Category: Back Door Power Grab

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Corruption Facebook Faked news How sick is this? Leftist Virtue(!) Links from other news sources. Politics

The Censorship-Industrial Complex: The Top 50 Organizations to Know

Who knew?

An extensive report from the efforts of Susan Schmidt, Andrew Lowenthal, Tom Wyatt, Techno Fog, and four others.

Introduction by Matt Taibbi

On January 17, 1961, outgoing President and former Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower gave one of the most consequential speeches in American history. Eisenhower for eight years had been a popular president, whose appeal drew upon a reputation as a person of great personal fortitude, who’d guided the United States to victory in an existential fight for survival in World War II. Nonetheless, as he prepared to vacate the Oval Office for handsome young John F. Kennedy, he warned the country it was now at the mercy of a power even he could not overcome.

Until World War II, America had no permanent arms manufacturing industry. Now it did, and this new sector, Eisenhower said, was building up around itself a cultural, financial, and political support system accruing enormous power. This “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience,” he said, adding:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. 

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes… Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. 

This was the direst of warnings, but the address has tended in the popular press to be ignored. After sixty-plus years, most of America – including most of the American left, which traditionally focused the most on this issue – has lost its fear that our arms industry might conquer democracy from within.

Now, however, we’ve unfortunately found cause to reconsider Eisenhower’s warning.

While the civilian population only in recent years began haggling over “de-platforming” incidents involving figures like Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos, government agencies had already long been advancing a new theory of international conflict, in which the informational landscape is more importantly understood as a battlefield than a forum for exchanging ideas. In this view, “spammy” ads, “junk” news, and the sharing of work from “disinformation agents” like Jones aren’t inevitable features of a free Internet, but sorties in a new form of conflict called “hybrid warfare.”

In 1996, just as the Internet was becoming part of daily life in America, the U.S. Army published “Field Manual 100-6,” which spoke of “an expanding information domain termed the Global Information Environment” that contains “information processes and systems that are beyond the direct influence of the military.” Military commanders needed to understand that “information dominance” in the “GIE” would henceforth be a crucial element for “operating effectively.”

You’ll often see it implied that “information operations” are only practiced by America’s enemies, because only America’s enemies are low enough, and deprived enough of real firepower, to require the use of such tactics, needing as they do to “overcome military limitations.” We rarely hear about America’s own lengthy history with “active measures” and “information operations,” but popular media gives us space to read about the desperate tactics of the Asiatic enemy, perennially described as something like an incurable trans-continental golf cheat.

Indeed, part of the new mania surrounding “hybrid warfare” is the idea that while the American human being is accustomed to living in clear states of “war” or “peace,” the Russian, Chinese, or Iranian citizen is born into a state of constant conflict, where war is always ongoing, whether declared or not. In the face of such adversaries, America’s “open” information landscape is little more than military weakness.

In March of 2017, in a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee on hybrid war, chairman Mac Thornberry opened the session with ominous remarks, suggesting that in the wider context of history, an America built on constitutional principles of decentralized power might have been badly designed:

Americans are used to thinking of a binary state of either war or peace. That is the way our organizations, doctrine, and approaches are geared. Other countries, including Russia, China, and Iran, use a wider array of centrally controlled, or at least centrally directed, instruments of national power and influence to achieve their objectives…

Whether it is contributing to foreign political parties, targeted assassinations of opponents, infiltrating non-uniformed personnel such as the little green men, traditional media and social media, influence operations, or cyber-connected activity, all of these tactics and more are used to advance their national interests and most often to damage American national interests… 

The historical records suggest that hybrid warfare in one form or another may well be the norm for human conflict, rather than the exception.

Around that same time, i.e. shortly after the election of Donald Trump, it was becoming gospel among the future leaders of the “Censorship-Industrial Complex” that interference by “malign foreign threat actors” and the vicissitudes of Western domestic politics must be linked. Everything, from John Podesta’s emails to Trump’s Rust Belt primary victories to Brexit, were to be understood first and foremost as hybrid war events.

This is why the Trump-Russia scandal in the United States will likely be remembered as a crucial moment in 21st-century history, even though the investigation superficially ended a non-story, fake news in itself. What the Mueller investigation didn’t accomplish in ousting Trump from office, it did accomplish in birthing a vast new public-private bureaucracy devoted to stopping “mis-, dis-, and malinformation,” while smoothing public acquiescence to the emergence of a spate of new government agencies with “information warfare” missions.

The “Censorship-Industrial Complex” is just the Military-Industrial Complex reborn for the “hybrid warfare” age.

Much like the war industry, pleased to call itself the “defense” sector, the “anti-disinformation” complex markets itself as merely defensive, designed to fend off the hostile attacks of foreign cyber-adversaries who unlike us have “military limitations.” The CIC, however, is neither wholly about defense, nor even mostly focused on foreign “disinformation.” It’s become instead a relentless, unified messaging system aimed primarily at domestic populations, who are told that political discord at home aids the enemy’s undeclared hybrid assault on democracy.

They suggest we must rethink old conceptions about rights, and give ourselves over to new surveillance techniques like “toxicity monitoring,” replace the musty old free press with editors claiming a “nose for news” with an updated model that uses automated assignment tools like “newsworthy claim extraction,” and submit to frank thought-policing mechanisms like the “redirect method,” which sends ads at online browsers of dangerous content, pushing them toward “constructive alternative messages.”

Binding all this is a commitment to a new homogeneous politics, which the complex of public and private agencies listed below seeks to capture in something like a Unified Field Theory of neoliberal narrative, which can be perpetually tweaked and amplified online via algorithm and machine learning. This is what some of the organizations on this list mean when they talk about coming up with a “shared vocabulary” of information disorder, or “credibility,” or “media literacy.”

Anti-disinformation groups talk endlessly about building “resilience” to disinformation (which in practice means making sure the public hears approved narratives so often that anything else seems frightening or repellent), and audiences are trained to question not only the need for checks and balances, but competition. Competition is increasingly frowned upon not just in the “marketplace of ideas” (an idea itself more and more often described as outdated), but in the traditional capitalist sense. In the Twitter Files we repeatedly find documents like this unsigned “Sphere of Influence” review circulated by the Carnegie Endowment that wonders aloud if tech companies really need to be competing to “get it right”:

In place of competition, the groups we’ve been tracking favor the concept of the “shared endeavor” (one British group has even started a “Shared Endeavour” program), in which key “stakeholders” hash out their disagreements in private, but present a unified front.

