The website of NYC mayoral frontrunner says he'll "shift the tax burden" to "whiter neighborhoods." When asked about his openly racist agenda, @ZohranKMamdani insists it's not a proposal at all but rather "a description of what we see right now." That's next-level gaslighting.😬 This guy's ability to lie so calmly while smiling should send chills up the spines of every New Yorker.

He could have taken it down and said, "You know, I regret that the website said that and so I deleted it, because it doesn't express what I believe."

Instead, he's just asked millions of New Yorkers to believe his own obviously flagrant lie rather than their own eyes. That's creepy and wrong.

Everyone can see for themselves that he used a gratuitous racial reference regarding a tax proposal. We don't tax people on race. So why use it? Because he and his campaign wanted to introduce race.

And it's not the first time. @ZohranKMamdani should delete his flagrantly racist tweets and web site language, apologize, and promise to never invoke racism in these ways again.

The idea that former Intelligence Community officials are working with European leaders to censor the Internet sounds like a conspiracy theory, but over the last two days, Obama’s CIA Director plotted with UK, EU, and Irish officials in Dublin to do precisely that. These people are a direct and imminent threat to free speech and democracy worldwide. They are dangerous and out of control:

Former CIA Director John Brennan helped initiate the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. He used foreign spies to help trigger the FBI investigation of of the Trump campaign. And he manipulated the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment to falsely claim the Russians favored Trump over Clinton.

Niamh Hodnett, Ireland’s “Online Safety Commissioner,” leads Ireland’s censorship regime under the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act, which mirrors EU and U.S.-backed models shaped by intelligence-linked NGOs.

Aine Kerr, a Former Facebook Policy Manager, helped manage Facebook’s public policy as it partnered with U.S. intelligence agencies post-2016, then co-founded Kinzen, which received support from EU and transatlantic institutions focused on content surveillance. Her work connects platform moderation with state-funded narrative monitoring.

Nóirín O’Sullivan, a Former Garda (Irish police) Commissioner and EUROPOL Official, who went from leading Ireland’s national police to a senior role at EUROPOL, which works closely with intelligence and security services across Europe. She advocates for integrating security principles into online content governance.

Claire Loftus, Ireland’s Former Director of Public Prosecutions, oversaw prosecutions during a period of expanding legal efforts to criminalize online expression and misinformation. Her presence signals an effort to align the judiciary with state-backed censorship.

Robyn Simcox, the UK Commissioner for Countering Extremism,
operates within the UK Home Office, a department with direct ties to MI5 and GCHQ. She frames conspiracy theories and misinformation as forms of radicalization and demands surveillance and preemptive regulation. Her office channels intelligence priorities into speech policing under the banner of counter-extremism.

Brazil has been banning and censoring journalists and politicians for years. But now it is taking steps to ban X entirely. It’s time for @SecRubio to block President Lula, Justice Moraes, and their criminal accomplices from entering the US. President Trump and Secretary Rubio must not let these tin pot dictators censor speech and ban the world’s most important social media company.

https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1927726758280745097

They're launching mortar rounds, @GavinNewsom

https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1931809661856137557

video credit: @alexdatig

Everybody in L.A. knows there aren't enough police officers. It has little more than half as many per capita as Chicago. And yet @GavinNewsom @MayorOfLA @KamalaHarris and *every single* Democratic governor opposed calling out the National Guard.

https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1931853485819281733

California has half the population as Germany and a bigger economy. We pay the highest taxes by far. And yet, not only does LA have nearly half the police per capita as Chicago, Mayor @KarenBassLA wants to lay-off 400 police officers.

There's no shortage of police in L.A., said @GavinNewsom a few hours ago. In fact, L.A. has far fewer police per capita than other big cities. And now, the protesters have overrun the police and blocked the highway. Video: @AnthonyCabassa_

https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1931808447122866603

L.A.'s lack of police has been one of the biggest crime stories in California for a decade. As such, @GavinNewsom is either lying or even more in a bubble than we knew. And now, naturally, LA's radical-Left mayor and city council want to cut 400 more police officers.

Around the world, governments are threatening & censoring US social media platforms for legal speech. Now, @SecRubio @StateDept says it will deny visas to foreign nationals engaged in censorship against Americans, US tech companies, and people posting from inside the US. Since taking office, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has taken a series of actions to push back against growing foreign government demands to censor American citizens and American technology companies like Google, Meta, and X.

