Big Tech has grown accustomed to operating without limitations. The lack of necessary oversight is most evident in their efforts to censor and block users for speech they don’t like. With President Trump’s election victory, Big Tech will soon learn that Americans do not appreciate being muzzled. This lesson will be taught by Trump’s pick for FCC chairman, Brendan Carr. At the helm of the agency, he will bring much-needed reform to the digital space that has been under the boot of Big Tech for too long. In his statement announcing the selection of Carr for the role, President Trump called FCC Commissioner Carr a “warrior for Free Speech.” This title is well earned since, just days before the announcement, he sent a letter to Big Tech CEOs asking for answers relating to their reliance on the “Orwellian-named” company NewsGuard, which advertises itself as an unbiased rater of news organizations. Carr rightly points out that NewsGuard betrays their self-righteousness by “[operating] as part of the broader censorship cartel.” He backed up his rhetoric by pointing to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and the protections it affords for good faith actions taken by Big Tech. Since the FCC has jurisdiction over the implementation of those protections, Carr can leverage Section 230 to get Big Tech to respect the free speech of Americans. He posted on X that “Any tech company that continues to rely on NewsGuard is putting its Section 230 protections in serious jeopardy.” Carr is also outspoken about the “messy, delayed rollout” of high-speed internet to Americans provided for in the 2021 infrastructure bill. The bill specifically set aside $42 billion for this purpose — money that has not been used to connect a single home or business. He called out the Biden administration for its focus on rewarding political friends rather than helping tax-paying Americans get online. Additionally, Carr brought up how an $885 million infrastructure award won in the 2020 FCC auction by Starlink to connect rural homes and businesses was revoked by the FCC for seemingly no good reason. A Facebook post calling out the egregious behavior of the Biden administration was censored by the company at the behest of a third-party fact-checker. Carr blasted the decision and called for the platform to stop censoring posts on behalf of the government. Broadcast media is also in Carr’s sights. In the lead-up to the election, NBC gave airtime to Kamala Harris by featuring her on “Saturday Night Live” the weekend before the election. Carr called out the behavior citing the FCC’s Equal Time rule which is intended to stop “a licensed broadcaster using the public airwaves to exert its influence for one candidate on the eve of an election.”  Broadcast media’s privileged use of limited airwaves requires them to respect the public interest. Carr posted on X that he intends to enforce the requirement. Outlined by Carr in the Heritage Foundation’s presidential transition publication, Project 2025, is a whole host of necessary FCC reforms. Some examples include expanding transparency rules to cover Big Tech and updating the “Covered List” of risky communication equipment to better protect national security. Carr is meticulously aware of what needs to be reformed and prioritized if the FCC is going to be successful in achieving its mission. Carr is laser-focused on restoring fairness and free speech to the internet and other communication networks. As chairman of the FCC, he will be in a perfect position to do just that. By stopping the abuses of Big Tech, holding broadcast media to higher standards, ending the political abuse of the FCC, and implementing other necessary changes, Carr will be able to make sure that Americans are free to generate and consume content online without fear of censorship or punishment. Americans needed a free speech champion at the helm of the FCC and President Trump delivered exactly that. Caleb Larson is a cybersecurity researcher, policy analyst with the Internet Accountability Project, Heritage Foundation alum, and contributor at The Federalist where he writes about cybersecurity-related issues facing the United States. READ MORE from Caleb Larson: Close the AI Cloud Loophole Google Controls the Internet … and Us! Amazon Should Be Pro-America, Not Pro-China The post Americans Need Brendan Carr as FCC Chair to Rein in Big Tech appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

WASHINGTON — “Washington is still operating as if it’s March 2020. The headquarters of most agencies remain largely abandoned,” Sen. Joni Ernst wrote in a report released Thursday that paints a dystopian picture of the federal workforce inside the vaunted beltway. It’s been nearly five years since COVID knocked on America’s door. Most schools and businesses opened up years ago. But federal government operations in Washington, D.C. are behind the flyover states. Because of COVID, President Joe Biden campaigned from home in 2020. But after American classrooms and businesses reopened, Biden has been a frequently absent executive since he took the oath of office. Ernst figured Biden “was out of office 532 days over the last three-and-a-half years, about 40 percent of the time he was expected to be in the Oval Office.” The no-show mentality has filtered from the top down. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin didn’t bother to inform Biden when he was hospitalized for days. Defense Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks ran the Pentagon while on a beach vacation in Puerto Rico. Moscow and Beijing must be gleeful. In the past, when partial shutdowns shuttered agencies and curtailed services because Congress was dithering, instead of passing funding measures, the press went into overdrive with warnings of dire consequences. But when agencies that are supposed to serve the public — inspecting baby formula, screening calls from veterans who desperately need mental health services, processing student aid applications — don’t have enough working staff, Americans don’t get time off from paying taxes. Ernst is a founder and member of the DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) caucus that is preparing to go after the worst abuses in the federal workforce. According to Ernst, “the nation’s capital is a ghost town, with government buildings averaging an occupancy rate of 12 percent.” The Biden administration has been in no hurry to get federal workers back to the office — to the displeasure of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, as well as area eateries and businesses. An updated contract between the Social Security Administration and the American Federation of Government Employees extends work-from-home policies — reporting to the office between two and five days a week — into 2029. TrumpLand has a better take. In a piece that ran in the Wall Street Journal last month, DOGE czars Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy wrote of commonsense reforms that should send a thrill up voters’ legs — most notably, a requirement that federal workers in the D.C. area come to the office five days a week. The DOGE duo expects that the policy “would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome.” Federal employees who show up for work and do their jobs diligently must be enraged at these abuses. According to Ernst, 3 percent of the federal workforce teleworked daily before COVID; now 6 percent report in-person on a full-time basis, while nearly a third work entirely remotely. The arrogance of those who abused COVID measures can be breathtaking. A Veterans Administration manager dialed into a meeting from his bathtub. He took a selfie of himself in the tub with the headline, “My office for the next hour.” “Instead of pulling the plug on these ‘bubble bath bureaucrats,’ taxpayer dollars keep going down the drain paying their salaries and maintaining their empty offices,” Ernst wrote. I’ve been in this business for so long that I remember when partial government shutdowns generated horror stories about the disasters about to fall upon a vulnerable public. Now we learn that nearly a third of the government workforce is entirely remote. Sort of like Joe Biden. Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM READ MORE from Debra J. Saunders: Smear the Conservative: Episode 2761, Pete Hegseth Don’t Be a Turkey on Thanksgiving Sabotaging Trump: Abolishing Migrant Restrictions The post Joe Biden’s COVID Nation appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

by Ron Paul, Ron Paul Institute: Politicians and pundits spent much of last week commenting on President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter for lying on a federal gun purchase form, failing to pay taxes, and any other offenses he may have committed over the past decade. Much of the controversy is because President Biden […]

by Jesse Colombo, The Bubble Bubble Report: The CME is launching a gold futures contract to meet surging demand from retail traders, but it will only flood the market with more ‘paper’ gold. CME Group Inc., the parent company of COMEX, the leading U.S. exchange for gold and silver futures, will introduce a one-ounce gold futures contract […]