Category: Tech Media

Missouri U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt Calls on Biden’s Cybersecurity Chief to Resign over Censorship Campaign

Virginia Star Staff

Republican Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt called on a top cybersecurity official to resign Wednesday following a preliminary injunction preventing government coordination with social media platforms to censor protected speech.

Schmitt urged the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Jennifer Easterly to step down in an interview with journalist Michael Shellenberger on Wednesday. A federal judge had issued an injunction Tuesday preventing the Biden administration from coordinating with social media companies to censor content after finding that officials likely violated the First Amendment.

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Mark Levin: Target Refuses to Sell Book Critical of Democrats

Virginia Star Staff

Mark Levin, author and host of “Life, Liberty & Levin” on Fox News, claimed in a Wednesday tweet that Target told him it will not carry his new book because customers may be offended by the title.

Target reportedly informed Levin’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, that the retail giant will not carry his new book, “The Democrat Party Hates America,” which is set to be released on Sept. 19, because the title may offend customers, Levin said on Twitter. Target has been the center of several recent controversies that include selling LGBTQ merchandise for children during Pride Month and funding an anti-militarization group.

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Google Erodes User Privacy to ‘Train AI Models’ in Quiet Policy Update: Report

Just the News

Google quietly updated its privacy policy over the long July 4 holiday weekend to expand what it can do with user data, namely improve its artificial-intelligence abilities, according to tech blog Gizmodo.

The new policy replaced the word “language” with “AI” in a section referring to the “publicly available information” that Google uses to train its “models” for the benefit of users, Gizmodo says, citing the publicly recorded change log.

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Drag Queen ‘Peaches Christ’ Blames ‘Bigoted Christians’ at Google for Tech Company’s Removal of Performance from ‘Pride’ Events

Susan Berry, PhD

A drag queen who uses the name “Peaches Christ” lashed out against ‘bigoted Christians” in a social media post after Google removed its affiliation from his previously scheduled performance during the company’s “pride” events.

As CNBC reported, Google appeared to distance itself from its original plans to sponsor drag queen Joshua Grannell’s performance at a San Francisco LGBTQ bar as part of its “pride” month events after a petition circulating among the tech giant’s employees expressed opposition to its anti-Christian theme.

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Study Finds Use of Contraceptive Pill from Young Age Increases Risk of Depression in Women by up to 130 Percent

Susan Berry, PhD

A study from the UK finds women who began using the combined contraceptive pill as teenagers increased their risk of depression by 130 percent, while those who began to use the contraceptive in their 20s or older showed a 92 percent increased risk of depressive symptoms.

The population-based cohort study that utilized data from more than 250,000 UK Biobank women was published in Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences and online by Cambridge University Press.

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China Implements Export Controls on Key Metals Used for Chips

Admin

by Jason Cohen   China has implemented export limits on two metals utilized in the manufacturing of computer chips and other valuable technological devices, according to an announcement by the country’s Ministry of Commerce on Monday. The export restrictions on gallium, germanium and their corresponding chemical compounds will officially take…

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TikTok’s CCP-Linked Parent Company Is Trying to Break into a Whole New Industry

Admin

ByteDance, the CCP-linked parent company of popular shortform video platform TikTok, is trying to enter the book publishing industry, The New York Times reported Saturday.

The company filed in late April for a U.S. trademark for a publishing firm, 8th Note Press, and has already begun reaching out to some independent authors for the rights to sell their books, the NYT reported. TikTok has helped some books become bestsellers in the past several years, posts using the #Booktok hashtag have been viewed more than 91 billion times and the combined sales of 100 authors with large BookTok followings eclipsed $760 million in 2022, a 60% surge from the year prior.

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Tucker Carlson Mocks Rachel ‘Rick’ Levine in Latest ‘Tucker on Twitter’ Monologue

Kaitlin Housler

In the eighth episode of his newest production, “Tucker on Twitter,” former Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson took aim at Admiral Rachel L. Levine, who currently serves as the 17th Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

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Pornhub Blocks Its Access in Virginia Due to State’s New Age Verification Law

Just the News

Pornhub, the adult-content website, has blocked users from the state of Virginia due to its new age verification law that will take effect July 1. 