The idea that the Biden administration viewed millions of Americans as a terrorist threat sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it’s not. Newly declassified documents show that in December 2021, the FBI and DHS labeled opponents of Covid mandates "Domestic Violent Extremists." NEW: Biden Administration Labeled Opponents Of Covid Mandates As “Domestic Violent Extremists,” Newly Released Documents Show

The designation infringed on the First Amendment and opened the door to investigating Americans for vaccine mandate skepticism.

by @shellenberger @C__Herridge and @galexybrane
Former President Joe Biden announces Covid vaccine mandates on September 9, 2021, in Washington, DC. Three months later (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

The Biden Administration labeled Americans who opposed the COVID-19 vaccination and mask mandates as “Domestic Violent Extremists,” or DVEs, according to newly declassified intelligence records obtained by Public and Catherine Herridge Reports. The designation created an “articulable purpose” for FBI or other government agents to open an “assessment” of individuals, which is often the first step toward a formal investigation, said a former FBI agent.

The report, which the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has declassified, claims that “anti government or anti authority violent extremists,” specifically militias, “characterize COVID-19 vaccination and mask mandates as evidence of government overreach.” A sweeping range of COVID narratives, the report states, “have resonated” with DVEs “motivated by QAnon.”

The FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) coauthored the December 13, 2021 intelligence product whose title reads, “DVEs and Foreign Analogues May React Violently to COVID-19 Mitigation Mandates.”

The report cites criticism of mandates as “prominent narratives” related to violent extremism. These narratives “include the belief that COVID-19 vaccines are unsafe, especially for children, are part of a government or global conspiracy to deprive individuals of their civil liberties and livelihoods, or are designed to start a new social or political order.“

“It’s a way they could go to social media companies and say, ‘You don’t want to propagate domestic terrorism, so you should take down this content,’” said former FBI agent Steve Friend....

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Renewables don't risk blackouts, said the media. But they did and they do. The physics are simple. And now, as blackouts in Spain strand people in elevators, jam traffic, and ground flights, it's clear that too little "inertia" due to excess solar resulted in system collapse. Six days ago, the media celebrated a significant milestone: Spain’s national grid operated entirely on renewable energy for the first time during a weekday.

At 12:35 pm today local time, the lights went out across Spain and Portugal, and parts of France. Although power was quickly restored in France, it could take a week to fully restore power in Spain and Portugal.
In an instant, the electric hum of modern life — trains, hospitals, airports, phones, traffic lights, cash registers — fell silent. Tens of millions of people instantly plunged into chaos, confusion, and darkness. People got stuck in elevators. Subways stopped between stations. Gas stations couldn’t pump fuel. Grocery stores couldn’t process payments. Air traffic controllers scrambled as systems failed and planes were diverted. In hospitals, backup generators sputtered on, but in many cases could not meet full demand.
It was one of the largest peacetime blackouts Europe has ever seen. And it was not random. It was not an unforeseeable event. It was the exact failure that many of ushave been, repeatedly, warning lawmakers about for years — warnings that Europe’s political leaders systematically chose to ignore.

While Portugal’s grid operator REN initially blamed the mass blackout on “extreme temperature variations” and a “rare atmospheric phenomenon,” and while some media repeated that framing, the reality is more serious. Weather may have triggered the event, but it was not the cause of the system’s collapse.
Spain’s national grid operator, Red Eléctrica, revealed that the immediate cause of the blackout was a “very strong oscillation in the electrical network” that forced Spain’s grid to disconnect from the broader European system, leading to the collapse of the Iberian Peninsula’s power supply at 12:38 p.m.

“No one has ever attempted a black start on a grid that relies so heavily on renewables as Iberia,” noted @JKempEnergy . “The limited number of thermal generators will make it more challenging to re-establish momentum and frequency control.”

In a traditional power grid dominated by heavy spinning machines — coal plants, gas turbines, nuclear reactors — small disturbances, even from severe weather, are absorbed and smoothed out by the sheer physical inertia of the system. The heavy rotating mass of the generators acts like a shock absorber, resisting rapid changes in frequency and stabilizing the grid.
But in an electricity system dominated by solar panels, wind turbines, and inverters, there is almost no physical inertia. Solar panels produce no mechanical rotation. Most modern wind turbines are electronically decoupled from the grid and provide little stabilizing force. Inverter-based systems, which dominate modern renewable energy grids, are precise but delicate. They follow the frequency of the grid rather than resisting sudden changes....

