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Detroit customs officers seize over 2,000 pounds of marijuana labeled as 'pool toys'

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents in Detroit seized 2,175 pounds of marijuana labeled as “pool toys” earlier this month.

The incident occurred at the Fort Street Cargo Facility after an x-ray scan of a tractor trailer and physical inspection revealed the illicit goods, which were concealed as “foam pool toys.” The marijuana and tractor trailer were subsequently seized.

“This seizure underscores CBP’s long standing commitment to the border security mission, Port Director Devin Chamberlain said in a statement. “The men and women of CBP continue to work diligently to keep our Nation and our communities safe.”

CBP seized 319,000 pounds of marijuana in 2021.

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America’s rhetorical sphere has descended into chaos

Healthy civilizations hinge on being able to decide things through discussion and debate. That debate must be based on honest, accurate information that leads to conclusions based on the prevalence of reason. America’s rhetorical sphere today is sorely lacking in those standards. Raw emotion and rage have replaced reasoned debate, and falsehood is a key tool in manipulating public argumentation. Chaos dominates the nation’s deliberations.

Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn warned years ago of the connection between rampant falsehoods in public dialogue and violence in a society. Reason has pretty much left the American marketplace of ideas today: Spin, concoction, and misdirection prevail. Violence, in the rhetorical and literal sense, as Solzhenitsyn forewarned, is also now thriving in America’s sociopolitical arena.

The chaotic political climate was supposed to have settled down after four years of mean tweets out of the Trump White House. The hoped-for return to measured and rational political dialogue never got out of the starting gate. A recent Rasmussen Reports study shows a full two thirds of Americans now believe the nation is even more divided than when Trump left office. That’s really saying something. Further, that survey was conducted before the Supreme Court leak about an upcoming abortion ruling.

Evidence of the nation’s communication chaos emerges daily, as passion overwhelms thinking. A rich guy named Elon announces plans to buy a social media platform, and an online mob goes berserk. CBS host Gayle King responds to the tragic shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., by claiming that “racism is mainstream” in America. The New York Times is so intimidated by cultural antagonists that it removes the word “fetus” from Wordle. A Supreme Court nominee is afraid to define the word “woman.” And so it goes, in a rhetorical climate of fear and anger.

The Department of Homeland Security planned to set up a Disinformation Governance Board, a move that totally puts the First Amendment on its head. Constitutional framer James Madison expected citizens to monitor the government’s information practices, not the other way around. Nearly half of Americans believe such a board would be a political weapon “used primarily to silence opposing views.”

The leak of the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling draft was an intentional attempt to inject emotional bedlam into an already acrimonious national debate. The Supreme Court has been one of the few remaining outposts in which careful deliberation could proceed as difficult legal matters were settled by debate. Now, abortion activists promise a summer of rage and to be “ungovernable.”

There are serious consequences to creating a chaotic public communications environment. Political opponents demonize and label each other, effectively ending sensible discussion. That condition was made clear in a study of political polarization last fall out of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. It showed fear and distrust now infect the minds of both sides of the political spectrum.

Another consequence is that citizens stop consuming news and thus have little factual basis on which to make judgements. People then are generally uninformed, but still feel compelled to rant on social media. Credibility deteriorates across society, even for the likes of scientists, whom nearly half of Americans now believe would falsify data to support personal views.

Make no mistake, communication chaos ultimately harms everybody. As the astute sociopolitical observer of the 20th century, Eric Hoffer, wrote, “Chaos, like the grave, is a haven of equality.” This turmoil serves a purpose for the provocateurs seeking to destabilize the culture and alter established structures and values. The destabilization leaves a void that gets filled with confusion, nonsense, and yet more rage. Everybody becomes equally miserable.

Technology has complicated the nation’s communications situation, speeding up messaging and limiting the time frame for actual thinking. A super-charged sensationalism now prevails. But modern technologies are no excuse for a nation that has lost its ability to think, reason and engage coherently in public.