The law, titled SB 1515 and proposed by Republican state Sen. William M. Stanley Jr., will require sites with pornographic content to verify users in Virginia are at least 18 years old before they allow them to view the content on the website.

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Commentary: Mainstream Media Has Convinced Even Republicans to Believe Hunter’s Business Is No Big Deal

Virginia Star Staff

After reading my commentary about my self-inflicted ordeal of listening to NPR for a month, a friend noted this station’s “reports” bear no resemblance to “objective reality.” Can so many Americans, asked my correspondent, believe that the U.S. is full of oppressed transgendered who must take up arms to protect themselves against “anti-trans rhetoric?” Do NPR listeners really think American blacks are suffering from “systemic white racism,” and that only increased government control can protect them from being shot on the streets by white racists?

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New California Bill Would Make Social Media Platforms Liable for Harm Caused to Children

The Center Square

Parents of children who are harmed by the use of social media platforms are one step closer to holding those platforms accountable, thanks to a new bill passed by the California Assembly Judiciary Committee.

The bill was authored by State Senator Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) and is being sponsored by Attorney General Bonta.  

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YouTube Repeatedly Censors RFK Jr. as Democratic Leaders Demand Reinstatement of 2020 Censorship

Just the News

The disputed 2020 election now appears in the rearview mirror for YouTube, which is now determining what users can see relevant to the next election.

The Alphabet-owned, video-sharing site and Google sibling has censored at least two videos, and may be throttling a third, featuring Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shortly after ending a two-and-a-half-year ban on questioning the “integrity” of the last presidential election, saying it accomplished little relative to the potential harm it caused.

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Study Finds Abortion in First Pregnancy Linked to Increased Risk of Later Mental Health Problems

Susan Berry, PhD

While a common abortion industry narrative claims restrictions on abortion cause mental health harms to women, a new study has found that abortion during a first pregnancy is associated with a greater incidence of mental health problems after the procedure than giving birth.

The study, conducted by Dr. James Studnicki, vice president and director of data analytics at the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI), and his colleagues, was published at the International Journal of Women’s Health.

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Google Backs Down from Pride’ Drag Show After Employees Claim Discrimination Against Christians

Susan Berry, PhD

Tech giant Google has reportedly distanced itself from a ‘pride month’ drag performance it had planned to sponsor in San Francisco after several hundred employees signed a petition expressing opposition to the event, arguing it discriminates against the Christian faith.

According to a report Tuesday at CNBC, a drag queen known as “Peaches Christ” was scheduled to perform at Beaux, an LGBTQ bar in San Francisco, at a “pride” event sponsored by Google.

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Tucker Carlson Points Out the Irony of ‘Democracy’ Surrounding Ukraine-Russia War in Episode Seven of ‘Tucker on Twitter’

Kaitlin Housler

In the seventh episode of his newest production, “Tucker on Twitter,” former Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson discussed the irony surrounding the topic of “democracy” regarding the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia.

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Homeland Agency Expanded Authority to Wage ‘Domestic Surveillance and Censorship,’ House Report Says

Just the News

Secret documents obtained by the House Judiciary Committee show that a Department of Homeland Security agency “expanded its mission to surveil Americans’ speech on social media, colluded with Big Tech and government-funded third parties to censor by proxy, and tried to hide its plainly unconstitutional activities from the public,” according to an interim staff report released Monday night.

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UN Takes Cues from Organizations That Seek to Censor Conservatives

Admin

by James Cohen   A United Nations (U.N.) policy proposal that outlines how to combat online “mis- and disinformation and hate speech,” including through demonetization, is informed by work from groups that actively push to censor conservative speech online. The policy brief, titled “Information Integrity on Digital Platforms,” is intended to help…

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BlackRock Recruiter Says $10k ‘Can Buy a Senator,’ Calls Ukraine War ‘Good for Business’: Video

Just the News

A recruiter for BlackRock said that the asset management firm is able to “buy a senator” for $10,000 and that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is “good for business,” according to a video recorded by an undercover journalist.

“You could buy your candidates. First, there is the senators. These guys are f***ing cheap. Got 10 grand? You can buy a senator. I’ll give you 500k right now. It doesn’t matter who wins, they’re in my pocket,” BlackRock Recruiter Serge Varlay said in a video published Tuesday by the O’Keefe Media Group, which was founded by guerilla journalist James O’Keefe.