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Bravo to the Supreme Court for upholding the right of the accused under Alien Enemies Act to due process. "For all the rhetoric... today’s order & per curiam confirm... detainees... are entitled to... an opportunity to challenge their removal. The only question is which court..." The Court adds, "Although judicial review under the AEA is limited, we have held that an individual subject to detention and removal under that statute is entitled to ‘judicial review’ ... as well as whether he or she 'is in fact an alien enemy fourteen years of age or older.'"

Trump is losing support from Republican “financiers”, say the media. First, did it ever cross their mind that Wall Street may not represent the American interest? Of course not. Second, @FT irresponsibly omitted the small detail that Ken Langone’s @HomeDepot is long Vietnam.

https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1909293869851983928

Perhaps the most entertaining part of the Trump tariffs is how they have brought together financiers and @BernieSanders , thus exposing just how full of baloney his whole “oligarchy” shtick is.

One FBI employee involved in the cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop was Bradley Benavides (ctr-intel div). Weeks earlier he played key role in an apparent FBI scheme to smear @SenRonJohnson & @ChuckGrassley — who were investigating Hunter — as tools of Putin. Sinister.


According to @SenRonJohnson & @ChuckGrassley , Benavides and a colleague on August 6, 2020 provided "an unnecessary briefing on behalf of the FBI and Intelligence Community on matters purportedly related to the senators’ investigation into Hunter Biden."

ronjohnson.senate.gov/2022/8/sens-jo…

The FBI said it didn't interfere in the 2020 election, but it did. It tricked Twitter & Facebook into censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story. Now, newly released chat messages show the FBI issued a "gag order" after an employee accidentally confirmed the laptop's authenticity. This is a CatherineHerridgeReports @C__Herridge / Public Investigation

In 2024, an FBI official admitted to House investigators that an FBI employee had inadvertently confirmed the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop to Twitter on a conference call the morning of October 14, 2020, the day the New York Post published a story about it.

“I recall that when the question came up, an intelligence analyst assigned to the Criminal Investigative Division said something to the effect of, ‘Yes, the laptop is real’,” testified the then-Russia Unit Chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force in a closed door transcribed interview.

“I believe it was an (Office of General Counsel) attorney assigned to the (Foreign Influence Task Force) stepped in and said, ‘We will not comment further on this topic.’”

For the first time, and with a change of administration, the FBI has now turned over to GOP House investigators the internal chat messages that show Bureau leadership actively silenced its employees.

The FBI, which had a special task force to counter foreign election interference, could have set the record straight by confirming the laptop was real and the subject of an ongoing criminal probe. Instead, FBI leadership allowed the false narrative about the laptop to gain momentum.

The FBI provided the chat messages to congressional investigators with heavy redactions.

Some of the redactions on the chats are marked “OGC AGC,” which appears to mean that they were made by the FBI’s Office of General Counsel and Associate General Counsel.

An individual whose name is blacked out, tells Elvis M. Chan, the San Francisco-based FBI special agent tasked with interacting with social media companies, there was a “gag order” on discussion of Hunter Biden’s laptop. In a separate exchange, Chan is told “official response no commen(t).”
In the chat, the FBI officials showed awareness that the laptop may have contained evidence of criminal activity.

Asked Chan, “actually what kind of case is the laptop thing? corruption? campaign financing?”

Another FBI employee responds, “CLOSE HOLD —” after which the response is redacted.

To which Chan responds, “oh crap” appearing to underscore the serious nature of the probe, which included felony tax charges. Chan adds, “ok. It ends here”.

In the same conversation, Chan is asked if “Anyone discussing that NYPost article on the Biden’s?” Chan responds, “yes we are. c d confirmed an active investigation. No further comment.” “C D” is likely shorthand for the FBI’s Criminal Division.

Said another FBI employee, whose name was redacted by the Bureau, “please do not discuss biden matter.”
We asked for a response from the bureau and the FBI employees identified in the chat messages. An FBI spokesman declined to comment.

According to the IRS whistleblowers, DOJ prosecutors blocked standard investigative protocols that might have led to Joe Biden ahead of the presidential campaign.

