Daily Caller
‘Zuck Bucks’ Need To Be Stopped Cold

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Jason Snead
It is less than 90 days to Election Day, and right on queue the group behind the “Zuck Bucks” campaign of 2020 is back with a new scheme. This time, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) is doling out millions in grant dollars to rural election administrators in 19 states.
Election officers beware. The group is trying to turn the government offices that run elections into bastions of partisan progressive activism. Election officials striving for nonpartisanship should steer clear.
CTCL rose to prominence during the unprecedented election of 2020. The group got $350 million from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, which it then funneled disproportionately to swing-state communities that ultimately voted for Joe Biden.
Racine, Wisconsin used its CTCL money to purchase a mobile voting van that in 2022 it deployed to heavily Democrat areas of the city to register voters and collect ballots. Earlier this year, a judge declared that illegal.
After 2020, a majority of states moved to ban or restrict private funding for running election offices, including several on a bipartisan basis. This year, Wisconsin voters approved two constitutional amendments to ban private funding after the scope of CTCL’s involvement was revealed. Even Mark Zuckerberg announced he would no longer back the group’s grants.
But that did not stop CTCL. Instead, it created “Zuck Bucks 2.0,” an $80 million program called the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence.
Now, CTCL is offering grants to rural counties, saying it is merely helping cash-strapped offices on the eve of a contentious election. Sound familiar?
The sudden interest in flyover country is laughable. In 2020, rural areas got token grants of just $5,000 while urban areas got millions. CTCL claimed that big cities have more voters and therefore need more money. Subsequent analyses showed that blue counties got far money more per voter than red counties.
Perhaps CTCL hopes this move can insulate it against criticism that it is once again influencing elections. Not so fast. Reports indicate that CTCL is setting aside $2.5 million for rural grants.
CTCL is giving $3 million to Clark County, Nevada, for this election cycle alone. Add in the huge grants offered to heavily Democrat DeKalb County, Georgia and Madison, Wisconsin, and CTCL has given nearly three times the grants to just these heavily Democrat areas (located in swing states, no less) than hundreds of rural counties could get combined.
In fairness, CTCL is not wrong that rural areas often need additional resources. But those funds should come from state and local taxpayers, not partisan groups pushing an agenda.
And make no mistake, CTCL has a political agenda. Though it claims to be nonpartisan, it’s founder and executive director is a former Obama Foundation fellow and used to work at a group the Washington Post once labeled the “Democratic party’s Hogwarts for digital wizardry.” CTCL’s donors are just as left-wing, with major liberal organizations like the Skoll Foundation, Democracy Fund, and Arabella Advisors’ New Venture Fund footing its bills.
Small wonder, then, that by this April 28 states had banned or restricted CTCL-style private funding. Over the last few years, residents in communities from Greenwich, Connecticut, to Brunswick County, North Carolina, have opposed election administrators joining ranks with such a partisan group. Ottawa County, Michigan, declined to accept $1.5 million in CTCL funds with the county clerk explaining that accepting the grant could compromise public confidence in elections.
Over the next few months, CTCL will offer hundreds of rural counties “free” money. Many may feel inclined to take it. Before they do, they should know who they are doing business with.
Rural election offices may need additional funding, but turning to partisan groups like CTCL just puts public trust in elections at risk. County officials should treat CTCL’s latest offer of “free” money the way they would treat a windowless van hanging a sign marked “free candy:”
Stay away and warn your friends.
Jason Snead is the Executive Director of Honest Elections Project Action.
Business
Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan Ramp Up Pressure On Google Parent Company To Deal With ‘Censorship’

