Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz (R-TX) has called out a major tech giant for its ties to a dystopian online rating firm. Microsoft has long had a partnership with website traffic cop NewsGuard, including for its Edge browser and for educational initiatives, and Cruz now aims to find out exactly what the latter partnership entails. Cruz wrote in his Monday letter, “Given growing concerns about NewsGuard's ideological bias and its efforts to manipulate young minds, I ask for transparency regarding Microsoft's involvement in and financing of this Orwellian censorship project.” Read the full blog on MRC Free Speech America’s website.

A woman who recently worked for a woke organization in Pennsylvania has been arrested after she allegedly attempted to register multiple dead people as well as some nonexistent people to vote.This year, Jennifer Hill, 38, worked for New Pennsylvania Project, a far-left organization that openly advocates for "social justice" and claims that "policing in America, at its core, is deeply rooted in structural and systemic racism." Billing itself as a voting rights group, NPP facilitates voter registration efforts through an app from the Pennsylvania Department of State.Between April and September of this year, Hill reportedly attempted to register 310 people to vote. However, a whopping 129 of those applications were rejected, and investigators later noticed that Hill had apparently submitted variations of the same name paired with different physical and email addresses, according to WCAU.'It could be just one bad canvasser, but they should take a look and make sure that all of those people are legitimate registrations.'Included among those 129 rejected applications were Hill's deceased father and an individual who died in Hill's home in 2011. Hill certainly knew that this individual was dead because "she was the person who called the police to come when he died in her house," Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer claimed.Hill also successfully registered at least one "fraudulent person," Stollsteimer said. Hill allegedly managed to register this person using part of her grandmother's name. No one attempted to cast a vote under that person's name, he noted."We don’t know from the other 129 that were non-verifiable how many of those were made-up names," Stollsteimer continued."Literally what this woman did was to pad the numbers for her employment." In all, Hill is suspected of attempting at least four fraudulent registrations.Hill was arrested on December 19 and charged with multiple crimes, including forgery, tampering with public record/information, and applying for registration knowing individual is not entitled to registration. She remains in custody at the George W. Hill Correctional Facility after failing to post bail.Stollsteimer said the state should investigate the entire New Pennsylvania Project organization in light of these allegations."It could be just one bad canvasser, but they should take a look and make sure that all of those people are legitimate registrations," he said.Kadida Kenner, CEO of the New Pennsylvania Project, confirmed to WCAU that Hill had worked at NPP but that she had been "suspended" and several voter registration efforts had been "paused" pending an investigation into the allegations. "To be clear, [NPP] DOES NOT provide financial incentives or bonuses for voter registration application collection. Our employees have no quota to meet, and hourly wages paid to part-time canvassing employees remain the same no matter the number of voter registration applications collected," Kenner said."Due to the hard work of many individuals to prevent disruptive actions by bad actors, our voting rolls and elections are secure, and no fraudulent ballots were cast," the statement concluded.WCAU could not identify an attorney who could speak on Hill's behalf.H/T: @EndWokenessLike Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

After spending years talking a big game about improving the environment and public health, the Biden administration has evidently decided to end things on a radioactive note. On Monday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved a request from Mosaic Fertilizer LLC, a major producer of phosphate fertilizer based in Tampa, to use phosphogypsum in a road construction project on private property in New Wales, Florida. Phosphogypsum is a waste product generated by the phosphate industry when processing phosphate ore into the phosphoric acid used in fertilizer. This byproduct contains radium, which decays to form radon, an odorless and colorless radioactive gas linked to roughly 21,000 lung cancer deaths ever year, according to an EPA estimate. Under the Clean Air Act, phosphogypsum must be disposed of in engineered piles called stacks to limit public exposure. A 2022 paper in the peer-reviewed journal Heliyon noted that phosphogypsum "stacked in the open severely damages soils, water systems, atmosphere and other environments. Radon-222 exhalation and hazardous gases containing phosphorus, cadmium and Radium-226 may have a negative impact on the atmosphere, releasing highly polluting substances and spreading pollutants to nearby areas." The radon-226 found in