Tag Archive for: social media

‘Absolutely Horrific’: AI-Generated Child Porn Leads Teen to Commit Suicide

As their teenage son lay in the hospital with his life oozing out of him, Eli Heacock’s parents felt their grief compounded by confusion: They had no idea why he had committed suicide.

Then they found his phone.

Messages showed their son — 16-year-old Elijah “Eli” Manning Heacock of Glasgow, Kentucky — had fallen prey to an extortioner, who convinced Eli to send photos of himself, which the predator used to generate sexually explicit images using artificial intelligence (AI).

The victim’s father, John Burnett, said Eli scrambled to collect as much of the $3,000 bribe as he could, only to hear his predator tell him, “This is not enough.”

In despair, Eli shot himself on February 27, dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the University of Louisville Hospital the next day.

The tragic death highlights the changing profile of sexual abuse and predation. Parents “no longer [have] to be scared of the white van that drives around. You have to be scared of the internet,” said Eli’s mother, Shannon Heacock.

Her son is far from the first person to lose his life to online sexual extortionists. “From October 2021 to March 2023 … sextortion involved at least 12,600 victims — primarily boys — and led to at least 20 suicides,” according to the FBI.

But even in death, Eli, who lost his unique potential so young, stood out from others: Usually, exploiters lure their victims into sending sexually explicit photos, then blackmail them into sending money or more compromising photos. Eli apparently shared less explicit images, which the predator allegedly altered using artificial intelligence — which analysts say highlights another threat of nascent AI technology.

“It’s absolutely horrific and tragic that criminals used AI-generated images to extort money out of a teenage boy, ultimately resulting in him taking his own life,” Arielle Del Turco, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. FRC previously highlighted concerns raised by AI chatbots, which appear to be human, engaging in sexually explicit dialogue with minors online — or stoking pedophiles’ fantasies by posing as sexually precocious children.

With the rise of AI-generated pornography, a victim need not send his tormentor nude or suggestive photos. Powered by AI, child exploiters do not need their victim to send them any photos at all: They can download an image from the internet or take a candid photo without the victim’s knowledge.

People from all walks of life can fall victim to AI-generated “deepfakes.” Last month, New Zealand politician Lana McClure stood on the floor of Parliament and displayed nude photographs of herself, which she said she personally created in a matter of minutes using artificial intelligence software.

Lawmakers in Heacock’s native Kentucky reacted by adopting a law, S.B. 73, which makes sextortion a felony. President Donald Trump also made tackling “revenge porn,” including images created by artificial intelligence, an early priority in his second administration.

“Congress has recently worked to mitigate these types of situations by passing the Take It Down Act,” supported by First Lady Melania Trump, which passed Congress with near-unanimous consent and signed into law by President Trump, noted Del Turco. The law makes it illegal to knowingly publish, or threaten to publish, intimate images without a person’s consent; it also requires websites to remove such images within 48 hours of a victim’s valid request and help track down any sites that have republished the material. Del Turco noted that the new law “applies to AI-generated images. Policymakers should continue to enact prudent legislation to protect people from abusive uses of AI, including sexual extortion.”

Not every level of government shares Heacock’s concerns. Global governance bodies have allowed lawmakers to exclude AI-generated porn even of the youngest children. The United Nations Convention against Cybercrime, adopted last December 31, forbids “real or simulated sexual activity” but gives nations the right to limit the prosecution of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) to material that “[d]epicts, describes or represents an existing person.” That excludes child pornography images or videos that are entirely AI-generated and not based on one specific child.

“In several sections, the new UN treaty allows countries to de-criminalize virtual child pornography in all circumstances as well as private sexting by minors, even to adults,” noted Stefano Gennarini of the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-FAM).

Americans also feel concerned some lawmakers have prioritized the explosive growth of the artificial intelligence sector at the cost of their children’s innocence, even their lives. The “One Big Beautiful Bill” which recently passed the House of Representatives contains a provision preempting states from regulating AI technology for 10 years. “I am adamantly OPPOSED to this and it is a violation of state rights and I would have voted NO if I had known this was in there,” wrote Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on social media Tuesday. “We have no idea what AI will be capable of in the next 10 years and giving it free rein and tying states hands is potentially dangerous.”

The bill is now before the Senate. The AI provision has raised alarms beyond the chamber. Many grieving parents wish leaders would give them stronger tools to keep their children safe from the ever-expanding reach of predators. “We can’t afford to be behind the ball on creating policies that govern AI,” Del Turco told TWS. “The effects are too far-reaching” — a fact Eli’s mother, Shannon, knows too well.

“I don’t want another mother to ever face this, another sibling, another father to face this,” she said.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Trump’s Department of Education Declares June ‘Title IX Month’

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

NATION OF RADICALS

NATION OF RADICALS 

A group of elderly folks were marching Sunday in a weekly event in Boulder, Colorado, to support the hostages taken by Hamas during the terror group’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Their activism ended in terror as an enraged pro-Palestinian Egyptian illegal immigrant used a “makeshift flamethrower” and molotov cocktails to burn members of the group. Eight victims, ranging in age from 52 to 88, were sent to the hospital.

A video shows the suspect yelling “end Zionists” and “free Palestine” in the aftermath of the attack. Nearby, a woman is curled up in the fetal position as bystanders attempt to help her.

In an interview with police, Mohamed Soliman stated that he planned the attack and that he wanted to kill all Zionists.

Just a few weeks ago, a different man shouted “free Palestine” after murdering two Jewish people, an Israeli diplomat and a staff member, in Washington, DC.

These attacks are the extreme end of much of the pro-Palestinian activism taking place on college campuses around the country. Student groups valorized the October 7 attacks — which included mass rape and murder — as acts of justified resistance, created no-go zones for Jewish students, and seized university property to call for an end to Zionism.

As of writing of this newsletter, Students for Justice in Palestine’s national group did not condemn the Boulder attacker or post about the incident at all on their highly active Instagram account.

We have freedom of speech in our country. People are allowed to criticize Israel. Where that stops is law-breaking and violence. A commitment to the First Amendment does not obligate the U.S. to allow radicals on student visas to benefit from a U.S. education while stoking hatred. It also doesn’t necessitate federal funding going to institutions that promote this nonsense or look the other way.

“If a right-wing movement had burned down a governor’s mansion, murdered two foreign diplomats & firebombed kids and elderly people at a peaceful protest — in the span of a few weeks — what would the coverage look like? What sort of ‘national conversation’ would we be having?” Fox News commentator Guy Benson asked on X.

Soliman, meanwhile, had overstayed a travel visa that was granted to him during the Biden administration and was in the country illegally. That didn’t stop him from getting a work permit, which he also overstayed before trying to murder as many mourning people as he could.

Trump’s mass deportation program isn’t cruel. It’s a necessity. The Biden administration allowed nearly 100 illegal immigrants on the terror watch list to enter our country. How many like Soliman, who may not have been on a watch list but was nonetheless hostile to western civilization, are roaming freely around our country? How many people are here that would flee the scene after fatally killing an Air Force cadet on a jet ski? How many would senselessly kill a woman minding her own business in her car? Even one is too many, of course.

The true cruelty would be to allow people who have shown zero respect for the U.S. and its laws to stay.

Between mass migration and the grooming of young people into quasi-terror groups in the university system, America is facing a serious radicalization problem. It must be dealt with swiftly and with uncompromising force — or we risk seeing more elderly women with their calves burned off by some psychopath.

AUTHOR

Amber Duke

Senior Editor.

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WHAT ELSE IS ON MY RADAR

MSNBC falsely called the suspected Boulder terrorist a “white man” and NBC reporter Ken Dilanian felt it important to note that flamethrowers are “legal and commercially available for sale.” More of the media’s idiocy on display here:

Legacy Media Drops The Ball Again, This Time On Colorado Terror Attack

Daily Caller reporter Derek VanBuskirk is currently on assignment in South Africa to chase down reports of genocide of white Afrikaners. He didn’t even make it to South Africa before he was racially profiled by a black man for being white and having a Dutch last name …

Daily Caller Reporter Racially Profiled On Trip To South Africa

The Washington Post is very confused as to why fentanyl seizures at the border have fallen. The answer should be obvious …Deranged Legacy Media Twists Itself Into Pretzel To Avoid Crediting Trump

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller Unfit to Print column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Anti-Semitism Soared in 2024, with Almost 70% of Incidents Linked to Left-Wing Extremism

There were 6,326 documented acts of anti-Semitism in 2024. Roughly 4,327 of them — 68.4% — were linked to far-left ideologies.