“There were a lot of overt investigative steps that we were not allowed to take because we had an upcoming election,” said Joseph Ziegler, the IRS case agent on the Hunter Biden probe.. “And it related to the president's son. So not even the candidate.”

The FBI chat is cryptic and the heavy redactions make it difficult to discern context. For example, an employee says to Chan that “[redacted] has a gag order from [redacted]... got checked by [redacted] had to backtrack - sorry!”
Another cryptic exchange came from Laura Dehmlow, the FBI employee who told House investigators that an FBI employee had accidentally confirmed that the laptop was real. “WTF(redacted) No COMMENT.”

An employee whose name is also withheld wrote, “nope, just a domestic hit job, yay” to which Dehmlow responded, “Yup.”

The exchange may be referring to the FBI’s knowledge that the laptop was authentic and not a foreign “hack and leak” or “Russian information operation,” as 51 former senior intelligence officials alleged at the time.

The IRS whistleblowers said there was no basis for the statement from the former intelligence officials....
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The Right is a threat to democracy, the media says. But it isn’t. It’s winning elections and respecting constituitons. It’s the Left that is undermining democracy. It tried to jail Trump, is about to jail Bolsonaro, and just sentenced Le Pen to prison. This is a five alarm fire.
And when the Left can’t incarcerate a presidential candidate, it simply prevents them from running, for no good reason, and in flagrant violation of the law, as the totalitarian creeps just did in Romania.

Free Speech Diplomacy, R.I.P.

March 3, 2025 - March 19, 2025

https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1896566526544900438

Was fun while it lasted!

https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1902573198052356320

Every single Trump advisor, including and especially @StephenM, knows perfectly well that what they did is unconstitutional.

https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/1901741630618489054

It's up to the courts not the Administration to determine whether it is non-justiciable. The administration must comply with the order until a higher court reverses it or sets it aside. That's how our system works.

There's no proof of major waste, fraud, or abuse in govt spending, say the media. But there is. And now Public has obtained invoices revealing that a major contractor overcharged the Ed. Dept, paid its CEO $2M/year, and promoted debunked research as student performance declined. US Education Department Contractor Overcharged Taxpayers While Spending Millions On Executive Salaries

As student math and reading scores declined, the American Institute of Research charged 50% in indirect costs and paid its CEO over $2 million

by @galexybrane and @shellenberger

Over the last few weeks, the media and Democrats have been lambasting President Donald Trump for cutting the Department of Education’s research budget. In particular, the media criticized the Trump administration for cutting a contractor’s research into support services for students with disabilities who are nearing graduation.

But it’s not clear that the research was necessary or successful, and there is already both state and federal funding aimed at helping students with disabilities to develop life skills and plans for the future.

And now Public has obtained invoices showing that the Department’s contractor for the research in question, American Institute for Research (AIR), had significantly overcharged the Department in so-called indirect costs.

The invoice is from November 18, 2024, and shows AIR billing the Department $411,961.35 for the month of October 2024. Of that money, $214,952.74 was in “total indirects.” AIR charged an additional $26,950.74 as a 7% fee.

The invoice shows that the cumulative amount that AIR had billed the Department of Education was $10,957,275.73, of which $4,993,376.12 was total indirects and $716,831.18 was total additional fees.

A second invoice is from January 15, 2025, and shows AIR billing the Department $60,913.72 for the month of December 2024. Of that money, $29,685.23 was in total indirects. AIR charged an additional $3,985.01 as a 7% fee.

The invoice shows that the cumulative amount that AIR had billed the Department of Education was $11,076,493.79, of which $5,028,446.77 was total indirects and $724,630.48 was total additional fees.

In response to questions from Public, an AIR spokesperson said, “AIR’s indirect rates are similar to those of other social and behavioral research organizations and we have always abided by our approved rates. For government contractors, indirect costs include such costs as information technology, data security, and compliance and reporting.”

However, 50% in indirect fees is widely considered excessive. The National Institutes of Health recently required that its contractors lower indirect costs to 15% to reduce widespread overcharging.

Indeed, when asked about the invoice, a spokesperson for the Department of Education condemned the high fees. “Contracts with indirect rates over 50% take gross advantage of taxpayer dollars, perverting the reason the contracts exist — our students,” said Department spokesperson Madison Biedermann. “Incoming leadership will no longer allow these unacceptable terms.”