Throughout American history, the rhetorical sphere has gotten cluttered with excessive emotion, falsehoods and nonsensical reasoning. But for nearly 250 years, Americans have found a way to muscle up and adhere to the principles of reasoned democracy. The nation must now dig deep to again find its way. The result of failing to do so won’t be pretty.

Jeffrey McCall is a media critic and professor of communication at DePauw University. He has worked as a radio news director, a newspaper reporter and as a political media consultant. Follow him on Twitter @Prof_McCall.

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How the Sussmann trial revealed Hillary Clinton’s role in the Alfa Bank scandal

The trial of former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann crossed a critical threshold Friday when a key witness uttered the name “Hillary Clinton” in conjunction with a plan to spread the false Alfa Bank Russian collusion claim before the 2016 presidential election.

For Democrats and many in the media, Hillary Clinton has long held a Voldemort-like status as “She who must not be named” in scandals. Yet, there was her former campaign manager, Robby Mook, telling a jury that Clinton personally approved a plan to spread the claim of covert communications between the Trump organization and the Russian bank. It was one of the most successful disinformation campaigns in American politics, and Mook implicated Clinton as green-lighting the gas-lighting of the electorate.

The mere mention of Clinton’s name sent shockwaves through Washington. In past scandals, the Clintons have always evaded direct responsibility as aides were investigated or convicted, from the Whitewater land dealings to cattle futures. Even when long-sought documents in Whitewater were discovered outside of the family quarters and bearing Hillary Clinton’s fingerprints, Washington quickly moved on. 

Clinton was not supposed to be the object of the Sussmann trial, because Judge Christopher Cooper, an Obama appointee, issued a series of orders limiting the scope of the trial and its evidence. The orders were viewed as “spar[ing] the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee … potential embarrassment.” 

Yet, even after winning such limiting orders, it was the defense that called Mook to the stand — out of order, in the midst of the prosecution’s case, because he was scheduled to leave on vacation — and he proceeded to confirm that Clinton herself approved of the tactic.

It was Washington’s worst-kept but least-acknowledged secret. 

On July 28, 2016, then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s alleged plan to tie Donald Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” Obama reportedly was told how Clinton allegedly approved “a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.”

Thus, Mook testified that Clinton did precisely what Brennan warned Obama was being planned.

The date of Brennan’s warning is important: It was three days before the FBI’s collusion investigation began. It also was a couple of months before Sussmann contacted then-FBI general counsel Jim Baker while claiming he was not representing any client. (He was counsel to the Clinton campaign and, according to prosecutors, billed the meeting time to the campaign.)

There is a strikingly familiar pattern in both the Steele dossier — which became the basis for the Russia collusion investigation — and the Alfa Bank tale. Campaign associates developed both claims while actively seeking to conceal their connections from the public and the government, including reportedly denying the funding of the Steele dossier and concealing that funding as legal costs.

The campaign then pushed these unfounded claims to the media and the FBI. Indeed, prosecutors this week contended that Sussmann continued to push the Alfa Bank claims after Trump was elected, in an apparent effort to fuel the Russia collusion claims being breathlessly reported in the media at the time.

When Clinton allegedly approved this effort, at least some people connected to her campaign were aware that the Alfa Bank theory was never viewed as credible by researchers tasked with supporting it. Those researchers had warned that it would be easy to “poke several holes” in the claim, according to prosecutors, and that the data could be seen as “a red herring.” Yet, trial witnesses admitted that they hoped the media would make the claims stick.

Despite a record of Clinton associates pushing unfounded allegations to the FBI on both the Steele dossier and Alfa Bank, Mook and another witness, Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias, insisted they preferred to use the media for such efforts. The campaign found a conduit in one liberal magazine, for example, whose story was then cited as a “bombshell” report, as if the campaign had had nothing to do with it.

For her part, Clinton not only approved using the Alpha Bank claim but helped to portray it as an established fact, tweeting: “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.”

That claim was then further amplified by one of her campaign advisers, Jake Sullivan, who now serves as President Biden’s national security adviser. Sullivan declared at the time: “This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow. Computer scientists have uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.” Sullivan added that he could “only assume federal authorities will now explore this direct connection between Trump and Russia as part of their existing probe into Russia’s meddling in our elections.” 

As the FBI’s Baker and other witnesses told jurors this week, there was in fact “nothing there.”

Months after approving the Alpha Bank strategy, Clinton called in December 2016 to censor opponents whom she accused of spreading falsehoods to try to influence elections. She declared that “it’s now clear that so-called ‘fake news’ can have real-world consequences.” Indeed, Clinton has pushed for state and corporate censorship while demanding a “global reckoning” with those who spread disinformation. Of course, Sussmann could still face the real consequence of conviction given the strength of the evidence against him. Yet, there will likely not be consequences — let alone a “reckoning” — for Hillary Clinton.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.

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Esper backs McCormick over Oz in Pennsylvania Senate race

Former defense Secretary Mark Esper waded into the Pennsylvania Republican Senate primary, backing candidate Dave McCormick (R), after news broke that the contest was considered too close to call against Trump-backed Mehmet Oz.

Speaking on “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Friday, Maher asked his guests, which included Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile, comedian Adam Carolla and Esper if Democrats should run more candidates like Pennsylvania Senate candidate and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D).

“He is such a wonderful populist candidate,” Brazile said, adding it was “because he supports the middle class, he supports the little person.”

“He’s the lieutenant governor. He has a strong record. He wants to raise the minimum wage. Yes, he wants to legalize marijuana … he wants to bring factory jobs. Yes, he has a great personality. You should have him on as soon as he’s ready,” she said.

Before the Democratic primary Fetterman announced that he had suffered a stroke, and underwent a procedure to implant a pacemaker. The lt. governor won the Democratic primary.

Esper jumped into the conversation, appearing to throw support behind McCormick.

“Let me provide you an alternative,” Esper said. “I grew up in Pennsylvania. The man for the job is Dave McCormick. He’s a frontrunner alongside Oz right now for the Republican side, and he would be a great U.S. senator.”

The development comes after The Associated Press reported on Friday that the Pennsylvania Republican Senate primary was too close to call and could trigger an automatic recount law in the state if the margin between candidates is within 0.5 percent. 

On Wednesday, former President Trump urged Oz to declare that he had won the race even as votes were still being counted. 

Esper served under Trump from 2019 until the former president fired him in 2020 days after the presidential election. Their relationship was fraught, and Esper claimed in parts of his new book that Trump wanted to shoot protestors in June of 2020.

He also alleged that the former commander in chief wanted to fire missiles into Mexico to combat drug cartels.

Whoever wins the Republican primary will face off against Fetterman in the November midterms. 

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As we honor a voting rights milestone, Biden’s executive order has new urgency

On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial 65 years ago this week, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. implored this country’s leaders to pass voting rights legislation. 

In calling on the president and members of Congress to “Give Us the Ballot,” he noted that “all types of conniving methods are still being used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters.” 

Decades later, methods of exclusion persist.

On the heels of historic election turnout for the 2020 election, states across the country enacted dozens of laws making it harder for Black and Brown communities to vote. This is a pernicious effort to undermine decades of civic engagement and power in communities of color. Regrettably, federal legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act and protect our right to vote has failed to pass despite almost unanimous bipartisan support in years past. 

Our democracy is fragile, making it even more important to follow through on the important initiative launched by President Joe Biden to strengthen our democracy with tools leveraged by the federal government — last year’s Executive Order on Promoting Access to Voting signed by the president on the 56th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. The executive order directs all federal agencies to develop plans to increase civic engagement and promote voter registration for the people these agencies serve. 

This executive order is possible because it builds on the promise and foundation of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which is not being fully utilized. The act is best known for its provisions requiring state motor vehicle, public assistance, and disability offices to offer voter registration services. But this landmark legislation — which had its signing anniversary on Friday — also contains a provision allowing for federal agencies to provide voter registration assistance in cooperation with states as well. The promise of this provision has yet to be fully realized, and this executive order, if properly implemented, can help complete the work begun under the National Voter Registration Act to make registration more accessible for all Americans.

We know that agency-based voter registration is effective. In the first year after the National Voter Registration Act’s enactment, more than 30 million Americans registered to vote through methods made possible by the act. The time is right to make sure federal agencies fully play their intended role in advancing voter access.

We are seeing promising steps just one year into the executive order’s implementation. For example, in March of this year, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced a pilot project to provide voter registration assistance in a few states. But there is much more to do. Federal agencies serve millions of Americans every year, and many more of them must step up their efforts to provide the access to voter registration contemplated by the National Voter Registration Act.

Civic engagement through voting builds a healthy democracy, ensuring that all Americans have a say in the choices that affect their everyday lives. This is a goal that transcends state borders and party lines. 

As we celebrate this 29th anniversary of the National Voter Registration Act, let us also continue the push for the successful implementation of Biden’s executive order and honor Dr. King’s call to ensure every American has access to the ballot. We should be doing all we can at all levels of government to strengthen and increase access, not restrict it.  

We must be stewards of our shared civil rights legacy to ensure that this most powerful tool — voting — is accessible to all.

Martin Luther King III (@OfficialMLK3) is chairman of the Drum Major Institute. Arndrea Waters King (@ArndreaKing) is president of the Drum Major Institute. Taifa Smith Butler (@TaifaButler) is president of Demos.

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Russia cuts off natural gas supply to Finland amid NATO dispute

Finnish energy company Gasum announced on Saturday that Russia cut off its natural gas supply to Finland following moves by the Nordic country and Sweden earlier this week to formally apply to NATO.

“Natural gas supplies to Finland under Gasum’s supply contract have been cut off,” Gasum said in a release. 

“Starting from today, during the upcoming summer season, Gasum will supply natural gas to its customers from other sources through the Balticconnector pipeline. Gasum’s gas filling stations in the gas network area will continue in normal operation,” the Finnish energy company added.

Last week, Finnish transmission system operator Fingrid confirmed that Russian energy supplier RAO Nordic Oy had cut off its electricity supply to Finland, though the operator noted that the electricity supplied through RAO Nordic Oy only makes up 10 percent of Finland’s consumption.

“The lack of electricity import from Russia will be compensated by importing more electricity from Sweden and by generating more electricity in Finland,” senior vice president of power system operations at Fingrid, Reima Päivinen, said in a statement. 

The development comes after both Finland and Sweden formally applied for NATO membership. 

Speaking from the White House rose garden on Thursday with the leaders of the countries, President Biden declared that the two countries “meet every NATO requirement and then some.” 

“The bottom line is simple, quite straightforward: Finland and Sweden make NATO stronger, not just because of their capacity but because they’re strong, strong democracies.  And a strong, united NATO is the foundation of America’s security,” he added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said ahead of Sweden and Finland formally applying to the military alliance, “there is no immediate threat to Russia from an expansion to include these countries.” His comments were an apparent reversal from what a Kremlin spokesperson had said earlier this month. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Tensions rise between DOJ, Jan. 6 panel

After weeks of airing concerns the Justice Department may not be moving aggressively enough to prosecute former President Trump and others in his orbit, lawmakers on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack met the department’s request for assistance with an interesting response: Not so fast.

The Justice Department has asked the committee to share some of its materials, sending a letter noting that some of its work “may contain information relevant to a criminal investigation we are conducting.”

But the committee has said it won’t directly turn over what it’s got, suggesting it would provide only a more narrow level of assistance. 

It’s the latest sign of inter-branch tension between the two investigations which, despite their overlapping interests, have stressed their independence of one another.

Jeff Robbins, an attorney now in private practice who has served as both a federal prosecutor and a Senate investigative counsel, says while both branches are seeking accountability over the events surrounding Jan. 6, each entity has different goals in mind.

“I can say broadly that the traditional tension between congressional investigative committees and the Department of Justice … about witnesses is that they have different interests,” Robbins said. “The Department of Justice wants to be in a position to prosecute people or to potentially prosecute people and the congressional committees want to be able to stage hearings that lay out for the American people what happened in a way that is designed to grab and keep the attention of the media and the American people.”

“So there is some – let’s call it jealousy and competing interests between the two branches.”

Members of the select committee have been calling for the Justice Department to be more aggressive in investigating and prosecuting political figures who may have played a role in instigating the Jan. 6 attack – or, as in the case of former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, have defied the panel’s subpoenas.

“Attorney General Garland, do your job so we can do ours,” Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) said during a March hearing to weigh their third and fourth referrals to DOJ of witnesses who refused to testify. 

Providing federal prosecutors with the transcripts of hundreds of witness interviews by the committee would likely aid law enforcement in bringing the types of prosecutions that many in the Democratic Party have been seeking.

“It’s not clear that the Department of Justice would need evidence from the committee for the purpose of prosecuting Whack Job A and Lunatic B storming the Capitol. What they would be interested in is evidence that relates to the various strategies put in place before the election, after the election, leading up to January 6, and even afterwards, for the purpose of trying to get the election results flipped. And the cast as potential characters is a large one,” Robbins said.

DOJ has filed charges against members of the Proud Boys and far right militia group the Oath Keepers. But the request could also signal an investigation into those in Trump’s orbit.

But Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) implied DOJ may look but not touch.

“They could come and view what we have, but we’re not going to share it,” Thompson said.

“A decision was made not to share any of the records. If they would like to change the request and say we’ll come over and view it that’s fine. But the original request, as it came to the committee, has been turned down,” he said, adding that the department has yet to come back with a more tailored request.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said the standoff is not a sign of “any kind of hostility between our committee and the department,” even as he called for the Justice Department to be more specific about what it’s asking of the panel.

“My concern, frankly, is the lack of evidence of DOJ investigating in areas where I think they should. And so that’s a greater concern for me than the breadth of what they’re asking Congress for,” he said.

“I think they need to be specific about what they need and why they need it. And the failure to do so raises the same questions about the scope of their investigation and why it is more than a year after Jan. 6 some things still don’t seem to be investigated by the department.…The department doesn’t wait on Congress to do an investigation. And so I think the question is: Why is the department coming to Congress at this point? Why hasn’t the department been doing a broader investigation from the beginning?”

Others referenced a need to assert their independence.

“The January 6 Select Committee has a very specific, statutorily defined purpose,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said.

“The House resolution creating us has asked us to assemble evidence about what happened on the sixth, what caused it and what we need to do in order to prevent it in the future. The Department of Justice has a completely different mission, which is to determine specific crimes and to prosecute them. And so in the Venn diagram of our relevant missions, there’s a lot of overlap, but it’s not complete.”

Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) also echoed the hope that DOJ is serious about holding people accountable.

“Everybody’s got their role,” he said. “We’re staying in our lanes and we’re focused on laying out the case that’s ahead of us in June.”

Robbins said the select committee should be mindful about keeping the DOJ investigation at arms length so it doesn’t create the perception that it is colluding with prosecutors on cases against partisan adversaries.

“In a country which is so polarized on whether or not there’s anything to this January 6 thing or not, they would be wise to think about the optics of looking as though they are just a feeder for politically-motivated prosecutions,” he said. “If you were them you would want to be careful about simply saying, in effect, ‘Great, glad you asked. Here it all is.’”

It’s unclear which of the select committee’s witnesses are of interest to federal prosecutors. The panel has interviewed more than a thousand people across a spectrum of figures with varying degrees of involvement in the actual riot at the Capitol.

The DOJ declined to comment on its request for the committee’s transcripts.

The department has reportedly expanded its investigation in recent months to include organizers of the “Stop the Steal” rallies that preceded the attack as well as the scheme to prepare fake slates of electors who would have thrown their support behind Trump in states that President Biden won.

Robbins said that the DOJ’s interest in the committee’s transcripts would support the speculation that prosecutors are turning their attention from those who were physically present during the mayhem on Jan. 6 to the various efforts to undermine or overturn the 2020 election results.

“The most reasonable inference is also the obvious one, which is that the Department of Justice, while staying silent as it should about what it’s doing, is in fact, looking at a potential case or potential cases against individuals involved in the prelude to January 6, or even the aftermath of January 6,” he said.

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The unbearable weight of defining disinformation and misinformation on the internet

The past few weeks have been momentous for regulation of internet disinformation and misinformation (D&M): Elon Musk agreed to purchase Twitter largely to change its approach to D&M; the U.S. government announced — and then suspended — a Disinformation Governance Board to oversee some D&M; the European Union completed historic, new internet laws, some of which regulate D&M; and former President Obama changed his longstanding hands-off approach and called for government regulation of D&M.

No exchange better illustrates the difficulty of defining D&M than the recent one between President Biden and Amazon-founder/Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos. Following Biden’s tweet “You want to bring down inflation? Let’s make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share,” Bezos replied: “The newly-created Disinformation Board should review this tweet, or maybe they need to form a new Non Sequitur Board instead.” An industry and a global regulatory structure are emerging to address internet D&M, but how difficult is the task?

Two conditions about regulating D&M are important to note. The first is that most advocacy for regulating D&M is only for very large platforms, usually defined as having many millions of subscribers, leaving smaller platforms less regulated. This includes the European Union, many countries and several U.S. states. The second is that regulation of D&M would be consistent with a range of pre-existing internet content regulations covering areas that have been regulated or prohibited both on and off of the internet going back centuries — including infringements, child pornography, false advertising, slander, threats of immediate harm, obscenity, rebellion, and more. These areas have robust history of national definition, refinement, legislation and litigation.

The majority of content moderation that occurs on internet platforms today involves these existing forms of illegal/regulated content, and definitions tend to be similar among nations.

Regulating or prohibiting D&M breaks new ground by moving into previously less-defined categories such as politics, health, science, etc. — and by attempting to do so on a global scale. 

When looking at something this complex, it’s often best to start at the beginning — and the beginning is July 3, 1995, the day that everyone in any American supermarket checkout line encountered a stunning Time magazine cover showing a young boy behind a computer keyboard who was obviously in complete shock as he looked at the computer screen, with a huge headline blaring “CYBERPORN.”

An explosion of political concern about content on this new medium called the internet followed, leading to groundbreaking internet content laws, rules and regulations, the most important of which insulated internet platforms from liability for content created by others and allowed platforms to edit content in any way they wished, virtually without oversight or liability.

As I explained in an earlier piece, nearly all of this early attention to internet content was about cyberporn and it unequivocally established a clear right for the government to oversee internet content. Previously, the government’s role in managing content in computer bulletin boards and chat rooms was much less clear.

Twenty-seven years later, few talk about regulating cyberporn: The focus is almost entirely on D&M — but those initial laws on cyberporn established the foundation for government regulation of D&M, and they lead to some of the same difficult questions. 

Most notably: If the governments or platforms prohibit D&M, then they must define with some exactness what is — and is not — D&M, just as governments tried to define obscene pornography during the last century. Precisely defining D&M today is far more complicated than defining obscenity in the 1900s — because large internet platforms serve myriad different nations, societies, religions, jurisdictions, languages, etc. Accordingly, there is a temptation to simply hark back to Justice Potter Stewart’s 1964 definition of obscene pornography — “I know it when I see it” — and to rely on “fact checkers” instead of justices to call out D&M “when they see it.”

Not surprisingly, there is no universally agreed-upon definition of either “disinformation” or “misinformation,” although many definitions of disinformation center on the concept of “false” and misinformation on “misleading.” Webster defines D as “false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth” and M as “incorrect or misleading information.” Some of the time, establishing truth/falsity is straightforward, but we all know that many times, it is not. My fourth-grade teacher explained this by showing us a partially filled glass and asking whether it was “half full” or “half empty” … we immediately divided into respective camps. By seventh grade, we learned in debate club that advocates emphasize truthful facts that support their opinion and discredit truthful facts that do not.

In a far more sophisticated way, President Obama explained that “any rules we come up with to govern the distribution of content on the internet will involve value judgements. None of us are perfectly objective. What we consider unshakeable truth today may prove totally wrong tomorrow. But that doesn’t mean some things aren’t truer than others or that we can’t draw lines between opinions, facts, honest mistakes, intentional deceptions.” Sometimes, as Obama explained, what is considered true or false may change. As evidence of evolving internet D&M truth, Knight First Amendment Institute’s Evelyn Douek recently described in Wired magazine how multiple D&M classifications were later revised or even reversed.

Regardless, dozens of governments have criminalized or regulated Internet D&M and made large platforms responsible for illegal D&M posts by third parties. According to the Poynter Institute, posting “false information” on internet platforms is a crime in many countries and more are on the way. In these situations, governments — through their courts or bureaucracies — will decide what is and is not disinformation or misinformation. At the same time, public demands are increasing for internet platform corporate executives to more actively regulate or prohibit D&M outside of (or in conflict with?) any government regulations. 

Governments or business executives are in for a very difficult task.

NOTE: This post has been updated from the original to correct the date of the Time magazine cover mentioned in the sixth paragraph.

Roger Cochetti provides consulting and advisory services in Washington, D.C.  He was a senior executive with Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT) from 1981 through 1994. He also directed internet public policy for IBM from 1994 through 2000 and later served as Senior Vice-President & Chief Policy Officer for VeriSign and Group Policy Director for CompTIA. He served on the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy during the Bush and Obama administrations, has testified on internet policy issues numerous times and served on advisory committees to the FTC and various UN agencies. He is the author of the Mobile Satellite Communications Handbook.

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New congressional map in New York approved by judge

A New York Supreme Court Justice late Friday approved a new congressional map in the Empire State, setting into motion some potential member-on-member primaries for Democrats.

Among some of the changes made in the latest New York congressional map included placing the communities of Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant fully in the 9th and 8th Congressional Districts respectively, instead of splitting them up.

In the 11th Congressional District, Staten Island was united with the areas of Bath Beach, Bensonhurst, New Utrecht and Bay Ridge. 

Within the 10th Congressional District, Sunset Park in Brooklyn and Manhattan’s Chinatown were included together, according to The New York Times. 

Following news of the approved maps, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) confirmed on Twitter he would be running in the 12th Congressional District.

“This new district belongs to no individual candidate, but instead to the voters who call it home. I’m grateful for the opportunity to continue steadfastly serving the West Side and eager to introduce myself – and my record of principled leadership – more fully, to neighboring communities of the East Side,” Nadler tweeted.

Meanwhile Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), who currently represents the 17th Congressional District, said he would be running in the 10th Congressional District. 

“The final maps released today are the result of partisan politics–drawn by an out-of-state, Republican court appointee who has shown utter disregard for cultural, social, and economic communities of interest. It is designed to reduce the number of NY Democrats in Congress,” he tweeted.

“I have decided to run for another term in Congress in #NY10. This is the birthplace of the LGBTQ+ rights movement. Since long before the Stonewall Uprising, queer people of color have sought refuge within its borders,” he added in a follow-up tweet.

Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) announced on Friday he would be running in the 10th Congressional District.

The unveiling of the map earlier this week startled Democrats as the map introduced member-on-member primaries, including between Nadler and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) for the 12th Congressional District.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), said he would be running in the 17th Congressional District instead of the 18th Congressional District, which he currently represents and would have set up an awkward member-on-member primary between him and Jones.

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