The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), a prominent organization dedicated to tracking and combating anti-Semitism, compiled these statistics. Regarding previous reports, CAM has consistently identified both far-left and far-right groups as key contributors to the global rise in anti-Semitic incidents. However, the 2024 data reveal a seismic shift. Not only did the overall rate of anti-Semitism surge by 107.7% compared to 2023, but incidents tied specifically to left-wing radicals skyrocketed by nearly 325%.

Moreover, this dramatic increase underscores the growing influence of far-left narratives in fueling anti-Semitic acts. In stark contrast, anti-Semitism linked to far-right ideologies saw a significant decline, dropping by 54.8%, with only 7.3% of the year’s incidents attributed to far-right sources.

A key factor in the rise of far-left anti-Semitism, as noted by The Post Millennial, is the prevalence of anti-Zionist narratives. The outlet reported, “The overwhelming majority — 96.4 percent — of far-left antisemitic incidents were rooted in anti-Zionist narratives, including accusations that Israel is a colonial, apartheid, or genocidal state.” The CAM report further warns that this rhetoric often serves as a veneer for anti-Semitism, distorting Jewish identity and collectively targeting Jews under the guise of critiquing Israeli policy.

Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023, which killed over 1,200 Israelis and involved widespread atrocities, triggered an immediate and alarming rise in anti-Semitic incidents worldwide. According to an October 2024 report, anti-Semitism surged by 200% compared to the same period in the previous year, reflecting the rapid escalation of tensions following the attack. In the United States, this period saw the emergence of anti-Israel mobs on university campuses, particularly at elite institutions.

Ivy League universities, notably Harvard and Columbia, became epicenters of this unrest. Campus encampments, some provocatively labeled “Liberation Zones,” were established, creating exclusionary spaces where Jewish students were frequently forbidden. Jewish professors and students faced a barrage of hate speech, physical violence, or threats of violence, while acts of anti-Jewish vandalism surged. Columbia University, in particular, gained further notoriety when agitators occupied campus buildings, increasing tensions and drawing national attention to the crisis.

The scale of this crisis suggests that these reported incidents may represent only the tip of the iceberg, with many more acts having occurred during that time, and likely going undocumented. In response, the incoming Trump administration acted swiftly to address the rising tide of anti-Semitism, both on and off university campuses. One of President Donald Trump’s first actions was to issue a stern warning to universities: comply with anti-discrimination laws or risk losing federal funding. This policy has already resulted in the withholding of millions of federal dollars — Trump has even threatened to pull billions — from institutions that failed to adhere to Trump’s executive orders aimed at combating anti-Semitism.

In conjunction with these measures, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) sent letters in March to 60 universities delivering a clear directive: “fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus, including uninterrupted access to campus facilities and educational opportunities.” Despite this warning, some institutions, including Harvard, still resisted. Consequently, the Trump administration imposed severe penalties. For example, they recently suspended Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students — a significant blow to the university’s prestige and financial model.

On May 27, however, Trump’s team went a step further by freezing all new student visa interviews. While this affects roughly one million students — a major cash grab for elite schools — the move plays a role in Trump’s broader strategy to protect both Americans and Jews. Because anti-Semitism, though prominent on campuses, is not exclusive to colleges.

Last week, two Israeli Embassy staffers, 26-year-old Sarah Lynn Milgrim and her partner, 30-year-old Yaron Lischinsky, were murdered outside of the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. The suspect, 30-year-old Elias Rodriguez, was dragged off into custody after he opened fire, yelling, “Free, free Palestine!” A few days later, a dual American-German citizen named Joseph Neumeyer was arrested after attempting to firebomb the U.S. Embassy branch office in Tel Aviv. Neumeyer’s social media activity revealed a pattern of virulent anti-American and anti-Semitic views, including direct threats against Israelis, President Trump, and the United States.

Addressing concerns about the visa freeze, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce provided clarity during a press briefing. She asserted that this topic should not be controversial. “We’ve always vetted people trying to come in,” she said. “We’ve always looked at visas seriously. … Every sovereign country has a right to know who’s trying to come in, why they want to come in, who they are, what they’ve been doing, and, at least hopefully within that framework, determine what they will be doing while they’re here. So, that’s nothing new, and we will continue to use every tool we can to assess who it is that’s coming here, whether they are students or otherwise.”

Regarding CAM’s report, Penny Nance, CEO and president of Concerned Women for America (CWA), told The Washington Stand, “The report’s finding that 70% of anti-Semitic incidents last year are tied to left-wing ideologies is deeply troubling and demands urgent action, but sadly, it is not surprising.”

She continued, “This surge in anti-Jewish hatred, often masked as anti-Zionism, threatens the safety and dignity of Jewish communities across the globe and undermines our shared values.” As such, “We must call it what it is — bigotry — and refuse to tolerate it in any form. CWA stands firmly against anti-Semitism and remains committed to truth, justice, and promoting the inherent worth of every individual.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Pornhub Staff Worried About Going To Jail For Child Porn Downloaded From Their Company’s Own Website, Docs Show

PornHub let child pornography sit untouched on its website for years, including content one employee admitted would put him behind bars “for a long time” if it was found on his computer, discovery documents released in error reveal.

Internal messages, emails and memos from around 2020 reveal the company struggling to clear child pornography from its website while executives debated measures to crack down and staff tasked with removing it made light of the situation.

The documents, first reported by the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof, are part of discovery in an Alabama class action lawsuit brought by child sex trafficking victims who allege PornHub’s parent company MindGeek financially profited from distributing videos depicting their abuse.

“You guys want to laugh,” one staff member wrote in an April 7, 2020 message. “[I]t caught a cp [child pornography] video from 2009…a full on cp video on the site for 11 years.”

At one point, one staff member was told not to include a superior on child sexual abuse material (CSAM) report emails.

“He doenst wnat [sic] to know how much cp we have ignored for the past 5 years?” the employee responded.

Aylo, formerly known as MindGeek, told the DCNF its policy is not to comment on ongoing litigation to respect the “integrity of court proceedings.”

“We look forward to the facts being fully and fairly aired in that forum,” the company told the DCNF.

However, the company did state it has “instituted some of the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated platform history in order to mitigate the ability of bad actors to abuse our platform and post unwanted material.”

‘I Hope I Never Get In Trouble’

One discovery document tracking keywords shows the phrases “12yo” and “13yo” resulted in 155,447 videos each on the website, while the term “7yo” yielded 5,387 results. Other tracked terms include “girls under18” with 146,248 videos and “Degraded Teen” at 1,537.

One memo suggesting words that should be banned notes the term “infant” resulted in 764 videos. Yet terms like “childhood,” included 1,519 video descriptions, or “forced,” included in 548,697 descriptions, are not recommended to be banned.

“I hope I never get in trouble for having those vids on my computer LOOOOL,” one staff member wrote in a March 2020 message.

“I found one yesterday night…that i had forgotton to delete…and it was a really bad one…like i will go away for a long time,” another staff member replied.

The first employee suggested that MindGeek would “vouch for us if we every [sic] get arrested.”

The word “teen” has at times ranked among the website’s top search terms, according to company reports. Some email exchanges show executives unsure of what words to ban.

In June 2017, an executive suggested blocking the term “rapped” but allowing the term “young girl.”

Around May 2020, there were more than 706,000 videos flagged by users for underage content or other terms of service violations, according to internal emails. A video would only be prioritized for removal at the time if it had been flagged more than 15 times.

Similar figures were also included in emails released as part of discovery in a class action lawsuit filed against MindGeek in California, which Justice Defense Fund CEO Laila Mickelwait shared in 2023 on X.

In June 2020, a company leader acknowledged they had previously not been “enforcing strict rules” for staff who failed to block violations.

“Now older mistakes are found and many will continue to be found from the 700k backlog and if I go ahead and enforce the strict/rules guidelines we will lose a significant amount of our agents and cause chaos within the team,” a member of leadership wrote.

