Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito dismissed criticism of the so-called shadow docket. Erin Schaff/AP hide caption

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito dismissed criticism of the so-called shadow docket.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito launched a litany of acerbic barbs at critics of the Supreme Court's so-called shadow docket on Thursday.

Noting that the term was coined in a 2015 law review article, Alito said that the term has been adopted by "journalists and some political figures" in order to convey the idea that "something sneaky and dangerous" is going on at the high court when it rules on emergency appeals seeking the court's intervention.

"This picture is very sinister and threatening, but it is also very misleading," he said in a lecture at the University of Notre Dame. "There is nothing, absolutely nothing new about emergency applications."

He added: "The catchy and sinister term 'shadow docket' has been used to portray the court as having been captured by a dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods to get its way. And this portrayal feeds unprecedented efforts to intimidate the court or damage it as an independent institution."

Addressing the court's most recent and controversial shadow docket decision, which allowed a Texas law banning abortions after about six weeks to go into effect, Alito said it is "false and inflammatory" to contend, as some critics have, that the decision "nullified Roe v. Wade."

"We did no such thing, and we said so expressly in our order," he said. Indeed, the court's 5-to-4 decision specifically left open the possibility that the court could re-examine the state law in a future case. But Alito did not address the fact that the court's decision to let the law go into effect meant that for the foreseeable future at least, almost all abortions in Texas are banned.

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the unsigned majority opinion "illustrates how far the court's 'shadow docket' decisions may depart from the usual principles of appellate process."

But Alito fiercely denied that, contending that the court's processes for dealing with emergency appeals has not, in reality, changed over the years.

"The truth of the matter," he said, "is that there is nothing shadowy" or really new about the process.

Indeed, the Supreme Court has long been willing to grant temporary relief in a limited number of cases to preserve the status quo, especially when there is a strong case that individuals will be harmed if the court does not act. Most often in the past these emergency orders have been used in death penalty cases to halt executions if there is a real likelihood that the death row inmate's sentence may have violated the constitution.

But there was an explosion of these emergency applications when the Donald Trump became president. From 2001 to 2017, during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the solicitor general filed a total of eight applications with the Supreme Court seeking to halt lower court orders dealing most often with administration policies. That is one every other term, according to University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck. Of those eight applications, the court granted just four, one every other term.

In contrast the Trump administration filed 41 emergency relief requests, securing a win from the court 28 times.

"It's a silly criticism," Alito said of the notion that the court has issued more emergency rulings in recent years. Addressing some of these numbers, he said "the real complaint of the critics is that we should have granted relief when they think it should have been denied ... and denied relief when they think it should have been granted."

The justice maintained that he had no problem with legitimate criticism, but he contended that most of the criticism of the way the current court handles the shadow docket is politically motivated and that it erroneously "seeks to convey ... that a dangerous cabal is deciding important issues in a novel, secretive, improper way in the middle of the night."

See the article here:

Justice Alito Calls Criticism Of The Shadow Docket 'Silly' And 'Misleading' - NPR

Photo: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

In August, Mayor Bill de Blasio made an enormous bet to reopen New York City schools for in-person learning. By requiring all of the citys 150,000 public-school employees to get a shot, he hoped to prevent a third academic year from going remote because of the virus. Employees who did not, he warned, would be suspended without pay.

So on Monday morning, the first day the mandate was enforced, about 8,000 employees were unable to report for work because they refused to be vaccinated. De Blasio took a victory lap at a press conference where he announced that 95 percent of employees were vaccinated, including 96 percent of teachers. A surge of last-minute vaccinations seemed to have avoided the sort of mass suspensions that officials feared and the relative few who were suspended, de Blasio said, had been replaced by vaccinated substitutes. As of today all of the employees in our 1,600 schools are vaccinated, he triumphantly said.

The Department of Education reported that 43,000 shots have been administered since the mandate was announced in August, with 18,000 coming in the past 10 days alone. About 1,000 teachers were vaccinated over the weekend, according to Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, which held its own press conference on Monday. (Mulgrew added that UFT members who are vaccinated before the end of the month will be able to return to work the following day.) Teachers who choose to remain unvaccinated will have to make a decision at the end of the month: voluntarily resign or remain on unpaid leave for a year. Both options allow teachers to retain health insurance benefits until early September, 2022. Teachers who choose neither option will be fired in December, according to an email sent to employees who had yet to comply.

Although the mayor had said all employees must be vaccinated by Friday at 5 p.m. or be placed on unpaid leave, the Department of Education told staff they could be vaccinated as late as Monday morning and still show up for work. While its unclear exactly how many teachers were unable to report for work on Monday morning, the mandate did trigger concerns about staffing shortages. The citys substitute-teacher portal listed thousands of slots available over the weekend, while the city said roughly 9,000 vaccinated substitutes were standing by to fill in. Mulgrew said staff shortages could hit some areas of the school system particularly hard, especially those that work with children who have special needs and school safety agents.

Of particular concern was Staten Island, where the vaccination rate has lagged behind the citywide average. Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter allayed fears about staffing shortages at schools there, such as New Dorp High School. Twenty staff members in a school of that size, while not insignificant, was fully covered by the work of the superintendent, by the work of the central staff, and by the work of the subs, she said at Mondays press conference.

This is going to be a total nightmare, said Rachel Maniscalco, 36, who taught English and special education at Concord High School in Staten Island. Maniscalco received an email from the DOE on Saturday notifying her that she had been placed on unpaid leave. Maniscalco said she would not be getting a shot before the end of the month because she did not feel drug manufacturers had been transparent about the makeup of their vaccines. The mayor wants to say that were replaceable, but the truth of the matter is that this week is going to be so detrimental to the DOE employees, their students, and their kids families, she said.

The school systems mandate comes nearly a week after New York began requiring vaccinations at health-care facilities statewide. That order resulted in a surge of vaccinations but left some hospitals with staffing shortages, forcing administrators to cancel elective surgeries in some instances. In Brooklyn, SUNY Downstate Medical Center postponed radiology appointments and canceled elective C-sections, according to Gothamist. Unlike mandates in other states and cities, New Yorks mandates do not allow for educators or health-care workers to rely on regular testing as an alternative to vaccination.

I never considered getting the shot at all. I dont even do flu shots, said Jo Rose, 30, a teachers assistant in the Bronx who was suspended over the weekend. Rose said she was one of only a handful of holdouts at her school; most of her unvaccinated co-workers caved to the pressure the mandate had placed on them since it was announced. Rose has not been vaccinated because she believes the government has too much control over people.I had to tell my kids on Friday that I was leaving. They thought I was cracking a joke on them, she said. They really thought I wasnt being serious. They were like, Why dont you just go get it? And I just tried to explain to them that I have a right to decide over my body.

The mandate survived a number of legal challenges, including a last-ditch appeal to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, which was denied. About 3,000 UFT members applied for religious exemptions or medical accommodations, Mulgrew said, but only 1,000 had been granted. Michael Kane, 43, a teacher in Queens, was originally denied a religious exemption but is in the process of appealing that decision. As of Monday morning, Kane was not allowed inside his school building, but he has yet to be placed on unpaid leave.

Its been very conflicting, said Paulette ONeal, a 52-year-old teachers assistant at P.S. 307 in Brooklyn, who said she was denied a religious exemption. ONeal said she had not gotten vaccinated because she was concerned about the shadow-banning and censoring of information about vaccines. They dont want us in the building. Or to let us talk to our children or their parents. They just want us to disappear, she said.

De Blasio said he was considering whether to extend the mandate to other city employees but would not say which departments might be next.

Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.

Excerpt from:

De Blasios Vaxx Mandate Led to an Avalanche of Shots for Teachers - New York Magazine

Justice Samuel Alito gave a blistering defense of several of the Supreme Court's recent rulings on contentiouscases, including its decision to allow the Texas law banning all abortions after six weeks.

Critics have accused the majority-conservative Supreme Court of abusing the ideaof a"shadow docket" over the past few months an idea which Alito rejected wholeheartedly ina speech at the University of Notre Dame on Thursday.

"The catchy and sinister term 'shadow docket' has been used to portray the court as having been captured by a dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods to get its ways," he said. "This portrayal feeds unprecedented efforts to intimidate the court or damage it as an independent institution."