Who are the leaders of these messaging campaigns? If you care to ask, the groups below are a good place to start.

“The Top 50 List” is intended as a resource for reporters and researchers beginning their journey toward learning the scale and ambition of the “Censorship-Industrial Complex.” Written like a magazine feature, it tries to answer a few basic questions about funding, organization type, history, and especially, methodology. Many anti-disinformation groups adhere to the same formulaic approach to research, often using the same “hate-mapping,” guilt-by-association-type analysis to identify wrong-thinkers and suppressive persons. There is even a tendency to use what one Twitter Files source described as the same “hairball” graphs.

Where they compete, often, is in the area of gibberish verbiage describing their respective analytical methods. My favorite came from the Public Good Projects, which in a display of predictive skills reminiscent of the “unsinkable Titanic” described itself as the “Buzzfeed of public health.”

Together, these groups are fast achieving what Eisenhower feared: the elimination of “balance” between the democratic need for liberalizing laws and institutions, and the vigilance required for military preparation. Democratic society requires the nourishment of free debate, disagreement, and intellectual tension, but the groups below seek instead that “shared vocabulary” to deploy on the hybrid battlefield. They propose to serve as the guardians of that “vocabulary,” which sounds very like the scenario Ike outlined in 1961, in which “public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific and technological elite.”

Without further ado, an introduction to the main players in this “CIC”:

​1.​ Information Futures Lab (IFL) at Brown University (formerly, First Draft):

Link: https://sites.brown.edu/informationfutures/ / https://First Draftnews.org/

Type: A university institute, housed within the School of Public Health, to combat “misinformation” and “outdated communications practices.” The successor to First Draft, one of the earliest and more prominent “anti-disinformation” outfits.

You may have read about them when: You first heard the terms Mis-, dis-, and malinformation. The term was coined by FD Director Claire Wardle. IFL/FD are also the only academic/non-profit organization involved in the Trusted News Initiative, a large-scale legacy media consortium established to control debate around the pandemic response. Wardle was Twitter executives’ first pick for a signal group of anti-misinformation advisors it put together. She also participated in the Aspen Institute’s Hunter Biden laptop tabletop in August 2020 (before the laptop story broke). IFL’s co-founder Stefanie Friedhoff serves on the White House Covid-19 Response Team. First Draft staffers were also revealed in the #TwitterFiles to be frequent and trusted partners to a leading public face of the Censorship-Industrial Complex, Renee DiResta, now of Stanford University.

What we know about funding: First Draft was funded by a huge number of entities including Craig Newmark, Rockefeller, the National Science Foundation, Facebook, the Ford Foundation, Google, the Knight Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, Open Society Foundations, and more. Funding for the IFL includes the Rockefeller Foundation for a “building vaccine demand” initiative.

What they do/What they are selling: IFL/First Draft position themselves as the vanguard of disinformation studies, acting as key advisors to media, technology, and public health consortiums, bringing together a wide range of academic skill sets.

Characteristic/worldview quotes: High use of terms like coordinated inauthentic behavior, information pollution, the future Homeland Security catchwords mis-, dis-, and malinformation, and information disorder.

Gibberish verbiage: “The most accessible inoculation technique is prebunking — the process of debunking lies, tactics or sources before they strike.”

In the #TwitterFiles: First Draft is featured extensively in the files. They were the first proposed name when Twitter decided to assemble a small group of “trusted people to come together to talk about what they’re seeing,” were part of the Aspen Institute’s Burisma tabletop, and appeared in multiple emails with Pentagon officials.

 

Goofy graphage:

 

Closely connected to: Almost all the leading lights of the CIC, including the Stanford Internet Observatory, the Trusted News Initiative, Shorenstein Center, DFRLabs, the World Economic Forum, the Aspen Institute, Meedan, and Bellingcat.

In sum: With a strong ability to both know and direct emerging trends, and with a large array of elite networks in tow, the IFL will continue to serve as one of the key tastemakers in the “anti-disinformation” field.

2.​ Meedan

Link: https://meedan.com/

Type: Medium-sized non-profit specializing in technology and countering “disinformation.”

You may have read about them when: Meedan ran a range of Covid-19 misinformation initiatives “to support pandemic fact-checking efforts” with funding from BigTech, the Omidyar Foundation, the National Science Foundation and more. Partners included Britain’s now-disgraced Behavioural Insights Team, or “nudge unit,” known for scaring the pants off Brits about a range of medical manias. Among Meedan’s “anti-disinformation” projects is an effort to peer into private, encrypted messages. The Meedan board includes Tim Hwang (former Substack General Counsel), free speech skeptic Zeynep Tufecki, and Maria Ressa, a Nobel Prize winner with very close ties to eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and the National Endowment for Democracy. Ressa believes Wikileaks “isn’t journalism.” Meedan co-founder Muna AbuSulayman was the founding Secretary General of the Saudi Alwaleed bin Talal Foundation. Alwaleed bin Talal is one of the largest shareholders in Twitter, both pre-Elon Musk and now, with Musk.

What we know about funding: Widespread public and private funding including from Omidyar, Twitter, Facebook, Google, the National Science Foundation, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, and more.

What they do/What they are selling: Meedan positions itself as an NGO leader in the “anti-disinformation” field; convening networks, developing technology, and establishing new initiatives. Strong support and development are given to “fact-checking” organizations and building the technology to support them.

Characteristic/worldview quote: “Detection of controversial and hateful content.”

Gibberish verbiage: “Our work shows that there are far more matches between tipline content and public group messages on WhatsApp than between public group messages and either published fact checks or open social media content.”

In the #TwitterFiles: Minimal in the files at hand, though Meedan is noted as one of Twitter’s four main Covid “misinformation” partners.

Connected to: Twitter, Factcheck.org, AuCoDe, the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, the Behavioral Insights Team, the Oxford Internet Institute, Stanford Internet Observatory, and First Draft.

