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Chuck Schumer: ‘Only Way’ To Reduce Inflation Is To ‘Raise Taxes’ & Undo Trump Tax Cuts

The “only way” to tackle rampant inflation in America is to raise taxes on the middle class and eliminate tax cuts enacted by former President Donald Trump, according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D).
“If you wanna get rid of inflation, the only way to do it is to undo a lot of the <a href="https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2017/12/20/historic-congress-passes-tax-cuts-jobs-act-sends-president-trump-sign/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Trump Tax Cuts</a> and raise rates,” Schumer said during a press conference at the Capitol building on Tuesday.
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“No Republican is ever going to do that, so the only way to get rid of inflation is through reconciliation,” he added, referring to a procedure whereby Democrats would force through legislation with their narrow simple majority in the Senate.
Schumer’s explanation is ignorant at best and dishonest at worst, as there are several ways to reduce inflation.
Schumer conveniently omitted that reducing the federal government’s excessive entitlement spending facilitated by the Federal Reserve’s money-printing policy known as “quantitative easing” would more efficiently reduce inflation.
In fact, just raising taxes on Americans would not actually tackle the inflation problem at all due to the sheer size of the national debt and its accompanying interest.
As economist Milton Friedman noted: “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.”
The Federal Reserve could raise borrowing interest rates to the current official inflation rate – <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/apr/12/us-inflation-rate-march-2022" target="_blank">8.5% as of March</a> – to encourage savings and reduce economic demand, but that would likely push the economy into a recession.
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The Fed could also shrink its balance sheet – a process known as quantitative tightening – to reduce the money supply, which would ease inflationary pressure.
“There’s one source of inflation. The actual definition of inflation is an expansion of the money supply,” economist and EuroPacific Capital CEO Peter Schiff told Fox News host Tucker Carlson last month, adding that inflation is effectively a hidden tax imposed upon the American people because the dollar’s spending power is diminished over time.
“It’s the Federal Reserve that’s been expanding the money supply,” Schiff continued. “They’ve called it ‘quantitative easing’, but they keep creating dollars, and it’s the U.S. government that spends those dollars into circulation. And as it does that, the value of each dollar goes down. And so the price of everything you buy with dollars goes up.”
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“The middle class is going to feel the inflation tax the hardest. Their wages are not going to go up nearly as much as the cost of living,” he added.
So Schumer’s proposal is to add on even more economic pain upon the middle class by hiking their taxes even more in an inflationary environment while doing nothing to address the out-of-control government spending that caused the inflation to begin with.
Watch the full Democrat press conference:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" readability="4.4444444444444">
HAPPENING NOW: <a href="https://twitter.com/SenSchumer?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SenSchumer</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/SenStabenow?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SenStabenow</a>, and <a href="https://twitter.com/SenatorCantwell?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SenatorCantwell</a> are speaking live from the Capitol. <a href="https://t.co/yjnoITOzg9">https://t.co/yjnoITOzg9</a>
— Senate Democrats (@SenateDems) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenateDems/status/1519017294189539332?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 26, 2022</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://battleplan.news/watch?id=62603065d905881a86263c39" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Households Cancel Streaming Subscriptions in Record Numbers as Inflation Forces Cutbacks</a>
 
 
source <a href="https://www.infowars.com/posts/chuck-schumer-only-way-to-reduce-inflation-is-to-raise-taxes-undo-trump-tax-cuts">https://www.infowars.com/posts/chuck-schumer-only-way-to-reduce-inflation-is-to-raise-taxes-undo-trump-tax-cuts</a>

news Chuck Schumer: ‘Only Way’ To Reduce Inflation Is To ‘Raise Taxes’ & Undo Trump Tax Cuts

The “only way” to tackle rampant inflation in America is to raise taxes on the middle class and eliminate tax cuts enacted by former Preside...