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Mayo Clinic Professor Michael Joyner Suspended after Saying Testosterone Improves Athletic Performance

Admin

A Mayo Clinic College of Medicine professor was recently suspended — and remains under the threat of termination — after he told a news outlet his stance on trans-athletes in women’s sports and plasma treatments for COVID-19.

Administrators suspended Professor Michael Joyner without pay for a week, citing his “use of idiomatic language” and comments he made in a June 2022 New York Times article as justification for the disciplinary actions, according to a March 5 disciplinary letter that recently came to light.

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Commentary: Recent Headlines Claiming Sucralose ‘Damages DNA’ Are Scary, But What Does the Study Really Say?

Admin

When I went back to the U.S. for the first time in several years last year, I made an incredible discovery. It’s called Sparkling Ice and is sold separately or in 12-packs of 17 ounces (curious size) and has a ton of flavors that mostly taste alike but taste very good. Sparkling ice contains the artificial sweetener sucralose and is also lightly carbonated (low carbon footprint!) so that I didn’t drink it like water; I essentially drank it instead of water.

But lo! Newsweek headline: “America’s Most Popular Artificial Sweetener Damages Our DNA, Scientists Say.” You know, like atomic bomb victims. The alleged result is a leaky gut, and you don’t have to know exactly what that means to know it’s probably not good. Except it may not even be real; but we’ll get to that.

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Asa Hutchinson: GOP Should ‘Back Off’ Accusations of DOJ ‘Weaponization’

Just the News

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is running in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, said Republicans should “back off” of “accusations” of the “weaponization of the Justice Department.”

Hutchinson told ABC on Sunday that while he disagrees with some of the DOJ’s decisions, he believes Republicans are incorrect to label the department’s indictment of former president Donald Trump as “weaponization.”

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Study Finding Facebook Does Not Censor Conservatives Is ‘Deeply Flawed,’ ‘Laughable,’ Experts Say

Admin

Media Matters for America published a study recently concluding that Facebook does not censor conservatives, but experts told the DCNF the study is not credible because it did not properly measure the suppression of right-leaning pages.

Right-leaning Facebook pages typically got more total interactions than politically nonaligned and left-leaning pages on Facebook, according to the study. However, experts say this does not mean that there was no censorship of right-leaning Facebook pages, as the only example of suppression the Media Matters study cites is Donald Trump’s Facebook ban.

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Meta Scraps Censorship Policies for COVID ‘Misinformation’

Virginia Star Staff

Facebook parent company Meta is officially terminating its COVID-19 censorship policies in the U.S., the tech giant told The Washington Post.

Meta has repeatedly tamped down on COVID-19 “misinformation” in the U.S. and even faced pressure from the White House to engage in content suppression. Although the tech giant is done moderating this content in the U.S., it will continue restricting content “in countries that have a Covid-19 public health emergency declaration” due to “the risk of imminent physical harm,” Meta told the Post.

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Today’s Youth List TikTok, Instagram Influencers as Most Trusted Sources of News

Virginia Star Staff

A new report reveals that the youngest generations of today are more likely to trust news they receive from social media influencers rather than from actual news outlets and reporters.

As Fox News reports, the study was conducted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism out of the University of Oxford. The survey found that 55 percent of TikTok users get their news from “personalities” on the platform, with another 52 percent of respondents saying the same thing for Instagram influencers.

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In Episode Three of ‘Tucker on Twitter,’ Carlson Pinpoints the Date the Deep State Began Targeting Trump

Kaitlin Housler

Former Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson released on Tuesday the third episode of his newest production, “Tucker on Twitter.” The episode, titled “America’s principles are at stake,” is a 13-minute video podcast where Carlson discusses the indictment of former President Donald Trump.

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Commentary: Unmasking the CDC’s In-House Intelligence Service

Admin

CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky is departing at the end of June and Joe Biden has tapped former North Carolina health boss Dr. Mandy Cohen to replace her. More important than the identity of the CDC director is what goes on behind the scenes, and hints have been emerging.

In April of 2021, the CDC reassigned Dr. Nancy Messonnier, longtime director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD). In a May 7, 2021 White House briefing, Walensky suddenly announced that Messonnier was stepping down.