The "Texas Heartbeat Act" which the Supreme Court bench declined to block in early September has been seen as a near nullification of Roe v. Wade. Alito, however, referred to these claims as "false and inflammatory."

"We did no such thing," he said. "And we said so expressly in our order." Quoting from the order, Alito stressed that the ruling was not an evaluation of the constitutionality of the law, but rather that the majority (5-4) made its decision following procedural bases.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

In this case, and in other extreme emergency cases, Alito favors a different term to describe the group: the "emergency docket." Much like how first responders, in dire circumstances, do not have the same luxury of careful considerationas a nurse or doctor in a hospital, the Supreme Court couldnot use its regular deliberation strategies, according to Alito.

"You can't expect the E.M.T.s and the emergency rooms to do the same thing that a team of physicians and nurses will do when they are handling a matter when time is not of the essence in the same way," he explained.

In a dissenting opinion, Associate Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the ruling "illustrates just how far the Court's 'shadow-docket' decisions may depart from the usual principles of appellate process." She added that their decision making becomes more "un-reasoned, inconsistent, and impossible to defend," by the day.

The strict abortion rules that came into effect after the passing of the act, S.B No. 8, was a celebratory moment for conservatives and a dreaded point for women, abortion activists and practitioners and the left in general.

The restrictions, which took effect on Sept. 1, are extreme. Implementing a cutoff date that is often too early for a person to identify that they are pregnant, the act also follows a "vigilante-style system of policing Texans' right to choose" that punishes nearly everyone involved in facilitating a clandestine abortion including the Uber driver. It also does not grant exceptions in cases of rape, incest or sexual abuse.

But all hope is not lost for Texas abortion rights.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Earlier this month, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas over the law, claiming that it was enacted "in open defiance of the Constitution." Judge Robert Pitman of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas is presiding over the arguments presented by the Justice Department in their plea to block the ban. Meanwhile, the state has been enjoining the court to deny motion and dismiss the case out of hand.

"The federal government has not clearly shown that the Texas Heartbeat Act is unconstitutional, that a preliminary injunction would remedy irreparable harm, or that the balance of equities and public interest favor extraordinary relief," the state said in a filing, as reported by NPR.

There is currently no time table for the decision. In the meantime,people seeking abortions continue to travel to neighboring states to evade the harsh laws set out by the state.

The rest is here:

Justice Alito slams "efforts to intimidate" the Supreme Court over Texas abortion ban - Salon

SOUTH BEND A crowd consistingpredominantly of women gathered in downtown South Bend late Saturday morning as part of a national movement over women's reproductive rights.

The Rally for Reproductive Justice in Indiana - South Bend was part ofmorethan 650 marchesinall 50 statesand Washington, D.C. organized byWomen's March protesters and, locally, by the Michiana Justice Coalition and other similargroups. It comes a month aftera Texas lawbanningabortions after six weeks of pregnancy went into effectanddays before the Supreme Court is scheduled to reconvene on Monday.

Local organizers say it was purely coincidental the rally was scheduled for Saturday, mere weeks after two conservative Supreme Court Justices, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito, eachspoke at the University of Notre Dame on topics such as a'race-obsessed world' and 'shadow dockets.'

More: Justice Alito says nothing 'shadowy' about Supreme Court emergency orders during talk at Notre Dame

Local organizer Molly B. Moon said the ultimate goal of Saturday'srally was to bring awareness to the issue and how it affects women nationally and locally.

"The rally is going to have action stations where people will be able to register to vote, figure out how to get involved and speak out against this egregious behavior on American democracy," she said earlier this week.

Attendees carried posters saying "mind your own uterus" and "my favorite season is the fall of the patriarchy." Darcie Cichon of LaPorte and Suzanne Hall of South Bend both wore shirts that said "sugar and spice and reproductive rights."

"I feel like if this is the first step, then what's next?" Hall said. "Like (Vice President) Kamala (Harris) said, there's no rules on the book that say what a man can do with his body."

According to USA Today, Women's March executive director Rachel O'Leary Carmona said that while abortions have never been fully accessible, aMississippi challenge to the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, Texas' abortion legislation, and the possibility of other states following with similar laws, represent an "unprecedented attack" on reproductive freedoms.

"For a long time, groups of us were ringing the alarm bell around abortion access and many of us were told we were hysterical and Roe v. Wade will never be overturned," Carmona told USA Today."But now it's clear that our fears were both rational and proportional. We are at a break-glass moment for America, and now's the time for mass mobilization and federal action."

New legislation: House passes legislation protecting the right to an abortion, but bill faces unlikely prospects in the Senate

In August, a federal judge struck down several of Indiana's abortion laws, such as bans on telemedicine and laws saying only physicians can performcertain kinds of abortion care. Other laws, however,were upheld in the judgement, such as requiring an ultrasound before an abortion and that medication abortions meet FDA standards.

Following the ruling, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita appealed the federal judge's decision up to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, the IndyStar reported.

On Saturday, several area leaders spoke at the local rally in South Bend in front of the Morris Performing Arts Center, including attorney and formerDemocratic nominee for Indianas 2nd District U.S. House seat Pat Hackett.Hackett prefaced her speech saying she was speaking from a point of view as an "attorney and personof faith."

"The fact that the current Supreme Court in its majority allowed this (Texas) law to go forward at this time is ominous. Women in our nation are under attack, ourconstitution and our rule of law are under attack and these assaults will metastasize in other states and in other populations, including Indiana unless we do something," Hackett said."Economic justice and ending violence against women getting access to healthcare including reproductive healthcare reverenceslife. The Texas law does not. ... As an attorney and as a person of faith, Iask you to join me, Iurge our dissent and our action."

Contact Mary Shown at 574-235-6244 and mshown@gannett.com. Follow heron Twitter:@maryshownSBT and @marketbasketSBT.

Read the original:

South Bend crowd rallies over women's reproductive rights as part of national movement - South Bend Tribune

This is a rush transcript of "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on October 1, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: Good evening and welcome to TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT. Happy Friday.

Since nobody reads books anymore, all of us get all of our history from Wikipedia. It is convenient. The problem is Wikipedia is so politicized and dishonest that on a lot of topics, certainly anything related to partisan politics, it's not even really worth reading anymore. There's just too much lying.

On the other hand, there is a lot of stuff there, it's a huge site and there are some gems remaining on Wikipedia.

So if you have a minute this weekend, take a look at the entry on mass hysteria through the ages before the authorities inevitably delete it as I'm certain they will, and as you read the entry, ask yourself if any of this sounds familiar to you? There are lots of witch trials of course, many of them -- many, many, many of them over many centuries. There are plagues of spontaneous dancing, mass ghost sightings, fits of laughing and trembling and babbling that seized entire towns at once for no apparent reason. It's all there.

And then there are more esoteric outbreaks of mass hysteria. There's a medieval French nun who according to the entry quote, "Inexplicably began to meow like a cat leading the other nuns in the convent to meow as well.

Eventually all of the nuns in the convent began meowing together leaving the surrounding community astonished. This did not stop until the police threatened to whip the nuns." It's hilarious as you read it, though at the time, the nuns definitely did not see the humor in it. They sincerely thought they were cats.

Hysteria is like that. When large groups of people start acting totally crazy, the reference points disappear. It all seems normal, no matter how nuts it is.

So with that feature of human nature, which never changes, with that in mind, take a look at this tape from yesterday's hearing before the House Oversight Committee. The topic was legal abortion, but because it is the year 2021, and we're all convinced we're cats, the conversation soon turned to the newly established scientific fact that men can get pregnant. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:And I just wanted to acknowledge, a lot of people are being left out of this conversation today because as we know, people get pregnant and not just women, but I hear people over and over and over again say women get pregnant, but that's excluding people that should be a part of this conversation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Yes, you don't want to exclude anyone, and it turns out that even in 2021, there are people out there who are still claiming that only women get pregnant and they'd better stop claiming that or else.

Amanda Presto just learned this. Presto is a writer at "The Daily Wire" and by the way, a woman, so she tweeted this thought crime assuming that she had biology on her side. She wrote this quote: "Demanding others call you by your preferred pronouns and growing out your hair does not make you a woman. Stop demeaning womanhood." No, Amanda, you stop demeaning pregnant men.