Musk Slams Anti-Free Speech Authoritarians: ‘I Am Against Censorship That Goes Far Beyond Law’

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Tesla CEO and new Twitter owner Elon Musk commented outrage over his vow to bring free speech back to the platform speaks volumes.
“The extreme antibody reaction from those who fear free speech says it all,” Musk tweeted Tuesday concerning the livid reactions seen from many following his acquisition of the company.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" readability="4.3805309734513">
The extreme antibody reaction from those who fear free speech says it all
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519020176884305920?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 26, 2022</a></blockquote>
Musk went on to clarify his definition of free speech is any speech that is permitted by law.
“By ‘free speech’, I simply mean that which matches the law,” Musk tweeted.
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By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.
I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.
If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.
Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519036983137509376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 26, 2022</a></blockquote>
“I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law,” he pointed out.
“If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.”
“Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”
It remains to be seen whether Musk’s free speech vision involves reinstating, or unbanning accounts that were suspended under Twitter’s previous ownership, but some conservatives have <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.infowars.com/posts/liberal-twitter-users-baffled-as-they-lose-thousands-of-followers-after-musk-buyout" target="_blank">reported</a> seeing an uptick in follower counts suggesting algorithmic changes are already taking place.
On Tuesday, Musk responded to a tweet from Breaking Points co-host Saagar Enjeti, who highlighted an article reporting Twitter lawyer Vijaya Gadde cried during a company meeting following the acquisition, pointing out Gadde helped censor the New York Post over the Hunter Biden laptop story which was now been confirmed true.
“Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate,” Musk commented, suggesting he’s well aware of the issue.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" readability="5.5058823529412">
Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519073003933515776?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 26, 2022</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://banned.video/watch?id=6267135ca7b0322fef726b36" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BREAKING: Elon Musk Takes Over Twitter, Learn What Will Come Next</a>
 
 
source <a href="https://www.infowars.com/posts/musk-slams-anti-free-speech-authoritarians-i-am-against-censorship-that-goes-far-beyond-law">https://www.infowars.com/posts/musk-slams-anti-free-speech-authoritarians-i-am-against-censorship-that-goes-far-beyond-law</a>

news Musk Slams Anti-Free Speech Authoritarians: ‘I Am Against Censorship That Goes Far Beyond Law’

Tesla CEO and new Twitter owner Elon Musk commented outrage over his vow to bring free speech back to the platform speaks volumes. “The ex...

Twitter’s Top Lawyer Breaks Down In Tears During Musk Takeover Meeting

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://api-assets.infowars.com/2022/04/4-26-22-twitterrrr.jpg" /></div>
Twitter’s top lawyer, Vijaya Gadde, reportedly broke down in tears during a virtual meeting with the company’s policy and legal teams to discuss the ramifications of Elon Musk’s purchase of the social media platform.
According to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/26/twitters-top-lawyer-reassures-staff-cries-during-meeting-about-musk-takeover-00027931">Politico</a>, “Gadde cried during the meeting as she expressed concerns about how the company could change,” and “acknowledged that there are significant uncertainties about what the company will look like under Musk’s leadership.”
Having been with Twitter since 2011, Gadde was the key executive in charge of ‘trust and safety, legal and public policy functions‘ – described by Politico as the company’s “moral authority.” 
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote" readability="9.2471131639723">
Gadde holds one of the most controversial positions at Twitter: Her teams decide <a href="https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/twitters-gadde-is-final-word-on-blocking-tweets-even-trumps?context=article-related" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">how to moderate content</a>. That’s made her a target of right-wing criticism, particularly when Twitter <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/technology/facebook-twitter-republicans-backlash.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">blocked the distribution</a> of a New York Post article about President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, in 2020. She faced a renewed wave of criticism after multiple reports confirmed she was behind the decision to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/16/technology/twitter-donald-trump-jack-dorsey.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ban Trump from Twitter</a>. -Politico
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In other words, Gadde is likely the exec who signed off on ZeroHedge’s February 2020 ban for speculating that Covid-19 may have emerged from a Wuhan Lab, and President Trump’s January 2021 ban in connection with the capitol riot.
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote" readability="14.659606656581">
She has <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/28/twitter-vijaya-gadde-free-speech-policies-technology-social-media-429221" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">shepherded Twitter through some of its most contentious political battles</a>, including the decisions to remove all political advertising and to boot former President Donald Trump from the platform in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill — a position that has earned her devoted fans within Twitter, as well as a large contingent of <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/01/18/twitter-exec-says-company-taking-crackdown-on-conspiracy-theorists-global/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">right-wing critics</a>.
But as news of Musk’s official takeover broke, policy and legal employees fretted at the meeting about what his leadership could mean for Twitter’s carefully crafted online speech rules, including its policies against hate speech, misinformation and even political advertising. -Politico
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She played a ‘leading role’ in the negotiation between Twitter and Musk, according to the report.
“I think everyone at Twitter, regardless of how they feel about the news, is feeling reflective and emotional,” said a Twitter employee. “We’ve gone through a lot in the past two years and I think it’s generally instigated a lot of reflection. I think this was more of an acknowledgment of the uncertainty everyone is feeling right now.”
As a reminder, Gadde is crying because her new boss is a ‘free speech absolutist,’ while she wants to silence divergent opinions from her own.
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“I’m often inspired by the vigorous debates on controversial issues that occur on Twitter, but I’ve also been seriously troubled by the plight of some of our users who are completely overwhelmed by those who are trying to silence healthy discourse in the name of free expression,” Gadde <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/16/twitter-executive-heres-how-were-trying-to-stop-abuse-while-preserving-free-speech/">wrote</a> in 2015. “At times, this takes the form of hateful speech in tweets directed at women or minority groups; at others, it takes the form of threats aimed to intimidate those who take a stand on issues.” 
What a crying shame.
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source <a href="https://www.infowars.com/posts/twitters-top-lawyer-breaks-down-in-tears-during-musk-takeover-meeting">https://www.infowars.com/posts/twitters-top-lawyer-breaks-down-in-tears-during-musk-takeover-meeting</a>

