Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Apr 3 27 tweets 18 min read Read on X
TWITTER FILES - BRAZIL

Brazil is engaged in a sweeping crackdown on free speech led by a Supreme Court justice named Alexandre de Moraes.

De Moraes has thrown people in jail without trial for things they posted on social media. He has demanded the removal of users from social media platforms. And he has required the censorship of specific posts, without giving users any right of appeal or even the right to see the evidence presented against them.

Now, Twitter Files, released here for the first time, reveal that de Moraes and the Superior Electoral Court he controls engaged in a clear attempt to undermine democracy in Brazil. They:

— illegally demanded that Twitter reveal personal details about Twitter users who used hashtags he did not like;

— demanded access to Twitter’s internal data, in violation of Twitter policy;

— sought to censor, unilaterally, Twitter posts by sitting members of Brazil’s Congress;

— sought to weaponize Twitter’s content moderation policies against supporters of then-president @jairbolsonaro

The Files show: the origins of the Brazilian judiciary’s demand for sweeping censorship powers; the court’s use of censorship for anti-democratic election interference; and the birth of the Censorship Industrial Complex in Brazil.

TWITTER FILES - BRAZIL was written by @david_agape_ @EliVieiraJr & @shellenberger

We presented these findings to de Moraes, to the Supreme Court (STF), and to the High Electoral Court (TSE). None responded.

Let’s get into it...
“We are… pushing back against the requests...”

On February 14, 2020, Twitter’s legal counsel in Brazil, Rafael Batista, emailed his colleagues to describe a hearing in Congress on “Disinformation and 'fake news’”

Batista revealed that members of Brazil’s Congress had asked Twitter for the “content of messages exchanged by some users via DMs” as well as “login records - among other info.”

Batista said, “We are… pushing back against the requests,” which were illegal, “because they do not meet [Brazilian Internet law] Marco Civil legal requirements for disclosure of user's records.”

Batista noted that some conservative Twitter users had gone to the Supreme Court “after they learned from the media that the Congress was trying to get their IPs and DM content. In light of this, the Supreme Court granted an injunction suspending the requirement given its failure to fulfill legal requirements.”Image
CONTEXT: Brazil’s Supreme Court and Superior Electoral Court

Seven justices comprise Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE).

Three of those justices are also members of the Supreme Court (STF).

One of them, Alexandre de Moraes, presides over the TSE.

Here's background on the rise of Brazil's Censorship Industrial Complex by @david_agape_

“Google, Facebook, Uber, WhatsApp and Instagram provide registration data and phone numbers without court order”

On January 27, 2021, Batista emailed his colleagues about a police investigation against him for refusing to give personal Twitter user data to the São Paulo State Public Prosecutor Office.

The Prosecutor claimed that Twitter’s “attitude is isolated, because all the other big technology companies such as Google, Facebook, Uber, WhatsApp, and Instagram provide registration data and phone numbers without a court order."

But Twitter “has not [sic] affirmative obligation to collect registration data” explained Batista to the prosecutor and “there is no phone number associated with the account under investigation.”Image
“This is the first time an actual criminal investigation was filed against an employee”

On February 18, 2021, Batista emailed his colleagues again to report back on his deposition. He said he told the prosecutor that “Twitter operates in Brazil since 2012 and this is the first time an actual criminal investigation was filed against an employee for allegedly non-compliance either with a request or a court order.”

Batista said he pointed out that “There is no affirmative obligation in the country for collection and consequently provision of 'registration data'."

Moreover, Brazil’s Internet privacy law, “Marco Civil… covers only: "I - physical address; and II - personal qualifications: understood as full name, marital status and profession" - none of them collected by Twitter.”Image
“We are unfortunately living strange times in Brazil.”

One month later, on March 18, Batista emailed his colleagues again, this time with, “Great news!” A judge rejected the prosecutor’s request for “private user information absent a court order” and also “rebukes the prosecutor for forcing compliance through a non-existent obligation, without clarity about the purpose of the criminal investigation and most importantly, reinforcing that acts that seek to identify private and constitutionally protected information require previous judicial review.”
A colleague of Batista, Regina Lima, replied to his email saying, “What Rafa forgot to mention is that the employee under threat here was him, the matter continued to escalate in a dangerous way and his resilience throughout the process was amazing.”

