International
Biden admin expands Title IX to include ‘gender identity,’ sparking conservative backlash
From LifeSiteNews
“It will be the end of women’s sports, sex-segregated restrooms, locker rooms, sororities, and dorms – all vanquished by an administrative state fiat that almost no one supports”
The Biden administration published on Friday changes to the Title IX discrimination law to now include “gender identity,” setting the stage for legal fights with nearly half the states, which have passed laws to protect women and children from the transgender ideology.
The newly published Title IX regulations expand the federal government’s prohibition against “discrimination” to now include under its umbrella “discrimination based on sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.”
The move has drawn strong public criticism from conservatives, who have rallied behind the protection of women and children from transgender ideology in schools and public spaces, and the erosion of basic safeguards such as sex-exclusive locker rooms, restrooms, and sports.
Rep. Julianne Young, member of the Idaho legislature who introduced the Gem State’s recent Definition of Sex law (which affirms that “there are only two sexes, male and female”) expressed her outrage at the administration’s abuse of a law originally meant to protect women so that it now does just the opposite.
In comments to LifeSiteNews on Biden’s new changes to Title IX, Young stated, “It is outrageous and unconscionable that the Biden administration is now using civil rights law created to protect women to assault them, undermining their privacy, dignity, and safety!”
Heritage Foundation conservative policymaker Jay Richards, who has worked extensively on legislation regarding transgender issues, told LifeSiteNews that, “The new rule interpreting title IX is, in fact, an assault on the point of the law itself. The law is intended to protect Americans against sex discrimination. But the new rule defines sex – the biological difference between male and female – to include ‘gender identity.’ Gender identity refers to a supposed internal subjective state. It is manifestly not the same as biological sex. This new rule is a paradigmatic example of using the rulemaking process to subvert a law duly passed by Congress. If applied, it will mean the destruction of women’s rights in particular.”
Brandon Showalter, host of the Christian Post podcast Generation Indoctrination: Inside the Transgender Battle, and co-author of the book Exposing the Gender Lie, told LifeSiteNews:
The spirit of the age, the great lie of our time, is rooted in a heinous, false anthropology – that an ineffable ‘gender identity’ known only to the person claiming to have one – defines a human being at the most basic, ontological level. When a material falsehood such as ‘you are whatever you say you feel’ is enshrined in government policy, as it has been in the recently revamped Title IX regulations, there are real-world consequences and women are girls almost always bear the cruelest brunt. Human beings are only ever always either male or female. No one has ever been born in the wrong sexed body and no one ever will be. All people of goodwill must continue to resist the abuse and degradation that gender ideology is wreaking on humanity.
Rep. Virginia Foxx, (R-NC) chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, also strongly condemned the new regulation saying, “This final rule dumps kerosene on the already raging fire that is Democrats’ contemptuous culture war that aims to radically redefine sex and gender.”
Former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who oversaw Trump administration reform of Title IX, which strengthened protections for women, told the Washington Examiner in February that Biden’s changes “may well be the most anti-woman regulation of all time.”
“It will be the end of women’s sports, sex-segregated restrooms, locker rooms, sororities, and dorms – all vanquished by an administrative state fiat that almost no one supports, which is why the Biden administration advanced it in the dark of night,” she warned. “Every parent and child should be horrified this rule is moving forward.”
DeVos said the new regulation “returns us to the untenable days where there is no due process on campus and instead radical gender ideologues call all the shots.”
“The rule is sexist, illegal, and unpopular, but appeasing the far-left flank is more important to the Biden administration than doing what’s right for students,” she insisted.
In a press release following the changes to Title IX, Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel Rachel Rouleau said, “The Biden administration’s radical redefinition of sex turns back the clock on equal opportunity for women, threatens student safety and privacy, and undermines fairness in women’s sports. It is a slap in the face to women and girls who have fought long and hard for equal opportunities.”