phosphogypsum has a 1,600-year radioactive decay half-life. A 2017 paper published in the International Journal of Environmental Studies indicated that world production of phosphogypsum annually exceeds 220 million tons. According to Florida Polytechnic University's Florida Industrial & Phosphate Research Institute, there are roughly 1 billion tons of phosphogypsum contained in 24 stacks in Florida and 30 million new tons generated each year. In the face of increasing stockpiles of this waste product, there has been a decades-long push to consider recycling phosphogypsum instead of dumping it into the ocean or storing it in mines. Proposals to add the waste to road base fillers, modified bitumen, and asphalt concrete have been met in turn with heavy opposition. Various conservation groups petitioned the EPA in early 2021, asking that it reverse its 1991 regulatory decision to exclude the radioactive waste from hazardous waste regulation under Subtitle C of the Resource Conservation and Recover Act; to "initiate the prioritization process for designation phosphogypsum and process wastewater as high priority substances for risk evaluation under the Toxic Substances Control Act"; and to consider whether the use of the material in road construction qualifies as a significant new use. 'The majority of comments were generally opposed to the use of phosphogypsum in public roads.' The Trump EPA passed a rule in 2020 approving a request from the Fertilizer Institute to use the material for government road construction projects, but the Biden EPA withdrew the approval months after receiving the February petition. Mosaic Fertilizer submitted its request for a "small-scale road pilot project on private land in Florida" in March 2022, then submitted a revised request last year, proposing the construction of four sections of radioactive waste road, 300 feet long and 24 feet wide, near the existing phosphogypsum stack in New Wales. In October, the EPA gave the project pending approval, noting that its review "found that Mosaic's request [was] complete per the requirements of EPA's National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants under the Clean Air Act, and that the potential radiological risks from conducting the pilot project meet the regulatory requirement that the project is at least as protective of public health as maintaining the phosphogypsum in a stack." Joseph Goffman, EPA assistant administrator, notified Mosaic Fertilizer in a Dec. 20 letter that the project had officially been approved following an extended public comment period, stating that the risk assessment "is technically acceptable" and that none of the comments raised during the comment period contained "new information which would call into question the technical basis of the risk assessment for this pilot project." The agency noted Monday in the Federal Register that "the majority of comments were generally opposed to the use of phosphogypsum in public roads, and critical of the current state of phosphogypsum management." The entry noted further:Commenters were critical of many aspects of the risk assessment. Commenters questioned the EPA's overall ability to perform radiological risk assessment, use of fatal radiogenic cancers as a health endpoint, selection of dose and risk coefficients, selection of models, and selection of exposure scenarios and whether current risk data was used. Specifically, several commenters believed that greater emphasis should be placed on the consideration of a future resident at the site of the pilot project. These comments represent disagreements with decisions that EPA has made in its evaluation of potential risks associated with the proposed pilot project. The EPA ultimately conditioned the approval on the company notifying all workers involved in the project that "phosphogypsum contains elevated levels of naturally occurring radionuclides." Ragan Whitlock, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, which has opposed the project, said in a statement obtained by the Tampa Bay Times, "The well-documented harm to public health and the environment from this kind of waste leaking out of radioactive phosphogypsum storage stacks should be leading to better oversight of Florida's biggest polluters." "Instead the EPA has bowed to political pressure from the phosphate industry and paved the way for this dangerous waste to be used in roads all over the country," continued Whitlock. "We'll do everything in our power to protect Florida's people and precious environment from this reckless plan." Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Wikipedia's parent company, the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, spent massive swaths of its budget on ideological initiatives in the last fiscal year.In total, the organization spent $51.7 million on programs relating to "equity" and "safety & inclusion," amounting to 29.2% of its 2023-2024 budget of $177 million.This included programs to strengthen efforts related to ensuring "equity in decision-making" surrounding the themes of education, culture and heritage, and gender.Specifically for gender, the organization described prioritizing "more inclusive, gender-equitable and safe spaces" in order to contribute to "intersectional content on women's biographies and material."The confusing descriptions for the programs included a need for "facilitated processes" for contributors and editors so they can have "extended rights to onboard gender equitable norms and practices into the volunteer experience."Reacting to the company's budget, X CEO Elon Musk commented, "Stop donating to Wokepedia until they restore balance to their editing authority."Musk was alluding to the fact that much of Wikipedia's political and historical content is heavily slanted toward a left-wing perspective."They spent $50M on DEI!? Damn, they suck," Musk added on Christmas Day.They spent $50M on DEI!? Damn, they suck.