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Walker Bragman moved to Threads and BlueSky Profile picture
Walker Bragman moved to Threads and BlueSky
@WalkerBragman
Co-Founder: @OptOutNews Reporting: https://t.co/aV56NH3a9k BlueSky: @walkerbragman@bsky.social. Threads: walkerbragman Tips: Importantcontextnews@gmail.com
Persnickity ✝️🇺🇸 Profile picture No One You Know ♥️ Profile picture LeftwardSwing ♿🕊️ 💉 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 Profile picture MakeChange Profile picture ezra Profile picture 5 subscribed
Oct 24, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The "If everyone is mad at my article, I got it right" conventional wisdom needs to be retired already.

Faye, I'm a reporter who covers disinformation and dark money. Your article got it wrong and these folks you keep engaging with are extremists. Thacker, for example, was the Twitter Files guy who implied (wrongly) that Taylor Lorenz's uncle owned the Internet Archive. He writes for the Brownstone Institute, a far-right dark money outfit that promotes misinformation and conspiracy thinking.
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Oct 19, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Today, I am excited to announce that I have a story in @RollingStone, which is also cross-published with Important Context.

The scoop: America's largest charitable funds have been funding anti-vaccine groups throughout the pandemic.

rollingstone.com/politics/polit… Please subscribe to Important Context so we can continue doing this kind of reporting!

importantcontext.news/p/americas-big…
Sep 24, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
The White House plan is to let you get infected every year—perhaps multiple times—with a virus linked to a host of serious health problems and for which reinfection makes those problems more likely. CDC won’t even recommend masking at this point. It’s just pathetic.

They bet everything on the vaccines early on but didn’t adapt when it became clear that the jabs wouldn’t be enough on their own.

The goal now seems to be normalization of current levels of infection
Sep 18, 2023 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
It's incredible how reliably conspiracy theories end up reinforcing--rather than challenging--power.

COVID conspiracy theories, for example, fuel opposition to public health measures opposed by big business. Anti-vaccine conspiracy theories not only lead to hesitancy, which helps new strains develop, but you don't see antivaxxers calling to strip pharmaceutical companies of IP protections for their vaccines.
Aug 3, 2023 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya's credibility savaged in yet another Canadian court decision.

"He stubbornly He stubbornly refused to admit that his statement...was inaccurate"


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Image "Dr. Bhattacharya was reluctant to accept any evidence or opinion that may cast doubt on his opinions."

"He conceded that he aware that the article had been retracted...but he did not raise that fact until he was cross-examined on it

This is wild.

Just a completely dishonest.

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Jun 15, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
NEW: The parents’ rights group known as Parents Defending Education calls itself “grassroots.”

Tax filings reveal that in its first year, 2021, it received hundreds of thousands of dollars from major right-wing organizations and funds.

importantcontext.news/p/major-grassr… The funders of Parents Defending Education, which was founded by right-wing operative Nicole Neily, a veteran of the political influence network of Charles Koch, include the Searle Freedom Trust, which funds a number of groups in Koch’s network.

The trust gave $250K.
Jun 5, 2023 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
We hear a lot about “lockdown costs,” but never any specifics.

That’s probably because “lockdown costs” sounds a lot scarier than “not being able to get a haircut.” See, now we get to it. “Lockdown costs” is really economic disruption a certain business owners.

Admittedly, our govt did not do enough to mitigate that harm.

But the loudest folks complaining about “lockdown costs” don’t support safety nets or govt action in the first place.
Jun 5, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
People make this mistake a lot. When we contextualize a writer or speaker by noting their affiliation with right-wing dark money, it doesn’t mean they’re insincere in their beliefs.

It does provide insight into what their beliefs are and how much real support there is for them. While there are certainly times when people sell out for the money, I suspect that the people who end up working for years at right-wing billionaire-funded groups genuinely align ideologically with those groups.
Jun 4, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
RFK Jr. isn’t even remotely left. "There is no stronger advocate for free market capitalism than myself...The best thing that could happen to the environment is if we had true free market capitalism in this country." - RFK circa 2009
Jun 2, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Well, that's the end of the "kids don't spread COVID" lie.