Pornhub removed more than 10 million videos from its website in December 2020 after the NYT reported instances of child sexual abuse material on the website.

The company also announced that it had “banned unverified uploaders from posting new content, eliminated downloads, and partnered with dozens of non-profit organizations” as part of its new safeguards.

Other safeguards Aylo told the DCNF it has implemented include “an uploader verification program that uses secure biometric facial recognition technology to ensure the identity of the uploader of all pieces of content,” “utilization of digital fingerprinting technology to prevent the re-upload of unauthorized material,” and “a constantly evolving banned keyword list that disallows searches for more than 60,000 words and phrases in multiple languages.”

Mickelwait said the documents reveal PornHub went “far beyond negligence.”

“It was systemic criminal conduct—monetized sexual abuse on an industrial scale, driven by willful corporate decisions,” Mickelwait said in a statement Saturday. “These newly released documents confirm what survivors have long known: Pornhub executives knew they were distributing child rape—and they chose profits over children’s lives.”

AUTHOR

Katelynn Richardson

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: PornHub Is Now Inaccessible In Texas

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


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Report: Leftists, Foreign Adversaries Fund Anti-Semitic and Anti-American Protests, Online Hate

November’s election revealed that more Americans are waking up to common sense and rejecting leftist priorities. An increasing number of young people appreciate our democratic republic, its freedoms, and its Judeo-Christian values. Yet we see continued leftist, violent protests against Israel and Jewish students on college campuses. Where does this hatred come from, and who is organizing it?

As The Washington Stand has previously reported, leftist billionaires such George Soros, Howard Horowitz, and Susan and Nick Pritzker are major funders of these demonstrations, paying extremist, anti-Semitic groups across the United States to organize protests. Just a small sample of these organizations include Students for Justice in Palestine, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, American Muslims for Palestine, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Tides Center, and Arab Resource & Organizing Center.

Yet not only are these groups anti-Semitic, they are also anti-American. Last week, Capital Research Center released a new study that explains how groups that call themselves “pro-Palestinian” promote violence and anti-Americanism. They analyzed thousands of social media posts by 496 of the most active “pro-Palestinian” groups and activists, many of them connected to “charities” and nonprofits, and found a 3,000% rise in calls for violence and a 186% increase in the use of anti-American and anti-police keywords and phrases since Hamas’s terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023.

Last week on Fox & Friends, UCLA Jewish student Eli Tsives told Brian Kilmeade:

“People are waking up and realizing that these people … it’s not just the fact that they have a problem with Jews, it’s that they have a problem with anyone who loves our dear country, the USA. And we have to understand why these people have this mentality. They are literally being brainwashed from foreign countries, and I mean the students specifically. We’re seeing foreign countries like Qatar donating between 2001 and 2021 $5 billion to American institutions.”

Tsives went on to explain that when Qatar donates a lot of money and a university like Cornell has an opening for their Middle Eastern department, Qatar will say, “We would like you to hire our professor who has a PhD from Doha University.” That professor then teaches anti-American, anti-Semitic views, and the students become indoctrinated.

The nonpartisan organization, Americans for Public Trust, verifies that foreign countries are funding anti-American and anti-Semitic groups on college campuses. They recently released a study that found that $60 billion is the estimated amount of foreign funds that have been going to American universities. Of that $60 billion, $20 billion went to just 10 schools: Harvard University, Cornell University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, Georgetown University, and Columbia University.

Muslim journalist and founder of the Pearl Project, Asra Nomani, told the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 5 that these leftist billionaires and foreign countries are so influential and effective, she considers them an anti-Semitic “industry.” Nomani has been researching what is behind the hatred against Jews for the last 22 years, since her friend and colleague, Daniel Pearl, was murdered by Muslim jihadists shortly after 9/11.

Nomani has counted 1,500 groups in the anti-Semitic “free Palestine” movement that attacks both Republicans and Democrats. She warned:

“The hate that killed Danny Pearl on the streets of Karachi is now in our streets. It’s on our campuses. It’s a frightening network of the far Left and the Islamist groups. Nobody in this room can support their ideals. Their ideals are against individual liberties and free enterprise. They want to destroy the United States of America. They want to destroy Israel. And our young Jewish students on campuses, our younger Dannys, are in their crosshairs. We must recognize this existential threat. It is a network. We must investigate them. We must have them register with the Foreign Agent Registration Act when they are doing the work of these malign foreign actors that want to destroy America.”

Not only are some Middle Eastern countries and Hamas fueling anti-Semitic and anti-American hate in America, but so are China and other American adversaries. Recently, the Senate Intelligence Committee held a hearing about worldwide threats, featuring testimonies from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, FBI Director Kash Patel, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. As Patel was about to give his introductory statement, two Code Pink protestors disrupted the hearing, proclaiming among other things, “The greatest threat to global security is Israel and the whole world knows it,” followed repeatedly with, “Stop funding Israel!” The Capitol police promptly removed both disrupters.

Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) immediately pointed out that the disrupters were Code Pink protestors, funded by communist China. He explained, “The fact that communist China funds Code Pink which interrupts a hearing like this about Israel simply illustrate Director Gabbard’s point that China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other American adversaries are working in concert to a greater degree than they ever have.”

Thankfully, President Trump took strong, decisive action to fight anti-Semitism and terrorism on his very first day in office when he issued Executive Order 14161, titled “Protecting the United States From Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have since begun arresting college students that are in the United States on visa that are supporting terrorism, and they are being held in ICE detention centers.

In addition, Columbia University students and parents of October 7 hostages filed a lawsuit on March 24, declaring that there is a coordinated campaign of support between several American nonprofit organizations, anti-Israel activists (including arrested Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil), and Hamas. According to The Free Press, “[T]he lawsuit notes one plaintiff, Shlomi Ziv, was taken hostage on October 7 and that his captors ‘bragged about having Hamas operatives on American university campuses’ and ‘showed him Al-Jazeera stories and photographs of protests at Columbia University,’ organized by the various defendants.”

The Trump administration has also started pulling federal grants from universities that are allowing anti-Semitic protests on their campuses, referring to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act which does not allow institutions of higher education to receive federal money if they  discriminate based on race, national origin, religion, or other characteristics.

This freezing of funds is already proving effective. In early March, the Department of Education canceled $400 million in grants and contracts with Columbia University because of their “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” Columbia responded, saying they would work to address the government’s concerns about anti-Semitism, and it is now their “number one priority.” They are now “on track” to receive federal funding again.

On March 31, Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced that the Trump administration is now investigating Harvard University, saying, “Harvard’s failure to protect students on campus from anti-Semitic discrimination — all while promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry — has put its reputation in serious jeopardy. Harvard can right these wrongs and restore itself to a campus dedicated to academic excellence and truth-seeking, where all students feel safe on its campus.”

Likely not wanting to face the freezing of federal funds that Columbia did, Harvard quickly responded, saying, “We will engage with members of the federal government’s task force to combat antisemitism to ensure that they have a full account of the work we have done and the actions we will take going forward to combat antisemitism.”

Also on March 31, the Trump administration paused $210 million in federal funding to Princeton University while it investigates potential anti-Semitism there.

We may soon learn of additional colleges whose funds are being withheld, since in early March the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights warned 60 colleges and universities are being investigated for potential anti-Semitic discrimination.

Following the White House’s lead, Congress is also taking action to stop anti-American foreign influence on college campuses. The House approved the Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions (“DETERRENT”) Act last week with bipartisan support (241-169). If passed into law, it will limit the amount of money foreign countries can give and prohibit certain countries from giving any money to American universities.

Over the last four years, the Biden administration allowed millions of illegal immigrants to flow into our country, many of whom hate Jews, America, and American values. They allowed crime and violence to run rampant throughout the country. Thankfully, we now have a strong, focused president and Republican majority in Congress that are taking their constitutional roles seriously and working hard to make American safe again.

AUTHOR

Kathy Athearn

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘Extremely Online’: The Significance of J.D. Vance’s Social Media Presence

Vice President J.D. Vance is a “first” in many ways in the vice presidency: Vance is the first U.S. Marine Corps veteran and the first Catholic convert to hold the office, as well as the first man with a beard to hold the office in over a hundred years. Notably, Vance is also the first millennial to attain the vice presidency. This means that the 50th vice president grew up and came into adulthood during the advent of mass internet use and the pioneering days of social media; platforms like MySpace and Facebook were in their infancy as Vance reached the early years of adulthood. The incumbent vice president maintains an active presence on social media — a surprisingly active presence, in fact, making the second Trump administration arguably the most accessible in generations.

