John:
Good afternoon from Capitol Hill.
The House and Senate are still out of session. The midterm elections are in 8 days. And Happy Halloween! I was trying to come up with a fun pun or a cute turn of phrase but then I realized that a town full of politicians collaborating with America’s biggest corporations to enforce the groupthink is scary enough. We don’t even need a holiday to be spooked.
But, incredibly, one of the biggest holds the political left had on the public narrative has just been broken.
Earlier this month, Fox News asked me to predict what this year’s mid-term October surprise would be, and I suggested it would be Elon Musk finalizing his purchase of Twitter prior to November 8th. Hilariously, this ended up being a dead ringer. Musk closed the $44 billion deal for Twitter last Thursday, walking into Twitter HQ carrying, of all things, a sink – for “let that sink in.”
The reaction on the left has been nothing short of extreme, from prominent media figures trying to strip Elon Musk of US citizenship to saying the quiet part out loud: if Elon doesn’t do what they want, they’ll compel Google and Apple to kick Twitter out of their app stores, just like they did with Parler.
For Musk’s part, he is said to be considering charging money for the coveted “blue check,” freeing accounts from “Twitter jail,” convening a council on content moderation, and giving users the option to moderate their own Twitter experience. He also fired the current executive team, including CEO Parag Agrawal, who publicly stated that Twitter’s role was “not to be bound by the First Amendment” and to “focus less on thinking about free speech,” and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, who orchestrated the permanent ban of Donald Trump.
For my part, I think Tucker Carlson had it right:
This is a huge deal. It's hard to overstate how transformative this could be. The activist left believed it owned Twitter and the public conversation in this country more broadly. Why do they think that? Because for many years they have owned it. They had a monopoly and that monopoly has been broken.
Once everyone can talk—rich or powerful, poor or powerless, doesn't matter—when everyone can talk, nothing will ever be the same and the Democratic Party will be forced to defend its positions on their merits.
In other news, the Supreme Court heard arguments this morning in two lawsuits which will decide the future of race-based admissions policies in universities. More from The Daily Caller:
In the two cases, Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina (UNC) and Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard, the court will consider arguments that the universities’ race-conscious admissions policies lead them to unlawfully discriminate against certain groups such as Asian-Americans. Students for Fair Admissions, a non-profit that fights race-based policies, is asking the court to overrule Grutter v. Bollinger, a landmark case which found affirmative action admissions policies that favor certain races do not violate the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause; if the group is successful, the court would then prohibit the universities from considering race during the college admissions process for the purpose of diversifying its institutions.
Students for Fair Admissions argues that Harvard University uses race-conscious admission policies to put a specific limit on the number of minorities it accepts into the university and has failed to increase its diversity. UNC, Students for Fair Admissions argues, allegedly gives preference to certain minorities over Asian-American and white students as a result of their policies which consider socioeconomic factors in admissions, violating the groups’ rights.
Audio of the argument is here.
The Latest From Around The Conservative Movement
One More Thing…
I sat down for an hour with Glenn Beck to talk about the country, the Republican party, and the state of conservatism. You can watch here.
Sincerely,
Rachel Bovard
Director for Policy
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