She added, “We are unfortunately living strange times in Brazil. We are seeing a concerning trend on aggressive law enforcement requests and court orders restricting fundamental rights.”Image
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“An unfortunate and surprising update”

Then, on March 30, Batista emailed his colleagues again with “An unfortunate and surprising update”: the São Paulo State Public Prosecutor Office was back on the attack, “initiating a criminal proceeding” and claiming a “conflict of interest/lack of impartiality of the Judge.”
One week later, on April 5, 2021, Batista emailed his colleagues to say, “I am happy to share that we had great and relieving news…. The criminal court preliminary dismissed the charges against me mainly because it was not possible to identify any element of crime in my conduct.”

The ruling was because Twitter does not collect “registration data” of its users and the Marco Civil “clearly states that access to protected information such email - personal data - could only be done through specific judicial review.”Image
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“Google Brazil… weakens our stance on privacy since we have always pushed back…

On May 31, 2021, Batista wrote to his colleagues to lament that “Google delivered to the Brazilian Senate at least 200 gigs of videos that had been deleted from YouTube by people connected to the federal government” related to a Brazilian Senate investigation of the government’s response to COVID-19.

Batista called Google’s actions “a very concerning precedent… that contradicts and weakens our stance towards privacy since we have always pushed back against requests from congressional commissions, even when involving only basic subscribe info and IPs….”

In the same email, Batista noted that a member of Congress named Gleisi Hoffmann, who presides over Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party, and who had sued Twitter for “attacks against her honor,” seeking “private data and removal of some Tweets,” had finally dropped her lawsuit.Image
"Unmask several Twitter accounts..."

In the same email, Batista noted that a court in São Paulo had demanded that Twitter “unmask several Twitter accounts… related to criticism/alleged offenses against Fernando Capez, a Brazilian professor and politician, former congressman and currently special secretary in the São Paulo Consumer Protection Agency” who was “a defendant in criminal proceedings - recently a federal court seized millions of reais from his bank account and the Tweets are related to these facts. We will therefore push back against this court order…”Image
“We won't deliver any name at this stage…”

On June 11, 2021, Batista emailed his colleagues to say that the government had opened a criminal investigation against Twitter and that Brazilian “authorities are seeking the name and address of the person responsible for conducting the case internally at Twitter…”

Batista reassured his colleagues: “We won't deliver any name at this stage…”Image
“Even though the complaint is legitimate, the requests are unreasonable”

Batista emailed his colleagues on June 14, 2021, to say that “Twitter was served last year with a 'complaint notice', which now was turned into a civil investigation against us.”

Batista explained that “The complaint was brought by Djamila Ribeiro, a Brazilian philosopher and journalist after racist offenses/hate crimes directed to her (no specific content has been provided though). Among several requests, she is seeking: i) monitoring measures of all trending topics to avoid offensive content especially against black woman; ii) disclosure of user information without court orders in racially motivated crimes; iii) message triggers in a regular basis informing people about ethical and legal parameters of responsibility for what is published on social networks; iv) standard messages/texts about such ethical and legal parameters to new users; v) payment of collective moral damages. “

Another case related to an “extreme right” blogger “akin to Alex Jones” named Allan dos Santos. Twitter wanted to suspend the user, explained Batista, but “the user's history of litigating to keep their accounts active… we worry that the inherent messiness of the internal reviews [at Twitter] could make it challenging to explain the basis of a suspension action. Therefore we've agreed to let the strike system play out, and have us take action when it is clear and unambiguous upon their next violation of our rules, which is just a matter of time considering his list of violations and recent Tweets on COVID issues/misinfo…”Image
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Information “related to @CarlosBolsonaro (president's son)”