“The administration continues to ignore biological reality, science, and commonsense, and women are suffering as a result. The administration’s new regulation will have devastating consequences on the future of women’s sports, student privacy, and parental rights, which is why Alliance Defending Freedom plans to take action to defend female athletes, as well as school districts, teachers, and students who will be gravely harmed by this unlawful government overreach,” Rouleau stated.
In May 2023, a group of 22 Republican senators led by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, called on the president to withdraw the proposed changes to Title IX, arguing they ran contrary to Congress’ clear intention in passing the law.
“Congress made clear that its intention in passing Title IX was to prohibit discrimination against women participating fully in all aspects of athletic and academic opportunity at institutions that received federal financial assistance,” the senators wrote. “This proposed rule uses weakly-associated case law and polarizing social concepts to broaden the definition of women and girls to include individuals who identify as women, and in doing so, the intent of the law is destroyed and women are marginalized yet again.”
Censorship Industrial Complex
Congressional investigation into authors of ‘Disinformation Dozen’ intensifies
From LifeSiteNews
By Dr. Michael Nevradakis of The Defender
The Center for Countering Digital Hate, authors of ‘The Disinformation Dozen,’ faces a Nov. 21 deadline to provide Congress with documents related to its alleged collusion with the Biden administration and social media platforms to censor online users.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), authors of the “Disinformation Dozen,” faces a Nov. 21 deadline to provide Congress with documents related to its alleged collusion with the Biden administration and social media platforms to censor online users.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, on Nov. 7 subpoenaed CCDH as part of an ongoing congressional investigation, launched in August 2023, into the nonprofit’s censorship-related activities.
The subpoena requests all communications and documents “between or among CCDH, the Executive Branch, or third parties, including social media companies, relating to the identification of groups, accounts, channels, or posts for moderation, deletion, suppression, restriction, or reduced circulation.”
The subpoena also requests all records, notes, and other “documents of interactions between or among CCDH and the Executive Branch referring or relating to ‘killing’ or taking adverse action against Elon Musk’s X social media platform (formerly Twitter).”
CCDH previously included Kennedy on its “Disinformation Dozen” list, published in March 2021, of the 12 “leading online anti-vaxxers.”
Leaked CCDH documents released last month by investigative journalists Paul D. Thacker and Matt Taibbi revealed that CCDH sought to “kill” Twitter and launch “black ops” against Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee for secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
CCDH included Kennedy, founder of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), on its list of “The Disinformation Dozen” when he was still chairman of CHD.
“Black ops” are defined as a “secret mission or campaign carried out by a military, governmental or other organization, typically one in which the organization conceals or denies its involvement.”
A subsequent report by Taibbi and Thacker showed that CCDH employed tactics it initially developed to help U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the U.S. Democratic Party, to target Musk, Kennedy and others.
CCDH used ‘explicit military terminology’ to target speech
Thacker told The Defender the leaked documents “definitely spurred” Jordan’s subpoena.
Sayer Ji, the founder of GreenMedInfo, was also listed among “The Disinformation Dozen.” He said the leaked documents were “chilling” and that CCDH’s efforts were part of “the largest coordinated foreign influence operation targeting American speech since 1776.”
Ji told The Defender:
The leaked documents confirm what we experienced firsthand: CCDH wasn’t just targeting 12 individuals – we were test cases for deploying military-grade psychological operations against civilians at scale.
Just as the British Crown once used seditious libel laws to silence colonial dissent, CCDH’s operation expanded to silence hundreds of millions globally, from doctors sharing clinical observations to parents discussing vaccine injuries.
Ohio physician Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, also on “The Disinformation Dozen” list, told The Defender, “The exposure of the manipulation that went on behind the scenes to silence us is what we suspected, and now we know … We have the sad last laugh against their attacks. They are the ones with blood on their hands.”
Ji said CCDH’s internal communications reveal not just bias, “but explicit military terminology – ‘black ops,’ ‘target acquisition,’ ‘strategic deployment’ – coordinated between Five Eyes networks and dark money interests to target constitutionally protected speech.”
