November 25, 2024

In the News

Fox News: School district defends decision to ban parents who wore ‘XX’ wristbands at daughters’ game with trans athlete

By Ryan Morik

.....Roughly two months after barring parents who wore "XX" wristbands during a high school soccer game against a transgender athlete, a school district is confident in its decision to do so.

Anthony Foote of Bow, New Hampshire, told the New Hampshire Journal he had received a notice of trespass from Bow and Dunbarton School Districts Superintendent Marcy Kelley after he had worn armbands in support of biological girls-only sports to his daughter’s high school soccer game back in September.

Foote, his wife Nicole, Kyle Fellers, and Eldon Rash then filed a federal lawsuit against the Bow School District, Superintendent of Schools Marcy Kelley, Principal Matt Fisk, Athletic Director Mike Desilets, Bow Police Lieutenant Phil Lamy and soccer referee Steve Rossetti several days later.

The "silent protest" at Bow High School, the lawsuit says, intended to "show solidarity" with the Bow team and oppose a policy that allowed a transgender girl to play on Plymouth's team.

Fellers and Foote testified Thursday that they hadn’t intended to harass or otherwise target a transgender player on the opposing team, but the school district said differently.

The Courts

New Jersey Monitor: I was ‘political pawn’ for Jersey City mayor, fired ex-aide says in lawsuit

By Dana DiFilippo

.....A former aide to Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop sued him and other city officials Wednesday, accusing them of discrimination, defamation, and civil rights violations for trash-talking and ultimately firing him because he donated to his conservative sister’s political campaign.

Jonathan Gomez Noriega, who worked off and on for the city since 2018, served on Jersey City’s LGBTQ+ task force, a job that normally wouldn’t attract much notice — but did after reporters discovered he was a regular donor to sister Valentina Gomez’s campaign to become Missouri’s secretary of state. Valentina Gomez, a Republican who lost her primary bid, is known for her viral videos in which she bashes the LGBTQ+ community, among others.

But in a complaint filed in federal court, Gomez Noriega accuses Fulop, a Democrat running for governor next year, of “an abuse of public office.” Fulop knew for eight months that he supported his sister’s campaign and even advised him to “focus on family,” but dismissed him in August “to bolster his progressive credentials” after his donations made headlines, he contends in the complaint.

California Globe: Award Winning Gay California Teacher Suspended for Speaking Out Against Transgenderism

By Evan Gahr

.....[L]ast week veteran educator Ray Shelton, who was banished from school grounds and suspended after he sharply criticized transgenderism at a school board meeting, scored a victory when a federal judge ruled that his lawsuit against the Glendale School District for First Amendment violations can proceed.

United States District Court Judge for the Central District of California Judge Consuelo Marshall ruled that Shelton had presented sufficient evidence that school officials had retaliated against him for his pugnacious speech meant to deride the District’s policy allowing schools to keep kids’ gender transitions secret from parents.

Marshall wrote that “the facts alleged indicate it is plausible that” the school principal and other administrators “were involved in the alleged retaliation.”

Fox News: Critics accuse Georgia sheriff of silencing them on social media in lawsuit

By Greg Norman

.....Three Georgia residents are accusing Cobb County Sheriff Craig Owens of violating their free speech rights, alleging in a lawsuit that he silenced their critical opinions on Facebook following a viral incident in which he called deputies to a Burger King over a botched order. 

The legal filing in U.S. District Court lists David Cavender – a Republican who unsuccessfully ran against Owens for the sheriff position this election season – as one of the plaintiffs. 

Ed. note: Complaint is embedded in article.

Biden Administration

National Review: Biden Administration Has Spent $267 Million on Grants to Combat ‘Misinformation’

By Brittany Bernstein

.....The Biden administration has spent $267 million in taxpayer funds on research grants dedicated to combating so-called “misinformation” and investigating how it is spread, according to a new report from government spending watchdog Open the Books. 

By contrast, the Trump administration spent just $6.7 million on grants around misinformation. Twelve of 16 of the grants awarded under the Trump administration funded technological developments to monitor social media and flag misinformation.

Spending on misinformation jumped from $2.2 million to $126 million from 2020 to 2021 alone as the Biden administration spend significant funding to address Covid-19 related misinformation…

The report acknowledges the massive spending likely does not cover all the grants the Biden administration has awarded to combat misinformation, because its methodology involved adding up the total number of grants that mentioned “misinformation,” but transaction descriptions may not include “misinformation” as a keyword.

The Media

Reason: How Scientific American's Departing Editor Helped Degrade Science

By Jesse Singal

.....Laura Helmuth resigned as editor in chief of Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. "I've decided to leave Scientific American after an exciting 4.5 years as editor in chief," she wrote on Bluesky. "I'm going to take some time to think about what comes next (and go birdwatching), but for now I'd like to share a very small sample of the work I've been so proud to support (thread)."

Helmuth may in fact have been itching to spend more time bird watching—who wouldn't be?—but it seems likely that her departure was precipitated by a bilious Bluesky rant she posted after Donald Trump was reelected.

