Heartland Daily News
U.S. House Oversight Investigates Censorship of Trump Shooting
From Heartland Daily News
By Casey Harper
“Google users report that autocompleted search prompts related to the assassination attempt of President Trump produced results for failed assassination attempts of former Presidents, including Harry Truman, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan—or even assassinations of historical figures such as Archduke Franz Ferdinand—but omitted from the list of automatically generated search suggestions the recent attempt on President Trump’s life”
U.S. House Oversight Chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., launched an investigation Wednesday into allegations that Google and Meta, formerly known as Facebook, censored or misrepresented content about President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Comer sent letters to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai Wednesday over the alleged censorship, which grabbed national attention after the near-fatal assassination attempt against Trump in Butler County, Pennsylvania July 13.
How Google and Facebook handled questions and searches about the assassination attempt against Trump sparked criticism.
“Specifically, Meta’s AI assistant claimed, ‘the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump was a ‘fictional’ event,’ even as the chatbot ‘had plenty to say about Democratic rival Kamala Harris’ run for the White House,” Comer wrote, citing a New York Post article. “When asked if the assassination on President Trump was fictional, Meta’s bot responded that there ‘was no real assassination attempt on Donald Trump. I strive to provide accurate and reliable information, but sometimes mistakes can occur.’ The bot further added, ‘[t]o confirm, there has been no credible report or evidence of a successful or attempted assassination of Donald Trump.’”
Facebook’s team also admitted that it censored the photo of a bloody Trump holding his fist in the air just after the shooting, a photo that went viral online and became a rallying point for his campaign.
“This was an error,” Facebook Communications Director Dani Levi wrote on X about the photo. “This fact check was initially applied to a doctored photo showing the secret service agents smiling, and in some cases our systems incorrectly applied that fact check to the real photo. This has been fixed and we apologize for the mistake.”
“Google users report that autocompleted search prompts related to the assassination attempt of President Trump produced results for failed assassination attempts of former Presidents, including Harry Truman, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan—or even assassinations of historical figures such as Archduke Franz Ferdinand—but omitted from the list of automatically generated search suggestions the recent attempt on President Trump’s life,” Comer wrote.
Google told CBS MoneyWatch that the search issues were technical “anomalies” that were unintentional and could affect anyone.
Comer’s investigation is calling for documents and answers on how Google’s search and autocomplete works. Google staff briefed the committee earlier this month.
“In response to preliminary staff inquiries, Google contends that the Autocomplete results omitted the Trump assassination attempt due to a safety protocol concerning predicted assassination attempts of current political leaders, and Google had not yet updated the Autocomplete feature to reflect that an assassination attempt of President Trump had occurred,” Comer wrote.
In his letter to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, formerly known as Facebook, Comer pointed out that the executive branch regulates the tech companies that can have bias in determining who runs the executive branch.
“The Committee has long been concerned with how large technology companies leverage their businesses to influence public opinion—especially the design and use of content moderation policies within private sector social media companies—and how company policies are shaped and influenced by Executive Branch officials,” Comer wrote in his letter to Zuckerberg.
After the issues last month, Trump blasted both companies online, saying “here we go again” and calling it “rigging the election,” an apparent reference to how social media companies at the urging of the FBI censored news stories about the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation but the laptop later was found to be real.
Originally published by The Center Square. Republished with permission.
Health
AGs Question Pediatricians Pushing Trans Treatment
From Heartland Daily News
In encouraging the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions, the AAP claims the treatments are reversible. The AG letter says that is “misleading and deceptive.”
“It is beyond medical debate that puberty blockers are not fully reversible, but instead come with serious long-term consequences,”
Attorney generals from 20 states and legislators from Arizona signed an interrogatory letter to the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) about the group’s support of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery for children and adolescents who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
“Often the AAP has exercised its influence responsibly,” states the letter. “… But when it comes to treating children diagnosed with gender dysphoria, the AAP has abandoned its commitment to sound medical judgment.”
The AG letter demanded responses to multiple questions about its child gender policies by October 8, and it stated AAP’s conduct is being reviewed further.
Idaho Attorney General Raul R. Labrador sent the letter, and AGs from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia signed it, as did the president of the Arizona State Senate and the speaker of the Arizona House.
