Clean Elections THREATENED in Congress

[INSIDE JW]

CDC COORDINATED WITH FACEBOOK ON COVID MESSAGING AND
‘MISINFORMATION’

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Is it any wonder that Americans don’t trust the CDC
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or Facebook
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to deliver accurate information? And is it any surprise that your
Judicial Watch caught these two organizations colluding to control the
flow of news and opinion about Covid-19?

We learned a lot about the behind the scenes, inappropriate friendship
of this government agency and this private company after we sued.

We received 2,469 pages
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of
documents from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),
which reveal that Facebook coordinated closely with the CDC to control
the Covid narrative and “misinformation.”

In addition, social media companies gave more than $3.5 million in
free advertising to the CDC.

We received these documents in response to our Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) (_Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Health of Human
Services_
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(No.
1:21-cv-00625)) lawsuit
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for:


Any and all records of communication between CDC officials and/or
employees and employees, agents, and/or representatives of Google,
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube concerning,
regarding, or relating to COVID-19 related content on company
platforms. Such records include, but are not limited to, any advice
or instructions issued on disinformation re COVID-19.
The documents show little daylight between the CDC and Big Tech on
Covid-19 messaging and misinformation:

* In an email exchange beginning on January 26, 2020 with the
subject, “Data for Good | CDC intros,” a Facebook representative
sends the “FB coronavirus narrative” to the CDC.

It states the following
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Facebook is taking a three pronged approached to the global response
for the coronavirus:

LIMIT MISINFORMATION AND OTHER HARMFUL CONTENT ON OUR
PLATFORMS. Our third-party fact-checkers have been rating
information on this topic as false, including
the AP, Politifact, AFP Hong Kong, Rapple IQ in the
Philippines. As a result, we show people who come across that false
content accurate information from our fact-checking partners and
strong warning labels. We also send notifications to people who
already shared this content alerting them that it’s been fact
checked.

PROVIDE ACCURATE AND HELPFUL INFORMATION ON OUR PLATFORMS TO OUR
PARTNERS. Partners are already using our platforms to share accurate
information about the situation, including on Pages. We have also
provided ad credits to the World Health Organization and the
Philippines’ Department of Health to enable them to run coronavirus
education campaigns on Facebook in-region, which we will continue to
do. We’re continuing to explore additional steps we can take,
including dedicated information modules on relevant search queries and
improved search ranking.

EMPOWER PARTNERS WITH DATA TOOLS. We’re sharing aggregated mobility
data and high resolution density maps with various partners (e.g.,
National Tsinghua University (Taiwan); Harvard School of Public
Health) to help inform forecasting models for the spread of the virus
as part of our broader Data for Good program. We’re exploring
doing this with a broader set of partners (e.g., WHO, US CDC) and also
helping partners understand how people are talking about the issue
online through tools like Crowdtangle to inform their efforts.
This email exchange continues
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on
showing more coordination on messaging between the CDC and
Facebook.

* The CDC was given over $3.5 million of free advertising on
Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

* In a March 8, 2020 email
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a Facebook representative sends four ad credits totaling $2 million
to the CDC for the purpose of supporting “messaging related to
coronavirus.”

On March 14, 2020, then-CDC Chief Operating Officer and Chief Strategy
Officer Sherri Berger emails Facebook to thank them for the $2
million.

“On behalf of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
and by the authority delegated to me through Section 231 of the Public
Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. Section 238), as amended, thank you for
Facebook’s non-monetary gift of advertising credited with an
estimated value of $2,000,000. The gift will be used by CDC’s
COVID-19 response to support dissemination of critical public health
messaging. Thank you!”