On July 2, 2021, Batista reported on an information request “related to @CarlosBolsonaro (president's son) - We received an official letter from the federal police supported by a court order seeking registration data from @CarlosBolsonaro. Therefore, we are working on a reply where we will push back as follow (i) Twitter does not collect registration data - which under BR definition refers to personal data such as professional qualification, address and full name; (ii) it is not possible to provide data relating to a specific tweet - no IP available; (iii) even if it were possible, the legal retention period of logs in BR are 6 months and it has already been exceeded - Tweets are from 2018; and (iv) the profile @CarlosBolsonaro is a verified account."Image
“There is a strong political component with this investigation”

On August 18, 2021, Batista emailed his colleagues to say that the Superior Electoral Court has demanded that the accounts of “heavy supporters of President Bolsonaro” who “have been constantly engaging in coordinated attacks against members of the Supreme Court” and “Superior Electoral Court… The court order is focused on the demonetization of these accounts - from different platforms…”

These demands appeared to be politically motivated to target pro-Bolsonaro sentiment.

“Even though this obligation initially does not touch us, the court also determined Twitter, YouTube, Twitch TV, Instagram and Facebook to: i) refrain from algorithmically suggesting profiles and videos of political content discrediting the electoral system (legitimacy of elections) in association with those users/accounts and also ii) identify the origin of specific content (we have not been served with any specific Tweet URLs).”

Twitter’s Head of Legal Diego de Lima Gualda, a colleague of Batista’s, responded saying, “There is a strong political component with this investigation and the court is trying to put pressure for compliance.”Image
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The “court wants to identify account handles… and also somehow reduce engagement”

Two days later,  On August 20, 2021, Batista reported some alarming news about new demands from the Superior Electoral Court (TSE).

Batista reported that “it seems like the court wants to identify account handles that would have specifically added certain types of trending hashtags and also somehow reduce engagement of specific content on the platform (ie. refrain specific accounts from being suggested to others.”

This represented a significant escalation in the court’s anti-democratic efforts.

Batista noted that “President Bolsonaro himself and several of his supporters are being investigated in this procedure (15 Twitter account handles have been provided so far).”Image
“We are going to push back”

Brazil’s High Electoral Court (TSE), which de Moraes controls, also demanded that Twitter reveal the identities of users. On October 25, 2021, Twitter’s senior legal counsel, Rafael Batista, emailed his colleagues to let them know that the TSE was “compelling us to track down and unmask users who used specific hashtags.”

The TSE’s request was illegal, noted Batista, and so Twitter would resist the court’s order. Batista said that Twitter was “going to push back” because there was “no evidence of illegality in the use of hashtags” and because the TSE was demanding  “mass and indiscriminate disclosure of private user data, which characterizes a violation of privacy and other constitutional rights."Image
On November 26, 2021, the courts of Brazil issued sweeping censorship demands.

A court of appeals orders Twitter to “globally remove,” not just in Brazil, “specific URLs related to the plaintiff.”

The court claimed that Brazilians could find other ways to see the content, such as through a VPN, which masks a user’s location.

The court also sought to know the identities of users who were not in Brazil.

In another case, Twitter was “pushing back against an injunction that granted data provision (IP logs) to unmask 62 accounts that retweeted an original illegal content…” Of the 62 accounts, “8 accounts are not even located in Brazil…”Image
The Police are “under a lot of pressure from the Superior Electoral Court”

In March 2022, Twitter’s Head of Legal for Latin America saaid that he met with “the judge,” referring to de Moraes. He said he was surprised to find there the Federal Police (Brazil’s FBI) and technical court staff working on the hashtag investigation.

TSE pushed for private user data under the justification of “exceptional circumstances” and wanted to use Twitter as a crime precognition machine to “anticipate potential illegal activities.”
Two months later, Gualda said that the Federal Police “is under a lot of pressure from the Superior Electoral Court to provide tangible results for this investigation (remembering that in this procedure the Federal Police is supporting an investigation that is conducted by the Superior Electoral Court itself).”Image
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“There is no reason for this lawsuit to be under court secrecy.”

Leading up to the 2022 presidential election in Brazil, TSE made censorship demands to prevent citizens from commenting on election policies and procedures.

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”).

Additionally, the TSE demanded subscription information and IP addresses of users who used the hashtag #VotoDemocraticoAuditavel in 2021. Brazilians wanted to debate printouts to enhance their unique voting machines, but the TSE wasn’t happy about their cause and pressured Twitter to give up their personal data.