Sounding an Alarm
The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), an alternative medical professional organization, has spent years sounding the alarm on AAP-approved transgender treatments.
ACPeds organized a coalition of health care professionals to create the Doctors Protecting Children Declaration, a document urging organizations to stop promoting what ACPeds calls unethical, harmful practices in treating children with gender dysphoria. Some 82,500 professionals and concerned citizens have signed the declaration.
“We have personally reached out to the AAP leadership and leaders of the other named organizations, asking them to put a stop to this, and have not received a response,” said ACPeds Executive Director Jill Simons, M.D.
“Unfortunately, the leadership of the AAP and other organizations have silenced their very members from engaging in medical discourse when they have put in question these harmful protocols, and they continue to double down on them even as they stand without evidence-based research to support their current positions,” said Simons.
Questioning What’s ‘Reversible’
In encouraging the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions, the AAP claims the treatments are reversible. The AG letter says that is “misleading and deceptive.”
“It is beyond medical debate that puberty blockers are not fully reversible, but instead come with serious long-term consequences,” the letter states.
The letter cites the widely recognized Cass Review commissioned by Britain’s National Health Service and published in April.
“The Cass Review was monumental in demonstrating, through the most thorough review of the research and current protocols and outcomes in England, that the current protocols of social affirmation, puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones do not improve the health outcomes of children with gender dysphoria and in fact there is evidence of causing harm,” said Simons.
“Dr. Hilary Cass’s recommendation has shut down the practice of transitioning kids in England,” said Simons. “Many other European countries are also reversing course and returning to proven medical care, which is supportive mental health and addressing underlying diagnoses.”
Leaked files from the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) and a recent statement from the American Society of Plastics Surgeons have bolstered the case against surgical and hormonal trans treatments, says Simons.
APA, AMA Uninterested
A growing number of people are recognizing the validity of the studies, says Dr. Tim Millea, chair of the Health Care Policy Committee and Conscience Rights Protection Task Force of the Catholic Medical Association (CMA).
“Physician organizations such as AAP and [American Medical Association] appear to be uninterested in those studies, at the expense of ongoing harm to Americans that they encourage to enter the ‘gender-industrial’ medical system,” said Millea. “It seems to be true that the leadership of these groups prioritize ideology over science, which is a dereliction of duty in the vocation of medicine.”
Doctors Afraid to Speak Out
Most U.S. pediatricians are members of the AAP. Dissent within the organization has led to the development of alternative professional organizations such as ACPeds. The AAP is too radical for most pediatricians, though they are reluctant to say so, says Simons.
“I speak to countless pediatricians who are members of the AAP who disagree with the AAP’s policies and fully support our efforts to put a stop to these unethical protocols, but they are truly fearful of losing their jobs and the harms that will come to them if they speak out,” said Simons. “I unfortunately speak to pediatricians who have been reprimanded and even fired for speaking out.”
Going to Court
The AAP has been named in multiple lawsuits against doctors and hospitals. Members of ACPeds have served as expert witnesses and submitted amicus briefs to fight the AAP’s gender treatment protocols.
ACPeds also filed a lawsuit against the Biden-Harris administration for its rule requiring doctors to perform gender transition procedures on minors against their medical judgment.
“The American College of Pediatricians is filing this lawsuit against HHS because doctors should never be forced to violate their sound medical judgment and perform life-altering and sterilizing interventions on their patients,” stated ACPeds news release. “Our doctors take an oath to do no harm, but the Biden administration’s rule forces them to violate this oath and perform procedures that are harmful and dangerous to our patients– vulnerable children. What the Biden Administration is calling for is wrong and unlawful.”
Over the past several years, the CMA has been involved in gender intervention cases around the country and plans to file an amicus brief for the Supreme Court case United States v. Skrmetti, scheduled to be heard during the current session.
Changing the Culture
CMA hosted a two-hour panel discussion on September 8, 2024, in which several de-transitioners recounted the harms they suffered from gender transition procedures as minors. The organization wants to make sex-change procedures among children, teens, and young adults unthinkable, says Millea.
“There are three areas of emphasis to accomplish that goal, and two of them are judicial and legislative,” said Millea. “The third is of greatest importance, and that is cultural. The public needs to learn and understand the negative and lifelong risks and complications of gender transition.