Lots of folks have much to answer for. Remember that as of December, nearly 280K American kids were estimated to have lost a primary or secondary caregiver. Image
Jun 2, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
This agreement is a win for the GOP and a devastating loss for struggling Americans. The consistent failure of the Democratic leadership to meet this urgent moment--their dogmatic insistence on adhering to norms when their opposition has jettisoned any pretense of giving a damn--scares the hell out of me.
May 31, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
This is how the Brownstone Institute is framing child labor.

Not even joking. This is Brownstone’s response to my reporting on leaked emails that show the group’s founder confessing his support for child labor and being met with encouragement from his peers, including the author of this diatribe.

Full story here: importantcontext.news/p/leaked-brown…
May 30, 2023 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
To say they “misunderstood” fundamentally misses what the GBD was.

It wasn’t a scientific document, arguing for an alternative approach to the pandemic based on modeling.

It was an economic document, providing an academic veneer to the agenda of right-wing billionaires. The GBD was published by a billionaire-backed libertarian think tank, American Institute for Economic Research.

One of its authors—the most vocal and public of the bunch—is an operative from billionaire-funded right-wing think tank the Hoover Institution and working w DeSantis.
May 28, 2023 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Brownstone contributor responds my reporting about how she and her colleagues were praising a pro-child labor article by the group’s founder and generally agreeing with him over email as he openly supported child labor/cigarette smoking.

…without addressing that stuff. ImageImageImageImage “Reopen schools mom” Jennifer Sey lauded a pro child labor piece by Brownstone‘s founder.

She did not respond when I asked her what her stance on child labor was in a press inquiry.

Now, she’s got a blog post framing my report as an argument for “helicopter” parenting.

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May 27, 2023 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Meet Ron DeSantis’ favorite COVID “expert.”

- Not a PhD epidemiologist

- As MD has never treated a COVID patient

- Called for mass infection as path to herd immunity with zero modeling

- Resents that mainstream public health didn’t take him seriously

whowhatwhy.org/politics/the-l… The Stanford professor is a health economist who has been involved with the Hoover Institution for years.

Hoover is a billionaire-backed right-wing think tank housed at the school.

Dude doesn’t answer questions about his relationship with Hoover.
May 27, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I wonder if there’s any context here from the article that might be important… ImageImageImage If this guy is who he says he is (who knows with Musk’s new verification system), he should know better.
May 26, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
DeSantis has spent years posturing as a COVID minimizer, cozying up to fringe "experts" and letting them guide his state's public health policies.

Between this and another recent video attacking Trump for shutdowns, it seems clear he wants to make COVID the issue of the primary This is the other video I was referring to. DeSantis has clearly calculated that being the anti-public health candidate is a path to victory against Trump in a GOP primary.
May 26, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Bike was rightfully the kid’s. Period. Image Of course, the white lady raked in tons of cash from the worst people in America to fight her lawsuit.

Meanwhile, nobody bothered getting the kid’s side of the story.

This fucking country…
May 25, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
NEW: Leaked emails from the Brownstone Institute reveal support for child labor and youth smoking. open.substack.com/pub/importantc… The Brownstone Institute is a small, but influential right-wing dark money operation that began in 2021 with the mission of undermining public health measures put in place in response to COVID-19.

It has since fed experts to the GOP Congress’ COVID subcommittee.
May 23, 2023 • 24 tweets • 6 min read
Anyone who has been paying attention to how COVID disinformation has been circulated on the right will not be surprised by this.

Let's get into it.
nbcnews.com/politics/2024-… From the outset of the pandemic, capital-aligned right-wing dark money groups have been waging a misinformation war on public health measures.

Why? To get people back to work. To crush solidarity and undermine labor. To prevent government actions that interfere with business.
May 23, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Just another doc telling you the vaccines are dangerous despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary while offering their own “faith-based” alternative services. These people have no fucking shame.