In an e-mail sent in November 2022, a Twitter lawyer detailed actions taken by Moraes and TSE during the presidential race. The judge wouldn’t explain why he ordered Twitter to remove Evangelical pastor André Valadão’s (@andrevaladao) entire account under a heavy fine.

Twitter “filed an appeal against the order”, pointing out they didn’t know why they were being ordered to do so, but complying. TSE would threaten Twitter to comply “in 1 hour” under an hourly fine of BRL 100,000 [US$ 20,000] to censor an inactive account for disinformation committed elsewhere.

TSE also targeted elected House members Carla Zambelli (@Zambelli2210) & Marcel van Hattem (@marcelvanhattem) for alleged misinformation, threatening a fine of BRL 150,000 (US$ 30,000) if Twitter did not comply within 1 hour. Twitter pushed back. Among other objections, it argued that “there is no reason for this lawsuit to be under court secrecy.”Image
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“Unusual requests …. compelling us to provide… user data based on hashtag mentions”

On August 17, 2022, a member of Twitter’s legal team emailed the groups saying that Twitter “received a new court order” relating to “an inquiry with the aim to identify individuals/groups behind a potential coordination of efforts to attack the institutions and the electoral system across different platforms. President Bolsonaro himself is investigated in this process…”

She added, “We have received several unusual requests coming from this inquiry, the most recent relevant one compelling us to provide an undetermined amount of user data based on hashtag mentions. The hashtags concern a mobilization around the elections - roughly translated as #PrintedVoteNO; #DemocraticAuditableVote and #BarrosoInJail - Barroso is the former TSE President….According to the report we currently have, there were 182 tweets in the period of interest… We need the content, user handles and respective BSI data asap…”Image
“TSE’s request is clearly abusive”

“TSE’s request is clearly abusive”, Brazilian attorney and legal scholar Hugo Freitas @hugofreitas_r told us, when asked about the situation.

“Posting hashtags to promote legislative changes is completely appropriate for a democracy and it’s no crime predicted by Brazilian law.”
Three months after de Moraes became TSE’s president in August 2022, he demanded censorship.

Despite the fact that posting hashtags does not violate any specific legal statutes, Twitter complied with the court's demands to avoid substantial fines.

Brazil’s high court and Twitter removed political speech and penalized users for debating policies. In this way, the court appears to have interfered in a major presidential election.
Today: Fake News Bill For Censorship

Today, Brazil’s Censorship Industrial Complex is demanding that Congress pass “Fake News” censorship legislation. The bill would hold social media companies hostage if they didn’t comply with vague censorship requirements. The bill doesn’t define what “fake news” or “disinformation” are.

What the Fake News bill would do is require social media platforms to pay news outlets for the right to distribute their content. This is the exact same approach being pushed by governments in Australia and Canada.

De Moraes, the TSE, and Brazil’s Supreme Court openly lobbied for the legislation.

The public revolted against the censorship bill, and Congress stalled the bill in May 2023.

Then, in February of this year, the TSE unilaterally implemented the legislation, usurping the role of Congress.
No Free Speech In An Election

TSE’s censorship is an attack on the democratic process. Elections can remain free and fair only if the public is able to debate and question election laws, systems, and results. If there ever is electoral fraud in Brazil, nobody will be allowed to talk about it, if de Moraes gets his way.

For centuries, candidates have complained that the election was stolen. Hillary Clinton claimed this in 2016, Stacey Abrams claimed this in 2018, President Donald Trump claimed this in 2020, and President Jair Bolsonaro claimed this in 2022.

De Moraes wants to make such speech illegal and punish social media platforms that don’t censor it.
The Solution: First Amendment-Level Protections For Brazil

Two legal scholars, Hugo Freitas and André Marsiglia, @hugofreitas_r and @marsiglia_andre ,  recently introduced new free speech legislation aimed at bringing free speech protections in Brazil to the same high standard as is held in the United States. The bill is a “Declaration of Rights of Freedom of Expression in Brazil.”

The bill seeks to proclaim a Declaration of Free Speech Rights in Brazil, which, if enacted, would roughly align Brazilian law to that of the United States in this regard.