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Tucker Carlson Releases Second Episode of ‘Tucker on Twitter’

Daily Caller News Foundation

Former Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson on Thursday released the second episode of his newest production, “Tucker on Twitter.” The episode, titled, “Cling to your taboos!” is a 12-minute long video podcast where Carlson addresses the connection between pedophilia and the growing acceptance of white supremacy without defining it.

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Evangelist Pat Robertson Has Died

Just the News

Pat Robertson, a conservative Christian television host, died early Thursday morning at his Virginia Beach home. He was 93. He is best known for his prayer and commentary for “The 700 Club” and for founding The Christian Broadcasting Network in 1960. Robertson also ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, but he lost the primary to President George H.W. Bush. 

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Big Tech-Backed Group Tries to Kill California Bill Because It Could Help Conservative Media

Virginia Star Staff

The Chamber of Progress, a tech industry coalition backed by companies such as Google and Meta, released statements and a study arguing against the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), stating it would primarily benefit conservative media outlets.

The California Assembly passed the CJPA on Thursday, a bill that compels companies like Google and Meta to pay publications for news links they post on their platforms, which would disproportionately enrich “disinformation giants like Fox News and the New York Post,” according to the Chamber of Progress. The coalition lists Google and Meta as corporate partners on its website and the Chamber of Progress’s founder and CEO, Adam Kovacevich, formerly headed Google’s U.S. policy strategy and external affairs team, according to its website. 

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Louisiana Senate Passes Bill Banning Transgender Drugs and Surgeries for Minors

Susan Berry, PhD

The Louisiana State Senate passed a bill Monday that would ban puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender transition surgeries, such as double mastectomies and castrations, for minors. HB 648, which passed by a vote of 29-10, was resurrected in the state senate after State Senator Fred Mills (R-Acadiana), a former Democrat and a pharmacy owner backed by the pharmaceutical industry, killed the measure in the Senate Health and Welfare Committee.

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Former Abortionist: Media’s ‘Blatant Lie’ That Doctors Feel ‘Trapped’ by Abortion State Trigger Laws

Susan Berry, PhD

A former abortionist-turned pro-life advocate wrote at Conservative Review Monday that, even in South Dakota, media are pushing the leftist narrative that state laws restricting abortion are harming women in difficult pregnancies.

Patti Giebink, M.D., author of Unexpected Choice and a former Planned Parenthood abortionist, took to task a South Dakota Searchlight reporter who claimed “physicians feel ‘trapped’” by the state’s abortion trigger law by noting the media’s “dishonesty” about several key facts.

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DOD ‘Bait and Switch’ with Emergency and Licensed COVID Vaccines Killed Student, Lawsuit Alleges

Just the News

The Pentagon conducted “human experimentation without consent” by falsely advertising a COVID-19 vaccine under emergency use authorization as fully licensed, a “bait and switch” that killed a college student, according to a new lawsuit against Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin by the student’s estate.

George Watts was waiting for FDA approval of Pfizer’s Comirnaty to fulfill the COVID vaccine mandate at New York’s Corning Community College, which provided a 35-day grace period for compliance following Comirnaty’s Aug. 23, 2021, approval, the filing states.

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YouTube Reverses Misinformation Policy, Allows Claims About 2020 Election on Platform

Virginia Star Staff

YouTube reversed its misinformation policy regarding content about elections on Friday and will now permit content that questions the veracity of the 2020 presidential election results, according to the company’s website.

YouTube’s parent company Google has a policy that prohibits content “advancing false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in certain past elections to determine heads of government,” and Youtube wrote in December 2020 that it would remove content that “misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.” The platform will now “stop removing” such content about the 2020 election, per its website.

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Commentary: Combating the Censorship Industrial Complex

RealClearWire

It’s been nearly six months since the first installment of the Twitter Files — the journalistic effort by Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, and many others to expose the myriad channels by which the U.S government cooperated with Twitter on content moderation and censorship — was first published. Twitter Files One, perhaps the mildest of more than 20 unique reports, details the social media company’s internal deliberations in the days before the New York Post’s story about Hunter Biden’s laptop was removed from the site. Later reports have exposed the tendrils of a governmental apparatus that influenced some of the most significant media distortions in recent American history, from the fraudulent Hamilton 68 misinformation tracking dashboard to the FBI’s intimate involvement with Twitter’s content-moderation practices.