In sum: Meedan exemplifies the NGO-to-Stasi stylistic shift, where spying and snitching on private messages in the name of “anti-disinformation” is now considered a public good.

3.​ Harvard Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy (Technology and Social Change Project) 

Link: https://shorensteincenter.org/programs/technology-social-change/

Type: An elite academic project once regarded as one of the leading centers in the “anti-disinformation” field.

You may have read about them when: It was announced that the center would be closed in 2024 on the spurious grounds that project lead Joan Donovan lacked sufficient academic credentials to run the initiative (what was spurious is that it took that long for this realization to come about). Donovan was already widely known for partisanship and getting things wrong, in particular repeatedly claiming the Hunter Biden laptop was not genuine. The Shorenstein Center birthed two other key “anti-disinformation” initiatives, the aforementioned First Draft and the Algorithmic Transparency Initiative. Cameron Hickey, ATI’s lead, is now CEO of the much larger National Congress on Citizenship. In this video, Joan Donavan sits alongside Richard Stengel, the first head of the Global Engagement Center, an agency housed in the State Department with a remit to “counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts.” The closing of the Technology and Social Change Project is a minor victory in an otherwise exploding field.

What we know about funding: Money from: the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Gates Foundation, Google, Facebook Journalism Project, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

What they do/What they are selling: Academic research into “disinformation,” a fellows program, field convening, and frequent media commentary. The Shorenstein Center also produces a leading “misinformation studies” journal.

Characteristic/worldview quote: Donovan’s infamous tweet, posed with an Atlantic staffer: “Me and @cwarzel Looking at the content on the Hunter Biden Laptop, the most popular straw man question at #Disinfo2022.”

Gibberish verbiage: “Examining accuracy-prompt efficacy in combination with using colored borders to differentiate news and social content online”

Closely connected to: First Draft, Algorithmic Transparency Initiative/NCoC, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Data and Society, and the Aspen Institute.

In sum: An “anti-disinformation” project that got it wrong so often, even the center that housed it cut ties.

4.​ The Public Good Projects 

Link: https://www.publicgoodprojects.org/

Type: Non-profit consultancy, specializing in health communications, marketing, technology and “disinformation.”

You may have read about them when: Whilst PGP seem to do some front-facing work, they are also guns for hire for a large range of corporate and government programs. Twitter files show PGP had contracts with biotech lobby group BIO (whose members include Pfizer and Moderna) to run the Stronger campaign, which according to Lee Fang “worked w/Twitter to set content moderation rules around covid ‘misinformation.’” Jennifer McDonald of Twitter’s Public Policy team noted in an email that PGP was also among Twitter’s four “strongest information sharing partnerships” for Covid “misinformation”. PGP partnered with UNICEF on the Vaccine Demand Observatory which aims to “decrease the impact of misinformation and increase vaccine demand around the world.” The board includes the former CEO of Pepsi and Levi’s, a Morgan Stanley Vice-President, and Merck Pharmaceuticals’ Director of Public Health Partnerships.

What we know about funding: $1.25 million from BIO as well as partnerships with Google, Rockefeller, and UNICEF.

What they do/What they are selling: A suite of communications activities including marketing, research, media production, social media monitoring, vaccine promotion, and campaigns. They also use AI and natural language processing to “identify, track, and respond to narratives, trends, and urgent issues” in order to “perform fact-checking” and “power behavior change strategies.”

Characteristic/worldview quote: “Think of us as the BuzzFeed of public health.”

In the #TwitterFiles: Noted as one of Twitter’s four go-to sources for supposed detection of Covid-19 misinformation.

Closely connected to: Twitter, UNICEF, Rockefeller, Kaiser Permanente, First Draft, Brown School of Public Health

In sum: A sophisticated communications and technology outfit with close BigTech and BigPharma partners, and a mission to stop “misinformation.”

​5.​ Graphika 

Link: https://www.graphika.com/ 

Type: For-profit firm with defense connections specializing in “digital marketing and disinformation & analysis.”

You may have read about them when: Graphika was one of two outside groups hired in 2017 by the Senate Intelligence Committee to assess the Russian cyber menace. Graphika was also a “core four” partner to Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership and its Virality Project, both subjects of #TwitterFiles reports. Made headlines for claiming a leak of US-UK trade discussions, publicized by Jeremy Corbyn, was part of an operation called “secondary Infektion” traceable to Russia.

Former Director of Investigations Ben Nimmo was previously a NATO press officer and DFRLabs fellow, and is now Facebook’s Global Threat Intelligence Lead. Head of Innovation Camille Francois was previously Google Jigsaw’s principal researcher.

What we know about funding: $3 million from the Department of Defense for 2020-2022, “to support and stimulate basic and applied research and technology at educational institutions”; boasts of partnerships with the Defense Advanced Partnerships Research Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Air Force. According to USAspending.gov, defense agencies have provided almost $7 million.

What they do/What they are selling: Long-form reports and subscription services for corporate and governmental clients, often focused on identifying “leading influencers” and “misinformation and disinformation risks,” along with highly sophisticated AI for surveilling social media.

Characteristic/worldview quote: “seeding doubt and uncertainty in authoritative voices leads to a society that finds it too challenging to identify what’s true.”

Gibberish verbiage: Tendency to impressively horrific puns (“More-troll Kombat,” “Lights, Camera, Coordinated Action!” “Step into my Parler”).

In the #TwitterFiles: In 2017-2018, Twitter was unaware the Senate Intelligence Committee would be sharing their data on supposed Russia-linked accounts with commercial entities.

In sum: With deep Pentagon ties and a patina of public-facing commercial legitimacy, Graphika is set up to be the Rand Corporation of the Anti-Disinformation age.

Connected to: Stanford Internet Observatory, DFRLabs, Department of Defense, DARPA, Knight Foundation, Bellingcat

Further reading: https://www.foundationforfreedomonline.com/?page_id=2328

 

6.​ Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLabs) of the Atlantic Council

Link: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/programs/digital-forensic-research-lab/

Type: Public-facing disinformation research arm of highly influential, extravagantly funded, NATO-aligned think tank, the Atlantic Council.

