The White House is hosting a roundtable Wednesday with representatives of social media companies working to end the sale of illicit drugs on platforms like Meta, X, YouTube, and TikTok.   Sara Carter, director of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, will lead the discussion on ways to keep children and youth safe from drug traffickers who may target them online.   “Throughout my career, I have spoken to countless families who lost a child or loved one to drugs purchased through social media,” Carter said in a statement first provided to The Daily Signal.   “In many of these cases, the victim thought they were purchasing a safe pill, which actually contained a lethal dose of illicit fentanyl,” Carter continued. “These drug poisonings are incomprehensible tragedies that cannot continue.”   Angel Mom Anne Fundner will attend Wednesday’s roundtable. Fundner, who testified before Congress in 2024, lost her 15-year-old son Weston in 2022 after he took drugs that contained fentanyl.   “When your child dies, the whole family dies. We’ve lost everything with Weston’s death. We lost everything but each other. It has been a very hard road,” Fundner told members of Congress in her prepared testimony after her son’s death.  When young people become addicted to drugs, for “$7.50 they can go on an app like Snapchat or Instagram and have it delivered and put underneath the doormat at your front door,” Fundner said.   Over the past decade, roughly 500,000 lives have been lost in the United States to synthetic opioid overdoses, mainly fentanyl, according to the National Institutes of Health.  In an effort to prevent more parents from suffering a loss similar to the Fundner family’s, the Office of National Drug Control Policy “will need full-scale cooperation from social media companies, law enforcement, and the whole-of-government,” Carter says.  Carter is also calling on families to educate their children on the dangers of drug use, and is encouraging parents to monitor their children’s “social media use to protect them from those who seek to do irreparable harm.”  The meeting is Carter’s first public event since being confirmed as President Donald Trump’s drug czar in January. Prior to serving in the White House, she was an investigative journalist and reported extensively on the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.    Multiple Trump administration officials will join the roundtable, including Terry Cole, administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Ronnie Kurtz, assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Debbie Seguin, acting deputy director for the Office of National Drug Control Policy.   The post EXCLUSIVE: White House Works With Social Media Companies on Deadly Drug Crisis   appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The UK government wants to scan people’s photos before they send them. Not just children’s photos. Everyone’s. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall spelled it out on BBC Breakfast, floating a proposal to “block photographs being sent that are potentially nude photographs by anybody or block children from sending those.” That second clause is the tell. Blocking “anybody” from sending potentially nude images requires scanning everybody’s messages. There’s no technical path to that outcome that doesn’t involve reading content the sender assumed was private. Kendall said the government is conducting a consultation on “whether we should have age limits on things like live streaming” and whether there should be “age limits on what’s called stranger pairing, for example, on games online.” The consultation, she said, will look at all of these. That list now covers messaging apps, photo sharing, gaming, and live streaming. Any feature that lets you share an image with another person potentially falls inside it. This is how the mandate grows. The government announced a push for new delegated powers on February 16, framing them around age verification for social media and VPNs. What Kendall described in broadcast interviews goes well beyond that framing. The official press release mentioned consulting on how companies might “safeguard children from sending or receiving” nude images. Kendall’s BBC comments dropped the qualifier about children entirely, proposing to block “potentially nude” images sent by anyone. The mechanism matters here. The government plans to introduce these new authorities as amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which has already cleared the House of Commons and the House of Lords and sits in its final stage. Amendments introduced this late receive less parliamentary scrutiny than standard legislation. Delegated powers allow a minister or department to issue secondary legislation without returning to Parliament for a full vote. That secondary legislation isn’t subject to the same debate as the original Act. The government gets to decide the specific rules, on its own timeline, with limited opportunity for challenge. Kendall told Good Morning Britain that the government plans to push new “online safety rules” every year through this mechanism. The bill already contains amendments requiring