“We remain hopeful that doctors will push back against these protocols and follow their oath to do no harm,” said Simons. “There will be a tipping point when doctors are no longer fearful and will speak out.”
Ashley Bateman ([email protected]) writes from Virginia.
Censorship Industrial Complex
‘Silicon Curtain’ Is Protecting Government Censorship
From Heartland Daily News
By AnneMarie Schieber
Citing Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” metaphor describing the Cold War division of Europe, health care policy expert Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told an audience, “We are now in the middle of a Silicon Curtain of censorship descending across the previously free West.”
In a keynote address at The Heartland Institute’s Benefit Dinner in Chicago on September 13, Bhattacharya said public health is the new “fig leaf” for justifying government censorship.
“Free speech is in dire danger in the U.S.,” said Bhattacharya. “The government will use its power to suppress criticism [of] its own misinformation.”
Bhattacharya is a plaintiff in Murthy v. Missouri, in which the Supreme Court lifted a preliminary injunction directing the Biden administration not to “coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to suppress protected speech” and remanded the case to a lower court.
“This gives a way to the government to censor at will,” said Bhattacharya. “All they have to do is send emails and algorithms to social media companies without naming a single person—just name ideas not allowed to be said online.
“The First Amendment, in effect, is an unenforceable dead letter,” said Bhattacharya.
Under Fire for Opinions
Bhattacharya, a medical doctor and professor of medicine, economics, and health care research policy at Stanford University, rose to prominence when he published The Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) on October 4, 2020, with epidemiologists Martin Kulldorff and Sunetra Gupta. The declaration criticized COVID lockdowns and urged authorities to focus on keeping children in school and protecting the elderly instead of imposing broad-based restrictions.
Although the writers were highly recognized for their work and associated with Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford Universities, respectively, powerful government figures denounced them. Francis Collins, then director of the National Institutes of Health, and Anthony Fauci, then director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called the trio “fringe epidemiologists” in emails that were made public later.
Ostracized and Blacklisted
Bhattacharya was ostracized by other professors at Stanford and was blacklisted on Twitter. When Elon Musk purchased the social media giant, he discovered the list and shared it with Bhattacharya.
Google “de-boosted” the GBD, which was posted online and signed by more than 940,000 doctors, researchers, and concerned citizens. Facebook banned posting of it altogether.
Using internal government emails they obtained, the plaintiffs showed the government was controlling social media companies by threatening to regulate them out of business if they didn’t abide by the Biden administration’s censorship demands.
The White House also used universities to help with the censorship work, which the government is prohibited from doing directly. Bhattacharya brought up the case of the Stanford Internet Observatory, which received government grants to develop algorithms to target a particular idea. The government shared that information with social media platforms.
Rising Worldwide
Europe, Canada, the U.K., and Australia have led the way on legislation to control speech, Bhattacharya told the audience. The bills and laws ostensibly outlaw violence, pornography, and hate on the internet, carry Orwellian names, and establish authorities to do the enforcement.
These include the Digital Services Act in the E.U., the Online Harms Act in Canada, and the Online Safety Act of 2023 in the U.K. A bill in France establishes a digital “safety” commission for the same purpose.
“It is dangerous to let governments have control over the definition of hate,” said Bhattacharya. “It’s even more dangerous to allow government to determine what is misinformation because science and medicine depend on free speech to operate properly.”
Censoring Political Opponents
Scott Jensen, a medical doctor and Minnesota state senator who ran against Tim Walz for governor in 2022, says his respect for Bhattacharya is immense. Jensen was a prominent critic of COVID-19 policies, and Facebook censored his election page. Jensen lost the race, and Walz went on to implement some of the most draconian COVID-19 restrictions and is Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate in this year’s election for president.
“Dr. Bhattacharya’s willingness to present and stand by a contrarian narrative—which ultimately proved to be profoundly wise—will go down in history as an act of immense courage in the face of smothering government censorship fueled by behemoth, profit-driven technological companies,” said Jensen.
“American’s First Amendment rights are under attack by a political elite, but Dr. Jay Bhattacharya continues to stand in the breach and do whatever is necessary to protect and defend free speech,” said Jensen.
AnneMarie Schieber ([email protected]) is the managing editor of Health Care News.
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