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 26, 2024 Less than half of Wikimedia's operating budget went to company infrastructure and just 22% to "effectiveness."The company also claimed there is a need to push funding toward "safety" initiatives because there exists a "threat to free knowledge" that is present because of "mis- and disinformation."The nonprofit also claimed an alleged "massive" amount of disinformation, government interference, and surveillance threatens the safety of its volunteers.Another chart showed the company spends a whopping $7.4 million on travel and events while nearly $25 million goes toward grants and "movement support."'Supporting equity represents the second largest part of our programmatic work.'Despite a massive slice of the budget going toward what most would call woke initiatives, contributors to the platform did not list political positions or activism as their reason for donating.Of the top 10 reasons listed, these were the top three:"I use Wikipedia often, so I want to support it.""I support free knowledge for all.""I want Wikipedia to stay online.""Supporting equity represents the second largest part of our programmatic work, with grants and Movement support representing the majority of the budget within the equity goal," the company wrote in its report.Although Wikimedia's budget has increased year over year, the increase slowed from 15% in 2022-2023 and 30% in 2021-2022 down to just 5% growth in the last fiscal year.This has led the company to conclude that it must "reduce internal expenses" or increase the annual budget by 6-7%. However, the company has projected increases of just 3-5%.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Sean O'Brien, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, torched Vice President Kamala Harris for allegedly declaring she would win the election against President-elect Donald Trump "with or without" the union's support.During a Monday interview on "The Tucker Carlson Show," O'Brien explained why the Teamsters refused to endorse Harris in the November presidential election. It marked the first time the union had not supported a candidate in nearly three decades.'That's really arrogant.'O'Brien stated that Harris had previously told Teamsters vice president Joan Corey that the union "better get on board soon" with endorsing her.According to O'Brien, the union had repeatedly attempted to get Harris to sit down for an interview leading up to the presidential election."She finally agrees to come after we were putting pressure on her," he told Carlson. "I was doing interviews all over the place, saying, 'We haven't gotten invited to the DNC [Democratic National Convention]. They haven't accepted our invitation for her to come to a roundtable.'"O'Brien explained that rank-and-file union members had prepared 16 questions for Harris to answer during the roundtable discussion. He noted that the union also held similar interviews with the other presidential candidates, including Trump, who answered all of the questions.He claimed that Harris' team was trying to "negotiate" with the union only to ask her three questions. "So she answers three of them, and on the fourth question, one of her operatives or one of her staff slips a note in front of me: 'This will be the last question,'" he told Carlson, noting that the roundtable was scheduled for another 20 minutes. "Her declaration on the way out was, 'I'm gonna win with you or without you,'" O'Brien remarked.Carlson responded, "Damn. I thought I was arrogant. That's really arrogant."Following the roundtable event, O'Brien stated that he contacted President Joe Biden's former secretary of labor, Marty Walsh.O'Brien claimed that he told Walsh, "Let me ask you a question, Marty. Excuse my French. Who does this f***ing lady think she is?""If I want support from any organization, I am not gonna point my finger in someone's face and say, 'You better get on board or else,'" he continued.During his interview with Carlson, O'Brien also expressed concerns about Biden's health, noting that what he observed "kinda looked like elderly abuse.""We had Biden in there, and you could just clearly tell he was not the man he was. It was kinda sad," he added.Most Teamsters' members, 59.6%, supported Trump over Harris. The union, representing 1.3 million members, previously endorsed Biden and Hillary Clinton. A spokesperson for Harris did not respond to a request for comment from Newsweek. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

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