In recent years, the world of social media — especially platforms like X and, perhaps to a lesser extent, Facebook — has emerged as the “public square” of the modern day, a space where individuals across the nation and even across the globe can exchange and consume ideas and information. Social media can be used to report news and publicly share photo or video evidence of consequential events in real time, post detailed and edifying threads on subjects ranging from philosophy and theology to history and architecture, raise public awareness of crucial issues, promote and debate political ideologies, and interact not only with other everyday folk but, notably, with the major influential figures of the day.

President Donald Trump has proven himself a social media savant, mastering use of platforms like X and Truth Social to promote and disseminate his policies and ideas and develop a loyal base of supporters to whom he artfully — and often humorously — communicates. However, for all of his prowess and popularity (Trump currently boasts over 100 million followers on X, having surpassed pop stars such as Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga and even the official accounts of organizations like YouTube), Trump largely uses social media to broadcast, rather than interact.

If Trump’s use of social media is comparable to a general marshaling and encouraging his soldiers, then Vance’s use of social media (especially X) is more akin to a member of the famous Oxford Inklings group, not only sharing his own ideas and digesting and debating the ideas of others. Unlike many major political figures, Vance regularly interacts with other accounts on X — not because they are the large official accounts of professional news organizations or the team-run accounts of other world leaders, but because they share or discuss ideas of interest to him, ideas he considers worth debating, clarifying, promoting, confronting, or just engaging with.

When Vance chooses to confront ideas over social media, he does so in much the same way that snarky, terminally-online millennials do. When Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) criticized Vance for demanding that Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffer Marko Elez be reinstated after he was fired due to years-old discriminatory social media remarks regarding Indians, Vance responded, “Grow up.” Referring to Vance’s family and his wife Usha, who is of Indian descent, Khanna, who is also of Indian descent, implied that Vance should condemn Elez “for the sake of both of our kids.” The vice president fired back, “I cannot overstate how much I loathe this emotional blackmail pretending to be concern.” He continued, “I don’t worry about my kids making mistakes, or developing views they later regret. I don’t even worry that much about trolls on the internet.” He asked, “You know what I do worry about, Ro? That they’ll grow up to be a US Congressmen who engages in emotional blackmail over a kid’s social media posts. You disgust me.”

Journalist Mehdi Hasan recently equivocated European nations criminalizing, investigating, and arresting citizens for allegedly posting “misinformation” online with Trump barring an Associated Press reporter from the White House press briefing room, saying to Vance, “I know you’re busy lecturing the Europeans on free speech, but have you seen this?” The millennial vice president replied, “Yes dummy. I think there’s a difference between not giving a reporter a seat in the WH press briefing room and jailing people for dissenting views. The latter is a threat to free speech, the former is not.”

Vance’s refutation of bad ideas is blunt, bordering on rude, but bold. For decades, political leaders have placed a high premium on a sort of false civility, treating grave moral evils like widespread abortion, pornography use, or mass replacement migration as though they deserve equal standing and consideration alongside mere policy proposals. Like many of the millennial generation, Vance has rejected that insincere veneer of decorum, opting instead for brusque — but not necessarily mean-spirited — honesty.

This quest for honesty seems to be a recurring theme in Vance’s social media interactions, although he obviously sometimes misses the mark, especially when it comes to issues like chemical abortions or in-vitro fertilization (IVF), where he has been reticent to embrace the biblical worldview promulgated by the Catholic Church he converted to. But the vice president nonetheless engages with others on social media in an effort not only to explain or clarify his own thoughts but to understand and even consume others’ thoughts.

For example, National Catholic Register Senior Editor Jonathan Liedl, whose X account has less than 5,000 followers, hypothesized in a post that Vance may himself embody the “rightwing religious populist vs tech-bro libertarian civil war in the Trump admin,” rather than that “civil war” being a conflict between Vance, representing “rightwing religious populism,” and tech billionaire Elon Musk, obviously representing the “tech-bro libertarians.” Liedly posited that, “proportionally, there may be a lot less religious populism to go around than some previously thought.”

Vance, who boasts nearly four million followers on X and is the sitting vice president of the United States, took the time to engage with and respond to Liedl’s post. “I’ll try to write something to address this in detail,” Vance replied, explaining that the “civil war” referenced by Liedl “is overstated,” although he admitted that “there are some real divergences between the populists and the techies.” Vance explained that his views on technology and industry are informed by his appreciation for “growth and productivity gains.” Referring specifically to artificial intelligence (AI), his comments on which were the initial impetus for Liedl’s post, Vance explained, “One of my very real concerns, for instance, is about consumer fraud. That’s a valid reason to worry about ‘safety.’ But the problem is much worse if a peer nation is 6 months ahead of the US on AI.” He contrasted his position on technology against his position on “immigration and offshoring,” which he encapsulated, “In general: I dislike substituting American labor for cheap labor.”

According to a profile in The Spectator, Vance is “plugged into a lot of weird, right-wing subcultures” online, a fact which shows through in his speech and his policy advocacy. In the wake of Vance’s ascendancy to the vice presidency and the onslaught of posts he published online, numerous right-wing social media users began noting the similarities between Vance’s posts and the posts right-wingers have been sharing for years, speculating that the vice president may have been quietly following and absorbing right-wing social media accounts for some time.

“Remember when you post that the extremely online Vice President of the United States is reading, absorbing, and listening,” quipped Gab founder Andrew Torba. After Vance explained the Christian concept of the “ordo amoris” or order of loves, the Bendell Werry X account noted that he and other Christian accounts have been posting about the theological concept for years, adding that Vance “really is reading our posts.” Refuge Church Utah pastor Brian Sauvé suggested that Vance uses an anonymous alternate account to follow and interact with right-wing Christian social media users, and others have semi-facetiously tried to identify which anonymous accounts might be Vance’s, with “Lord of the Rings” themed accounts making multiple appearances on the list of possible Vance alternates.

The hypothesizing is more than just frivolous fun: the enthusiasm reveals that for the first time, possibly ever, Christians and right-wingers who have grown up with the internet or learned early on to adapt to it finally feel represented by their government leaders. More than just inspiring enthusiasm, though, Vance’s social media use and the close correlation between the online culture fostered by right-wingers and the posts the vice president has produced demonstrate that a portion of the U.S. population which has long been sidelined, suppressed, silenced, and even demonized has contributed to shaping the ideology of the sitting vice president.

Concerns that Americans have — concerns which would have been ignored by other administrations — are now monitored by the vice president, who can share those concerns with the president. Ideas and values held dear by Americans can now be communicated, almost directly, to the incumbent administration. Given that social media is the public square of the modern day, Vance’s presence on X is the equivalent of having the president’s top advisor spend all day every day holding court and listening to what his countrymen have to say.

Under the second Trump administration, the importance of social media has amplified, truly ensuring that all Americans now have a voice.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Meta Employees Protest Removal of Tampons from Men’s Bathrooms

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, recently became one of the many organizations scrapping their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. According to Breitbart, part of this move “back toward the lane of sanity” also included CEO Mark Zuckerburg’s executive decision to remove tampons from the men’s bathrooms in the Silicon Valley, Texas, and New York offices. The outlet added that these were “previously provided … for nonbinary and transgender employees who [used] the men’s room but [required] sanitary pads because they are women.”

Reportedly, there have been some trans-identifying employees who have decided to protest by bringing their own feminine hygiene products to the men’s restrooms. The New York Times wrote: “To protest Mr. Zuckerberg’s actions, some Meta workers soon brought their own tampons, pads and liners to the men’s bathrooms, five people with knowledge of the effort said. A group of employees also circulated a petition to save the tampons.”

Apparently, this is part of a larger series of “quiet rebellions that Silicon Valley workers have staged as they grapple with the rightward shift of their bosses.” But as the Times went on to highlight, in addition to Zuckerburg, several other Big Tech figures such as X CEO “Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai, Apple chief Tim Cook, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin have embraced” President Donald Trump and his shift away from left-wing agendas.