* In an email exchange
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between
August 10-11, 2020, the CDC’s Sherri Berger emails Facebook again to
thank them for another $1 million in ad credits with a similar message
to that on March 14, except she adds: “This gift will be used by
the CDC’s COVID-19 response to distribute scientifically accurate
data, guidance and risk communication information on COVID-19 to a
broader audience.” In an email exchange
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on
August 25, 2020, Facebook makes CDC officials aware that of their
recent gift of $1 million in ad credits, $529,207.42 remain.
* In a heavily redacted email exchange
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on
March 17, 2020, a Twitter official offers the CDC advertising in the
form of Twitter’s Promoted Trend and Promoted Spotlight Trend,
which have approximate values given as $75,000 and $150,000.
* In an email exchange
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beginning
March 16, 2020, a Google representative offers the CDC free video
advertising on YouTube. In the exchange, they claim to not be able
to assign a dollar value to this advertising. The CDC’s official
acceptance document for this advertising, which they value at $0,
Sherri Berger states
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I understand that Google LLC may be a vendor and/or lobbyist employed
and that Google LLC’s employees may be registered
lobbyists. Providing the gift will not prevent Google LLC or its
affiliates from supplying products of services to CDC in the future;
CDC, however, is under no obligation to accept future services from
Google LLC or its affiliates.
* In a February 27, 2020 email, a Facebook representative offers to
put CDC officials in contact with WhatsApp in order to establish
auto-responses to FAQs about coronavirus in that communications
platform.

These documents show that Facebook and the CDC are joined at the hip
on managing the ever-changing Covid-19 “narrative” – which
includes censorship of alleged “misinformation.”

I suspect there is more to be found on this topic and Judicial
Watch’s investigators and litigators will continue to expose the
behind-the-scenes censorious machinations between Big Government and
Big Tech that are a threat to both the truth and your First
Amendment rights.

CHICAGO MAYOR SAYS SHE WOULD “ABSOLUTELY” DISCRIMINATE AGAINST
WHITE REPORTERS AGAIN

In-your-face racism continues in the Chicago mayor’s office.

We filed an amended complaint
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in
our lawsuit on behalf of the Daily Caller News Foundation and
reporter Thomas Catenacci against Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot for
violating their First Amendment rights and Catenacci’s right to
equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.

We sued in the United States District Court for the Northern District
of Illinois, Eastern Division, after Catenacci, a white male, emailed
Lightfoot’s office requesting a one-on-one interview with the mayor
and the office failed to reply to the request or Catenacci’s two
additional follow-up emails (_Catenacci et al v. Lightfoot _
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1:21-cv-02852)). Christine Svenson of Svenson Law Offices in Palatine,
Illinois, is assisting us with the lawsuit.

Mayor Lightfoot discriminated against journalists based on their race.
We repeatedly requested that Lightfoot sign a consent decree agreeing
not to use race-based criteria for interview requests for the
remainder of her time in office. Not only did her lawyers ignore these
requests, in a recent interview, an unrepentant Lightfoot told
a _New York Times_ writer
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“I would absolutely do it again. I’m unapologetic about it because
it spurred a very important conversation, a conversation that needed
to happen, that should have happened a long time ago.”

“I cannot believe that Mayor Lightfoot told the _New York
Times_ reporter that she would absolutely discriminate against
reporters again based on their race,” said Thomas Catenacci. “If
she isn’t stopped, what’s next?”

“A policy of granting interviews based on the color of a
reporter’s skin isn’t merely discriminatory, it undercuts the
foundational principles of freedom of the press,” said DCNF acting
editor in chief Thomas Phippen. “That Mayor Lightfoot is
‘unapologetic’ about her policy speaks volumes.”

In May, Lightfoot’s office informed multiple reporters that she
would grant one-on-one interviews, “only to Black or Brown
journalists
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The next day, the mayor released a letter
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doubling
down on her discriminatory policy.