It proposes to repeal the criminalization of speech in all but the most extreme instances, such as true threats or incitement to imminent lawless action. In contrast, conducts such as blasphemy, contempt of authority or certain forms of hate speech and disinformation would cease to be criminalized. The protection of political speech is especially emphasized.

In tort cases, the bill seeks to reduce judicial discretion by laying out clearer standards for assessing if the speech is protected or crosses into illegal conduct. In particular, the bill repeals provisions that have been used by prosecutors and private associations to retaliate against speech by claiming compensatory damages, under allegations such as that it has caused offense to an unknown number of listeners or tarnished the reputation of broad categories of people.

Finally, the bill concerns itself with more modern forms of censorship targeting the internet. A blanket ban is imposed on the practice, now frequent in Brazil, of government blocking the access to specific social media accounts in response to speech.

More subtle forms of internet censorship are also addressed. The government is barred from censoring speech indirectly under the guise of content moderation by private platforms, following in the footsteps of recent court decisions in the US. The bill reaffirms the provisions already in place in Brazilian legislation exempting social media platforms from liability for the speech of its users in response to attempts by the government to revoke those provisions so as to force social media companies to censor preemptively according to government wishes.

/END

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More from @shellenberger

Jul 21
After the assassination attempt, the Secret Service said it hadn’t denied repeated requests by Trump’s security detail for more help. It lied. Now the @nytimes and @washingtonpost have confirmed our reporting and vindicated @dbongino. What else is being covered up?

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Sources close to President Trump were adamant last week that Trump’s protective detail had made “multiple” requests over the last several months and that the Director of the Secret Service, Kimberly A. Cheatle, turned them down. And, they said, a security expert had warned Trump directly that his detail was inadequate.

The former president’s security detail is far smaller than the one provided to President Joe Biden, which The New York Post first reported yesterday. For example, there was no aerial security coverage, either in the form of drones or helicopters, which may have spotted the shooter before he could fire his AR-15 rifle. The AR-15 has an effective range of 500-600 yards, and the shooter was 200-300 yards away.

“Forget the titles,” said a source close to President Trump. “It’s not how it’s measured. It’s measured by threat level. In 1999, the Pope did an event in St. Louis with bigger security than the president at the time had. That Trump doesn’t have the same security protection as Biden… you’re asking for this guy to get killed.”

Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) claimed on X, "I have very reliable sources telling me there have been repeated requests for stronger secret service protection for President Trump. Denied by Secretary Mayorkas.”

Former Secret Service officer Dan Bongino and journalist Tucker Carlson warned last year that Trump’s security was inadequate.

“I've told you this repeatedly,” said Bongino on his podcast in August 2023. “I'll tell you again. I'll tell you tomorrow, and I'll remind you the day after that. I did this for a living for 12 years…. Donald Trump's life is in absolute danger. Anyone telling you otherwise is full of crap.”

On Fox and Friends this morning, Bongino said, “There have been repeated requests to increase the security footprint around not just the residences of Donald Trump, but the body [of Trump] itself, and they have been rebuffed.”

A few days after Bongino and Carlson warned of an assassination attempt, NBC News published an article headlined, “Tucker Carlson stokes conspiracies, claims the U.S. is 'speeding towards' assassination of Trump.”

The NBC story mentioned the Bongino podcast episode and said Bongino had made his assertions of rising threat “without evidence.”
Hi @d_arkin @NBCNews

When will you retract your misinformation, apologize to @dbongino and @TuckerCarlson, and explain why you got the story so horribly wrong? Image
Read 4 tweets
Jul 16
I’m afraid I have some terrible news. The governor of America’s largest and richest state has just signed a law that puts 10 million children and adolescents in grave danger of medical mistreatment.

The media headlines have it wrong. They claim that California Governor Gavin Newsom’s new law protects children by stopping public schools from outing their new gender to their parents.

It does just the opposite. It makes children vulnerable to irreversible and lifelong medical abuse and mistreatment. And it is all based on the pseudoscientific idea that some children are born into the wrong bodies and that we can change a person’s sex through drugs and surgery.

