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.

From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

Politicians claim that moral opposition to assisted suicide (or suicide in general) and euthanasia is religiously motivated and then make the leap to insisting that this means such opposition should be ignored.

Euthanasia activists are currently doing what they do best: the bait and switch. 

As the debate heats up in the U.K., all of the familiar tactics are on display. First, of course, there is the relentless lying. Despite the case study of Canada, the Netherlands, and Belgium – and despite disability activists, judges, palliative physicians, and the secretaries of health and justice warning that no “safeguards” will hold – U.K. euthanasia activists are insisting that this time everything will be different. 

The response to these critiques has been predictable but infuriating. Euthanasia activists insist that all of this is about religion – that those nasty Christians are, once again, seeking to impose their suffering-based theology on the country. (This despite the fact that even Ann Furedi, who heads up the U.K.’s second largest abortion provider, opposes the proposed assisted suicide law.) One good microcosmic example of this tactic comes from UK writer Julie Street, who posted to X (formerly Twitter): 

Just walked out of Mass bloody fuming – our priest used the homily to read a letter from the Catholic bishops telling people to oppose the Assisted Dying Bill then handed out cards with our local MP’s details on to lobby them. Religion has no place in politics or women’s rights. 

There is much to say in response, of course. Why is Street so surprised to discover that her Catholic priest and bishops are, in fact, Catholic? Is she ignorant of the religion that she at least appears to practice? How airtight does one’s mind have to be not to see assisted suicide and euthanasia as religious issues? Indeed, “euthanasia” is Greek for “good death” – the theological premises are baked right into the term. Or does Street think that religious people should shut their mouths in the political arena and voluntarily disenfranchise themselves as the fates of the weak are decided? 

Is Street also ignorant of the fact that it was largely due to the Catholic Church’s public opposition that Adolf Hitler moved the Nazi’s euthanasia operation underground? (We now know, of course, that the Nazis only claimed to have disbanded the T-4 program.) I thought progressives wanted a Church that stood up for the weak, vulnerable, and dispossessed – and who qualifies more than the sick, elderly, and those with disabilities? Christians are accused of not being loving enough, and then rebuked when they stand up for the victims the political class deems expendable – first the unborn, now those on the other end of life’s spectrum.  

But there’s more to this tactic than grating ignorance. Progressives like to play both sides of the fence. Take abortion, for example. Politicians like to claim that it is a religious issue, and that thus they cannot legislate against it due to the fact that we live in pluralistic societies. Many religious leaders are quite happy to follow this logic, claiming that since abortion is a political issue, it cannot be discussed in church. And all the while, the countless corpses of the aborted unborn pile up in the No Man’s Land between. 

The assisted suicide debate is unfolding along similar lines. Politicians claim that moral opposition to assisted suicide (or suicide in general) and euthanasia is religiously motivated and then make the leap to insisting that this means such opposition should be ignored. Meanwhile, because politicians are debating the issue, folks like Street can claim that because this is now a political issue, priests and pastors should keep their traps shut. See what they did there? It’s a neat trick, and despite how farcical and illogical it is, it seems to work with maddening regularity. 

In fact, the priest Julie Street had the good fortune to hear was standing in the tradition of the clergy who stood up against Adolf Hitler and his eugenicist gang – and fighting the same evil being advanced under many of the same premises, to boot. She should be grateful. If she can’t manage that, she should at least be better educated.   

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Jonathon Van Maren

Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National Post, National Review, First Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton Spectator, Reformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture War, Seeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of Abortion, Patriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life Movement, Prairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.