Our amended complaint
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explains:


On May 18, 2021, a Chicago reporter tweeted that Mayor Lightfoot’s
spokesperson informed her that the mayor “is granting 1 on 1
interviews – only to Black or Brown journalists.” Mayor Lightfoot
subsequently released a letter stating, “By now, you have heard the
news that on the occasion of the two-year anniversary of my
inauguration as Mayor of this great City, I will be exclusively
providing one-on-one interviews with journalists of color.” Neither
Mayor Lightfoot nor her spokesperson suggested that the mayor’s new,
race-based interview policy was not permanent or identified any time
limit on how long the mayor intended to use race-based criteria for
granting interview requests.
Lightfoot’s communications director testified
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that
the mayor used race-based criteria for granting interview requests for
two days, May 19 and 20, and did not grant any interview requests to
White reporters. Moreover, the mayor’s office has yet to respond to
Catenacci’s request nor has the mayor agreed to an interview with
him. Mayor Lightfoot’s response to the lawsuit is due by August 2,
2021, so stay tuned for updates soon.

SENIOR JUDICIAL WATCH ATTORNEY RUSSELL NOBILE TESTIFIES TO CONGRESS ON
VOTING RIGHTS ACT

We are the leader in issues of election integrity and are educating
Congress through witness testimony by our leading experts in the field
of election law.

Senior Attorney Russell Nobile testified before the House Subcommittee
on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties in a hearing
titled, “The Need to Enhance the Voting Rights Act: Practice-Based
Coverage.” (This is Russ’s third appearance before Congress in
recent weeks!)

You can watch the hearing on our website
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In his testimony, he focused on new legislative efforts by Democrats
in Congress that would effectively result in a federal takeover of
election management and empower the Justice Department to veto voter
ID and other widely used election integrity measures.

From 2006 to 2012, Nobile worked as a trial attorney in the Department
of Justice’s Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section, which is
responsible for enforcing all provisions of the Voting Rights Act of
1965, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, and the Uniformed
and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.

Judicial Watch attorneys Robert Popper
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and Russell
Nobile
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addressed the
two houses of Congress on the importance of maintaining and protecting
strong election security measures and have previously testified before
both the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the
Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties
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and the U.S.
Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution
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BIG WIN AT SUPREME COURT SIGNALS ELECTION BATTLES AHEAD

If Americans can’t trust the outcome of elections, where are we? Our
chief investigative correspondent, Micah Morrison, explains
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the high-stakes battles in his _Investigative Bulletin_
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Judicial Watch experts were up on Capitol Hill earlier this month
explaining the implications of a big 6-3 Supreme Court ruling in the
fierce battle for clean elections. The immediate issues
in _Brnovich_, _Attorney General of Arizona, v. Democratic National
Committee et al_ revolved around out-of-precinct voting and ballot
harvesting. Should the Arizona practices be banned?

But both sides are hunting bigger game in the high-stakes case:
Section Two of the Voting Rights Act. The standards set
in _Brnovich_ will impact a wide array of hot-button state election
issues around the nation, including redistricting, voter ID, mail-in
ballots, same-day registration, proof required for registration, early
voting, third-party collection of ballots, and when polls can close on
election day.

Reacting to the July 1 High Court ruling
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Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton called it “a home run for
cleaner elections, reaffirming that states may take action to prevent
election fraud without waiting for it to occur within their own
borders. This new decision rightly rejects the race baiting of the
leftist partisans who pretend that neutral provisions to combat voter
fraud (such as voter ID and bans on ballot harvesting) are
presumptively racist.”

The Left went bonkers over _Brnovich_. President Biden called it a
“broad assault against voting rights.” The New York Times
editorial board said it was an “attack on democracy.” A Washington
Post columnist said the decision leaves “voters of color
increasingly vulnerable to efforts to exclude them from our
democracy.”

Testifying before Capitol Hill committees two weeks later, Judicial
Watch experts set the record straight. Judicial Watch Election
Integrity Project Director Robert Popper condemned the “outrageous
hyperbole” of critics of the _Brnovich_ decision.