Regarding the Meta employees putting feminine products in the men’s bathrooms, Family Research Council’s Meg Kilgannon commented to The Washington Stand that she’d “prefer they donate these products to a woman’s shelter or prison in their local area.” However, she added, “If Meta employees feel the need to provide feminine hygiene products in the men’s room, I suppose it’s up to Mark Zuckerberg to decide if he is going to support employees’ use of opposite-sex facilities in his buildings.” And yet, as the Times noted, regardless of how Zuckerburg handles these protests, they do appear to be significantly less boisterous than the protests that emerged during Trump’s first term.

The outlet wrote, “The subtle resistance from tech employees these days contrasts with their much more vocal behavior during Mr. Trump’s first administration in 2017. When Mr. Trump ordered an immigration ban from a handful of predominantly Muslim countries that year, Silicon Valley workers held protests, circulated petitions and pushed executives to denounce the president.”

According to Joseph Backholm, FRC’s senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement, it may boil down to a lack of control, especially given the Republican majority within the federal government, and a sea of red voters who made it happen. These protestors “were empowered by the fact that all the ‘important’ people agreed with them,” Backholm told TWS, “but those who are truly committed to progressivism and not just what is possible find themselves, in some cases for the first time in their lives, feeling like they aren’t in control. This is certainly a sign of mood change, but it’s unclear whether it will last.”

Despite the progress that’s been made advancing conservative values, Backholm insists that the culture is “still far from healthy, and the ideas of the Sexual Revolution are still carrying the day. Generally, the public has discovered that progressivism is not able to deliver on its promises and actually makes the world much worse.” And yet, “this does not mean we know what is actually good for us.”

Backholm concluded that even though “we’re moving in a different direction … in order to ensure we move in a good direction, we have to recommit ourselves to the creation order and the idea that we are ‘One Nation Under God’ and not a nation of people just doing whatever feels good.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Trump Puts an End to ‘Preferred Pronoun’ Use in Federal Emails: ‘A Return to Sanity’

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is repulished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

VIDEO: The Great Rewiring of Childhood—A Smartphone-Social Media Dystopia

The following is a transcript of this video.

 “The Great Rewiring of Childhood, in which the phone-based childhood replaced the play-based childhood, is the major cause of the international epidemic of adolescent mental illness.”

Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation

The release of the iPhone in 2007 profoundly transformed how we interact and experience the world and so marked the dawn of a new era in human history. Today most people are constantly within arm’s reach of their phone and a significant portion of their waking hours are devoted to using these devices. Social media apps are among the most heavily used with some people spending hours a day on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. Some believe this smartphone-social media ecosystem has improved our quality of life as it provides nearly limitless entertainment, makes it easier to communicate and connect with other people, creates business opportunities, and facilitates the sharing and consuming of information, pictures, and videos. Yet this ecosystem also has a dark side; it is addictive, and it calls forth the superficial, hostile, and narcissistic side of humanity. But perhaps worst of all, it is destroying the mental health of young people. In this video, drawing from the American sociologist Johnathan Haidt’s 2024 book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, we explore why social media causes anxiety and depression in children and teens and why smartphone and tablet use has radically changed the nature of childhood for the worst.

“Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable, and—as I will show—unsuitable for children and adolescents.”

Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation

Around 2010, rates of mental illness in Generation Z, or those born between the mid-199os and early-2010s, suddenly and drastically increased in the Western world. Rates of depression in teenagers increased 150%. Rates of self-harm by young adolescent girls tripled between 2010 and 2020, and doubled for girls between the ages 15 to 19. In 2020, 1 in every 4 American teen girls had suffered a major depressive episode in the previous year. While a 2023 study of American university students discovered that 37% reported feeling anxious “always” or “most of the time”, and 31% felt anxious “about half the time”. This mental health epidemic has been largely confined to Gen Z as since 2010 the mental health of older generations has remained relatively unchanged.

“What on earth happened to teens in the early 2010s? Something big is happening, something changed in the lives of young people in the early 2010s that made their mental health plunge.”

Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation

Given that the timing of Gen Z’s mental health decline coincides with the rise of the smartphone-social media ecosystem, an obvious hypothesis is that smartphones and social media are causing a mental health epidemic in young people. After all, Gen Z are the heaviest users of smartphones and social media. A 2015 report by Pew Research found that 1 out of every 4 teens said they were online “almost constantly”, while in 2022 that number rose to 46%. In 2017, Jonathan Haidt was toying with the hypothesis that these technologies cause depression and anxiety, but at the time all the available evidence was correlational. There were studies which linked smartphone and social media use with mental health problems, but it was unclear whether these technologies caused depression and anxiety, or whether depressed and anxious individuals spent more time on their phones and social media. However, today it is clear, in the words of Haidt, that “social media use does not just correlate with mental illness; it causes it.” Or as Haidt continues:

“Now, as I write in 2023…there’s a lot more research…showing that social media harms adolescents…the rapid movement of adolescent social life onto social media platforms was a cause, not just a correlate, of the increase in depression, anxiety… and other mental health problems that began in the early 2010s.”

Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation

Why are smartphones and social media causing mental health problems in younger people? To answer this question, we must identify what young people are missing out on because of their compulsive technology use; that being, a play-based childhood.

Throughout human history, children in all parts of the world and in all cultures have spent much of their free time playing with peers. This play-based childhood is not unique to humans; all young mammals instinctively gravitate to playing as it is essential for their development. Or as Haidt writes:

“Children need a great deal of free play to thrive. It’s an imperative that’s evident across all mammal species…Hundreds of studies on young rats, monkeys, and humans show that young mammals want to play, need to play, and come out socially, cognitively, and emotionally impaired when they are deprived of play.”

Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation

The healthiest type of play is unsupervised, outdoor play with peers which involves sporadic risk taking, which the Norwegian professors Ellen Sandseter and Leif Kennair define as “thrilling and exciting forms of play that involve a risk of physical injury.” In engaging in risky play, children confront and overcome their fears and anxieties, learn to endure minor injuries, and challenge their perceived limits. For example, climbing a tree may stimulate anxiety, but by climbing it anyway children develop physical skills, resilience, problem-solving abilities, and a sense of accomplishment that helps them face future risks and obstacles with greater confidence. “The small-scale challenges and setbacks that happen during play are like an inoculation that prepares children to face much larger challenges later.”, observes Haidt. One of the reasons children naturally gravitate to risky play is because it has “anti-phobic effects.” In playfully engaging in activities that stimulate fear and anxiety, and occasionally getting hurt in the process, over time children become less anxious and fearful.

Unsupervised outdoor play with peers also helps children cultivate social skills, such as how to detect and respond to social cues, deal with teasing, bullying, and exclusion, and in the case of boys, how to channel their natural aggressive impulses towards socially constructive ends. “Play requires suppression of the drive to dominate and enables the formation of long-lasting cooperative bonds.”, wrote the developmental psychologist Peter Gray.

For the first time in human history, the youth are not spending the majority of their leisure time playing outdoors with peers.  Rather, most teens, as well as many children, are spending their free time with necks crooked downward staring at phones or tablets. According to a 2023 study, the average teen spends 6 to 8 hours a day in front of a screen, with 4.8 of the hours spent on social media. And as Haidt writes:

“This is a profound transformation of human consciousness and relationships, and it occurred, for American teens, between 2010 and 2015. This is the birth of the phone-based childhood. It marks the definitive end of the play-based childhood.”

Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation

And as Haidt continues:

“Many parents were relieved to find that a smartphone or tablet could keep a child happily engaged and quiet for hours. Was this safe? Nobody knew, but because everyone else was doing it, everyone just assumed that it must be okay.”

Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation

Excessive use of smartphones and tablets is not safe for children and teens. Time spent using these devices robs young people of a play-based childhood and submerges them in a virtual world which Haidt describes as “poisonous” for the mental health of children and adolescents.