For any of this to make sense, you have to understand what’s happening in Britain. Several years ago, the government appointed a well-respected pediatrician named Hillary Cass to investigate whether it was ethical to block the puberty of children, give them opposite-sex hormones, and perform surgeries on their bodies to make them feel better about their gender. Dr. Cass came back a few weeks ago and said no, absolutely not.

Around the same time, the British government banned puberty blockers nationwide. And, just a few days ago, the new Labor Party government affirmed that it would maintain the former government’s ban.

In her report, Cass said that the so-called “social transition,” whereby a child adopts the identity of the opposite sex, is not a neutral act and has psychological consequences. This means it is the first step toward medical intervention.

What Gavin Newsom has done is actively prevented schools from informing parents that their children have been put on a medical pathway.

This is an outrageous attack on the rights of children and parents. Children have a right to go through puberty. No adult should be able to block their puberty. And parents have a right to know if their child thinks that they are the opposite sex or were born into the wrong body.

We have seen with leaked internal documents of the leading gender medicine group, WPATH, that these medical interventions, namely puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery, are not only irreversible but result in sterilization and loss of sexual function.

Children or adolescents are simply not mature enough to understand the effects of so-called “gender-affirming care.” They cannot, in other words, give their informed consent.

The new law creates the grave risk that activist teachers, students, and outside groups will convince their children that they were born into the wrong body, and hide their “social transition” from parents, which will lead to harmful medical mistreatment.

As such, the law that Newsom just signed is the opposite of what both children and their parents need. We need schools to immediately warn parents if their children think they are the opposite sex.

After all, this is a diagnosable psychiatric condition known as “gender dysphoria.” And if your child has a psychiatric disorder, whether anxiety, depression, an eating disorder, or gender dysphoria, you have a right to know.

And schools must stop teaching children, or allowing other people to teach children, the pseudoscientific and dehumanizing ideas that it’s possible to be born into the wrong body and possible to change one’s sex.

As such, either the legislature, the courts, or a ballot initiative will be required to nullify Newsom’s law. Until then, it is important to spread the word to parents that California public schools are fundamentally unsafe for the millions of children who attend them.
The politicians — @GavinNewsom @EleniForCA @AGRobBonta @XavierBecerra @JoeBiden @KamalaHarris — must immediately stop this grotesque violation of human rights.

The whole world is watching.
Read 4 tweets
Jul 13
Now might be a good time for our political leaders to tone down the rhetoric.
A mentally ill homeless drug addict attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband and NBC blamed Trump and the GOP.

Somehow I doubt NBC will blame Biden for the near-assassination of Trump. Image
Read 6 tweets
Jul 12
Take a good look at this man. His intent is to censor the entire Internet, including in the United States. He hates our freedom because it exposes his lies. He treats “1984” as a guidebook. He is a totalitarian menace, and we must do everything we can to remove him from power.
What Breton is doing is flagrantly illegal. He is violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the EU Constitution, and the French Constitution. US, EU, and other lawmakers around the world should demand Breton be fired and investigated for his attack on freedom.
Breton must be stopped at all costs. The longer he is allowed to stay in his position the more powerful and dangerous he becomes.

We are witnessing an EU coup against our fundamental freedom in real time.

The EU must fire Breton or face serious consequences for his pathological totalitarian behavior.
Read 6 tweets
Jul 11
Business owners and district attorneys in California have proposed a moderate ballot measure to stop rampant shoplifting and fentanyl deaths. Gov @GavinNewsom says he will oppose it. I suspect Kamala and Biden will, too.

The reason is that Soros is one of their biggest donors. It is his law that decriminalized shoplifting and hard drugs. Soros will likely give Gavin's consultants tens of millions to kill the law.

It will be interesting to watch Gavin, Kamala, and Biden defend their obviously immoral Soros-funded pro-crime agenda, which led a half million people to flee the state and has turned the downtowns of San Francisco and Los Angeles into lawless wastelands.

These are deeply creepy people who do not care about the thousands of mentally ill addicts they're letting foreign drug dealers poison every year.