You may have read about them when: In May of 2018, Facebook announced a “New Election Partnership With the Atlantic Council,” to “prevent our service from being abused during elections.” The announcement was made by former National Republican Senatorial Committee Chief Digital Strategist Katie Harbath, weeks after a contentious hearing in the Senate in which Mark Zuckerberg answered questions about the “abuse of data” on Facebook. The Atlantic Council’s DFRLabs at the time included such figures as Eliot Higgins (from Bellingcat) and Ben Nimmo, future Director of Investigations at Graphika. This became a watershed moment, as Facebook soon after announced a series of purges of accounts accused of “coordinated inauthentic activity,” including small indie sites like Anti-Media, End The War on Drugs, ‘Murica Today, Reverb, and Anonymous News, beginning an era of mass deletions.

DFRLab was a core partner for Stanford’s “Election Integrity Partnership,” and the “Virality Project.” The Atlantic Council also organizes the elite 360/Open Summit whose 2018 disinformation edition included the private Vanguard-25 forum that brought together Madeleine Albright, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, the head of the Munich Security Conference, Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, Edelman (the world’s biggest PR company), Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Bellingcat, Graphika, and more.

What we know about funding: “DFRLab has received grants from the Department of State’s Global Engagement Center that support programming with an exclusively international focus,” Graham Brookie of DFRLabs told Racket. The Atlantic Council receives funding from the U.S. Army and Navy, Blackstone, Raytheon, Lockheed, the NATO STRATCOM Center of Excellence and a long list of other financial, military, and diplomatic entities.

What they do/What they are selling: Long-form reports, list-making, conference hosting, creation of reporter-friendly widgets (e.g. “Foreign Election Interference Tracker,” “Minsk Monitor”)

Characteristic/worldview quote: On “rumors about Covid-19s origins,” particularly the “disinformation” that the virus may have originated in a laboratory: “The cumulative effect of this was to distract the U.S. public’s attention away from the federal government’s disjointed approach to mitigating the virus and point the blame at China.”

Gibberish verbiage: Awesome quantities; site seethes at public’s unwillingness to popularize nom d’équipe “Digital Sherlocks”; insists so often it is relying only on “open-source information” that one doubts it; relies heavily on schlock military (“Narrative Arms Race”) and medical (“Infodemic”) metaphors to describe disinformation threat.

In sum: DFRLabs is not only funded by the Global Engagement Center, and had initial GEC chief Richard Stengel as a fellow, but uses substantial state and corporate resources to evangelize GEC’s “ecosystem” theory of disinformation, which holds that views that overlap with foreign threat actors are themselves part of the threat.

Connected to: the Stanford Internet Observatory, University of Washington Center for an Informed Public, Graphika, Bellingcat, and the NYU Center for Social Media and Politics

This is only the top SIX!  (Media Mattress, aka Media Matters for America, comes in at 34.) For the complete list, click here:

This is what we are up against.

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Corruption Politics

White House BARS New York Post From Attending Joe Biden’s Only Public Event On MAY 8

The Biden White House barred the New York Post from attending Monday’s event in the South Court Auditorium as prosecutors consider charges against Hunter Biden.

On Monday, Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg delivered remarks on flight delays and cancelations from Biden’s fake White House set in the South Court Auditorium.

Biden mumbled through his remarks before shuffling away and refusing to answer questions.
Only 30 reporters were present.

The White House press office blocked the New York Post from attending Biden’s only public event for the day.

According to The Post, there were 20 empty seats in the South Court Auditorium on Monday, but their request for a press credential was still denied.

The New York Post reported:

The White House press office barred The Post from attending President Biden’s only daytime public event Monday as federal prosecutors near a decision on criminally charging first son Hunter Biden for tax fraud and other crimes.

The Post has closely covered the president’s ties to his relatives’ foreign dealings and first reported in October 2020 on files from Hunter’s abandoned laptop that link Joe Biden to ventures in China and Ukraine.

Biden, who falsely characterized The Post’s reporting as Russian disinformation, appeared with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to talk about airline policies in the White House-adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office Building

In a Monday email, White House staff informed The Post: “We are unable to accommodate your credential request to attend the Investing in Airline Accountability Remarks on 5/8. The remarks will be live-streamed and can be viewed at WH.gov. Thank you for understanding. We will let you know if a credential becomes available.”

The email does not claim that the exclusion is due to “space limitations” — an excuse that was used until recently to justify the press office’s mysterious prescreening of reporters let into large presidential events, which under past administrations were open to all journalists on White House grounds.

In the same room this February, Biden chose to answer The Post’s query about whether his family’s links to China compromised his ability to steer US policy. He fumed about the lack of “polite” reporters and stormed out.

The Post has the fifth-largest news website by US readership — or fourth when excluding aggregator MSN. It is the nation’s second-most-read newspaper online and as of last year, The Post had the fifth-largest print circulation.

In June 2022, 73 journalists representing nearly two-thirds of White House briefing room seats signed a letter demanding the end of the mysterious prescreening process for events. But the unprecedented access restrictions remained in place, and press officers refused to explain the criteria for selection even to leaders of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

The White House did not respond to questions from The Post about the exclusion from Monday’s presidential event. At least two other journalists were initially barred, but the press office relented and let one of them in.

Empty seats at the press conference.

In addition to prescreening reporters let into Biden’s events — which critics say sets a troubling precedent for press access — the White House moved Friday to close a longstanding legal loophole that prevented authorities from stripping reporters of press badges and unveiled a formal process to do so.

Less than 1/3 of the White House press corps were present. WHY?

It’s obvious what the criteria for admittance are:

  • Do you report things contrary to or supportive of the narrative?
  • Do you ask hard or softball questions?
  • Are you reporting on the Biden crime family or just handwaving it away as “disinformation”?

And while holding airlines responsible for at-fault delays is a good idea, when will Pete Buttigieg be held accountable for the delays HE caused? Oh, wait…

 

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Corruption MSM Politics Reprints from others.