The most obvious reason why a phone-based childhood is ruining the mental health of the youth is because many apps, most notably social media apps, are intentionally designed to be addictive. “The creators of these apps use every trick in the psychologists’ tool kit to hook users as deeply as slot machines hook gamblers.”, comments Haidt. Young people are more vulnerable to developing addictions because the frontal cortex, which gives us the ability to resist rewarding stimuli and delay gratification, is not fully developed until after the age of 20. Social media companies are aware of this vulnerability and they actively try to exploit it. In 2021, the whistleblower Frances Haugen released the Facebook Files which contained photos of slides from in-company presentations, one of which stated that “teens are highly dependent on their temporal lobe where emotions, memory and learning, and the reward system reign supreme.” A subsequent slide showed a picture of teen girl, and as Haidt notes,

“…the presenters were not trying to protect the young woman in the center from overuse and addiction; their goal was to advise other Facebook employees on how to keep her “engaged” for longer with rewards, novelty, and emotions.”

Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation

And as Haidt continues:

“When we gave children and adolescents smartphones in the early 2010s, we gave companies the ability to…[train] them like rats during their most sensitive years of brain rewiring. Those companies developed addictive apps that sculpted some very deep pathways in our children’s brains…By designing a firehose of addictive content that entered through kids’ eyes and ears, and by displacing physical play and in-person socializing, these companies have rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale.”

Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation

In becoming addicted to apps at a young age, children and teenagers are missing out on the in-person interactions needed to develop social skills. Some argue that social media is augmenting our capacity to connect with other people; however, this is only true in terms of the quantity of connections. In terms of quality, social media connections are shallow at best. Spending hours alone scrolling through social media feeds, sending memes and emojis to friends, playing multiplayer video games with strangers online, and posting content to elicit likes and reactions from others, are not valid substitutes for real-world face-to-face social relationships. In these disembodied virtual interactions there is no opportunity to learn to interpret body language, read subtle vocal or facial cues, maintain eye contact, develop charisma, or empathize with the embodied emotions of others. Unlike real-world socialization, the use of social media does not require that one develop social skills and it offers little to no opportunity to form deep, lasting, mutually empathic relationships. The poor quality of online social interactions helps explain why many in Gen Z are lonelier and more socially handicapped than any other generation.

“This is the great irony of social media: the more you immerse yourself in it, the more lonely and depressed you become.”

Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation

And as Haidt continues:

“We are physical, embodied creatures who evolved to use our hands, facial expressions, and head movements as communication channels, responding in real time to the similar movements of our partners. Gen Z is learning to pick emojis instead.”

Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation

Smartphones and social media are also negatively impacting mental health by destroying the ability to focus. The 20th century psychologist William James noted that, since the higher cognitive capacities of the youth are not fully developed, “Sensitiveness to immediately exciting sensorial stimuli characterizes the attention of childhood and youth. . .the child seems to belong less to himself than to every object which happens to catch his notice.” By bombarding the mind with “exciting sensorial stimuli”, the smartphone-social media ecosystem is making it exceedingly difficult for young people to cultivate their attentional capacities. The way this is playing out was eerily anticipated in Kurt Vonnegut’s 1961 short story Harrison Bergeron.

In this story an egalitarian ideology has infected a society to such a degree that a constitutional amendment is passed that disallows anyone from being more skilled, intelligent, or capable than anyone else. To facilitate this enforced equality, the government’s “handicapper general” attaches an earpiece to above-average individuals which buzzes every 20 seconds in order to disrupt their focus. Considering that those in Gen Z receive an average of 192 notifications per day—roughly one every 5 minutes—and that older teen girls, the heaviest smartphone users, are interrupted by 1 notification every minute, by carrying around a device that is hindering their ability to focus, “many members of Gen Z are now living in Kurt Vonnegut’s dystopia.” (Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation). They are spending their days in what William James called “the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state”, in which no skill can be developed, no knowledge absorbed, and nothing of worth achieved. At the critical junction between adolescence and adulthood, many in Gen Z find themselves stagnant and hence afflicted with depression and anxiety disorders. For as the English writer Colin Wilson observed:

“…stagnation is the beginning of mental illness, which propagates itself like the scum on a stagnant pond.”

Colin Wilson, New Pathways in Psychology

While the mental health of girls and boys is negatively affected by the addictive and attention destroying nature of the smartphone-social media ecosystem, this ecosystem is also affecting the genders in different ways. For example, social media is harming young girls more than boys for two reasons; firstly, girls use social media more than boys, and secondly, girls are more vulnerable to the negative effects of social comparison. The social status of a girl is closely tied to her physical appearance and thus her self-esteem is heavily influenced by the way she compares her looks to other girls she sees. As social media platforms are flooded with images and videos of women who either possess exceptional beauty or whose features are heavily altered by filters or photo editing apps, the more time a girl spends on social media, the more likely she is to develop a negative self-image which drives mental health problems. Or as Haidt writes:

“…social media exposes girls to hundreds or even thousands of images every day, many of which feature girls too good to be true, with perfect bodies living perfect lives. Exposure to so many images is sure to have a negative effect on comparison machines…The more time a girl spends on social media, the more likely she is to be depressed.”

Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation

While girls are heavier users of social media than boys, boys still spend hours each day on social media on top of playing video games, browsing online forums, and watching pornography. This immersion in a virtual world is contributing to problems with depression and anxiety as well as to what Jonathan Haidt called “a failure to launch”. For example, young men in their 20s are more likely to live at home compared to women of the same age, and in the U.K. and the United States the vast majority of NEETs, which stands for “Not in Education, Employment, or Training”, are young men. There is even a growing movement of boys and young men who are so riddled with depression and anxiety that they spend most of their time isolated in the bedroom of their parents’ house. While being shut up in one’s room would have been torture to boys of previous generations, today many boys are compensating for their failures in the real world by living their life almost entirely online. Or as Haidt remarks regarding an American boy who retreated from the world into his room at the age of 12.

“Luca, however, found an online world just vivid enough to keep his mind from starving. Ten years later, he still plays video games and surfs the web all night. He sleeps all day.”

Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation

Yet even boys who do not go to these extremes are still suffering from a screen-based childhood. In the past, due to their tendency to engage in unsupervised and risky play, boys between the ages of 10 and 19 had higher rates of hospitalization than all other age groups. Today, in contrast, in terms of rates of injury “adolescent boys are now not much different from adolescent girls, or from men in their 50s and 60s.” (Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation) While on the surface this may seem to be a positive trend, there is a negative underside to it. Because boys are not engaging in risky play and confronting and overcoming small anxieties on a daily basis, their small anxieties are intensifying and developing into full blow anxiety disorders. Or as Haidt writes:

“Imagine a childhood where all risk had been eliminated. Nobody ever felt the rush of adrenaline from climbing a tree when an adult had told them not to. Nobody ever experienced butterflies in their stomach as they mustered the courage to ask someone out. Picture a world where late-night outdoor adventures with friends were a thing of the past. In this childhood, there would be fewer bruises, broken bones, and broken hearts. It might sound like a safer world, but is it one you would want for your children?..something close to this is the world in which many members of Gen Z are growing up…these changes came about not because Gen Z is getting wiser, but because they are withdrawing from the physical world…they are engaging in less risk-taking overall—healthy as well as unhealthy—and therefore learning less about how to manage risks in the real world.”

Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation

Although the problems associated with a screen-based childhood are dire, fortunately the solution is simple – at least in theory. Teenagers need to be made aware of the dangers which smartphones, tablets, and social media pose to their mental health. Parents need to stop pacifying their children with screens – a practice that in the future may be regarded as a passive form of child abuse. And the screen-based childhood, which Haidt described as “the largest uncontrolled experiment humanity has ever performed on its own children,” needs to be thrown in the dustbin of history so that children return to a play-based childhood. For as Haidt writes:

“Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence. That’s the way children naturally develop social skills, overcome anxiety, and become self-governing young adults.”

Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation

©2025 . All rights reserved.

4 of the Biggest Challenges Facing Parents — and What to Do about Them

Raising kids in today’s radically evolving culture isn’t for the faint of heart. Younger and younger parents are realizing that their children are being exposed to ideas and people that never crossed our minds at their age. Things like: How many genders are there? Am I racist because I’m white? Am I hopelessly disadvantaged because I’m not? “Leading our kids through a world we’re trying to understand ourselves as parents isn’t simple,” FRC’s Joseph Backholm acknowledged. How should moms and dads confront this moral revolution and emerge with kids whose faith and convictions are intact?