news Twitter’s Top Lawyer Breaks Down In Tears During Musk Takeover Meeting

Twitter’s top lawyer, Vijaya Gadde, reportedly broke down in tears during a virtual meeting with the company’s policy and legal teams to di...

White Helmets Instructors Deployed to Ukraine, Moscow Claims

Ukrainian authorities and their foreign handlers are planning false-flag attacks involving weapons of mass destruction, Russia’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky said on Monday.
For that purpose, instructors of the notorious Syria-based White Helmets group have already been deployed to Ukraine, the official told reporters.
The diplomat effectively reiterated the allegations raised over the weekend by the head of the Russian Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Force, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, who said the supposed plans harbored by the Kiev regime include “three scenarios,” ranging from a false-flag attack on civilians, to “tactical” small-scale use of WMDs and open deployment of such weaponry on the battlefield.
To facilitate the allegedly looming false-flag attack, overseas “handlers” of the Kiev authorities have sent “instructors” of the notorious White Helmets group to Ukraine, Polyansky stated.
“There is a well-known model in which such provocations [involving chemical weapons] are used in other parts of the world. First, a so-called chemical incident is organized. Then pro-Western non-governmental organizations, especially the infamous White Helmets, stationed nearby, quickly arrive on the scene and collect, in violation of all the norms of the non-proliferation regime, questionable ‘evidence’, and then feed this story to the Western media. We all know this technology,” Polyansky said.
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I can say that the curators of the Kiev regime are not very creative, so they are readying more or less the same scenario for Ukraine. The White Helmets instructors are already in Ukraine.
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The White Helmets group, co-founded by late British mercenary and presumed ex-intelligence officer James Le Mesurier, rose to international notoriety amid the years-long conflict in Syria.
The group, advertising itself as ‘Syrian Civil Defense’, has operated exclusively in areas controlled by assorted jihadist groups opposing President Bashar Assad’s government. The White Helmets have been involved in multiple purported ‘chemical incidents’ blamed on government troops and used by Western nations to carry out strikes against the Syrian military and its allies.
<div class="6ECoBGD1"><a href="https://www.infowarsstore.com/survival-shield-x-2-nascent-iodine?ims=oadrd&utm_campaign=x2isbackhero&utm_source=Infowars+Hero&utm_medium=banner&utm_content=x2isbackhero" target="_blank"><img src="https://api.directus.libertycdn.com/uploads/_/originals/X-2-hero-385.jpg" /></a></div>
Polyansky stressed that Moscow harbors no plans to use any kind of WMDs in Ukraine. While Russia does not even possess any chemical or biological weapons, using them would not make any military sense, the diplomat went on.
“What is the point of using them in Ukraine in an immediate vicinity of our border? We will get nothing that could not be achieved through conventional means,” he said.
Russia attacked its neighbor following Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French brokered Minsk Protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.
The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.
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source <a href="https://www.infowars.com/posts/white-helmets-instructors-deployed-to-ukraine-moscow-claims">https://www.infowars.com/posts/white-helmets-instructors-deployed-to-ukraine-moscow-claims</a>

news White Helmets Instructors Deployed to Ukraine, Moscow Claims

Ukrainian authorities and their foreign handlers are planning false-flag attacks involving weapons of mass destruction, Russia’s deputy perm...