According to AIR’s IRS 990 form, the total compensation of AIR’s chief executive, David Myers, in the most recent year available, 2023, was $2,241,374.

“At the end of 2023, David Myers finished a 14-year tenure as AIR’s President and Chief Executive Officer,” said the AIR spokesperson. “His compensation for his final year included a retention payment. The salary for our current President and CEO is lower and in line with what other non-profit organizations of our size and type pay their chief executives.”

However, AIR’s tax forms showed that Myers earned $2,294,637 in 2022 and $1,145,400 in 2021.

Jessica Heppen is the current president and CEO. In 2023, she earned $685,060 as president. Neither Heppen nor Myers responded to Public’s request for comment.

AIR’s 990 form shows other high salaries for staff and fees for board members. AIR’s Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer, earned $931,610 in 2023, and its CFO earned $1,145,400 in 2022. A member of the AIR Board, Robert Boruch, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, received $80,250 in 2023 for just 2 hours of work per week, which is $772 per hour.

While nonprofit board members typically donate their time, 14 of AIR’s board members received hundreds of dollars per hour for their service. None responded to requests by Public for comment.

AIR’s fees should be considered in the broader context of declining student performance and AIR’s role to provide research that improves student performance.

Today, only 31% of fourth graders and only 30% of eighth graders are reading at or above proficiency levels, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). In eighth grade reading, 33% of students scored “below basic,” the highest percentage recorded in the NAEP’s history.

Congress established the Education Department in 1979 “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.”

Student performance has declined across the board over the last 10 years. While Covid school closures significantly worsened them, math and reading scores declined for fourth- and eighth-graders nationwide from 2014 to 2024.

AIR appears to be partly responsible. It gave a favorable evaluation to Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study curriculum, which used elements of the now-debunked “whole language” approach to reading instead of systematic phonics instruction.

Under the whole language approach, teachers taught children to memorize whole words and use guessing strategies instead of sounding out individual sounds in unfamiliar words.

The failure of the whole language approach was precisely why the Department of Education hires groups like AIR. The goal of research is to discover which teaching methods work and which don’t before schools adopt them. That didn’t happen. In fact, the opposite did. The result was a whole generation of children robbed of fundamental literacy.

“It is absolutely inaccurate to say we ‘gave a favorable evaluation’ to Units of Study,” said AIR.

But the evaluation was clearly positive. Implementation of the curriculum, AIR’s report stated, “is associated with improvements in ELA [English Language Arts] achievement starting in the second year of implementation, and in schools that opt to continue with the approach long term, the magnitude of the effects grow larger over time.”

And even AIR noted, in its email to Public, “We found no positive effect in the first year of implementation, then saw positive effects in subsequent years for some schools.”

Other Department contractors had much lower indirect rates. Why was AIR able to charge so much?

If you're not already a subscriber, please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning investigative reporting, read the rest of the article, and watch the full video!

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The former head of the UK's foreign intelligence agency, MI6, told Boris Johnson in early 2020 that the Covid virus escaped from the Wuhan lab. That means that the US, UK, Chinese, & German governments all knew the truth, covered it up, and spread disinformation. Case closed.

https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1668660948532625410

"It is now beyond reasonable doubt that Covid-19 was engineered in Wuhan Institute of Virology... [China] is now engaged in an information & influence operation (IO) to deflect responsibility....the Journal Nature was used to promulgate the narrative..."

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1…

Zelensky says he wants the war to end, but he’s not acting like it. Friday he dismissed the US ceasefire as unworkable. Saturday he had European leaders affirm his position. And now he says the end of the war is “very, very far away.” Feels like we’re being played.

https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1895619231586402473

If Zelensky’s strategy is to alienate the American people, and the president they just elected, one day before he addresses Congress, it’s working.

Zelenskyy says he’s grateful for US support but he acts entitled to it. He still hasn’t apologized for his behavior. And now he’s demanding the US do more. Zelensky, like Europe, doesn’t respect us. And relationships without mutual respect can’t last.

https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1895619231586402473

People say The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances in 1994 provided security assurances, but it did not include a binding defense commitment. Even pro-war voices admit the US is not legally obligated to defend Ukraine militarily under the Budapest Memorandum.

Healthy relationships depend on mutual respect. Ukraine and Europe don't respect us; they look down on us. America never had any obligation to protect Ukraine. And now we're asking why we should continue to spend our money, and put our lives on the line, to protect Europe.