Hmm: Biden Admin Removed ‘We The People’ Petition Platform on Inauguration Day

No wonder they cut direct access to the White House
creator avatarKingWolf.org

Introduction: The right to petition is a fundamental aspect of a Constitutional Republic, ensuring that citizens can voice their concerns and demand action from their government. However, on Inauguration Day, the Biden administration took an unexpected and concerning step, quietly shutting down the “We The People” petition platform. This article explores the implications of this decision and its impact on accountability, freedom of speech, and the rights of the American people.

A Brief History of the ‘We The People’ Petition Platform

The Creation of the Platform under the Obama Administration

In 2011, the Obama administration launched the ‘We The People’ petition platform as part of its commitment to fostering an open and participatory government. Designed to facilitate direct communication between the public and the White House, the platform allowed anyone to create and sign petitions on various topics, from policy changes to social issues. If a petition garnered a specific number of signatures within a given time frame, it would receive an official response from the White House.

The Purpose and Significance in our American Constitutional Republic

The ‘We The People’ platform served as a vital tool in promoting civic engagement and empowering citizens to voice their concerns and demand government action. By providing a direct line of communication with the White House, the platform enabled Americans to hold their government accountable and advocate for changes they deemed necessary. It also helped foster transparency, as official responses shed light on the government’s stance on various issues.

Notable Successes and Milestones Achieved through the Platform

Over the years, the ‘We The People’ platform played a role in influencing government policy and sparking national conversations on various topics. Some notable successes include:

  1. The ‘Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act’ – A petition advocating for the legalization of cell phone unlocking received over 114,000 signatures, leading to the passing of a bill in 2014 that made it legal for consumers to unlock their devices.
  2. Net Neutrality – A 2014 petition with more than 105,000 signatures called for the FCC to maintain net neutrality rules, contributing to the eventual implementation of the Open Internet Order.
  3. Death Star Petition – Although not a policy change, a humorous 2012 petition to build a Death Star received over 34,000 signatures, showcasing the platform’s ability to engage the public and generate interest in the political process.

These successes, among others, highlight the importance of the ‘We The People’ platform in the American constitutional republic and its role in promoting civic engagement and government accountability.

The Disappearance of the Platform

The Removal of the Platform on Inauguration Day

On January 20, 2021, the day Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States, the ‘We The People’ petition platform was taken down without prior notice or explanation. This sudden disappearance of a widely used communication tool between the public and the White House caught many off guard and raised questions about the Biden administration’s commitment to transparency and public engagement.

The Lack of Public Announcement or Explanation

What made the removal of the platform particularly concerning was the lack of communication from the Biden administration. No public announcement was made, nor was any explanation provided as to why the platform was taken down or if there were plans to reinstate it. This silence left users and advocates of the platform in the dark and fueled speculation about the administration’s motives behind the decision.

Comparisons to Previous Administrations’ Actions Regarding the Platform

It is worth noting that the ‘We The People’ platform remained active throughout both the Obama and Trump administrations. While the Trump administration was initially slow to respond to petitions, the platform was never taken down or disabled. The Biden administration’s abrupt removal of the platform without explanation stands in stark contrast to the actions of previous administrations, further raising questions about its commitment to the principles of civic engagement and government accountability.

The unexplained disappearance of the ‘We The People’ platform under the Biden administration has left many Americans concerned about the future of this important tool for public engagement and government transparency. It remains to be seen whether the platform will be reinstated or if a similar initiative will be introduced to fill the void it left behind.

The Impact on Accountability and Freedom of Speech
The Consequences of Losing a Direct Line of Communication with the Government

The removal of the ‘We The People’ platform has serious implications for accountability and public engagement. The platform provided citizens with a direct line of communication to the government, allowing them to voice their concerns and demand action on various issues. Losing this valuable tool hinders the public’s ability to hold the government accountable for its actions and decisions, making it more difficult to foster a transparent and responsive political system.

The Chilling Effect on Freedom of Speech and Public Discourse

The disappearance of the platform also has the potential to create a chilling effect on freedom of speech and public discourse. Without a dedicated platform for voicing concerns and mobilizing support for change, citizens may feel less empowered to speak out on important issues. This could lead to a decline in public debate, which is essential for the health of a constitutional republic.

The loss of the ‘We The People’ platform has raised concerns about the Biden administration’s commitment to government accountability and transparency. It is essential for citizens to continue advocating for the reinstatement of the platform or the creation of a similar tool to ensure their voices are not silenced.

Alternative Channels for Citizen Participation

Even with the removal of the ‘We The People’ platform, citizens can still participate in the political process and make their voices heard through various channels. In this section, we will explore alternative petition platforms, the importance of remaining engaged, and examples of successful grassroots movements and campaigns.

The Rise of Third-Party Petition Platforms

In the absence of the ‘We The People’ platform, several third-party petition platforms have emerged to fill the void. Websites such as Change.org, MoveOn.org, and Avaaz.org allow users to create and sign petitions on various issues, facilitating public engagement and advocacy. While these platforms are not directly connected to the government, they can still influence policy changes and raise awareness about pressing issues.

The Importance of Remaining Engaged and Proactive in the Political Process

Even without a direct line of communication with the government, it is crucial for citizens to remain engaged and proactive in the political process. This can be achieved through various means such as contacting local representatives, participating in town hall meetings, joining advocacy groups, and voting in elections. By staying informed and active, citizens can continue to hold the government accountable and promote positive change in society.

Examples of Successful Grassroots Movements and Campaigns

Throughout history, numerous grassroots movements and campaigns have had a significant impact on policy changes and social reform. Some notable examples include:

  1. The Civil Rights Movement: Led by figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., this movement successfully fought for the end of racial segregation and the enforcement of equal rights for all citizens.
  2. The Women’s Suffrage Movement: This movement, which spanned several decades, eventually led to the ratification of the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote in the United States.
  3. The Environmental Movement: Grassroots activism in the 1960s and 1970s led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the implementation of key environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.

These examples demonstrate the power of citizen participation and grassroots activism in shaping public policy and promoting social change.

The Role of Honest Journalism in Upholding a Constitutional Republic

In a constitutional republic, the media plays a vital role in informing the public and ensuring that citizens stay well-informed about the actions and decisions of their government. By providing comprehensive reporting, the media can hold the government accountable and help maintain a system of checks and balances.