The Supreme Court seems fed up with a Trump judge who sabotaged Biden

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Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump judge in Texas who essentially <a href="https://www.vox.com/23032702/supreme-court-remain-in-mexico-texas-biden-trump-immigration">seized control of much of the United States’ southern border policy</a>, appears likely to join the small cohort of Republican judges who went so far out on a limb that even this Supreme Court will not tolerate their behavior.
Last August, Kacsmaryk ordered President Joe Biden’s administration to reinstate Title 42, a Trump-era policy colloquially known as “Remain in Mexico,” which requires many migrants who arrive at the US-Mexico border to stay in Mexico while their asylum case is pending in the United States. But Kacsmaryk read federal immigration law so narrowly that even President Donald Trump’s version of this program wasn’t harsh enough to comply.
Indeed, as Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone conceded during an exchange with Justice Clarence Thomas on Tuesday morning while the Supreme Court was hearing the case, under Kacsmaryk’s reading of federal law, no administration has ever complied with that law since it was enacted in 1996.
The case is <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/biden-v-texas-2/">Biden v. Texas</a>, and it concerns what options are available to the federal government when it is confronted with an asylum seeker at the Mexican border. Under <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txnd.346680/gov.uscourts.txnd.346680.94.0.pdf">Kacsmaryk’s incorrect interpretation</a> of federal immigration law, the government only has “two options vis-à-vis aliens seeking asylum: 1) mandatory detention; or 2) return to a contiguous territory.”
Kacsmaryk’s reading isn’t just wrong, it is obviously wrong. On its face, federal immigration laws give the government at least four options when confronted with an asylum seeker at the Mexican border. It can do what Kacsmaryk says, or it can <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1182">grant parole</a> to someone seeking admission to the United States “for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.” And, when parole isn’t available, the government can also release an immigrant into the United States on “<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1226">bond of at least $1,500</a>.”
As Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted during the oral arguments, the case largely turns upon the proper meaning of the words “significant public benefit.” Arguing on behalf of the Biden administration, US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said that these words permit the government to reserve its limited detention space for immigrants who present a danger to the public or who might be a flight risk, and to parole other immigrants.
It’s debatable whether Prelogar offered the best possible interpretation of this statute, but her case was bolstered by the fact that Stone was unable to offer a coherent alternative interpretation. At one point in the oral arguments, at least five different justices, including conservatives Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, seemed to take turns castigating Stone for being unable to provide a coherent answer to one of the most important questions in the case.
Stone’s inability to offer a good answer to this question, combined with the fact that his interpretation of the law would lead to truly absurd results — as Justice Elena Kagan noted in a particularly heated contention with Stone, Texas’s reading of the law could give the Mexican government significant power to extort the United States — seems to have been enough to convince most of the Court that Kacsmaryk must be reversed.
That said, it remains likely that the Court will send the case back to Kacsmaryk to resolve some lingering issues. And, given Kacsmaryk’s past performance, it seems overwhelmingly likely that he will bend over backward to rule against the Biden administration — no matter what the law actually says.
It may be quite a while, in other words, before President Joe Biden and his administration regain their lawful authority to end the Remain in Mexico policy.
<h3>Kacsmaryk seized control over much of the United States’ foreign policy</h3>
Under Kacsmaryk’s incorrect reading of the statute, the United States must either return every asylum seeker who arrives at the Mexican border to Mexico, or detain them at a facility within the United States. But the United States has only a fraction of the detention facilities it would need to detain every single asylum seeker — at one point Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts quipped that the federal government may only have enough detention capacity for 2 percent of the relevant population.
That means the country has to do something about the other 98 percent of migrants, and, under Kacsmaryk’s approach, they must be returned to Mexico.
But that approach creates an obvious problem. The Mexican government must consent before the United States can send a flood of asylum seekers back across its border, and if it does not consent, that means that the United States could not possibly comply with the law — at least as Kacsmaryk understands it.
The other problem is that, if Mexico knows that the United States government is under a court order requiring it to return Central American migrants to Mexico, it can demand extraordinary concessions before it permits the US to do so.
As Kagan pointed out, “Mexico can change its mind any day.” It can make one set of demands today, then make another, more onerous set of demands tomorrow. If the Biden administration believes that it is not in the United States’ interest to comply with Mexico’s demands, its only option is to seek relief from a right-wing judge known for his extreme ideology. (Kacsmaryk, previously a lawyer with a Christian conservative law firm, once <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/8/17/22627107/trump-judge-remain-in-mexico-matthew-kacsmaryk-immigration-asylum-joe-biden-donald-trump">labeled being transgender</a> a “mental disorder,” claimed that gay people are “disordered,” and denounced what he called a “<a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/8/17/22627107/trump-judge-remain-in-mexico-matthew-kacsmaryk-immigration-asylum-joe-biden-donald-trump">sexual revolution</a>.”)
