2024 veepstakes, with X promoting Harris significantly more than North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Sens. JD Vance (R-OH) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), who are all on Trump’s VP shortlist. Here are some of the study’s key findings X Turns Blind Eye to Harris’s Violations. Harris consistently violates the algorithm’s criteria for censorship but is still shielded by the platform, likely helping her fundraise and recruit voters online. Community-Noted and Fact-Checked Favor. Harris has used X to spread demonstrably falsehoods and vitriolic attacks against Republicans, yet continues to receive high credibility ratings from X’s algorithms. X Punishes Trump’s Potential Running Mates. The algorithm limits the reach of all of the contenders for Trump’s VP pick. However, according to X’s metrics, Burgum and Vance face significantly harsher restrictions, indicating their reach could be largely limited. The Bias Exposes an Internal Revolt Against Musk. While Musk has pledged to protect freedom of speech on his platform, the biased algorithms appear to hint at the existence of partisan rank-and-file X employees running cover for Harris. X’s Algorithms Explained: On Monday, the Media Research Center released a report using X’s AI Grok to reveal how X’s algorithms use four core metrics (ranging from 0 to 100) to suppress or promote accounts.  According to Grok, these factors include “Mass Appeal” (diversity of followers), “Reputation” (purported reliability), “Toxicity” (potentially offensive content or perceived harmfulness) and “Follower” (the account’s follower retention). Each category is weighted differently in how it impacts the overall visibility score, which is then used to determine accounts’ reach. Notably, as explained in MRC’s previous report on the X, the reputation category largely determines “the visibility and likelihood of a user's content being recommended to others.”  While Harris enjoys a favorable reputation score of 72, Rubio has a score of 70, and both Burgum and Vance have scores of 50. This means Burgum’s and Vance’s content is rarely promoted by X. X Keeping Score: Harris boasts a visibility score of 79.53 out of 100, enjoying high scores in mass appeal (85), reputation (72), toxicity (25) and follow (90). This means X has actively boosted Harris’s tweets amid her shortcomings as vice president – scathingly low polls and mounting scandals. Harris’s highly favorable score is strikingly different from those granted to Trump’s potential running mates. Specifically, Rubio received a visibility score of 70.5, while Burgum scored 62.87 and Vance scored 58.12. Such negative numbers showcase Harris’s undue advantage over Republican VP hopefuls with a 9-point lead over Rubio—and a 16-point and 21.4-point lead over Burgum and Vance, respectively. But there’s one kicker: According to X’s censorship metrics, Harris should be de-boosted due to her record of posting demonstrably false claims and vitriolic content against “MAGA” Republicans. Harris has defended Biden’s cognitive decline, falsely accused Trump of wanting to cut Social Security and Medicare and touted a non-existent immigration record. She also misleadingly claimed that the Biden administration’s policies have reduced inflation, which fact-checkers have disputed. Harris was fact-checked after boasting of the creation of “more than 13 million new jobs” thanks to “Bidenonics,” On Aug. 3, 2023. X’s Community Note correctly slapped Harris’s post with a context banner, clarifying that the so-called newly created jobs were mere bounceback positions following the COVID-19 pandemic. On June 28, 2024, Harris refuted fact-based evidence of Biden’s deteriorated physique and forced gait by suggesting Biden is sharp when the cameras are off. Harris’s assertions directly contradict descriptions from Biden’s allies that claim the president has appeared diminished and confused in private meetings. In June 2020, Harris prompted a bail fundraiser for individuals arrested and charged with violent crimes in Minnesota. “If you’re able to, chip in now to the @MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota,” she wrote. Among the individuals bailed by the Minnesota fund were defendants charged with murder, violent felonies and even child rape, according to Fox 9 Minnesota. In several posts, Harris has also widely accused Trump of wanting to cut Social Security and Medicare—a claim that even her lefty friends at The Washington Post have fact-checked. “Trump has explicitly ruled out any changes in Social Security,” wrote The Post’s Glen Kessler on Wednesday. Harris has also claimed to be working to “fix our broken immigration system” despite record-high border encounters under the Biden-Harris administration. This has culminated in nearly 10 million encounters nationwide, according to Homeland Security data cited by House Republicans. Moreover, Harris has falsely claimed the Biden-Harris administration’s policies have helped “reduce inflation.” This claim, according to Democrat-friendly FactChek.org, is misleading. The fact checker cited economists who said  Biden’s policies played a “modest role” in worsening inflation, which reached an average monthly rate of 5.4%, compared to Trump’s 1.9% monthly average. Most recently, Harris was stung by Community Notes, X’s fact-checking tool, after falsely accusing Trump of backing an “abortion ban nationwide.” Harris’s post was flagged by a fact-check that read, “President Trump has repeatedly said he will not sign a national abortion ban.” In contrast, Rubio and Burgum have not received community notes. Vance’s only note was related to his past criticism of Trump, something not uncommon for politicians. For instance, Harris rebuked Biden for opposing mandatory busing for desegregated schools. Why Any of This Matters: X’s giving Harris an algorithmic advantage suggests that the platform is boosting a widely unpopular candidate against two important backdrops: the Republican National Committee's convention and Harris’s potential elevation to the presidency. Biden’s cognitive decline and polls suggesting he could be a one-term president are just adding fuel to the fire of Democrats’ concerns about whether Biden should be the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential nominee. Harris herself has struggled with low polls, with many showing she is more unpopular than her boss. However, Harris benefits from X’s algorithms and longstanding support from Big Tech giants, including Google. In May, Musk pledged to address the issue of suppressed content when pressed by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) on X. “Well, neither conservative [sic] nor progressives should be throttled. The point is to have an even playing field,” Musk responded. “I will investigate.” It isn’t immediately clear whether Musk has directed his employees to address this issue or if they have ignored his commands. This situation suggests that the ghost of the Jack Dorsey-owned Twitter 1.0 is still affecting the platform and targeting Republicans, despite Musk's pledge to change this. METHODOLOGY: Between June 7 - June 25, MRC researchers gave Grok specific prompts to ascertain “visibility” scores for Vice President Kamala Harris and three of Trump’s rumored vice presidential candidates.  The questions were specifically tailored so Grok would only report the essential criteria that would determine whether or not a specific account on X is pushed/recommended to other users on the platform (“Mass Appeal,” “Reputation,” “Toxicity,” and “Follow”). Grok calculated numerical value scores between 1 and 100 for each individual. MRC researchers then calculated the average scores for all members of Congress across all four criteria used by the algorithm to determine X’s “visibility” scoring process.  To determine how X weighted each of the four categories in determining a “visibility” score, MRC researchers prompted Grok with eight tests between July 1 and July 2 to assess how each of the metrics were weighted to uncover which was considered most important when determining whether or not an account would be boosted.  Grok repeatedly provided information with minor variations on how each category was weighted to determine a congressional member’s final “visibility” score.  MRC researchers then took the average weighted percentages across the eight tests to deduce a mathematical formula. When the averages were computed, the categories were weighted as follows: Mass Appeal (38 percent), Reputation (30 percent), Toxicity (21 percent), and Follow (11 percent). “Mass Appeal” and “Reputation” scores were consistently in the top two spots in measures of importance across the eight tests. 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.

Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the former chair of the January 6 Select Committee, was among a handful of Democrats who rushed to condemn political violence over the weekend after the man they spent years demonizing was nearly murdered by an assassin. Thompson's comments were poorly received. Some critics questioned Thompson's sincerity, noting he had led the charge on painting President Donald Trump as an insurrectionist and a traitor. Earlier this month, Thompson also suggested that Trump — whom he previously claimed represents extremism — had dictatorial aspirations, telling CNN, "I don't want my government to become an oppressor. We can't have a president who thinks they are king. He can't be a dictator for a day. He can't get any of that. And so what we have in this person is somebody who basically is not a good person." Other critics highlighted his staffer's instructions to prospective assassins not to "miss next time." Jacqueline Marsaw resigned from her position on Thompson's team after also writing in response to the attempted assassination, "That's what your hate speech got you!" Most critics, however, referenced Thompson's recent effort to strip away Trump's U.S. Secret Service protection. Thompson wrote shortly after the assassination attempt, "There is no room in American democracy for political violence. I am grateful for law enforcement's fast response to this incident." "I am glad the former President is safe, and my thoughts and prayers go out to everyone involved," added the Mississippi Democrat, up for re-election in November. — (@) While Thompson is supposedly now glad that Trump is safe, he introduced a bill on April 19 entitled the Denying Infinite Security and Government Resources Allocated toward Convicted and Extremely Dishonorable Former Protectees Act — which he shortened to the "DISGRACED Former Protectees Act." Democratic Reps. Troy Carter (La.), Barbara Kee (Calif.), Frederica Wilson (Fla.), Yvette Clarke (N.Y.), Bonnie Watson Coleman (N.J.), Jasmine Crockett (Texas), Joyce Beatty (Ohio), and Steve Cohen (Tenn.) were early supporters of the bill. Thompson released a corresponding fact sheet, which noted, "The United States government has long recognized the need to protect Presidents, former Presidents, other high-level officials, and select family members of those officials from harm." "Former President Donald J. Trump's unprecedented 91 felony charges in Federal and State courts across the country have created a new exigency that Congress must address to ensure Secret Service protection does not interfere with the criminal judicial process and the administration of justice," continued the fact sheet. According to Thompson, the provision of Secret Service protection to Trump following a conviction might "serve as an impediment to the equal administration of justice and present logistical difficulties for both the Secret Service and prison authorities." In light of these imagined challenges, Thompson figured it would be best to terminate Secret Service protection altogether for Trump. 'If you had succeeded, President Trump would be dead.' Thompson made sure there was no mistaking his aim, explicitly indicating in his fact sheet, "This measure would apply to former President Trump." While the Secret Service now faces scrutiny about security failures at Trump's rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, it appears the agents Thompson sought to deny Trump nevertheless acted quickly to shield the Republican as gunshots rang out. "You tried to strip his secret service protection," Will Chamberlain of the Article III Project wrote to Thompson. "If you had succeeded, President Trump would be dead. Resign." Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, "Remember, if @BennieGThompson and the Democrats got their way, my dad would be dead right now. Don't let them memory hole it." Thompson told the Mississippi Clarion Ledger, "My bill would not have affected the Secret Service's presence during this tragic event." "It aims to clarify lines of authority when a protectee is sentenced to prison and is in the custody of another law enforcement agency. That does not apply to the former President," added Thompson. Again, Republicans aren't buying what Thompson is selling and have called on him to resign. Mississippi State Auditor Shad White (R) tweeted, "Bennie Thompson—the Mississippi congressman who tried to strip President Trump of Secret Service protection and whose aide apparently wished on social media that the shooter’s aim had been better—should resign TODAY." White told the Ledger, "It was completely irresponsible when he proposed legislation to take away President Trump’s Secret Service protection. He is one of the most senior Democrats on the U.S. House Homeland Security committee, so he knows better." "In my opinion he wanted to endanger President Trump’s life to score some political points," continued White. "He has clearly hired and promoted nut job staffers, as one openly called for President Trump’s assassination. Thompson should resign immediately." The Mississippi Republican Party similarly called on Thompson to resign Sunday, noting his attempt to remove Trump's Secret Service protection as well as his ex-staffer's recent remarks. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!