Transparency and accountability are essential components of political reporting. By offering unbiased and accurate information, the media can foster trust between the public and the government, ultimately contributing to a healthier political environment. However, the potential consequences of biased or misleading information can be detrimental to public perception and decision-making, leading to a divided society.

The removal of the ‘We The People’ platform is a significant event that should be thoroughly covered by the media. Journalists have a responsibility to investigate and report on the reasons behind the platform’s removal to keep the public informed about potential changes in government priorities and their impact on citizen participation.

Encouraging public discourse on the implications of the platform’s removal for citizen participation and government accountability is essential. Open discussion about the removal of the ‘We The People’ platform can raise awareness of its consequences and inspire citizens to seek alternative channels for engagement and accountability. Honest journalism plays a pivotal role in upholding the values of a constitutional republic and ensuring that the government remains answerable to the people.

A Call to Action for a Stronger Constitutional Republic

In conclusion, the removal of the ‘We The People’ petition platform raises crucial questions about accountability, transparency, and the rights of American citizens. It is more important than ever for citizens to stay informed and engaged in the political process and for journalists to hold the government accountable for its actions.

As concerned citizens, we must act to ensure that our voices continue to be heard. To that end, we encourage you to sign and share the Accountability Act petition on Change.org. This petition aims to promote transparency and accountability in the government, calling for the restoration of the ‘We The People’ platform, among other measures.

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Corruption Just my own thoughts Links from other news sources.

Now we know why Biden removed Trumps Executive Privilege.

Mar-a-Largo raid. GP- Photo

Now we know why Biden removed Trumps Executive Privilege. After Biden removed Trump’s Executive Privilege, the DOJ did their raid. A raid done knowing the Secret Service would not have been there.

Mar-a-Largo was invaded by armed FBI agents. An FBI who did not want to do this but now we learn that it was a raid planned by the White House. What did they find? Documents in a secured locked room. Documents there because the President had a right to have.

Unlike the stolen documents found at the Biden cartel locations. Documents marked top secret that Biden had no right to have in his position. How do we now know this?

This week more evidence came out that Biden was involved with the raid on Mar-a-Lago:

NARA records obtained through America First Legal’s investigation into the circumstances surrounding the Mar-a-Lago raid further confirmed that the FBI obtained access to these records through a “special access request” from the Biden White House on behalf of the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Corruption How sick is this? Leftist Virtue(!) Politics The Courts The Law

Pelosi: ‘We Have To Convict Trump On The Charges To Find Out What Is In Them’

Affirmative action can't help you now brother.

This is from the Babylon Bee but is too close to reality for comfort.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Democrat Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi is calling for a quick conviction of Trump so that we can all see what he’s being charged with.

“Just like we do with our spending bills, we should convict Donald Trump of these charges right away so that we can see what’s in them,” said Pelosi. “Trump has many pages of charges that are probably horrible and we just don’t have time to read them all. Doing it this way is much more efficient!” Pelosi’s statement was then interrupted by her teeth getting stuck in an ice cream bar she was eating.

Sources speculate the list of charges against Trump includes paying hush money to a stripper, colluding with Russia to overthrow the United States government and usher in 1000 years of darkness, and being really yucky and Trump-like. “We don’t need a list of charges to know that Trump is guilty of being Trump,” said Pelosi. “Let’s get this over with already.”

At publishing time Manhattan’s DA had announced 3,000 additional pages of charges were brought in at 1 AM in the morning.

Look, anyone with more than two functioning brain cells can see this for what it is. Although I suppose that the Severe Trump Derangement Syndrome case hotspots in liberal cities like NYC may render even that generous definition moot.

 

 

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Corruption Links from other news sources. Reprints from others. The Law

Finally the truth about January 6th. Let my people go.

Trump supporters occupy the West Front of the Capitol and the inauguration stands on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Watch:

 

Finally the truth about January 6th. Let my people go. Let me be clear. Those who committed acts of violence and vandalism should have been charged. None should still be in jail held without bond.

Yesterday Carlson started releasing what really happened and why the left hid this from the American People. I actually now understand why Pelosi, Schumer, and the Committee to do about nothing hid this. They bared some of the responsibility. Please watch the video’s above and read the tweets below. Some of what the Democrats released was actually doctored. The only deaths that occurred were the protestors.

Democrats have been running around like decapitated chickens ever since news broke that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has given Tucker Carlson unfettered access to surveillance footage from inside the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot by supporters of President Donald Trump.

The Fox News host will air five stories culled from the footage Monday and Tuesday nights, countering the overblown “insurrection” narrative the Democrats and their media toadies have been pushing since Day One.

 

Ray Epps was never arrested or locked up for this “crime” or any crime on January 6th.

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Links from other news sources. Reprints from others. Social Venues-Twitter

Twitter Files: GEC, New Knowledge, and State-Sponsored Blacklists.

Twitter Files: GEC, New Knowledge, and State-Sponsored Blacklists. twitter Photo

Thanks to Matt and Racket News for this.

 

Americans have been paying taxes to disenfranchise themselves, as government agencies and subcontractors undertake a massive digital blacklisting project

Matt Taibbi

 

A new #TwitterFiles thread will be dropping in a few hours, at noon EST. It follows up the Hamilton 68 story of a month ago with examples of state-funded digital blacklisting campaigns run amok. It’s self-explanatory, but some advance context might help:

In 2015-2016, during the brief, forgotten period when Islamic terrorism was fading as a national obsession and Trumpian “domestic extremism” had not yet become one, Barack Obama made a series of decisions that may yet prove devastating to his legacy.

The short version is he signed Executive Order 13271, establishing a “Global Engagement Center” (“GEC”) to “counter the messaging and diminish the influence of international terrorist organizations.” This act got almost no press and even within government, almost no one noticed.

In the bigger picture, however, a lame duck president kick-started the process of shifting the national security establishment’s focus from counterterrorism to “disinformation.” Whether by malfunction or design, this abrupt course change of Washington’s contracting supertanker would have dramatic consequences. In fact, the tale of how America’s information warfare mechanism turned inward, against “threats” in our own population, might someday be remembered as the story of our time, with collective panic over “disinfo” defining this generation in much the same way the Red Scare defined the culture of the fifties.

This is a complicated story and it would be a mistake to jump to simplistic conclusions, like that the Global Engagement Center (humorously nicknamed “GECK” or “YUCK” by detractors in other agencies) is an evil Orwellian mind-control scheme. It isn’t. But for a few crucial bad decisions, it could have fulfilled a useful or at least logical mission, much as the United States Information Agency (USIA) once did. However, instead of stressing research and public reports, as the USIA did when responding to Soviet accusations that Americans had caused the AIDS crisis, GEC funded a secret list of contractors and employed a more surreptitious approach to “counter-disinformation,” sending companies like Twitter voluminous reports on foreign “ecosystems” — in practice, blacklists.

GEC was not conceived as a partisan mechanism to defang conservative media, despite the recent true and damning series of reports by the Washington Examiner, outlining how a GEC-funded NGO in England used algorithmic scoring to de-rank outlets like The Daily Wire and help papers like the New York Times earn more ad revenue. The blacklisting tales you’ll be reading about later today on Twitter also primarily target American conservatives, though GEC and GEC-funded contractors also target left-friendly movements like the gilets jaunes (yellow vests), socialist media outlets like Canada’s Global Research, even the Free Palestine movement.

The scary angle on GEC is not so much the agency as the sprawling infrastructure of “disinformation labs” that have grown around it.

Underneath America’s love affair with “anti-disinformation” in the Trump years — which expressed itself in the seemingly instant construction of a sprawling complex of disinformation studies “labs” at institutions like Harvard, Stanford, Clemson, UT, Pitt, William and Mary, the University of Washington, and other locations — lay a devastating secret. Most of these “experts” know nothing. Many have skill, if you can call mesmerizing dumb reporters a skill, but in the area of identifying true bad actors, few know more than the average person on the street.

This is described repeatedly in the #TwitterFiles. In one sequence Twitter was contacted by Sheera Frenkel of the New York Times, who was writing a hagiographic profiles of “disinformation” warrior Renee DiResta, who’d achieved some renown as a campaigner against vaccine misinformation. Frenkel wrote Twitter to ask why they hadn’t hired “independent researchers” like DiResta, Jonathan Albright, and Jonathon Morgan — coincidentally, all hired witnesses of the Senate Intelligence Committee — to help Twitter “better understand” its own business.

At the sight of Frenkel’s provocative note, some Twitter execs lost it.

“The word ‘researcher’ has taken on a very broad meaning,” snapped Nick Pickles. “Renee is literally doing this as a hobby… Of those three only [Albright] is the most credible, but… the bulk of his work is Medium blogs.”

“Like CVE before it, misinformation is becoming a cottage industry,” agreed comms official Ian Plunkett, referencing “countering violent extremism,” a.k.a. counterterrorism.

Today’s thread among other things will detail crude digital blacklisting schemes dreamed up by this new cottage industry. Each features the same design “flaw,” in which giant lists of supposed foreign disinformationists somehow also come to include ordinary Americans, often with the same political leanings.

In one ridiculous case, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), a GEC-funded entity, sent Twitter a huge list of people they suspected of “engaging in inauthentic behavior… and Hindu nationalism more broadly.” You’ll see the list to judge. As was the case with the “Hamilton 68” story, in which a spook-laden think tank purported to track accounts linked to “Russian influence activities” while really following the likes of @TrumpDyke and @TimeForTrumppp, this DFRLab list of “Hindu nationalists” is weirdly packed with real septuagenarian Trump supporters.

One, a woman named Marysel Urbanik who immigrated from Castro’s Cuba in her youth, struggled to understand why a Washington think tank had sent Twitter a letter ID’ing her as either “inauthentic” or a Hindu nationalist.

“They say I’m what?”

“A Hindu nationalist,” I said. “Well, suspected.”

“But I’m Cuban, not Indian,” she pleaded, confused. “Hindu? I wouldn’t even know what words to say.”

Such listmakers are either employing extremely expansive definitions of hate speech, extremely inexact methods of identifying spam, or they’re doing both in addition to a third thing: keeping up a busywork campaign for underemployed ex-anti-terror warriors, who don’t mind racking up lists of “foreign” disinformationists that just happen to also rope in domestic undesirables.

In his book Information Wars, the original nominal head of GEC and former Time editor Rick Stengel explained an epiphany he had that allowed him to tie the fight against “foreign” disinformation to matters domestic. It happened when Stengel watched a YouTube video of Russian nationalist Alexander Dugin:

He castigated Hillary Clinton’s campaign as a bunch of ‘“storm troopers.” He lambasted what he called the American “obsession with the fake Russian threat.” He said it was an excuse for losers… The production values were poor, the audience was small, but the video revealed an extraordinary mirroring of language and ideas between Dugin and other Russian voices and candidate Trump… The notion that there was some kind of shared rhetorical playbook just seemed too fanciful to believe. While the messages did not exactly repeat each other, they certainly rhymed.

At the same time as Dugin was uploading his video, according to public U.S. intelligence, the GRU—the Russian military intelligence service—began going through the email accounts of DNC officials…

Stengel didn’t need to prove an actual link between Dugin, Russia, and Trump. It was enough to imply it, by placing stories about the GRU near Trump’s name, while asserting Trump and Dugin’s ideas “rhymed.”

This is probably what’s going on in the DFRLab list: one assumes many BJP supporters have views that “rhyme” with what one might call the American version of nationalism, #MAGA. Similarly, a GEC report sent to Twitter about “Russian Pillars of Disinformation” stressed that even actors who “generate their own momentum” online should be considered part of a propaganda “ecosystem.” Independence, the GEC report stressed, should not “confuse those trying to discern the truth.”

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Links from other news sources. Reprints from others. Uncategorized

Former AG Whitaker. Overturning Trump Pardon ‘Abuse of Power’

Asking for justice.


Former AG Whitaker. Overturning Trump Pardon ‘Abuse of Power’.

Former Attorney General Matthew Whitaker told Newsmax on Tuesday that the administration of Joe Biden’s attempt to retry Philip Esformes, who former President Donald Trump pardoned, is “an abuse of power.”