The mainstream media in California takes money from Soros and campaigned for the legalization of drug dealing and shoplifting. They have been lying about this issue for years. So please share this information so we can get the truth out.
Voters passed the Soros-funded Prop 47 in 2014. Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris made it harder to mandate drug treatment because it effectively decriminalized hard drug dealing, public drug use, and theft under 950 dollars, with no incentive to enter rehab.

That combination proved devastating. Prop 47 allowed shoplifters and thieves to break the law with impunity, often to support their deadly drug habit.

The money addicts make from selling their stolen goods goes to drug dealers, so in effect, our laws subsidize the Sinaloa drug cartel, which has pioneered new forms of extreme violence.

That’s why so many stores, from Walgreens and Old Navy to Nordstrom’s and Macy’s, have closed and left California.

There is a better way. We need to mandate rehabilitation, not prison, for people who repeatedly break the law to support their addiction. We need to crack down on open-air dealing of fentanyl, which is killing our people. And we need to make it illegal to steal from retail stores, and hold people accountable.

Gavin Newsom is trying to kill the new ballot initiative, Proposition 36. It is essential that we stop him. Californians need the Homelessness, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act. Please visit to learn more.CASafecommunities.com
If @KamalaHarris becomes the Democratic nominee for president, you can expect criticism of her for campaigning for Proposition 47 and misleading voters about it.

As California's Attorney General at the time, Harris wrote the 100-word summary for voters. And, as AG, she oversaw the lab that analyzes DNA.

And yet Harris failed to mention in her summary that Prop 47 would drastically reduce the DNA samples collected by police, which proved devastating for prosecuting perpetrators of rape and murder.Image
Read 6 tweets
Jun 28
Many Democrats want to replace Biden with California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Doing so would be a disaster for the nation. Please consider these three key facts, and watch the video below for an overview:

1. Newsom's policies led directly to homelessness increasing by 31% in California, even as it decreased by 18% in the rest of the US from 2010-2020. Homelessness increased another 7.5% between 2022 and 2023.

2. Newsom's policies led directly to skyrocketing crime. One out of four San Francisco residents polled say they were a victim of crime in the last year, and 42% say they were a victim more than once.

3. Rising crime and homelessness, high taxes, and unaffordable housing under Newsom has resulted in people fleeing the state. The state's total population declined by 573,000 from its peak in 2020.

I have interviewed hundreds of homeless people in California. Many, if not most, are from out of state. Many said they came to California so they could be paid to use hard drugs, in many cases to self-medicate severe mental illness. And many are assaulted and left to die, resulting in far higher rates of drug death than other parts of the nation.

Don't believe the hype: Newsom is not compassionate. He only cares about himself, and his policies result in grotesque cruelty.
Newsom demanded that we decriminalize up to $950 in shoplifting and the possession of hard drugs. The result has been an influx of homeless addicts who shoplift to support their deadly habit. Many of us have endorsed a reform of the law (Prop. 47). Leaked emails show that @GavinNewsom tried to undermine the reforms, which voters are likely to pass this November.

cbsnews.com/sacramento/new…Image
Newsom, and the mainstream news media say there’s been no increase in crime and that crime levels are lower in California than in other states. But that’s a lie.

It's true that the increase in crime isn't just in California. But it's worse here.

California politicians know this. In a single week last April, someone burglarized the home of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, someone stole the suitcase of Congressman Adam Schiff in the Bay Area, and someone else punched the police officer protecting the mayor of San Jose.

In California, we have the fewest police per capita than at any point since 1991.

Newsom has done more than anyone to implement the policies of George Soros, one of his major funders.

Newsom enables and defends addiction.

“Clean and sober is one of the biggest damn mistakes this country's ever made,” said Newsom. “If you're like me, I've been known to have a glass of wine at night watching some of the nightly news. We all need to self-medicate periodically.”

For Newsom to compare his chardonnay sipping to people smoking fentanyl is grotesque.

Over 100,000 people died last year from hard drugs. People die in San Francisco at far higher rates than the rest of the country.

Yes, the epidemic started with prescription drugs. But Newsom made it worse by making drugs more available and opposing the tough love that addicts and criminals alike need to get their lives together.
Read 9 tweets

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