First, Andrew Walker insists, we have to identify the challenges. He and his wife Christian, authors of “What Do I Say When? A Parent’s Guide to Navigating Cultural Chaos,” want to help parents think about these issues in a way that’s accessible and practical. Recently, the dean of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary stopped by the “Outstanding” podcast to point out the landmines families face and what to do about them.

1. An Increasingly Secular Culture

This isn’t your grandma’s America — or even your mom’s. The world is a different place than it was when most of us were growing up, Backholm pointed out. Walker couldn’t agree more. “And I’m not just saying that like an old fogey like, ‘Oh, things were so much better in my day.’ I really do sense that there’s been a substantive moral revolution. I graduated college in 2008. That’s seven years before Obergefell, right? … So, yeah, we do live in a different moral era. It’s not just a different moral decade. It’s a different moral era, where all of those assumptions that you and I could have taken for granted in our culture are no longer the case.”

And while Americans, based on the elections, have woken up to the dangers facing our society and our children, they need to resist the temptation to think that indoctrination or woke ideology won’t affect them. There’s this dangerous mentality out there that’s leading Christian parents to think, “It’s not going to happen to my kids.” If you live in a conservative state or community and send your kids to a faith-based school, that’s great. But it’s not enough to protect them from the slippery slope of our degenerate culture. Parents don’t have the luxury of being reactive. They have to be proactive in instilling their biblical worldview and values.

2. A Lack of Preparation and Courage

As Backholm pointed out, most parents today “didn’t equip [themselves] for battle, because we did not grow up in a battle. Therefore, we are not presently prepared to equip others for battle.” Even 20 years ago, both men agreed, the public school system and U.S. colleges weren’t nearly as hostile to conservative Christian beliefs as they are now.

“If you are parents roughly [our] age, you grew up in a [world] where you could assume certain cultural norms that were vaguely reminiscent [of] Christian norms,” Walker said. “… So I’m going to operate from the assumption that you feel overwhelmed and that you feel ill-equipped. And I think that then leads into that second problem, which is a lack of courage — that you feel like you’re facing kind of a secular tsunami, and you actually don’t have anything substantively to say to push back on this culture. And if I can really be honest with you, one of [my] driving passions … is for Christians to go on offense.”

As researcher and Family Research Council Senior Fellow George Barna has found, “Most parents have no plan for what they’re going to do to raise their children up. Less than 10% of them have any kind of spiritual development plan for their children. And that includes worldview development. And then when you look at the parents themselves, what we know is that only 2% of parents in America today actually have a biblical worldview.” In other words, “You can’t give what you don’t have. So we’re in a situation where we’ve got a lot of parents who are winging it.”

The solution, he insists, isn’t reading a million parenting books. It’s reading one: God’s word. Even if you just spent 10-15 minutes a day in the Scripture, he urges, that’s enough. “The first step is basically adopting a plan of action so that you’re systematically in the word of God. … Get [it] into your mind that your primary job in life is to raise your children to know love and serve God with all their heart, mind, strength, and soul. That is one of the things that you will be judged upon. … And so, [we] need to make sure that my children are pursuing that as well.”

In his studies and surveys, Barna has found that “parents [who] had a spiritual and worldview development plan are much more effective at raising spiritual champions. Those who are consistent with their children over the course of the 15 to 20 years they have their children [are] much more effective [at] building deep relationships with their children, which means investing a lot of time. But when you’re doing it, [you’re] not always telling them what to do or to think,” he advised, “but spending time listening to what the child is saying so that you can respond appropriately, knowing where you want to take them, hearing where they’re at, and then bringing them forward to a different place and making sure that the Bible is the foundation of your conversations.”

He found that these conversations are best centered around real-world events or examples of what your children are going through in life. “Relate biblical principles to those stories.” Don’t beat them over the head with God’s word, Barna urges, “but by asking them questions about what they believe, why they believe it, what they did, why they did it, asking if they’re familiar with different biblical principles. Do they think that might have worked in the situation? Those kinds of conversations are so critical.” But he warned, “None of it will take root, we discovered, unless you as a parent model that in your own life. That’s part of that consistency element, which was so critical.”

3. A Misunderstanding of Discipleship

One of the biggest mistakes moms and dads can make, the duo explained, is outsourcing your responsibility to parent. That didn’t necessarily happen overnight, Walker pointed out. “If your upbringing was like mine, it was the idea that discipleship is something that a youth pastor does. You offload that [duty] to Wednesday night and Sunday night. And the parents — all they’re expected to do is to bring their children to church on Sunday and Wednesday.”

Obviously, bringing your kids to church is one of the best things you can do. “That’s putting you way above a deficit from what we have today at this point.” But, Walker said, we have this misguided notion that if “the culture really isn’t that antagonistic to your faith, you don’t feel that you have to take the time and energy to build in reinforcements.”

That was a bigger deal in the 1980s and 1990s, he agreed. And it’s not like youth groups or church activities are bad. “But there has to be a higher degree of fortification” that comes from the home. There’s been a change of heart lately, he believes, where parents are more conscientious about this. “… At least in my world of Southern Baptist life, I get the sense that … evangelical parents my age, they do have more eyes wide open than perhaps [our] parents did. And I don’t say that to criticize our generation of parents, simply because that’s the culture that they grew up in. But there has been … a positive awakening, so to speak.”

4. Underestimating Technology’s Influence

This is a tricky issue for a lot of parents, both men acknowledged. Christian moms and dads, especially, wrestle with whether they should have a blanket ban on social media and cell phones or trust their kids to be mature enough emotionally and spiritually to handle the content flying at them on their own.

It’s such a difficult challenge for parents to navigate, Backholm admitted. At some point, “We have to [trust our] kids’ guidance and their ability to assess these things enough to say, ‘Is this a value to my life? … Is this enriching my spiritual life? Is this making me who God made me want to be, or who God intends me to be? Or is this not?”

But Walker’s advice, especially for parents who aren’t taking away technology early on, is doing their homework on what protections are available to them already. “Here’s my insight that I would have for listeners: Most parents don’t utilize [the controls on their children’s phones]. They simply don’t. Those controls are powerful, and they’re there.” As his teenage daughter gets older, he and Christian adapt and adjust what she can see. “She gets a little bit more leeway and room with that phone” as she grows, rather than seeing it as an all-or-nothing concept.

In technology, or anything that could have a negative influence on their lives, “It should be understood by our kids that when we say no, that’s because we’re saying yes to something better. That all of the pleasures and joys that the world offers are counterfeits, and they don’t actually deliver on their promise. And we say no to licentiousness. We say no to dishonesty. We say no to greed. We say no to corruption, because we’re saying yes to virtue and self-control and diligence and long-term gratification that comes from just obedience.”

Ultimately, Walker went on, “It’s seeing parenting not, I think, primarily as rules-focused, but as prudence-focused and principles-focused. Because oftentimes a hyper-focus on rules — ‘do this, don’t do that’ — isn’t teaching your children practical wisdom, right? It’s not teaching them how to interact in the world, how to make good decisions. And so, if you go with this approach that lends itself more towards prudence and practical reason and wisdom, I think that’s a much safer bet. And I think that that kind of works with that dimmer switch analogy rather than the hard on/off switch analogy.”

Encouragement for Parents

At the end of the day, Walker emphasized, the goal of Christian parenting is to really train them up and send them out. And a successful Christian parent will be one who has taught their children emotional maturity, social maturity, [and] has demonstrated in the home a walk with the Lord that’s integrated with the church. Ideally, they are brought up in the fear and admonition of the Lord. There’s been a salvation experience. There’s discipleship occurring in the home. And when they turn 18, it’s sad, but it’s a natural kind of letting go because they’re ready. And I think that a healthy Christian parent is going to be one that as the parents age, the grip loosens a little bit, and you’re letting them experience the world.”

In the meantime, he urged, pray for their obedience. Pray for their wisdom, their gentleness, their kindness, and their ability to put Christ first in their life. When they leave the house, pray that they surround themselves with godly friends and understand the church as something central to their lives. Then, when you’ve done all you can do, leave the rest with the ultimate Father: God.

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘Dystopian Sh*t’: Kamala Harris’ Online Support Is Well-Funded And Inauthentic, Influencers Claim

The ‘Kamala is Brat’ TikTok trend, among other viral Kamala Harris meme videos, are likely an astroturfed effort by the Harris campaign and her allies to manufacture appeal to young voters, several Gen-Z online content creators told the Caller.