For her attack on the pregnant man community, Twitter shut Amanda Presto down. We are cats, and that's all there is to it, and that's true across the ocean in Great Britain. The Head of the Labour Party in the U.K. has now declared that men too can have cervixes because of course they can, "meow."

A few days later, a senior member of the Labour Party was asked whether she agreed that men can have cervixes. She was asked on television. Watch this uncomfortable moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Is it transphobic to say only women have a cervix? Good morning.

RACHEL REEVES, SHADOW CHANCELLOR: Good morning, Nick, and it's great to talk to you.

I just think that this issue has just become so divisive and toxic and it pits people against each other, both groups who face discrimination in society, women and trans-women, and I just find this debate incredibly unhelpful and unproductive to be totally honest.

QUESTION: Is it transphobic, yes or no?

REEVES: Look, is it -- is it transphobic? Look, I just -- I don't even know how to start answering these questions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Oh come on, Rachel Reeves, Shadow Commissioner, whatever you are of the Labour Party. It's a simple question, it's not a debate. Do men have cervixes? But she can't bring herself to say it.

On the other hand, she doesn't dare note the obvious, which is that the entire conversation is completely insane, so she breathes heavily. She harrumphs quite a bit and tries to move on to the next topic.

"The Washington Post" is hoping to avoid moments of uncertainty like this, so Jeff Bezos's newspaper has just issued a new style guidance to all of its reporters. Here is what it says, quote: "If we say pregnant women, we exclude those who are transgender and non-binary," which of course is not defined. So no more pregnant women in "The Washington Post." That's an outdated inherently offensive category, like secretaries and housewives.

And this is true in hospitals, too, across the country. Some physicians now punishing subordinates who recognize biological differences between men and women.

Dr. Lauren Chong for example, a pediatric trainee at the Sydney Children's Hospitals Network recently told "The New York Times" that healthcare workers should not use terms like "ovaries" and "uterus." Quote: "You can just say reproductive organs," Chong said, and that's an order.

The problem is that it may actually be medically relevant whether somebody has ovaries and a uterus. Reproductive organs might not be specific enough.

But honestly in 2021, when we're all cats, who cares.

Curing disease may be important, but is it more important than not offending the human rights campaign? Probably not. That's a conclusion the C.D.C. has reached.

The Center just released a graphic pointing out that quote, "Only 31 of pregnant people have been vaccinated," not pregnant women, pregnant people.

And then there's "The Lancet," which not that long ago was considered a serious medical journal. "The Lancet" just released a cover with this headline, quote: "Historically, the anatomy and physiology of bodies with vaginas have been neglected." So that's the term. You thought you were a woman, now you're a -- according to "The Lancet," a body with a vagina.

Try to imagine a more dehumanizing phrase, but then, it is probably not possible to imagine it, actually. At yesterday's House Oversight Hearing, Gloria Steinem showed up to prove that she is still alive and still relevant somehow.

For 50 years, Steinem has been -- as she describes it, defending women -- in the 70s, she wrote a piece for "Cosmopolitan" Magazine entitled, "If men could menstruate" and then she was constantly reminding us -- and this is a quote -- "If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament." Oh but now men can get pregnant. So, the script has changed a little bit.

Here was Gloria Steinem who we should note is now a cat, meowing, telling us that absolutely anybody can get pregnant and therefore anyone can get an abortion. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GLORIA STEINEM, JOURNALIST: What's happening in Texas is not only a local issue or a women's issue, it's a step against democracy, which allows us to control our own bodies and our own voices.

Remember when Hitler was elected and he was elected, his very first official act was to padlock the family planning clinics and declare abortion a crime against the state. Mussolini did exactly the same thing because they knew that controlling reproduction and nationalizing women's bodies is the first step in a controlling state -- in an all-controlling state.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: It turns out Gloria Steinem was always pretty dumb, but back when she was 35, nobody noticed, but rewriting history, can't let you do that.

Sorry, you're not Wikipedia.

Actually, Adolf Hitler was an enthusiastic eugenicist, just like Margaret Sanger who founded Planned Parenthood. He encouraged abortion according to almost everyone who studied this. Jeffrey Tuomala for example, a law professor who has written a lot about the Nuremberg trials, Hitler like Gloria Steinem supported abortion, not just as a matter of physical autonomy, but as a way to keep women working and contributing to the economy, quote: "The Nazis preferred that the Eastern European workers not become pregnant so they would not be taken out of the workforce. They took measures to identify pregnant workers and to encourage or pressure them into making use of the abortion services the Nazis provided."

Oh, does that sound familiar? So once again the goal is to reduce women to wage slaves. It is more virtuous to work at JPMorgan than it is to be a mother, that's what they're telling you. That's what Ayanna Pressley is telling you. She complained that abortion bans are tools of -- you guessed it -- white supremacy, and the experts at the hearings yesterday agreed.

Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:I think that it's very important for us to understand the intersection of racial justice policies and gender justice policies and reproductive justice policies because you don't understand why these bans on abortion are not about having more black and brown babies born, they want more white babies to be born.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: We're falling for it again, rising to the bait, being literal, correcting insanity because you know, it's kind of hard to resist.

There is no rational conversation about anything currently underway in the United States. We have to say, just again in the interest of fact checking that what you just heard is the opposite of the truth.

New York City is the biggest city in America, it's got eight million people. The abortion rate in New York among African-American mothers is roughly three times the rate that it is for white mothers. Thousands more black babies are born in New York that are born every year. So shutting down the abortion clinics in New York, which no one is even proposing, but if you were to do that, you would have a lot more black babies than you have now.

We can't even get to that conversation because we can no longer agree that only women have babies. Now men have babies, so for 50 years, they told us men have no interest in whether or not abortion is legal because they can't have kids, but now they can, so we thought it would be worth weighing in on this.

According to the House Oversight Committee, it is all for your own good.

Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. GHAZALEH MOAYEDI, OBSTETRICIAN-GYNECOLOGIST IN DALLAS, TEXAS: I know firsthand that abortion saves lives. For the thousands of people I've cared for, abortion is a blessing. Abortion is an act of love. Abortion is freedom.

We need Federal protection now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON:"Abortion is freedom," finally someone said it out loud, but is it? We thought for once it would be good to have a man, someone who by definition can get pregnant and have an abortion assess this claim, and that man tonight is Jason Whitlock. He is host of "Fearless." He's just written a new piece in "The Blaze" about how lunacy like this is the left's new religion.

Jason Whitlock, thanks so much for coming on tonight, so I don't know how you even begin to untangle the series of intersecting arguments none of which makes sense, but taken together become this like Gordian knot of insanity. How do you even unravel this? But I'm going to throw it to you and see if you can.

JASON WHITLOCK, HOST, "FEARLESS WITH JASON WHITLOCK": Tucker, we're looking at and we're living in an era where the truth is under an attack that it's never been under, a level of attack it's never been under. And you have to understand it from a biblical perspective.

God is a search for truth. God is truth. The Gospel is truth, and it's under attack in this very secular society and they're very clever and strategic about how they're going about it. The whole defining of truth as offensive and this whole little safe space society we've built where everybody lives in fear of saying anything that someone can define as offensive is an attack on truth.

Because the truth, particularly biblical truth in this era is probably offensive and will make people uncomfortable, but we're creating a society where we don't want to make sure anything that comes out of our mouth doesn't make any single person on the planet uncomfortable, therefore it's impossible to get to the truth.

Strategy number two, which is just as effective or perhaps the most effective is they frame the left as, the Democratic Party has framed every argument in racial terms and they control the racial conversation in this country. And so if you disagree with anything they say, if they say you know what, abortion is freedom, abortion is an extension of white supremacy, even though the truth and the facts say 40 percent of the abortions in America are happening to black women and we're killing about

650 black babies per day here in America through abortion, it is not abortion.

If it is an extension of white supremacy, it is because it's executing a genocide on black babies. The protection of abortion rights is in no way protecting black people, but the Democratic Party has just been so clever in its assault on the truth and its silencing of truth and anybody that speaks against it, I've just got to tip my hat to them because this is a propaganda campaign the likes of which I am not sure we've ever seen in the history of the planet, and it's effective, and if men don't stand up and women don't stand up and those of us that believe in truth, those of us that believe in the founding principles of this country, if we don't stand up they're going to continue to slaughter us with lies framed as truth.

CARLSON: It's pretty easy to at least on the margins to defeat the argument with like really simple commonsense, so if you care about someone, if you really love someone, your own children for example, what's the one thing you want for them? For them to have children.

You want more people like them, right, so if you love someone, wouldn't you encourage them to have kids? To reproduce? To be fruitful and multiply?

WHITLOCK: You certainly would if you want them to experience the highest level of joy that life has to offer, and I think that is having, raising, and developing young kids. Obviously, family is at the root of all successful societies. We are destroying that under a barrage of lies.

And Tucker, as a black man, a proud black man in this country, I am so offended that we, as black people, are being used by the left political machine in an attempt to grab power. They are using our previous pain and discrimination to bring us down and this entire nation down and I'm just begging those of us who are believers, not --

Just those of us with any commonsense, we must call this unbelievable racism that we're seeing from the left. We must call it out. We must stand up against it, call it exactly what it is.

The left -- if there's anybody imitating Hitler, Margaret Sanger, it is the left. They are trying to destroy this country and they are doing it by destroying black people first and then using race and the religion of race that they've replaced Christianity and the Judeo-Christian values that made this country great.

It was our pursuit of the approval of God that made this country accomplish great things. Now, we're all begging to be on the right side of some racial history that the left is going to write.

CARLSON: Nicely put, as always. Jason Whitlock, thank you so much for coming on tonight.

So, we still have no idea what these objects are in the sky. They are still unidentified flying objects, but we know there are a lot of them and we know they've been videotaped by U.S. military aircraft near military installations and U.S. Navy ships. What's interesting is that as far as we know, nobody in the Federal government is trying to figure out what this is and what it's about. That may change soon.

We'll have an update for you after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: The House of Representatives just passed a Defense Bill, excuse me -- that will cost more than $770 billion. We told you about it previous nights this week. Some of it is hard to defend, but some of it is worthwhile and some of it is interesting.

So the bill includes a provision to create a permanent office under the Defense Secretary that will be tasked with investigating reports of UFOs.

That office would quote, "Carry out on a department-wide basis the mission currently performed by the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force."

Interesting. It's unclear if the Senate will approve that provision. We'll be watching.

Lue Elizondo led The Pentagon's secret UFO Task Force for years, he joins us tonight to assess. Lue, thanks so much for coming on.

So, what would this do if it becomes law? And do we need it?

LUE ELIZONDO, FORMER PENTAGON OFFICIAL: Yes, Tucker. This is really historic. Yes, first of all, we absolutely need it. It's a long time coming. Frankly, we should have had it decades ago if you ask me. But it is historic and it is historic for several reasons.

In this obscure five pages that most people may not be aware of, it really says a lot. In fact, it -- first of all, it creates an environment where it disestablishes the UAP Task Force, which was a temporary capability to begin with and solidifies a permanent capability. Two, it also forces the Secretary of Defense to report on an annual basis to Congress what we've learned about UAPs. Three, it also requires us to now work with our international friends and allies. That's a big deal.

And if that wasn't a big deal enough, two other items that I found very interesting. Number four is that it -- and you kind of broke this story a few years ago, it requires any recovered material associated with UAPs to finally be reported to Congress, and then last but not least, it also requires the government to report to Congress any adverse medical effects that have been encountered by our pilots who may have come up close and personal to these UAPs.

CARLSON: So that suggests there have been adverse medical effects, that American servicemen have been hurt by proximity to these objects?

ELIZONDO: Yes, it actually suggests two things. It suggests that, what you just said that pilots may have actually suffered medical consequences, adversely; but also, that there is recovered material and that recovered material may be in the possession of the U.S. government.

CARLSON: So does anybody that you're aware of in The Pentagon believe -- sincerely believe -- that these objects are part of the Russian or Chinese military or that they're foreign military aircraft?

ELIZONDO: I mean, honestly, if you were to ask them off the record, no. I think, the consensus that this isn't Russian or Chinese technology, of course, you still have to keep that door open just a crack and I think it helps have the conversation help socialize it initially to especially some folks who are just now actually hearing about this for the very first time.

As crazy as it sounds, there are still people when you say hey, have you heard about the UAP issue that we're encountering off the Coast of California or over in the Middle East? They are saying no, what are you talking about?

So unfortunately, you still have to keep that part of the conversation open, but I think the general consensus is that we are dealing with something else.

CARLSON: Yes, something else. I mean, why is this not the biggest story ever of our lifetimes? And of course it is.

Lue Elizondo, thank you so much for all your efforts on this.

ELIZONDO: Always my pleasure. Thank you.

CARLSON: Because it is the biggest story of our lifetime, there is no getting around that, bigger even than COVID, we've been covering this for five years. We've put together a documentary in fact on "Tucker Carlson Originals," it's called "The UFO Files." You can stream it now on FOX Nation, if you like.

So the Southern border is open. People from all around the world are responding as you would respond if you lived in a poor country and someone offered you free healthcare. We just learned how many people are expected to arrive from foreign countries illegally uninvited just this month, and that number is shocking. It's much bigger than you would think, that's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CARLSON: Well, the Southern border is still open tonight, it appears there are more people on the way to the United States and the free healthcare they've been promised than we thought.

FOX's Matt Finn has the numbers on that for us tonight. Hey, Matt.

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Tucker: This is the end of biology - Fox News

Oct. 5LEWISTON The city has received its first tax payment tied to the New England Clean Energy Connect project, the result of new valuation that allowed Lewiston to lower its property tax rate this year.

The $1.55 million in property taxes paid by NECEC, the Central Maine Power project, represents roughly half of the full year's payment, and comes as a November referendum seeks to halt the controversial transmission line that's already under construction.

The statewide referendum, through a citizens' initiative, hopes to kill the project by banning "high-impact" transmission lines in the upper Kennebec region and requiring the Maine Legislature to approve such projects, which would be retroactive to 2020 before CMP's parent company, Avangrid, had received the necessary permits.

City officials Monday said they are not planning specifically based on possible outcomes of the referendum battle, but are staunchly against the effort. They see the tax revenue as an important piece of the city's revitalization, and one that could finally get Lewiston out of the shadow of the recession in the late 2000s.

Heather Hunter, interim city administrator, said the tax payments were budgeted for this year, which allowed officials to lower the tax rate from $29.67 per $1,000 of assessed valuation to $28.26.

More than $100 million in new valuation came online this year tied to the site work and related upgrades underway at 1651-1653 Main St., the site of a Lewiston converter station. Officials held a news conference in late June to announce the new valuation and its impact on the city's budget.

Hunter said the most "immediate impact" from the new tax revenue is the impact on the city's tax rate, but that the City Council may also decide to start adding back programs that were lost in the late 2000s and were never revived. She said Lewiston's recreation programs are "well under the industry average" based on the city's population.

Story continues

Referring to the upcoming referendum, Hunter said there's no specific measure that would repeal the work that's already been done, meaning she expects the tax impact gained by Lewiston so far would "stay on the books."

However, she said, she's concerned for the referendum's broader implications for how major infrastructure projects are handled in the future.

Ted Varipatis, a NECEC spokesman, said this week that tax payments made so far are "based on work already done in these communities and the money is theirs regardless of the vote in November."

"Of course, future payments over the next two decades wouldn't happen if the project is killed, but this is money paid out and in these towns' coffers," he said.

Mayor Mark Cayer said Monday that he's hopeful that NECEC will ultimately continue, given its benefits to Lewiston, but said he already sees the city gaining in new investment.

"We've had some really good economic development in our community over the past year and a half," he said. "We're moving forward one way or the other. This project will allow us to do a lot of work, but we're still moving in a positive direction."

So far, Lewiston is by far the biggest municipal tax recipient from NECEC. Other municipalities receiving payments so far include Embden, New Sharon, Cumberland, Pownal, West Forks, Moscow, Anson, Industry, Jay and Durham. The municipality with the second-highest tax assessment is Jay, at $146,695.

In September, the City Council passed a resolution reaffirming support for the project. The Lewiston substation will convert and transmit hydropower from Canada to southern New England.

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Lewiston receives first tax payments tied to NECEC project - Yahoo News

Axios Jonathan Swan spoke with Afghanistan's ambassador to the United States, Adela Raz, for the latest episode of Axios on HBO. It was her first TV interview since the fall of Kabul.

Guests: Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center; Axios' Jonathan Swan and Mike Allen.

Credits: Axios Today is produced in partnership with Pushkin Industries. The team includes Niala Boodhoo, Sara Kehaulani Goo, Dan Bobkoff, Alexandra Botti, Nuria Marquez Martinez, Sabeena Singhani, Michael Hanf, and Alex Sugiura. Music is composed by Evan Viola. You can reach us at podcasts@axios.com. You can text questions, comments and story ideas to Niala as a text or voice memo to 202-918-4893.

Go deeper:

NIALA BOODHOO: Good morning! Welcome to Axios Today! Its Monday, October 4th. Im Niala Boodhoo. Heres what you need to know today: The Supreme Court takes up some of our nations biggest issues. Plus, Mike Allen on the Pandora Papers. But first, todays One Big Thing: Afghanistans ambassador to the U.S. speaks out.

JONATHAN SWAN: Do you think Af-Afghans will ever trust an American president again?

ADELA RAZ: Uh, not soon, probably. I'm sorry to say that. I don't think so.

NIALA: That was Axios Jonathan Swan speaking to Afghanistan's ambassador to the United States, Adela Raz, for the latest episode of Axios on HBO. It was her first TV interview since the fall of Kabul, and Jonathan Swan is here to tell us how her story might reflect Afghanistans story right now.

NIALA: Jonathan, thanks for being with me.

JONATHAN: Thanks for having me.

NIALA: Jonathan, Afghanistan's ambassador to the U.S., Adela Raz, is still working in D.C., and I wanted to start by asking you: Does she still consider herself the ambassador to the U.S. and is she?

JONATHAN: Yeah, she does consider herself the ambassador and it's the most extraordinary situation. Basically shes stateless. She has kept the embassy open, the Afghanistan embassy. Obviously, she has no leader that she reports to because Afghanistan's president Ashraf Ghani fled the country in secret, and the Biden administration is declining to meet with her. She's someone who's spent her whole adult life fighting for the rights of Afghan women and girls. And she's basically, in the last month, watched her life's work go up in flames.

NIALA: What was her response to President Biden saying that the U.S. still wants to advocate for the rights of women and girls there?

JONATHAN: She said really it's all talk because what leverage does the U.S.-is the U.S. exerting of the Taliban? The Taliban has taken over the government. They're now stopping women from going to school. All the gains of the last 20 years that she's been involved in working for, are being erased right now.

NIALA: And what about President Biden's actions overall? What did she say about how the Biden administration handled the exit from Afghanistan?

JONATHAN: She really wishes that the Biden administration had renegotiated a better deal with the Taliban, one that put conditions in place, rather than just saying, we're going to leave. She saw that as a betrayal.

NIALA: Can you give me a sense of what her role was like in the lead up to the withdrawal?

JONATHAN: She was actually Afghanistan's ambassador to the United Nations. She was the first woman to be in that role. She was only appointed the ambassador to the United States in Washington in July. She was having to sort of publicly project confidence in her government when, of course privately, she had grave doubts about it. So she was just in a-in a horrendous position. We had to stop the interview several times. She was crying, had to collect herself, she feels like her life has just been taken away.

NIALA: What are you left thinking about now after this interview?

JONATHAN: I'll be honest, it left me feeling pretty bleak. The Taliban has shown pretty clearly that they haven't really changed. Ideologically, they're still the same Taliban that they were in the 1990s when they stopped Ambassador Raz, when she was a young girl, from going to school. The other thing that people aren't thinking about right now is Afghanistan is already experiencing a humanitarian crisis. There are sanctions on the Taliban and yet there's this moral imperative to get aid and food to the Afghan people. So it's just a very complicated situation and real people's lives are-are at stake.

NIALA: Jonathan Swan covers politics for Axios, and you can watch that whole interview with Ambassador Raz on Axios on HBO. Jonathan, thanks for giving us this backstory.

JONATHAN: Of course. Thank you.

NIALA: Well be back in 15 seconds with what to know about the Supreme Courts new fall term.

[ad]

NIALA: Welcome back to Axios Today! Im Niala Boodhoo. Abortion, guns and religious rights top the list of major issues in front of the Supreme Court as it starts its new term later today. Jeffrey Rosen is the President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, and he's with us for what he's watching as this new term begins.

JEFFREY: Hi, great to be here.

NIALA: We're hearing so much about, for example, abortion, is that the biggest issue the Supreme Court is taking up this fall?

JEFFREY: Yes, it is. The Supreme Court may overturn Roe v. Wade, and that is the biggest constitutional issue in decades. And that's what makes this case, which is coming out of Mississippi, so important.

NIALA: What do we need to know about that case?

JEFFREY: Well, Mississippi passed a law banning abortions after 15 weeks and Roe v. Wade. And the cases after that said you can't ban abortions, uh, before fetal viability around 24 weeks. So if the Supreme Court were to uphold this ban, that would represent a huge setback for abortion rights.

NIALA: I've also been hearing a lot about this term shadow docket. Can you explain what this is and how this factors into The Supreme Court this fall?

JEFFREY: The shadow docket are cases The Supreme Court decides without full arguments and briefings. And in the abortion context, the court recently refused to block Texas' abortion law, which bans abortion after six weeks. And it did it on the shadow docket. In other words, it issued a brief opinion but it didn't give reasons that really justified what it was doing. And it also didn't have full briefing. So critics of the shadow docket say this is allowing the court to make really important decisions without hearing good arguments on both sides. And that's the source of the criticism.

NIALA: Were also hearing a lot of criticism or maybe should say debate over the politicization of the court. And Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas last week said the court quote may have become the most dangerous branch of government. What's going on here?

JEFFREY: Well, those who say the court's becoming politicized, say the justices are ruling based on politics rather than The Constitution. And it's interesting that, not only Justice Thomas, but also justices Barrett and Justice Breyer, appointed by President Clinton, all denied that. They say judges are actually deciding based on their judicial philosophies, not politics. Now, not everyone is convinced by that. And Justice Thomas thinks the court is getting into areas where it shouldn't. And that's why he says the courts become dangerous.

NIALA: How should people think about this? Because it gets really tricky when you hear liberal and conservative justices denying and saying this has happening.

JEFFREY: There are many cases where the court is not political. And in fact, last term, there were more unanimous decisions than in a long time. And you saw the justices agreeing in all sorts of unexpected ways. At the same time, there are these counterexamples: abortion, guns. How can we explain this? Well, Justice Breyer has said, there's some areas where justice feel so strongly, and abortion is certainly one of them that they may not be able to separate their political from their constitutional views. But in other cases where they feel less strongly, they can. Maybe that's the simplest way to explain it.

NIALA: National Constitution Center CEO, Jeffrey Rosen, also hosts the podcast We the People, where he brings together liberals and conservatives to talk about the big constitutional issue of the week. Thanks Jeffrey.

JEFFREY: Thank you.

NIALA: Yesterday, the ICIJ - that's the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released: the Pandora Papers, an attempt to untangle the world of offshore finance via millions of leaked financial records. And this investigation was the result of a year-long collaboration between more than 600 journalists in 117 countries, including news organizations like the BBC, the Indian Express and The Washington Post. We'll be no doubt hearing about this investigation for some time. But for this morning, I asked Axios' Mike Allen what you need to know about what ICIJ says is the largest investigation ever in journalism history.

MIKE ALLEN: At a time when people are ever more suspicious of insiders and the establishment, the papers reveal mammoth deception and unthinkable spending on personal luxury. All with this astonishing, convincing paper trail. Look at Jordan. Among the poor countries in the Middle East, a large recipient of U.S. foreign aid. The king secretly spent more than a hundred million dollars on luxury homes. In the U.S. and London, including a compound in Malibu, the Washington Post reports. Another place the Pandora papers had home for Americans, The Washington Post found that South Dakota is now a hub of financial secrecy, tens of millions of dollars from outside the U.S. now sheltered by trust companies in Sioux Falls.

NIALA: Mike Allen is a cofounder of Axios.

Thats all weve got for you today!

Im Niala Boodhoo - thanks for listening - stay safe and well see you back here tomorrow morning.

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Afghanistans ambassador to the U.S. speaks out - Axios

CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses disordered eating.

A joint investigation by ABCs Four Corners and Triple J Hack that aired on Monday night has made explosive claims about TikToks algorithm and data practices, saying that the app can expose users to dangerous content with real-life impacts through its algorithms, data harvesting, and censorship.

Here are the five biggest claims to come from the report.

It takes less than 30 seconds to find harmful content on TikTok, and a few hours for the algorithm to dominate someones feed with offensive videos, according to several researchers, the Four Corners report claimed.

The report referenced tech advocacy organisation Reset Australia, citing their experiments that discovered it takes about four hours for the algorithm to learn that a 13-year-old is interested in racist content, and about seven hours for sexist videos to swamp someones feed.

Laura Hemmings, a university student, spoke to Four Corners about joining the app to watch funny videos, but said after she followed a fitness influencer, the algorithm appeared to push her toward viral calorie-counting trends.

After four months on TikTok, Lauren was diagnosed with an eating disorder.

According toSwinburne Universitys Dr Suku Sukunesan, who advises TikTok on how to make the app safer, TikTok videos can basically teach people how to have an eating disorder because the algorithm sends vulnerable young people toward similar content.

I was immediately given all this eating disorder content. After a couple of hours, TikTok suggested 30 different accounts to follow and they were all people living with eating disorder issues, he said on the episode, after embedding himself into TikToks eating disorder community.

Its almost like a pit with no end and you find that these kids would ultimately harm themselves more.

Claire Benstead, a 22-year-old who has been in and out of hospital over the last five years due to suffering from an eating disorder, was in recovery when she joined TikTok. Her algorithm quickly suggested videos relating to eating disorders to her, which she claims eventually led to her relapse.

Benstead tried cleaning up her feed by reporting videos that promoted eating disorders, but says she was told that the videos she reported did not breach TikToks guidelines.

The app also claims to ban content depicting, promoting, normalising, or glorifying activities that could lead to suicide, self-harm, or eating disorders, with a TikTok spokesperson telling the ABC:

Our teams consult with NGOs and other partners to continuously update the list of keywords on which we intervene,

Another TikTok user told Hack and Four Corners that she reported a viral video of a man taking his own life, and claims that she was also told it did not breach any community guidelines.

Claims that TikTok has a racial bias are not new. Last year, TikTok apologised forhiding posts with the hashtags Black Lives Matter and George Floyd as thousands of creators complained about being silenced, citing a glitch.

Earlier this month, TikTok user Ziggi Tyler went viral for showing how the platform flagged words such as Black, Black success, and Black Lives Matter in his bio as inappropriate content, but not terms such as neo-nazi and white supremacist.

TikTok shared a statement toForbes which read: Our TikTok Creator Marketplace protections, which flag phrases typically associated with hate speech, were erroneously set to flag phrases without respect to word order.

We recognise and apologise for how frustrating this was to experience, andour teamhas fixed this significant error. To be clear, Black Lives Matter does not violate our policies and currently has over 27 billion views on our platform.

The Four Corners x Hack report featured interviews with two creators of colour, Unice Wani (@unicewani) and Paniora Nukunuku (@pnuks), who discussed being shadow banned from TikTok for creating videos discussing race. (Shadow banning is term for when videos or posts are hidden from a platforms feed without explicitly being banned or taken down).

Nukunuku told the ABC that his videos on life with a disability are sometimes pinged for violating community guidelines, despite not breaking any rules.

Wani claims that a video he posted about Black Lives Matter saw his account banned for a week, and a video he put up in support of Palestinian protests was removed just hours after he posted it.

You tend to get a lot of shadow bans for speaking up about stuff such as racism I guess they focus more on the white girls dancing and stuff like that, Wani said.

The Four Corners report claimed that TikTok doesnt just mine facial data from the videos uploaded onto the app, but also from videos users might record on the app and never upload, or any videos and photos in their camera rolls.

The report alleged that the app analyses faces for personality and demographic traits, using that information to create a profile of the user and create a more accurate algorithm.

Anne Longfield, the former Childrens Commissioner for England, is leading a class-action lawsuit alleging that every child who has used TikTok since May 25, 2018, may have had private personal information illegally collected by ByteDance (TikToks parent company) through the platform for the benefit of unknown third parties.

Parents and children have a right to know that private information, including phone numbers, physical location, and videos of their children are being illegally collected, she said.

The lawsuit is demanding TikTok delete any personal information it has stored regarding children.

TikTok has strongly denied the allegations, with arepresentative saying the companys top priorities are privacy and safety and that the platform has plenty of policies, processes and technologies in place to protect all its users, including the younger end of the demographic.

We believe the claims lack merit and intend to vigorously defend the action, the representative for TikTok told the ABC.

The Four Corners x Hack report referenced an academic investigation by The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) which found that TikTok appears to use its algorithm to hide political speech that it thinks is controversial.

The US State Department funded the study which found hashtags relating to mass detention of Chinese Muslim minority Uyghurs, pro-democracy Hong Kong protests, LGBTQI issues and anti-Russian government videos were just some of the content that appeared to be hidden by TikTok.

We see evidence of how content moderation that takes place in China, how that type of thinking is still applied to TikTok outside of China, ASPIs Fergus Ryan said.

As it has expanded around the world, and particularly after its received a lot of scrutiny, the company has tried to, as much as possible, disconnect TikTok, the company, from its roots in China. But ultimately, those links cant be fully severed.

In a statement, TikTok vehemently denies companys involvement in political censorship.

We do not moderate or remove content based on political sensitivities. We have never removed content at the request of the Chinese government, nor have we been asked to.

You can read the full investigation into the TikTok spiral over at the ABCor watch the Four Corners episode here.

If you need support, give Butterfly Foundation a call on 1800 33 4673 or chat online.

If you are in distress, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or chat online.

Under 25? You can reach Kids Helpline at 1800 55 1800 or chat online.

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The 5 Most Explosive Claims Made In The Four Corners x Hack Investigation Into TikTok - Pedestrian TV

This report is from the Partnership on AI, a nonprofit that explores the responsible use of artificial intelligence. Members include Amazon, Facebook, Google, DeepMind, Microsoft, IBM, and Apple, as well as nonprofits like the ACLU and First Draft, news organizations like The New York Times, and academic and research institutes like Harvards Berkman Klein Center and Data and Society.

I like this report because misinformation coverage can often get bogged down in small, specific stories, and its useful to zoom back out. If you spot interventions that the authors have missed, you can note them here. LHO

Big Tech CEOs have become a regular sight on Capitol Hill, called intimeandtime againto testify before Congress about their misinformation practices and policies. These debates often revolve around whats been called thefalse take-down/leave-up binary,where the central question is whether platforms should allow misleading (however thats defined) content on their platforms or not.

A quick scroll through platform policies, however, will reveal a variety of intervention tactics beyond simple removal, including labeling, downranking, and information panels. When this range of approaches to misinformation is considered, far more fundamental questions arise: When should each of these approaches be used, why, and who gets to decide?

To date, there has been no public resource to understand and interrogate the landscape of options that might be used by platforms to act on misinformation. At the Partnership on AI (PAI), we have heard from our partner community across civil society, academia, and industry that one obstacle to understanding what is and isnt working is the difficulty of comparing what platforms are doing in the first place. This blog post is presented as a resource for doing just that. Building on our previous research onlabelingmanipulatedandAI-generated media, we now turn our attention to identifiable patterns in the variety of tactics, or interventions, used to classify and act on information credibility across platforms. This can then provide a broader view of the intervention landscape and help us assess whats working.

In this post, we will look at several interventions: labeling, downranking, removal, and other external approaches. Within these interventions, we will look at patterns in what type of content theyre applied to and where the information for the intervention is coming from. Finally, we will turn to platform policies and transparency reports to understand what information is available about the impact of these interventions and the motivations behind them.

This post is intended as a first step, providing common language and reference points for the intervention options that have been used to address false and misleading information. Given the breadth of platforms and examples, we recognize that our references are far from comprehensive, and not all fields are complete. With that in mind, we invite readers to explore and add to ourpublic databasewith additional resources to include. As a result of our collective work, platforms and policymakers can learn from these themes to design more informed and valuable interventions in the future and better debate what it means for an intervention to be valuable in the first place.

It seems like every other day a platform announces a new design to fight misinformation, so how did we decide on which interventions to categorize? We started by comparing a non-comprehensive subset of several dozen interventions (and counting) on top social media and messaging platforms for an initial categorization of intervention patterns, based onusage statistics. We also included some data about other platforms with lower usage statistics, including Twitter, due to its prominent interventions and interest amongst the Partnership on AI partners in our AI and Media Integrity Program.

We included any intervention we found that was related to improving the overall credibility of information on a platform. That means the focus of interventions is not always limited tomisinformation(the inadvertent sharing of false information) but also disinformation (the deliberate creation and sharing of information known to be false), as well as more general approaches that aim to amplify credible information. Note that public documentation of these interventions varies widely, and in some cases may be outdated or incomplete. In general, we based our intervention findings on conversations with PAI Partners, available press releases, platform product blogs, and external press coverage. If you see something to add or correct, let us know in thesubmission form for our intervention database.

In order to organize the patterns across interventions, we classified them according to three characteristics: 1) type of intervention, 2) element being targeted, and 3) the source of information for the intervention. These characteristics emerged as we noted the key differences between each intervention. Apart from the surface design features of the intervention, we realized it was key to address what aspect of a platform the design is applied to (for example, labeling on individual posts vs. accounts) as well as where the information was coming from, or the source.

There are many ways platforms might intervene on posts that they classify as false or misleading (more on the complexities of such classifications in part three). You might already be familiar with some tactics, such as fact-checking labels or the removal of posts and accounts. Others, like downranking posts to make them appear less often in social media feeds, you might not think of, or even be aware of. We refer to these various approaches as interventions, or intervention types, as the high-level types of approaches employed by platforms.

Note that the visual and interaction design of interventions can vary widely, even for interventions of similar types (e.g. veracity labels on Facebook compared to those on Twitter feature different terminology, colors, shapes, and positions). In this post we focus on general approaches, rather than comparing specific design choices within types.

Labels are one of the more noticeable and varied types of interventions, especially as platforms like Facebook have ramped up to labelmillions of postsrelated to COVID-19 since 2020. We define labels as any kind of partial or full overlay on a piece of content that is applied by platforms to communicate information credibility to users.

However, labels are far from alike in their design: in particular, we differentiate between credibility labels and contextual labels. Credibility labels provide explicit information about credibility, including factual corrections (for example, a false label, also known as veracity label in a review byMorrow and colleagues in 2021). Contextual labels, on the other hand, simply provide more related information without making any explicit claim or judgement about the credibility of the content being labeled. For example, TikTok detects videos with words related to Covid-19 vaccines and applies ageneric informational bannerto Learn more about COVID-19 vaccines).

Beyond this, label designs can vary in other crucial ways, such as the extent to which they create friction for a user or cover a piece of content. Labels may be a small tag added alongside content or may make it more difficult to open the content. Each choice may have profound implications for how any given user will react to that content. For a more thorough discussion of the tradeoffs in design choices around labeling posts, you can check out our12 Principles for Labeling Manipulated Media.

Ranking. Platforms with user-generated content, such as Facebook and TikTok, use various signals to rank what and how content appears to users. The same ranking infrastructure used to enhance user engagement has also been used to prioritize content based on credibility signals. For example, Facebook has used anews ecosystem quality(NEQ) score to uprank certain news sources over others. Conversely, downranking can reduce the number of times content appears in other users social media feeds, often algorithmically. For example, Facebookdownranksexaggerated or sensational health claims, as well as those trying to sell products or services based on health-related claims. At the extreme end of this spectrum, content may even be downranked to 0, or no ranking, meaning content will not be taken off of a platform, but it will not be algorithmically delivered to other users in their feeds. The ranking scores of any given content remains an opaque process across platforms, thus it is hard to point to examples that had a low ranking (that is, were downranked) vs. those with no ranking.

Removal is perhaps the most self-explanatoryand often mostcontroversialapproach. We define removal as the temporary or permanent removal of any type of content on a platform. For example, Facebook, YouTube, and othersremovedall detected instances of Plandemic, a COVID-19 conspiracy theory video, from their platforms in May 2020.

Though labeling, downranking, and removal are the most prevalent types of approaches, platforms also employ other methods related to promoting digital literacy and reducing conflict in relationships. Well discuss more specific examples in the next section.

While a lot of attention has been given to platform actions on individual posts, interventions act on a lot different levels. To understand the intervention landscape, its worth knowing and considering what element on a platform is being targeted. In assessing interventions, we found that different approaches act on different scopes of content, including posts, accounts, across feeds, and external efforts.

Post-level interventions are arguably the most visible and salient to users, as platforms indicate that specific posts of interest have been flagged and removed. This sometimes seems to trigger aStreisand effectin which the flagged posts receive additional attention for having been flagged. (This is especially true when the poster is a prominent public figure, such asformer President Donald Trump.) In addition to credibility labels with explicit corrections such as Facebook and Instagram false information ratings, interventions on posts can also include contextual labels that simply provide more information, such as TikToks labels on posts tagged with vaccine information encouraging users to Learn more about the Covid-19 vaccine.

Additionally, some post-level interventions like downranking are by definition less visible, as posts classified to be downranked, for example on Facebook due toexaggerated health claims, are distributed less on social media feeds. In these cases, users may only suspect that an intervention has taken place without being able to confirm this. Finally, post-level interventions also include sharing or engagement restrictions, such as WhatsApps limits on sharing messages more than five times.

In many cases, these post-level interventions may be done in tandem with each other. For example, when Facebook adds a fact-checking label, the post is also downranked, and when Twitter labeled certain Trump tweets following the 2020 election for containing misleading information, liking and sharing was also prohibited.

Account/group interventions target a specific user or group of users. When labeled, they are typically contextual in nature, offering identity verification according to platform-specific processes, or else surfacing relevant information about an account or groups origin, such as the accounts country or if it is state-sponsored. (Right: YouTube label for state-sponsored media.)

Accounts and groups are also subject to downranking and removal. Sometimes this is temporary or conditional until certain changes are made, such as the deletion of an offending post. Other times it is permanent. For example, platforms like Twitter have released guidelines detailing different account actions taken according to afive-strike system.

Instead of targeting individual posts or accounts, some interventions affect an entire platform ecosystem. Examples of feed-level interventions include the shadow banning of certain tags, keywords, or accounts across a platform, preventing search. It is not always clear what feed-level actions are taking place, leading to widespread suspicion and speculations of bias for example thedebunked ideathat conservative accounts and keywords are systematically downranked and banned across platforms like Facebook for ideological reasons.

There are feed-level labels as well, such as information hubs and information panels that are displayed prominently on platforms without being attached to particular posts. The banners shown on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections, which linked to election resources, are one prominent example. Other feed-level labels only appear when triggered by search. These can take the form of both credibility and contextual labels. Google, for example, highlights a fact-check if a query matches a fact-check in the ClaimReview database. And on Pinterest, merely searching for a keyword related to a misinformation-prone topic like census results in a banner linking to additional information (see example at right).

Finally, in some cases, platforms dont depend on labels, removal, or ranking, and instead aim to promote digital literacy education either using embedded digital literacy educators and fact-checkers or outside of a platform environment entirely. This tactic is particularly useful in closed messaging environments where content cant be easily monitored for privacy reasons. For this reason, platforms like WhatsApp have announced funding forseven fact-checking organizationsgroups to embed themselves in groups and find other relational approaches to promote credibility. In other cases, the intervention involves direct support of partner sources identified by a platform as credible to create ads or other content to be amplified to users.