The Supreme Court, moreover, has long warned judges not to get involved in these kinds of foreign policy disputes. As the Court said in <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/569/108/">Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co.</a> (2013), judges should be “particularly wary of impinging on the discretion of the Legislative and Executive Branches in managing foreign affairs.”
The Supreme Court bears much of the blame for placing the United States in this precarious position with Mexico. Last August, the Court handed down a surprising order which <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/8/24/22640424/supreme-court-remain-in-mexico-trump-biden-samuel-alito-immigration">left Kacsmaryk’s decision in place</a> while the case worked its way through appeals. That means that, for the last several months, the Remain in Mexico policy has been in place, and the United States has been forced to deal with Mexico — under threat of a contempt order from Kacsmaryk.
Now, however, a majority of the Court appears to be ready to reject at least some of Kacsmaryk’s reasoning.
<h3>What does “significant public benefit” mean?</h3>
No justice appeared sympathetic to Kacsmaryk’s claim that the United States only has two options when an asylum seeker arrives at the Mexican border. Even Justice Samuel Alito, the Court’s <a href="https://archive.thinkprogress.org/the-most-partisan-supreme-court-justice-of-all-fd31c58a25aa/">most reliable Republican partisan</a>, seemed to concede that federal law permits some asylum seekers to be granted parole — although he insisted that this determination must be made on a “case-by-case” basis.
But, as Solicitor General Prelogar explained, the government does make these determinations on a case-by-case basis. Asylum seekers are interviewed by immigration officials, they must submit to a background check, and they are screened to see if they’ve ever entered the United States before and fled immigration officials.
The purpose of this process is to identify immigrants who may either present a danger to Americans or who might be a flight risk, and thus should not be granted parole.
Prelogar spent much of her argument time responding to questions about whether a statute permitting immigrants to be granted parole “for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit” was broad enough to permit parole to be granted to the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who cannot be detained because the government lacks the capacity to detain them.
Under Prelogar’s argument, the public benefits from ensuring that the government’s limited detention capacity is reserved for “high-priority” cases, such as for immigrants suspected of violent crimes or terrorism. And the public also benefits if the United States does not have to make concessions to Mexico in order to maintain the Remain in Mexico program.
Stone, meanwhile, struggled to offer an alternative interpretation of the words “significant public benefit.” At one point, after he spent several minutes bobbing and weaving in the face of multiple justices’ questions trying to pin him down on this issue, Justice Barrett seemed to cut him off — telling him that these are questions “which you have to surmount” to prevail.
Kavanaugh seemed to believe that the words “significant public benefit” are sufficiently ambiguous that it may make sense to simply defer to the Biden administration’s interpretation of them. We “give a lot of deference to agencies” on these sorts of interpretative questions, Kavanaugh told Stone.
If Kavanaugh and Barrett vote with the Biden administration, it’s difficult to see how Stone could prevail. And Chief Justice Roberts, who told Stone at one point that “Congress may want detention but it hasn’t provided the money” to detain everyone, also seemed inclined to vote with the administration.
So that’s good news, both for asylum seekers and for anyone who believes that policy should be set by an elected president and his administration, and not by unelected judges like Kacsmaryk.
But there is one catch.
<h3>This case could still go on for a long time</h3>
Though Tuesday’s arguments largely focused on Kacsmaryk’s misreading of the statute, there’s also another issue lingering in this case. When the government makes a policy change, it <a href="https://www.vox.com/23032702/supreme-court-remain-in-mexico-texas-biden-trump-immigration">typically must explain why it did so</a>. The Supreme Court’s August order allowing Kacsmaryk’s order to remain in effect suggested that the Biden administration did not adequately explain its decision to end the Remain in Mexico policy — though the administration released a <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/21_1029_mpp-termination-justification-memo.pdf">new memorandum in October</a> that offers a more detailed explanation.
Some of the justices, most notably Kavanaugh, asked some questions suggesting that they might send the case back down to Kacsmaryk to determine whether this October memorandum is sufficient to end Remain in Mexico. And, if Kacsmaryk gets his hands on this case again, he’s likely to seize that opportunity to sabotage the Biden administration one more time.
Alito — and to a lesser extent Justices Thomas and Neil Gorsuch — asked a few questions about a jurisdictional question that the Biden administration mentioned in a footnote in its brief. This may be an effort by Alito to draw this case out even longer by ordering the parties to submit additional briefings on this jurisdictional issue before the case can be resolved.
And, for every minute that the Court leaves this case unresolved, Kacsmaryk’s order remains in effect.
It is possible, in other words, that even if the Republican Supreme Court ultimately allows President Biden to set policy compliant with federal law, they may try to delay their resolution of the case to frustrate him a little while longer.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/4/26/23042653/supreme-court-remain-in-mexico-trump-biden-texas-immigration-border-asylum">https://www.vox.com/2022/4/26/23042653/supreme-court-remain-in-mexico-trump-biden-texas-immigration-border-asylum</a>