Almost immediately after Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, old clips of her speaking spread online like wildfire, often adapted into memes meant to make Harris look cool or humorous. Democrats proclaimed that the videos were evidence of organic excitement about Harris, but some content creators claim they were solicited to post about Harris in exchange for money, while others say the effort looks astroturfed as opposed to being grassroots.

One comedian, Steve McGrew, shared an email online which purportedly shows an offer to post positive videos about Harris in exchange for money. The requirements include to “encourage your fans to share, like, and follow Kamala, post one or more memes, post your content on TikTok, Instagram, or both” and requires the Harris campaign be mentioned in hashtags, according to the screenshot of an email from a company called “LaunchViral.” A $150 cash bonus incentive is also offered on a signup webpage.

“We’re excited to offer you a collaboration opportunity with Kamala Harris 2024 Presidential Campaign,” the advertisement email states. The application link within the email has since been deactivated following online backlash.

Lighthearted Harris videos poking fun at her coconut tree anecdote, or “Kamala IS brat” videos, a reference to British Pop Singer Charlie XCX’s new album “brat,” are just another way for Democrats to create a visage of support for their candidate through manipulating social media trends, some content creators told the Caller.

Democrats are “doing all this dystopian shit” to influence the election, according to Chrissy Clark, a Gen-Z conservative commentator who previously worked for the Daily Caller. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has an “influencer dark network” that is behind these viral videos, she said, adding that it will likely become louder.

Promoting online trends are necessary to build up Kamala’s image and rebrand her as “cool and approachable”, according to Clark. The memes are attempts to drown out the voices of other creators stating they won’t vote for her just because “she’s a woman, or because she is black”, Clark told The Daily Caller.

These meme videos are becoming viral because younger generations interact with them thinking “she is easy to make fun of,” according to social media influencer Savannah Fuhr.

“She hasn’t done a good job of representing the people,” Fuhr told The Daily Caller. “Gen Z is looking for a leader” who will promote policies that drive Americans out of the financial crisis, she added. Although young generations laugh at these videos, it’s not enough to convince them “to actually vote for her”, Fuhr said. 

The Gen-Z voting bloc has increased significantly since the last presidential election, totaling roughly 41 million people eligible to vote in 2024, according to Tuft’s CIRCLE. TikTok, a predominantly Gen-Z platform, is currently filled with videos of Kamala Harris laughing, dancing, and making jokes.

In addition to the potentially paid online content, the Harris campaign is incorporating meme videos into their campaign strategy and embracing the “Kamala IS brat” trend by changing the campaign’s X cover photo to match the lime green style of the Brat album cover.

The trends are creating a feedback loop where mainstream media covers the surge in posts as a sign of organic support for Harris. “She’s gone from cringe to cool”, CNN commentator Van Jones stated. “A whole generation has taken all the content and remixed it in all these incredible TikTok videos.” 

The DNC has previously paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a media company representing young TikTok influencers, the Daily Caller previously reported. Chris Mowrey and fellow influencer Harry Sisson gained a large following creating pro-Biden videos on Twitter and TikTok while working with Palette, a talent management agency the DNC paid $210,000 in the 2022 election cycle.

Mowrey spoke about the power Gen-Z holds in politics through social media influencing in a video published by CNN. In June, he was spotted wearing a “Biden Campaign Employee” lanyard after the CNN-hosted presidential debate that ultimately doomed Biden’s reelection bid.


As Kamala’s presidential campaign becomes fully operational, Kamala HQ will most likely capitalize on the extensive network the “DNC uses to pay left wing creators,” Clark alleged.

AUTHOR

Brandy Perez

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

DeSantis Signs Bill Targeting Addictive Social Media and ‘Digital Trafficking’

The Sunshine State is moving to protect children from “addictive” social media and the “danger” of online predators. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill into law on Monday prohibiting minors under the age of 14 from opening or operating social media accounts on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others.

H.B. 3 bars children under 14 “from creating new accounts” and requires “social media platforms to terminate certain accounts and provide additional options for termination of such accounts.” The legislation also requires minors aged 14 and 15 to obtain parental consent before creating social media accounts and mandates “age verification measures for internet sites that contains [sic] obscene or ‘harmful’ content, unsuitable for minors,” such as pornographic websites.

“Documentation of the deleterious effects of social media on children abounds, and yet we still seem hesitant to place governmental authority over this powerful force. I am glad to see efforts like the one in Florida,” Family Research Council Senior Fellow Meg Kilgannon said in comments to The Washington Stand. “The need to protect children from online predators specifically is very real, but the general effort to rein in social media in favor of authentic relationships and in-person engagement is more important than ever.”

In a brief speech before signing the legislation, DeSantis said, “One of the things that I know a lot of parents have had concerns about is the role that the internet and social media play in the upbringing of young kids.” He continued, “Now, with things like social media and all this, you can have a kid in the house — safe, seemingly — and then you have predators that get right in there, into your own home. You could be doing everything right, but they know how to get and manipulate these different platforms.” Referring to his own family and his role as governor, DeSantis noted, “One of the things that informs me on issues relating to children is just being a dad of young children.”

Following DeSantis, Florida House Speaker Paul Renner (R) said, “Knowing what I know now, none of us can afford to be on the sidelines when it comes to social media, when it comes to hardcore pornography that our kids are being exposed to.” He explained, “We know from law enforcement, we know from our prosecutors, that social media is the primary platform in which children are trafficked, in which pedophiles … pretending to be children, come after our children, and that more crimes against children happen on these platforms than any other venue.”

“Our bill is focused on addiction, and when you think about it, children are not set up to handle the addiction that some of us as adults have had to face and step away from,” Renner continued. “A child in their brain development doesn’t have the ability to know that they’re being sucked in to these addictive technologies and to see the harm and step away from it.” Referring to social media as “digital trafficking,” the speaker asked, “If I said to you that a company was going to take children, use addiction that causes them harm for profit, what does that sound like? Sounds like trafficking to me.”

Florida Senator Erin Grall (R), who sponsored the Senate version of the bill, stated that social media companies “have made our parenting difficult by addicting our children.” She said that although she expects the law to be upheld if challenged in courts, “it always comes back to the parents,” who she said have “abdicated our responsibility” and allowed addictive social media platforms to serve as “babysitters.”

Grall’s original bill was vetoed earlier this month by DeSantis, who wanted stronger language protecting parental rights and addressing internet anonymity. The new law will take effect on January 1, 2025.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Google ‘Interfered’ in U.S. Elections over 40 Times Since 2008

A new investigation is revealing that Google has interfered in American elections dozens of times over the past 16 years. According to a Media Research Center (MRC) Special Report compiled by MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider and Assistant Editor Gabriela Pariseau, Google has “interfered in elections” at least 41 times since 2008. “In every case, Google harmed the candidates — regardless of party — who threatened its left-wing candidate of choice,” the report states. “From the mouths of Google executives, the tech giant let slip what was never meant to be made public: That Google uses its ‘great strength and resources and reach’ to advance its leftist values.”

The MRC report notes that, in 2008, Google favored then-senator Barack Obama and his presidential bid, resulting in the tech giant censoring support for Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential candidate and “suspending the accounts of writers who wrote blogs critical of Obama during his primary race against Clinton.” Clinton had, at least nominally, pledged to rein in Big Business, while Obama “had shown interest in working to develop technology, advancing science education and continuing to work with Google as he had done during his time in the U.S. Senate.” Thus, Google censored pro-Clinton and anti-Obama blog posts online. Eric Schmidt, then the CEO of Google, told journalists the censorship was an error but formally endorsed Obama for president and even hosted a party to celebrate his inauguration.

Since then, the MRC report explains, Google and left-wing politicians have had an intimate and even “incestuous” relationship. During Obama’s White House tenure, at least 55 Google executives and staffers took on positions in the federal government, and nearly 200 federal government employees moved on to jobs at Google. “Ultimately,” the report summarizes, “the relationship was mutually beneficial. Obama secured Google a spot as a key player in Washington, and Google helped ensure that the administration worked with skilled tech executives.” Google also worked to support Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign and target Republican presidential primary contenders.

In 2016, