Elon Musk says X will disobey Brazil court order to censor accounts, calls on judge to be impeached

Elon Musk stated that his social media platform will likely be forced to shut down operations in Brazil as a result of non-compliance with the court order, but argued that ‘principles matter more than profit.’

Elon Musk has pushed back on demands made in a Brazilian court order to censor certain accounts and called for the impeachment of a leading Supreme Court judge.

On Saturday, April 6, X (formerly known as Twitter) announced that it “has been forced by court decisions to block certain popular accounts in Brazil” under the threat of daily fines if the company fails to comply.

Shortly after the announcement, X owner Elon Musk said that the company would resist these demands, even if it had to shut down its operations in Brazil.

“We are lifting all restrictions,” the billionaire wrote. “This judge has applied massive fines, threatened to arrest our employees, and cut off access to 𝕏 in Brazil.”

“As a result, we will probably lose all revenue in Brazil and have to shut down our office there. But principles matter more than profit.”

In another post on X, Musk announced that his social media platform would publish the demands made by Supreme Court judge and head of Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court Alexandre de Moraes. Musk also called for de Moraes to be impeached and referred to him as “Brazil’s Darth Vader.”

“Coming shortly, 𝕏 will publish everything demanded by @Alexandre [de Moraes] and how those requests violate Brazilian law. This judge has brazenly and repeatedly betrayed the constitution and people of Brazil. He should resign or be impeached. Shame @Alexandre, shame.”

pic.twitter.com/dVI6TJWze7

— Te𝕏asLindsay™ (@TexasLindsay_) April 7, 2024

A few days prior, journalist Michael Shellenberger published the “Twitter Files Brazil,” which showed how the Deep State, led by de Moraes, had interfered in the 2022 presidential election by pressuring social media platforms to ban accounts that supported sitting president Jair Bolsonaro or questioned the electoral systems.

READ: New ‘Twitter Files’ show how Brazil’s deep state interfered in the 2022 presidential election

On March 30, 2022, the day after de Moraes took office as president of the TSE, the TSE mandated Twitter to, within a week and under the threat of a daily fine of 50,000 BRL (US$ 10,000), supply data on the monthly trend statistics for the hashtags #VotoImpressoNAO (“PrinteVoteNo”) and #VotoDemocraticoAuditavel (“DemocraticAuditableVote”).

In 2022, the court coerced Twitter into censoring several accounts, including two elected House members, for allegedly spreading “disinformation” under the threat of heavy fines. Twitter initially pushed back on these requests and appealed the orders but ended up complying with some of the requests due to the pressure of the heavy penalties.

Under Musk’s leadership, the social media platform appears to reject the censorship demands made by de Moraes and risk the shutdown of the company in Brazil.

“At any moment, Brazil’s Supreme Court could shut off all access to X/Twitter for the people of Brazil,” Shellenberger wrote on April 7 while reporting from Brazil. “It is not an exaggeration to say that Brazil is on the brink of dictatorship at the hands of a totalitarian Supreme Court Justice named Alexandre de Moraes.”

“President Lula da Silva is participating in the push toward totalitarianism,” he added. “Since taking office, Lula has massively increased government funding of the mainstream news media, most of which are encouraging increased censorship.”

In response to Musk’s announcement to disobey the court order, Brazil’s Attorney General Jorge Messias demanded “urgent regulations” of social media platforms. According to the Financial Times, Messias said, “It is urgent to regulate social networks.”

“We cannot live in a society in which billionaires domiciled abroad have control of social networks and put themselves in a position to violate the rule of law, failing to comply with court orders and threatening our authorities,” he added.

Musk called on users in Brazil to download and use a VPN (virtual private network) to be able to use the social media platform, should the government restrict access to X.

Related Topics:#AlexandredeMoraes #AndreasWailzer #BrazilSupremeCourtJudgeCensorship #ElonMuskBrazil #LifeSiteNews #XBrazil

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Worst kept secret—red tape strangling Canada’s economy

Published on February 22, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

In the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S.

According to a new Statistics Canada report, government regulation has grown over the years and it’s hurting Canada’s economy. The report, which uses a regulatory burden measure devised by KPMG and Transport Canada, shows government regulatory requirements increased 2.1 per cent annually from 2006 to 2021, with the effect of reducing the business sector’s GDP, employment, labour productivity and investment.

Specifically, the growth in regulation over these years cut business-sector investment by an estimated nine per cent and “reduced business start-ups and business dynamism,” cut GDP in the business sector by 1.7 percentage points, cut employment growth by 1.3 percentage points, and labour productivity by 0.4 percentage points.

While the report only covered regulatory growth through 2021, in the past four years an avalanche of new regulations has made the already existing problem of overregulation worse.

The Trudeau government in particular has intensified its regulatory assault on the extraction sector with a greenhouse gas emissions cap, new fuel regulations and new methane emissions regulations. In the last few years, federal diktats and expansions of bureaucratic control have swept the auto industry, child care, supermarkets and many other sectors.

Again, the negative results are evident. Over the past nine years, Canada’s cumulative real growth in per-person GDP (an indicator of incomes and living standards) has been a paltry 1.7 per cent and trending downward, compared to 18.6 per cent and trending upward in the United States. Put differently, if the Canadian economy had tracked with the U.S. economy over the past nine years, average incomes in Canada would be much higher today.

Also in the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S., and only about two-thirds as much new capital (on average) as workers in other developed countries.

Consequently, Canada is mired in an economic growth crisis—a fact that even the Trudeau government does not deny. “We have more work to do,” said Anita Anand, then-president of the Treasury Board, last August, “to examine the causes of low productivity levels.” The Statistics Canada report, if nothing else, confirms what economists and the business community already knew—the regulatory burden is much of the problem.

Of course, regulation is not the only factor hurting Canada’s economy. Higher federal carbon taxes, higher payroll taxes and higher top marginal income tax rates are also weakening Canada’s productivity, GDP, business investment and entrepreneurship.

Finally, while the Statistics Canada report shows significant economic costs of regulation, the authors note that their estimate of the effect of regulatory accumulation on GDP is “much smaller” than the effect estimated in an American study published several years ago in the Review of Economic Dynamics. In other words, the negative effects of regulation in Canada may be even higher than StatsCan suggests.

Whether Statistics Canada has underestimated the economic costs of regulation or not, one thing is clear: reducing regulation and reversing the policy course of recent years would help get Canada out of its current economic rut. The country is effectively in a recession even if, as a result of rapid population growth fuelled by record levels of immigration, the GDP statistics do not meet the technical definition of a recession.

With dismal GDP and business investment numbers, a turnaround—both in policy and outcomes—can’t come quickly enough for Canadians.

Matthew Lau

Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute

Business

‘Out and out fraud’: DOGE questions $2 billion Biden grant to left-wing ‘green energy’ nonprofit`

Published on February 22, 2025

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The EPA under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a ‘green energy’ group that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a “green energy” nonprofit that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists such as former Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams.

Founded in 2023 as a coalition of nonprofits, corporations, unions, municipalities, and other groups, Power Forward Communities (PFC) bills itself as “the first national program to finance home energy efficiency upgrades at scale, saving Americans thousands of dollars on their utility bills every year.” It says it “will help homeowners, developers, and renters swap outdated, inefficient appliances with more efficient and modernized options, saving money for years ahead and ensuring our kids can grow up with cleaner, pollutant-free air.”

The organization’s website boasts more than 300 member organizations across 46 states but does not detail actual activities. It does have job postings for three open positions and a form for people to sign up for more information.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, along with new EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, are raising questions about the $2 billion grant PFC received from the Biden EPA’s National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF), ostensibly for the “affordable decarbonization of homes and apartments throughout the country, with a particular focus on low-income and disadvantaged communities.”

PFC’s announcement of the grant is the organization’s only press release to date and is alarming given that the organization had somehow reported only $100 in revenue at the end of 2023.

“I made a commitment to members of Congress and to the American people to be a good steward of tax dollars and I’ve wasted no time in keeping my word,” Zeldin said. “When we learned about the Biden administration’s scheme to quickly park $20 billion outside the agency, we suspected that some organizations were created out of thin air just to take advantage of this.” Zeldin previously announced the Biden EPA had deposited the $20 billion in a Citibank account, apparently to make it harder for the next administration to retrieve and review it.

“As we continue to learn more about where some of this money went, it is even more apparent how far-reaching and widely accepted this waste and abuse has been,” he added. “It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion. That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue.”

Daniel Turner, executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, told the Beacon that in his opinion “for an organization that has no experience in this, that was literally just established, and had $100 in the bank to receive a $2 billion grant — it doesn’t just fly in the face of common sense, it’s out and out fraud.”

Prominent among PFC’s insiders is Abrams, the former Georgia House minority leader best known for persistent false claims about having the state’s gubernatorial election stolen from her in 2018. Abrams founded two of PFC’s partner organizations (Southern Economic Advancement Project and Fair Count) and serves as lead counsel for a third group (Rewiring America) in the coalition. A longtime advocate of left-wing environmental policies, Abrams is also a member of the national advisory board for advocacy group Climate Power.