age verification for VPNs (amendment 92) and for “user-to-user” services (amendment 94a). User-to-user covers most online platforms where people share content: social media, messaging apps, forums, and gaming services. Email and SMS are exempt. Most everything else isn’t. A charitable reading of why the government wants delegated powers: it needs flexibility to update technical standards for age verification as the technology changes, and only if Parliament first approves the underlying requirements. The less charitable reading, and the more plausible one: the government wants the ability to impose VPN and social media age verification even if those amendments fail. It’s building a back door to bypass the outcome of the parliamentary vote it’s currently trying to win. The House of Lords previously considered and rejected an amendment that would have required constant client-side scanning on most smartphones and tablets to detect child sexual abuse material. The Lords declined to adopt it. That rejection happened through the full parliamentary process. The government is now signaling it may pursue functionally identical surveillance through delegated powers, bypassing the scrutiny that killed the first attempt. Kendall’s photo-scanning proposal and the failed Lords amendment work the same way technically. Both require software installed on your device to examine content before it leaves. The Lords’ amendment targeted CSAM via client-side scanning. Kendall’s proposal targets “potentially nude” images via client-side scanning. The mechanism is identical. The content category is different. End-to-end encryption means the service provider can’t read your messages. Client-side scanning, which has already proven to be a disaster in Germany, means your device reads them first, before encryption activates, and reports back. The encryption remains technically intact. The privacy it’s supposed to provide doesn’t. This is the same architecture that Apple proposed and then abandoned in 2021 after security researchers explained what it actually meant for private communication. The government hasn’t acknowledged that its photo-scanning proposal requires dismantling the privacy guarantee that makes encrypted messaging meaningful. It’s describing the outcome it wants, not the infrastructure required to deliver it. Photo scanning that flags “potentially nude” images requires training a model to identify what nudity looks like, running that model continuously on a device, and reporting matches somewhere. The system built for that purpose can be retrained or repurposed. A scanner that identifies nudity can be adjusted to flag political content, protest coordination, or anything else a future government decides warrants detection. The delegated powers structure means those future decisions don’t require new primary legislation. They require a minister, a statutory instrument, and limited parliamentary review. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s February 16 Substack noted that “private chats” are supposedly harming children without proposing to target them specifically. The official press release didn’t mention messaging apps at all. What Kendall said on television this week went further than either document. The consultation hasn’t launched yet. The powers to act on its findings, at speed, with reduced oversight, are already being written into law. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post UK Government Plans to Use Delegated Powers to Undermine Encryption and Expand Online Surveillance appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

EU Doubles Down on Censorship

Back in January 2024, BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock made a prediction that ESPN sports critic Stephen A. Smith was quietly laying the foundation for a 2028 presidential bid. Whitlock hypothesized that Smith’s 2023 book — “Straight Shooter: A Memoir of Second Chances and First Takes,” which he argued was uncannily similar to Barack Obama’s 1995 memoir “Dreams from My Father” — was the first step in his long-term plan to transition into the political arena.Fast-forward three years after his book’s publication, and now Smith is openly teasing and seriously considering a potential run. Even though no formal declaration of candidacy has been made, multiple news outlets describe him as moving closer to a bid.“Over the weekend, it became more crystal clear that I was right two years ago and that Stephen A. Smith is running for president,” said Whitlock on a recent episode of “Fearless.”He warns that everyone who is rolling their eyes at the prospect of a President Smith, saying things like, “he’ll never win,” are having the wool pulled over their eyes yet again.Smith, he argues, isn’t some organically grown would-be politician but rather the next “clown” being deliberately “installed” to push the left’s agenda. His recent CBS profile is proof, he says. “I want to show you the cleverness and the sneakiness of what they're pulling off through Stephen A. Smith,” says Whitlock. “I keep saying this. People are into the position like … ‘Yeah, he may run, but he'll never win,’ and I say not so fast.”