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Andi Shae Napier
Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan are turning their attention to Google over concerns that the tech giant is censoring users and infringing on Americans’ free speech rights.
Google’s parent company Alphabet, which also owns YouTube, appears to be the GOP’s next Big Tech target. Lawmakers seem to be turning their attention to Alphabet after Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta ended its controversial fact-checking program in favor of a Community Notes system similar to the one used by Elon Musk’s X.
Cruz recently informed reporters of his and fellow senators’ plans to protect free speech.
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“Stopping online censorship is a major priority for the Commerce Committee,” Cruz said, as reported by Politico. “And we are going to utilize every point of leverage we have to protect free speech online.”
Following his meeting with Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai last month, Cruz told the outlet, “Big Tech censorship was the single most important topic.”
Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent subpoenas to Alphabet and other tech giants such as Rumble, TikTok and Apple in February regarding “compliance with foreign censorship laws, regulations, judicial orders, or other government-initiated efforts” with the intent to discover how foreign governments, or the Biden administration, have limited Americans’ access to free speech.
“Throughout the previous Congress, the Committee expressed concern over YouTube’s censorship of conservatives and political speech,” Jordan wrote in a letter to Pichai in March. “To develop effective legislation, such as the possible enactment of new statutory limits on the executive branch’s ability to work with Big Tech to restrict the circulation of content and deplatform users, the Committee must first understand how and to what extent the executive branch coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech.”
Jordan subpoenaed tech CEOs in 2023 as well, including Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Tim Cook of Apple and Pichai, among others.
Despite the recent action against the tech giant, the battle stretches back to President Donald Trump’s first administration. Cruz began his investigation of Google in 2019 when he questioned Karan Bhatia, the company’s Vice President for Government Affairs & Public Policy at the time, in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Cruz brought forth a presentation suggesting tech companies, including Google, were straying from free speech and leaning towards censorship.
Even during Congress’ recess, pressure on Google continues to mount as a federal court ruled Thursday that Google’s ad-tech unit violates U.S. antitrust laws and creates an illegal monopoly. This marks the second antitrust ruling against the tech giant as a different court ruled in 2024 that Google abused its dominance of the online search market.
Daily Caller
Daily Caller EXCLUSIVE: Trump’s Broad Ban On Risky Gain-Of-Function Research Nears Completion

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Emily Kopp
President Donald Trump could sign a sweeping executive order banning gain-of-function research — research that makes viruses more dangerous in the lab — as soon as May 6, according to a source who has worked with the National Security Council on the issue.
The executive order will take a broad strokes approach, banning research amplifying the infectivity or pathogenicity of any virulent and replicable pathogen, according to the source, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the anticipated executive action. But significant unresolved issues remain, according to the source, including whether violators will be subject to criminal penalties as bioweaponeers.
The executive order is being steered by Gerald Parker, head of the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, which has been incorporated into the NSC. Parker did not respond to requests for comment.
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In the process of drafting the executive order, Parker has frozen out the federal agencies that have for years championed gain-of-function research and staved off regulation — chiefly Anthony Fauci’s former institute, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.
The latest policy guidance on gain-of-function research, unveiled under the Biden administration in 2024, was previously expected to go into effect May 6. According to a March 25 letter cosigned by the American Society for Microbiology, the Association for Biosafety and Biosecurity International, and Council on Governmental Relations, organizations that conduct pathogen research have not received direction from the NIH on that guidance — suggesting the executive order would supersede the May 6 deadline.
The 2024 guidance altered the scope of experiments subject to more rigorous review, but charged researchers, universities and funding agencies like NIH with its implementation, which critics say disincentivizes reporting. Many scientists say that researchers and NIH should not be the primary entities conducting cost–benefit analyses of pandemic virus studies.
Parker previously served as the head of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), a group of outside experts that advises NIH on biosecurity matters, and in that role recommended that Congress stand up a new government agency to advise on gain-of-function research. Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield has also endorsed moving gain-of-function research decision making out of the NIH to an independent commission.
“Given the well documented lapses in the NIH review process, policymakers should … remove final approval of any gain-of function research grants from NIH,” Redfield said in a February op-ed.
It remains to be seen whether the executive order will articulate carveouts for gain-of-function research without risks of harm such as research on non-replicative pseudoviruses, which can be used to study viral evolution without generating pandemic viruses.
It also remains to be seen whether the executive order will define “gain-of-function research” tightly enough to stand up to legal scrutiny should a violator be charged with a crime.
Risky research on coronaviruses funded by the NIH at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through the U.S. nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance typifies the loopholes in NIH’s existing regulatory framework, some biosecurity experts say.
Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act in 2023 indicated that EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak submitted a proposal to the Pentagon in 2018 called “DEFUSE” describing gain-of-function experiments on viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 but downplayed to his intended funder the fact that many of the tests would occur in Wuhan, China.
Daszak and EcoHealth were both debarred from federal funding in January 2025 but have faced no criminal charges.
“I don’t know that criminal penalties are necessary. But we do need more sticks in biosafety as well as carrots,” said a biosecurity expert who requested anonymity to avoid retribution from his employer for weighing in on the expected policy. “For instance, biosafety should be a part of tenure review and whether you get funding for future work.”
Some experts say that it is likely that the COVID-19 crisis was a lab-generated pandemic, and that without major policy changes it might not be the last one.
“Gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens caused the COVID-19 pandemic, killing 20 million and costing $25 trillion,” said Richard Ebright, a Rutgers University microbiologist and longtime critic of high-risk virology, to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “If not stopped, gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens likely will cause future lab-generated pandemics.”
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