vox The Supreme Court seems fed up with a Trump judge who sabotaged Biden

Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump judge in Texas who essentially seized control of much of the United States’ southern border policy , appears lik...

Even Elon Musk doesn’t know what he means by free speech

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Changes are coming to Twitter. And if we’re to believe Elon Musk, those changes will transform the app in the name of preserving free speech online.
But what exactly does that look like or mean for your account? <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/23041717/twitter-musk-business-plan-peter-kafka-column">Not even Musk knows yet</a>, and these changes won’t be coming overnight (Musk’s offer of $44 billion to buy the company is expected to take several months to close).
Even if we don’t know the details, any potential change to Twitter — a platform used by nearly 400 million people including some of the world’s most influential politicians, celebrities, and public figures — will have a major impact. Already, many conservatives are hoping that Musk will reverse the company’s ban on former President Donald Trump (for now, <a href="https://twitter.com/meridithmcgraw/status/1518669690465366019">Trump has said that he won’t return to Twitter</a> if given the chance, but that could change). At the same time, some activists, civil rights leaders, and Twitter employees are worried about whether Musk’s absolutist approach to free speech will undo the progress Twitter has made in the past several years to reduce the prevalence of harassment, hate speech, and misinformation.
“The idea of allowing more speech sounds like a very positive thing,” said Renee DiResta, a researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory. “The question is, how is [Musk] going to balance that with the recognition that content moderation has always existed in the interest of community creation online?”
Musk has talked a lot about the virtues of free speech, but he has no experience managing that on a social media platform where <a href="https://www.internetlivestats.com/twitter-statistics/">hundreds of millions of tweets</a> are posted a day. The billionaire has offered a few clues, however, about what his overall approach to content moderation on Twitter might look like. In an interview at the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/14/elon-musk-ted-talk/">TED conference earlier</a> this month, Musk said he plans to “err on the side” of leaving content up — no matter how controversial — and only taking down content that clearly violates the law, such as an incitement to violence. This would be a stark departure from Twitter’s current content moderation policies, which, in recent years, have been aimed at limiting hate speech, harassment, and other types of content on the platform it deems harmful.
In the press release this week about his acquisition of Twitter, Musk also suggested less-controversial changes to Twitter, including “making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.” These are all areas that critics have called on Twitter to improve in the past, and in some cases, the company is <a href="https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/introducing-responsible-machine-learning-initiative">already working on</a> improvements. So we’ll have to see whether Musk can execute and how long it will take. Many of those eager for him to take the helm want him to turbocharge feature improvements like authenticating all users, and to dial back what they view as Twitter’s heavy-handedness in moderating people’s speech online.
Meanwhile, Musk’s motivations for buying Twitter seem somewhat complicated. One of the most remarkable aspects of this takeover saga is that Musk has publicly said that, for him, it is not about making money, it’s about promoting free speech. This free speech slogan has earned Musk the support of many conservatives who feel that Twitter and other social media companies unfairly discriminate against them. For Musk, it’s more than that: This deal is also a way to exert influence over a major media platform that is used by some of the most important politicians, celebrities, and leaders in the world. Given <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/musk-asks-us-judge-end-2018-sec-consent-decree-2022-03-08/">Musk’s own public battle with the SEC</a> over his tweets, owning Twitter provides a valuable way for Musk to be the one to set the rules.