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‘Boycott Target’ Song Climbs iTunes Charts, Garners Millions of Views

Just the News

The song “Boycott Target” has garnered millions of views online and climbed to No. 3 on iTunes Hip-Hop charts within days of being released. 

“Attention all shoppers: There’s a clean-up on every aisle. Target is targeting your kids,” the song by Forgiato Blow and Jimmy Levy featuring Nick Nittoli and Stoney Dudebro opens up. The music video, which has more than 3.6 million views on Twitter, features the rappers walking through what appears to be Target as they hold up Pride-themed merchandise.

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FBI Raid on Media Consultant’s Home Linked to Probe into Tucker Carlson Leaks: REPORT

Admin

An FBI raid of the home of a media consultant in Tampa was linked to a probe into leaked videos involving former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the Tampa Bay Times reported Friday.

FBI agents searched the home of Tim Burke, a media consultant who also worked with media outlets, and Tampa City Council member Lynn Hurtak May 8 as part of a probe into backstage videos and unaired footage obtained by Vice News and Media Matters, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

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Louisiana Republican State Senator Joins Democrats to Kill Bill to Protect Minors from Gender Transition Hormone Drugs and Surgeries

Susan Berry, PhD

Louisiana State Sen. Fred Mills (R-Acadiana), a former Democrat and a pharmacy owner backed by the pharmaceutical industry, joined with Democrats of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee to kill a bill, already passed by the state House, that would have protected minors from life-altering gender transition procedures.

HB648, a bill that would “prohibit certain procedures to alter the sex of a minor child,” including providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries such as elective double mastectomies and castrations, was killed in committee, by a vote of 5-4, with Mills, the GOP chair of the committee, breaking the tie to side with the Democrats.

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Commentary: The Clear and Present AI Danger

RealClearWire

Does artificial intelligence threaten to conquer humanity? In recent months, the question has leaped from the pages of science fiction novels to the forefront of media and government attention. It’s unclear, however, how many of the discussants understand the implication of that leap.

In the public mind, the threat either focuses narrowly on the inherent confusion of ever-better deep fakes and its consequences for the job market, or points in directions that would make a great movie: What if AI systems decide that they’re superior to humans, seize control, and put genocidal plans into practice? That latter focus is obviously the more compelling of the two.

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‘Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria’ Paper to be Retracted for Bogus ‘Informed Consent’ Violation: Author

Just the News

An academic paper based on a parental survey of suspected rapid-onset gender dysphoria in nearly 1,700 children, which drew criticism from transgender activists and allies, could soon be retracted by its publisher over a pretextual dispute about informed consent, according to its corresponding author.

Springer Nature is currently investigating “concerns” about the paper’s methodology following threats by academics to boycott the Archives of Sexual Behavior until its longtime editor, pioneering gender dysphoria researcher Kenneth Zucker, is replaced for accepting the ROGD paper among others questioning common LGBTQ narratives.

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Virginia’s Miyares Joins Lawsuit Against Robocall Company

The Center Square

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares has joined a nationwide lawsuit against Avid Telecom for “violating” the Telephone Consumer Protection Act for allegedly “facilitating billions of illegal robocalls.”

Miyares is joining a bipartisan coalition of 48 attorneys general from across the country in filing the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona. 

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Twitter’s Top Engineer Resigns after DeSantis’ Glitch-Plagued Presidential Announcement on Platform

Just the News

The head of Twitter’s engineering operations has resigned after the platform’s hosting of Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis’ glitch-plagued 2024 presidential campaign launch.

“After almost four incredible years at Twitter, I decided to leave the nest yesterday,” Twitter’s Foad Dabiri tweeted. “The combination of the fantastic community, the impact it has, and its limitless potential sets Twitter apart.”

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Leftist Media Celebrate Teens Traveling to Washington, D.C. for ‘Trans Youth Prom’ on Capitol Lawn

Susan Berry, PhD

The leftist media celebrated a “Trans Youth Prom” on the Capitol lawn this week in Washington, D.C., an event that reportedly drew not only young teens experiencing gender dysphoria, but transgender children as young as age five, from 16 states, with the backing of American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney and transgender activist Chase Strangio.

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