Writing on GreenMedInfo, Ji said, “CCDH’s ‘black ops’ approach includes coordinated media smears, economic isolation, and digital censorship.” Ji said CCDH’s activities represent “a new level of institutionalized power directed at civilian targets, often bypassing constitutional safeguards.”
Thacker said Jordan’s investigation should expand to include CCDH’s “black ops.”
“I don’t want to speculate on what CCDH was doing with ‘black ops’ against Kennedy,” Thacker said. “I think that should be explored by a congressional committee, with CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed put under oath,” Thacker said.
CCDH facing multiple lawsuits, possible Trump administration investigation
Jordan’s subpoena is the latest in a series of legal challenges for CCDH. According to GreenMedInfo, the organization faces several lawsuits and government investigations.
Following last month’s CCDH document leak, the Trump campaign said an investigation into CCDH “will be at the top of the list.”
The campaign also filed a complaint against the Harris campaign with the Federal Election Commission, “for making and accepting illegal foreign national contributions” – namely, from the U.K. Labour Party.
This followed the release of evidence indicating that the Biden administration coordinated with the U.K. Foreign Office as part of what GreenMedInfo described “as a systematic censorship regime involving CCDH and affiliated organizations.”
A lawsuit Musk filed against CCDH in July 2023 for allegedly illegally obtaining data and using it in a “scare campaign” to deter advertisers from X will likely proceed on appeal. A federal court initially dismissed the lawsuit in March.
Discovery in the Missouri v. Biden free speech lawsuit may also “shed further light and legal scrutiny on the critical role that CCDH played in allegedly suppressing and violating the civil liberties of U.S. citizens,” according to GreenMedInfo.
CCDH, others flee X in protest
Earlier this week, CCDH deleted its account on X, the platform it wanted to “kill.”
Writing on Substack, Ji said CCDH’s departure from X, during the same week Trump nominated Kennedy to lead HHS, represents a “seismic shift” and marks “a watershed moment, signaling the unraveling of entrenched systems of control and the rise of a new era for health freedom and open discourse.”
Several other left-leaning organizations and individuals, including The Guardian and journalist Don Lemon, also said they will stop using X, after Trump tapped Musk to lead a federal agency tasked with increasing government efficiency.
According to NBC News, many ordinary users are also fleeing X, citing “bots, partisan advertisements and harassment, which they all felt reached a tipping point when Donald Trump was elected president last week with Musk’s support.”
But according to Adweek, X’s former top advertisers, including Comcast, IBM, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Lionsgate Entertainment, resumed ad spending on the platform this year, but at “much lower rates” than before.
“Elon Musk’s ties with Donald Trump might spur some advertisers to think spending on X is good for business,” Adweek reported.
Thacker said CCDH’s deletion of its X account was “aligned” with the departure of “other organizations and ‘journalists’ aligned with the Democratic Party.” He said it appears to have been a “coordinated protest.”
Ji said organizations like CCDH view X “as an existential threat.” He added:
Having experienced both Twitter 1.0’s AI-driven censorship system and X’s more open environment, I understand exactly why CCDH sees X as an existential threat. X represents what Twitter 1.0’s embedded censorship infrastructure was designed to prevent: a truly free digital public square.
Under Musk’s commitment to free speech, their tactical advantage disappeared. They’re not leaving because X is toxic. They’re leaving because they can’t control it.
Online censorship ‘may no longer be sustainable under intensified scrutiny’
According to GreenMedInfo, CCDH’s departure from X “appears to reflect an internal recognition that their operational model – characterized by critics as a US-U.K. intelligence ‘cut-out’ facilitating unconstitutional suppression of civil liberties – may no longer be sustainable under intensified scrutiny.”
In recent months, several mainstream media outlets have corrected stories that relied upon CCDH reports claiming “The Disinformation Dozen” was responsible for up to two-thirds of vaccine-related “misinformation” online.