“This administration appears to not really be grounded by the Constitution,” Whitaker said Tuesday on “Wake Up America.” “The president’s ability to pardon folks is absolute under the Constitution. In this case, President Trump issued a pardon, commuted Mr. Esformes’ sentence, and now this administration wants to go back and re-prosecute the same case and put him back in jail, if they can, and it’s an outrageous abuse of power.”

Esformes, a nursing home owner, was convicted in 2019 in a $1.3 billion Medicare fraud scheme and sentenced to 20 years in prison, CNBC reported in January.

Trump commuted his sentence in 2020, but Esformes lost his appeal on prosecutorial misconduct earlier this year, which could allow him to be retried, the report said.

Whitaker said the Department of Justice under Biden has “gone berserk” with the case and that a presidential pardon should have ended the prosecution.

“Once the president has pardoned somebody for certain types of behavior, that’s usually what it should end in,” Whitaker said. “I can’t find an example where an administration is going back and prosecuted someone for the same crime. This is an extraordinary case. Obviously, it is personal for the prosecutors, which it should never be.”

Whitaker said the main motivation for trying for a retrial seems to be driven by the fact that the Biden administration wants the pardon overturned just because Trump issued it.

Whitaker also said Biden’s surprise visit to Ukraine on Monday to mark the first anniversary this week of Russia’s invasion into that country should have come sooner.

“Biden should have gone there well before the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion,” Whitaker said. “I think he is searching for a way, and a tone, to make this war compelling and interesting to the American people.”

Who else came out? Former AG’S John Ashcroft, Edwin Meese, Michael Mukasey, and Alberto Gonzales endorsed Esformes’ appeal before clemency was granted.

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Politics Public Service Announcement The Courts The Law

Follow up: REAL ID creates 2nd-class citizens. Sign Change.org petition

No "Real ID"? No seat for you!

This is the original article (New items follow below.)

Official Penn DOT website blurb

Note the date above: May 7, 2025. On that date, you will become a second-class citizen unless you bow to your masters’ demands.

Papers, please!

Although it’s been delayed several times, the insidious Real ID is coming. You will need to pay for the government’s approval so you can board a flight that NEVER LEAVES THE COUNTRY. And you won’t be able to seek redress of grievances because you won’t be ALLOWED into a Federal — and likely state — building if you don’t have their “Good Sheeple” ID to see your elected representatives. You won’t even be able to check with your local Social Security office about retirement without it. Or register to vote — if you’re a native-born American, that is.

Already, Drivers License locations have a security guard stationed inside them, because “Real ID” is given out there.

So far it’s supposedly a one-and-done deal, once you pay, the Real ID gold star is yours for life.

Does anyone really believe that the bureaucrats won’t draw from that well again — and again? Isn’t that what we were promised for the Covid-19 clot shot, one-and-done? How about the promise that Federal Income tax would only be on the rich? Or that electric cars would be cheaper to run — and less polluting — than internal combustion vehicles?

Okay, so maybe you don’t need to fly across the country, so what? Remember though that the TSA controls ALL public transportation. Think I’m kidding? Did you ever see those notices like on City buses: “The TSA requires all passengers to wear a mask….” How long do you suppose it will take the elitists to require Real ID to board a cross-town bus? They’re already trying to take our cars away from us.

Real ID is anathema to our country’s ideals

The very idea of Real ID is anathema to what the country stands for (or used to stand for) in the first place. In the second place, does anyone care to bet that the current surge of illegal immigrant/future democrat voters won’t need it — or that the elitists will provide it to them so they can continue to vote democrat?

I didn’t think so.

I know some leftist loons will claim I’m a conspiracy theorist. OTOH, how many things that the left decried as a “conspiracy theory” has been proven true?

We need to remove the upcoming “Real ID” restrictions for access to airlines and government buildings

The much-delayed “Real ID” will violate the Constitution if allowed to go into effect.

First, In limiting access to ALL federal buildings only to those with a “Real ID,” the law infringes on the 1st amendment right “..to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” Already you can find armed security personnel in many federal and other government buildings. If you can’t get into the building, you can’t see your elected Congressional representatives or testify before any federal entity. If they can make exceptions, then the law is i weapon to silence critics, not to protect anyone.

Second, The need for a “Real ID” to fly on a commercial airplane WITHIN THE UNITED STATES is effectively a “no-fly” list for citizens who don’t desire a “Real ID.” This violates the “general welfare” clause of the Preamble, and while it might be construed as lawful under Article One, Section eight “regulate interstate commerce” clause, personal (ie non-business) travel by definition is NOT “commerce.” And one could reasonably argue that it violates the 1st Amendment right to peaceably assemble.

“Real ID” creates an illegal underclass for people who may simply want to be left alone and not have “Big Brother” constantly looking over their shoulders.

It is also the first step to communist-style “travel documents” to control the movement of the citizens of the US.

Make your voice heard! Sign the petition here:

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Links from other news sources.

Biden says he will veto any cuts to Medicare, but yet he’s trying to cut Medicare Advantage.

Yes you did. Government overreach. FOX Photo.

Biden says he will veto any cuts to Medicare, but yet he’s trying to cut Medicare Advantage. You may have heard him Tuesday night carrying on like a crazy person hollering and screaming about Republicans cutting Medicare and Social Security.

Well now we know who’s proposing the draconian cuts and trying to gut Medicare Advantage. Joe Biden. His boy Obama tried that and even the majority of Democrats had to remind him of his place.

Now the Biden  Administration and Democrats Want to Cut Overwhelmingly Popular Medicare Advantage Program. A new report on Medicare shows that enrollment in the popular Medicare Advantage (MA) program has grown across the board, showing that more seniors are choosing privately-run, innovative options every year.

A group of progressive House lawmakers wrote to CMMI calling for it to get rid of the model for similar reasons.

Progressive lawmakers have also floated potential cuts to MA to help pay for expanded Medicare benefits such as dental or vision benefits as part of the Build Back Better Act, which has stalled in Congress due to objections from key centrist Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia.

The Biden Administration itself is proposing major cuts to the Medicare Advantage program. It runs into the billions.

CMS’ final rate announcement will be released by April 4.