In making intervention decisions, platforms must decide what to intervene on. They currently rely on a variety of sources to both identify the need to intervene and provide what they consider authoritative information. We refer to these actors and institutions as intervention sources and in many ways, the quality of an intervention can only be as good or trustworthy as its source, regardless of other design factors. These intervention sources include different systems, both human and algorithmic. Below we describe sources including crowds, fact-checkers, authoritative sources, and user metadata.

Very few crowd-based rating systems for misinformation currently exist publicly. In 2021, Twitter releasedBirdwatchin beta. The platform allows users to add notes with ratings about the credibility of posts. Others may then rate these notes, and the most helpful notes are surfaced first.

An earlystudy from Poynterobserved very low engagement with the feature, as well as evidence of politicized notes. Indeed, ensuring quality of notes and preventing organized gaming of ratings by motivated political actors remains a challenge for any crowd-based intervention at scalea challenge thatTwitter itself is attentive to.

Similar tools using reporting features exist for moderating hate speech. For example, in 2016Periscope released a featurethat polled random users about whether reported messages were appropriate until a consensus was reached, at which point the offending user would be either allowed to post or be penalized. Users were shown the results of the poll. Though not explicitly about mis/disinformation, the feature offers an interesting model for random jury-based polling for use in content classification.

One of the more publicized sources of intervention information are fact-checkers. A group of fact-checkers came togetherfollowing the 2016 electionoffering to help Facebook check the credibility of its posts. Such organizations are now approved by theIFCN(International Fact-Checking Network). These fact-checking members are contracted by platforms such as Facebook to provide ratings on posts, either according toplatform-specific classifications(as with Facebook), or broader industry schemas, such asClaimReviewdeveloped by schema.org and the Duke Reporters Lab (as with Google).

Facebook has described how ratings are extended in concert with multi-modalautomated detection toolsto flag duplicate issues across poststhoughthese are not always applied accuratelydue to the difficulties of appropriately assessing a users context and intent at scale.

In some cases where technical and specialized information is involved, such as election regulations, COVID-19, and the census, platforms have followed the recommendations of relevant expert organizations.

This approach may seem to offload the responsibility of the platforms to be arbiters of truth by instead depending on credible institutions. In practice, however, the authority of these institutions has also proved contentious in the context of a politicized information ecosystemfor example, Facebookpromotes CDCinformation even as many debate the agencys changing policies.

Additional sources included curated lists of tags/accounts, internal monitoring/content moderation, other platform curation of stories, andother metadata such as the provenance of a photo. While many platforms use automated detection, it is crucial to recognize that this detection is still based on prior classification by sources such as those listed above.

Now that we are equipped with a basic understanding of how misinformation interventions operate, how can we tell what they are meant to do and whether theyre doing it? Here we face a deeper problem: a lack of standardized goals and metrics for intervention. Though such interventions appear to have societal goals related to harmful misinformation, they are, in many ways, still treated like any other platform feature, with limited public-facing explanations. And while many platforms regularly release public statistics, these rarely include information about specific interventions other than high-level counts of actions such as posts removed.

Researchers have also asked for dynamic Transparency APIs to track and compare these and other changes in real time for reporting reasons, but many have yet to receivethe kinds of data they needto conduct the most effective research. For a summary of current research approaches, seeNew Approaches to Platform Data Researchfrom NetGain Partnership. The report points out that even as platforms provide total numbers and categories of information removed, they arent informative about the denominator of the information total, or what kinds of groups information is and isnt distributed to. Because of this, there is very little structured information about the efficacy of specific interventions compared to each other. This results in researchers scraping details from product blogs, corporate Twitter threads, and technology reporting.

If these interventions are to have a positive societal impact, we need to be able to measure that impact. This might start with common language, but ultimately well need more to be able to compare interventions to each other. This begins with platforms taking responsibility for reporting these effects and taking ownership of the fact that their intervention decisions have societal effects in the first place. Ourprior researchsurfaced widespread questioning and skepticism of platform intervention processes. In light of this, such ownership and public communication is essential to building trust. That is, platforms cant simply count on tweaking and A/B testing the color scheme and terminology of existing designs to make the deeper social impacts they appear to seek.

Going forward, we need to examine such patterns and ad hoc goals. We also need to align on what other information is needed and ongoing processes for expanding access to relevant metrics about intervention effects. This includes further analysis of how existing transparency reports are used to understand how they might be more valuable for affecting how users come into contact with content online. Platforms should embrace transparency around the specific goals, tactics, and effects of their misinformation interventions, and take responsibility for reporting on their content interventions and the impact those interventions have.

As a next step, the Partnership on AI is putting together a series of interdisciplinary workshops with our Partners with the ultimate goal of assessing which interventions are the most effective in countering and preventing misinformation and how we define misinformation in the first place. Were complementing this work with asurveyof Americans attitudes towards misinformation interventions. In the meantime, ourdatabaseserves as a resource to be able to directly compare and evolve interventions in order to help us build a healthier information ecosystem, together.

Do you have something to add that we didnt cover here? We know our list is far from comprehensive, and we want your help to make this a valuable and up-to-date resource for the public. Let us know what were missing by emailingaimedia@partnershiponai.orgor submitting an interventionto this Airtable formand well get to it as soon as we can. Stay tuned for more updates on future versions of this database and related work.

Emily Saltz is a UX researcher and a past fellow at the Partnership on AI and First Draft News. Claire Leibowicz leads AI and media integrity efforts at the Partnership on AI.

More here:

Shadow bans, fact-checks, info hubs: The big guide to how platforms are handling misinformation in 2021 - Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard

The following is a lightly edited transcript of remarks made by Kmele Foster during a Newsweek podcast debate on cancel culture. You can listen to the podcast here:

I hate the phrase "cancel culture," and I think I'm on record about that. But what I hate about the phrase, in practice, is that it emphasizes the cancelation and not the cultural bit.

Cancel culture is the prevailing social milieu that we operate in... as a result of a number of different factors, perhaps primarily the proliferation of new kinds of technologies that allow us to quickly share different things and come together and coalesce as groups. We have embraced a set of social norms that make us much more likely to engage in mobbings and censure; rather than trying to engage with people and have conversations and engage in public criticisms of ideas that we dislike, we attempt to excommunicate people.

Imagine being in a circumstance where you can't work, you can't live in our neighborhood, because you have the wrong sorts of ideas. And rather than have a conversation about those ideas, it immediately becomes "We will silence you."

There's a competition about feelings and notions of safety taking preeminence over any notion that we need to actually value a plurality of thought and perspectives. It's very ironic that we live in an era when we talk a great deal about diversity and inclusion, but in a very real sense, the ethos of cancelation culture is actually exclusion, monoculture and conformity of perspectivedriven so much by this forceful ostracization of people who are perceived to have the wrong sorts of ideas.

Think about the world you want to inhabit: Is the world a minefield where you're just trying to survive, where you're imagining all these ways you might run afoul of the new norms because it's completely unforgiving? Or is it a garden where of course there are hazards, there are places you might trip, a pitfall, a bush that has some thorns that you're not expecting; but there are also beautiful roses and all sorts of other things that you can discover?

We can experience the garden together, or we can experience the minefield together, and I think we are much more that minefield than that garden right now. And I think that that is something that is very concerning and has a material chilling effect.It is possible to have cultural innovation in both of those worlds.

In the garden, you can imagine us building new tools and finding new ways to talk to each other, and even cultivating new social norms that make it easier for us to live with the new reality that we find ourselves in, where everyone has this ready access to information, and occasionally that information is less than true.

Will we develop tools to deal with that reality so that we can navigate those things and adjudicate truth better? Or do we innovate in a different sort of way, where we're focused on being punitive, and we're focused on getting rid of the people who have the wrong sorts of ideas?

In the past, that meant waterboarding, crucifixion, an iron cross, a guillotine. Now, shadow-banning? That is the choice we have to make. I do think that a world where we're less willing to experiment with ideas, with new modes of living, where persuasion is not nearly as important to us as vilification, is a dangerous sort of world.

The trade-off is that we perhaps become less acquainted with truth.

Kmele Foster is the co-founder of Freethink and cohost of The Fifth Column Podcast.

Continue reading here:

We've Sacrificed Culture to Cancelation | Opinion - Newsweek