Popper noted that Section Two of the Voting Rights Act had given the
rise in recent years to extreme lawsuits challenging
“ordinary-seeming regulations—and changes to such
regulations—governing, for example, the use of absentee ballots,
in-precinct voting, early voting, voter ID laws, election observers
same-day registration, durational residency requirements, and
straight-ticket voting.” In a less highly charged political time,
Popper noted, the 2005 bipartisan Carter-Baker Commission Report
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“had
expressly noted the need for such regulations, including those
regarding absentee ballots, out-of-precinct voting, early voting,
in-person ID requirements, and election observers.”

One example of Section Two abuse? In the _Husted_ case
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a district court ruled that an Ohio law decreasing the early voting
period from 35 to 29 days violated the Voting Rights Act because the
change interacted with “historical and social conditions”
afflicting minority voters.

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision. It noted
that the loss of one week of early voting was, at worst, a minor
contraction of “one of the many conveniences that have generously
facilitated voting participation in Ohio.” The appeals court also
noted that thirteen states did not “permit any early in-person
voting days.”

The Carter-Baker Commission recommendations and _Husted_ are
examples that should be kept in mind when assessing the hyperbole from
the Left surrounding _Brnovich_ and current challenges to election
regulations, Popper noted.

Popper told Congress: “One hears—and large news outlets dutifully
report— that there is a ‘tsunami’ of legislation ‘restricting
the right to vote,’ that states reforming their mail-in voting laws
as COVID retreats are engaged in ‘voter suppression,’ and even
that these actions represent ‘the new Jim Crow.’ These claims are
preposterous. At best, they reveal a startling historical ignorance.
The grandfather laws, absurd literacy tests, poll taxes, intimidation
and terroristic violence of the Jim Crow era have nothing whatever to
do with, say, Ohio’s restriction of early voting from 35 to 29 days,
or with limiting same-day registration. Nor do they have anything to
do with regulating absentee ballots, out-of-precinct voting, or voter
ID requirements, all reasonable electoral integrity measures approved
by the Carter-Baker Commission. At worst these statements reveal a
startling cynicism, driven by a desire to inflame passions—and to
raise funds.”

Popper testified before a House Judiciary Committee subcommittee on
July 16. Two days earlier, Judicial Watch Senior Attorney Russell
Nobile spoke to a Senate subcommittee. Looking ahead, both men warned
of trouble in the post-_Brnovich_ landscape.

“In particular,” Popper noted, the Democrats’ top election bill
priority in Congress—HR 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act—“is
a bad idea.” It gives the attorney general “new, unchecked
power” to sue directly for violations of the Constitution. The new
powers likely would be centered in the Voting Section of the Civil
Rights Division of the Justice Department which, Popper warned, “has
in the past proved to be a hotbed of partisanship.”

Russell Nobile noted in his Senate testimony that the “truth is that
HR 4 goes far beyond any civil rights law enacted during the height of
the civil rights era. Rather, it is part of a grander plan to shift
control of American elections away from individual state legislatures
and into the hands of a single federal bureaucratic department.” You
can read more from Nobile on HR 4 and the looming election integrity
crisis in this Judicial Watch report
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Nobile also noted problems at the Voting Section of the Civil Rights
Division of the Justice Department, where both he and Popper served
earlier in their careers. Citing the recent “tremendous debate”
over Critical Race Theory (CRT)—the Marxism-rooted ideology
insisting that American democracy is suffused to its core by racism
and must be dismantled—Nobile said that “there are few places in
the federal government that are more dominated by the assumptions that
underlie CRT. The partisanship and hostility towards staff that do not
share the same assumptions is startling” and includes, from some,
“a shocking level of intolerance.”

Nobile warns that even within highly political Washington, “the
culture of the Voting Section stands out for its partisanship. Any
legislation that shifts greater federal power to the Department’s
Voting Section will make elections worse, not better.”

Read Robert Popper’s statement to the House Judiciary Committee’s
Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil
Liberties here
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Read Russell Nobile’s statement to the Senate Judiciary
Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution here
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Until next week,



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