“Why would you be so sure?” he asks. “They've been pulling off this scam and trick for a hundred years. They've been installing puppets and clowns in high positions for a hundred years.”To hear Whitlock’s theory about how Stephen A. Smith is being covertly installed into D.C. politics right before our very eyes, check out the episode above.Want more from Jason Whitlock?To enjoy more fearless conversations at the crossroads of culture, faith, sports, and comedy with Jason Whitlock, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Two three-letter agencies beginning with “I” show how differently Democrats view enforcement. When it comes to ICE, any enforcement is too much. When it comes to the IRS, no amount can be too much.U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement administers U.S. immigration law. The Internal Revenue Service administers U.S. federal tax law. In neither case do these agencies make the law. Congress writes the laws, and the president signs them. The agencies simply enforce what has been enacted.Democrats act as if illegal entry earns indefinite permission to stay. No one would tell tax evaders they can stop paying indefinitely.Yet Democrats want to abolish ICE for enforcing immigration law and to bolster the IRS for enforcing tax law.Consider the contrast. A growing chorus of Democrats now demands ICE be abolished, just as these Democrats called for defunding the police. Meanwhile, just months into his term, President Biden proposed doubling the size of the IRS, increasing its funding by $80 billion, and hiring 87,000 new IRS agents. Democrats delivered much of that in the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, with almost 60% of the nearly $80 billion aimed at audits.ICE targets those breaking U.S. immigration law. Everyone with income is subject to IRS review, and many are audited. The first group is a subset of the population; the second is essentially the entire adult population. Democrats oppose scrutinizing noncitizens living here illegally, but they welcome more scrutiny of U.S. citizens.The penalties differ just as sharply. The Department of Homeland Security currently offers to pay for a flight home and $2,600 for those in the country illegally who choose to self-deport. If they refuse and are found to be here illegally, ICE deports them. The duration of illegal presence does not add penalties. In fact, the longer someone has been here illegally, the more Democrats argue he should be allowed to stay.The IRS treats duration very differently. Unpaid taxes accrue penalties and interest that multiply over time. The IRS can garnish wages and seize assets, including homes, cars, and businesses. It also has imprisonment in its arsenal.Families factor in differently too. Democrats routinely argue that deportations are wrong because they hurt families. Yet IRS prosecution and punishment also hurt families, often severely, and that fact does not seem to trouble Democrats.Intent is another difference. Many people here illegally know they are here illegally, and many fail to show for immigration hearings. By contrast, many tax problems begin as mistakes. Yet the money is still owed, and the IRS will move to collect when it discovers the error.RELATED: The new activism looks a lot like mental illness Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesDemocrats also argue that illegal immigrants bolster the economy because they work and add value to GDP, even if they are not paying taxes. But the same is true of someone who evades taxes: He works, adds value, and withholds what he owes.No one argues that tax evaders should be left alone. They broke the law. If they did so deliberately, they deserve little sympathy. Allowing tax dodging encourages more of it.Yet Democrats say almost exactly the opposite about those who break immigration law, including those who break other U.S. laws as well. They have gone to great lengths to defend them, even traveling to El Salvador in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an accused gang member and human trafficker.Democrats act as if illegal entry earns indefinite permission to stay. No one would tell tax evaders they can stop paying indefinitely.Imagine sanctuary jurisdictions shielding taxpayers from the IRS. Imagine local authorities refusing to cooperate with federal tax collectors. Imagine Republicans storming federal prisons holding those convicted of tax fraud. Imagine conservatives building databases to track IRS agents. The backlash would be immediate and rightly so.Tax evasion is not treated as a persuasive argument about tax policy. Illegal immigration, however, gets treated by Democrats and the establishment press as if lawbreaking itself settles the immigration debate.On enforcement, Democrats apply two standards: one for immigration law and one for tax law. That is what hypocrisy looks like.

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Stephen Colbert isn't backing down in an extraordinary public dispute with his bosses at CBS over what he can air on his late-night talk show. On "The Late Show" Tuesday, Colbert said he was surprised by a statement from CBS denying that its lawyers told him he couldn't show...