“If in doubt, let the speech … let it exist. If it’s a gray area, I would say let the tweet exist,” said Musk at the conference. “I do think that we want to be just very reluctant to delete things.”
What Musk is talking about reflects the same ideology on which social media companies like Twitter and Facebook were founded: Let anyone say what they want online. But in practice, nearly every major platform — and even more recent free speech absolutist ones like Parler, Gettr, and Trump’s own Truth Social — have <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/trump-truth-social-developing-content-moderation-practices-to-ensure-family-friendly-community">put into place some rules against</a> things like hate speech, harassment, or inappropriate content. That’s because if they don’t, these platforms tend to devolve into cesspools of hateful, negative, or spammy content that isn’t good for users or advertisers. For example, when trolls flood someone with targeted harassment, they can be exercising their free speech, but their intimidation tactics are also potentially discouraging that user from sharing their own viewpoints.
“One of the things that we’ve seen on every single social platform since the invention of the internet is that some people’s free speech is deployed to try to prevent other people’s participation and assembly,” said DiResta.
In his TED interview, Musk did acknowledge some limitations to the idea of letting free speech remain up all the time. He said that, in some cases, Twitter could potentially deprioritize content to make it less prominent in people’s feeds.
“In a case where there’s perhaps a lot of controversy, then you would not want to necessarily promote that tweet,” said Musk. “I’m not saying that I have all the answers here.”
Twitter does have people in place to figure out the answers to these hard questions. Currently, Twitter’s moderation and safety teams, which reportedly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/25/technology/twitter-employees-elon-musk.html">include hundreds of employees</a>, help make decisions about when to downrank, label, or delete tweets that violate its policies. It’s unclear what Musk plans to do with these teams, and some at the company are worried he’ll cut back.
There’s also a fear that Musk’s plan to “open up” Twitter’s algorithm could prove difficult. The idea is that in cases where the company down-ranks certain tweets, Twitter should make it clear to users what’s going on. As Musk put it in his TED interview, this would show users that “there’s no behind-the-scenes manipulation, either algorithmically or manually.”
It’s an idea that, in theory, even some of Musk’s critics on content moderation agree with, but in practice, it needs a lot more fleshing out. For starters, Twitter has many algorithms, so which one is Musk referring to? Also, how would Twitter share its proprietary technology without giving out its secret sauce, thereby allowing its competitors to copy its business?
There’s still a lot we don’t know about how Musk would run Twitter. But what we do know is that his views on how much Twitter should be moderating content are drastically different from his predecessors’ in running the company. If handled well, that could result in a more open, robust realm of conversation on one of the world’s most influential social networks. But if handled poorly, that could mean that problems like harassment, hate speech, and misinformation will only get worse.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/23042878/elon-musk-twitter-free-speech">https://www.vox.com/recode/23042878/elon-musk-twitter-free-speech</a>

vox Even Elon Musk doesn’t know what he means by free speech

Changes are coming to Twitter. And if we’re to believe Elon Musk, those changes will transform the app in the name of preserving free speec...