In it, she accused her generation, Generation X, of being "full of fucking fascists," complained about how sexist and racist her home state of Indiana was, and so on.

"Fuck them to the moon and back," she said of the dumb high school bullies supposedly celebrating Trump's victory.

Just the News: RFK Jr. vs WaPo marks first round in Trump's vow for a showdown with legacy media, censorship

By Paul Bond

.....“If we don’t have free speech, then we just don’t have a free country,” President-elect Donald Trump said in a video posted to social media just day after winning reelection on Nov. 5. “Today, I’m announcing my plan to shatter the left-wing censorship regime.”

Not mentioned by name, though alluded to, are the various non-profit and for-profit groups that have sprung up to battle “fake news” but typically target outlets that lean right of center. Those group include the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), Media Matters for America (MMFA), the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and NewsGuard.

“When I am president, this whole rotten system of censorship and information control will be ripped out of the system at large,” Trump also announced.

With his bold pronouncements in mind, the following is Part 1 of a four-part series – a deep dive into some of the organizations to which he was likely referring. Critics of their work say it leads to censorship and loss of advertising for the media outlets that dare challenge the legacy media’s approved narrative. 

Candidates and Campaigns

New York Times: Trump Is Running His Transition Team on Secret Money

By Ken Bensinger and David A. Fahrenthold

.....President-elect Donald J. Trump is keeping secret the names of the donors who are funding his transition effort, a break from tradition that could make it impossible to see what interest groups, businesses or wealthy people are helping launch his second term.

Mr. Trump has so far declined to sign an agreement with the Biden administration that imposes strict limits on that fund-raising in exchange for up to $7.2 million in federal funds earmarked for the transition. By dodging the agreement, Mr. Trump can raise unlimited amounts of money from unknown donors to pay for the staff, travel and office space involved in preparing to take over the government.

Mr. Trump is the first president-elect to sidestep the restrictions, provoking alarm among ethics experts.

Las Vegas Review-Journal: ‘Money doesn’t always win’: How a newcomer ousted a sitting councilman in Henderson

By Annie Vong

.....Despite fundraising nearly ten times more than his opponent, Henderson City Council member Dan Shaw was voted out.

It was a rare upset in the city’s political arena.

When newcomer Dr. Monica Larson defeated Shaw by over 5,400 votes in the Nov. 5 election, it was the first time in nearly 30 years that a sitting Henderson City Council member lost a re-election race, according to former Henderson mayor Andy Hafen.

“Money isn’t always important during local races,” said Hafen, who is also the president of the Henderson Historical Society.

The States

New York Times: F.B.I. Agents Investigate Use of Fake Donors in N.Y. Assembly Race

By Jay RootBianca Pallaro and William K. Rashbaum

.....Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have opened a criminal investigation of Dao Yin, a recent New York State Assembly candidate suspected of using fake donors and forged signatures to artificially inflate his allotment of matching funds, according to several people familiar with the matter.

The pattern of behavior, first reported by The New York Times this summer, allowed Mr. Yin to receive more than $162,000 in taxpayer money under a new program designed in Albany to boost the value of small-money donors and reduce the corrupting influence of big money in state campaigns.

New York Post: Texas AG Ken Paxton investigates GARM ad cartel over boycott ‘conspiracy’

By Thomas Barrabi

.....Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation into a shadowy left-leaning advertising cabal over whether it participated in a “coordinated plan or conspiracy” to boycott “certain social media platforms,” his office said Thursday.

Paxton is probing whether the powerful World Federation of Advertising and its now-defunct nonprofit wing, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), pressured “advertisers not to purchase online advertising space” from sites that violated its “brand safety standards.”

GARM and its members faced intense scrutiny after a damning House Judiciary Committee report released in July accused them of a coordinated effort to suppress online free speech and restrict ads to a slew of media outlets, including The Post and Elon Musk’s X.

The Republican demanded documents and information from WFA and GARM as part of the civil investigation. Any evidence of a collusive boycott could violate state antitrust laws, according to Paxton.

“Trade organizations and companies cannot collude to block advertising revenue from entities they wish to undermine,” Paxton said in a statement. “Today’s document request is part of an ongoing investigation to hold WFA and its members accountable for any attempt to rig the system to harm organizations they might disagree with.”

Reason: Deepfake Crackdowns Threaten Free Speech

By Brent Skorup

.....While "political misinformation" has become a focus of the Democratic Party in the past few years, Republicans also object to AI-assisted media deployed opportunistically to harm their candidates' reputations. Deepfake fears have sparked rare bipartisan action, with nearly one-third of states passing laws to regulate their use during elections.

Most laws targeting deepfakes stick to civil penalties, but at least Texas and Minnesota take it further, criminalizing synthetic media intended to "influence an election." Texas' law resembles a criminal defamation statute and violations can mean a year in jail.

Minnesota's law is even harsher: simply "disseminating" a deepfake—resharing on social media might suffice—could land repeat offenders in prison for up to five years. Further, a government official or nominee guilty of disseminating a deepfake can be removed from office.