According to Thacker, this reflects an increasing awareness by such outlets that readers are turning their backs on such reporting.
“The outlets that promoted CCDH propaganda are being investigated by their own readers, who are fleeing in droves. Readers are voting against this type of propaganda by refusing to subscribe to these media outlets,” Thacker said.
Yet, “many outlets continue to host these demonstrably false narratives without correction,” Ji said.
According to Ji, these false narratives resulted in medical professionals fearing the loss of their licenses for expressing non-establishment views, self-censorship among scientists “to avoid career destruction,” suppression of “critical public health discussions” and the labeling of millions of posts as “misinformation.”
“This isn’t just about suppressing speech. It’s about establishing a new form of digital control that echoes the colonial-era suppression our founders fought against,” Ji said.
“CCDH has polluted political discourse by pretending there is some absolute definition of the term ‘misinformation’ and that they hold the dictionary,” Thacker said. “That’s nonsense. They spread hate and misinformation to attack perceived political enemies of the Democratic Party.”
Ji called upon Congress to investigate “The full scope of those silenced beyond the ‘Disinformation Dozen,’” the “systematic suppression of scientific debate,” “media organizations’ role in amplifying foreign influence operations” and “dark money funding networks” supporting such organizations.
Thacker said Congress should examine possible CCDH violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. “We need to also look at how much foreign money they took in and whether we as a nation are comfortable with foreign influence trying to alter the law and political discussions.”
“The fight isn’t just about correcting past wrongs or personal vindication. It’s about preserving fundamental rights to free speech and scientific inquiry in the digital age,” Ji said. “If we don’t address this systematic abuse of power, we risk surrendering the very freedoms our founders fought to establish.”
This article was originally published by The Defender – Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
International
Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy Outline Sweeping Plan to Cut Federal Regulations And Staffing
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy published an op-ed Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal that revealed their huge plans for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Civil service protections won’t shield federal workers from mass layoffs, according to the op-ed. Musk and Ramaswamy outlined a sweeping plan to cut federal regulations and staffing, marking the most detailed glimpse yet into Trump’s downsizing strategy.
The pair, acting as “outside volunteers,” pledged to collaborate with Trump’s transition team to assemble a “lean team of small-government crusaders.” This team, they said, would work closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget to implement their vision.
The initiative focuses on three core objectives: cutting regulations, reducing administrative overhead, and achieving cost savings. Legal experts and advanced technology will help identify regulations that overstep congressional authority. These rules would be presented to Trump, who could halt enforcement and begin the repeal process through executive action.
BREAKING: Donald Trump has officially announced Elon Musk & Vivek Ramaswamy will lead Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) pic.twitter.com/9WNn5FojN1
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) November 13, 2024
“A drastic reduction in federal regulations provides sound industrial logic for mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy. DOGE intends to work with embedded appointees in agencies to identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions,” the op-ed revealed.
Musk and Ramaswamy acknowledged the impact of their plan and said displaced workers should be treated with dignity, proposing incentives like early retirement packages and severance pay to ease their transition into private-sector roles. Despite common assumptions, civil service protections won’t prevent these layoffs, they contended, as long as the terminations are framed as reductions in force rather than targeting specific employees.
Musk and Ramaswamy also advocated for relocating federal agencies out of Washington, D.C., and encouraging voluntary resignations from remote workers unwilling to return to the office full-time. “If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home,” they said.
Ramaswamy said Tuesday that federal employees must return to the office full-time. He noted on X, previously known as Twitter, that unions are hastily revising agreements to prevent job losses, claiming the prospect of a five-day office schedule has left some “in tears.”
Trump announced that Musk and Ramaswamy will co-lead a newly created DOGE during his second term. The duo will work with the White House Office of Management and Budget to streamline federal agencies, reduce wasteful spending, and eliminate excessive regulations.
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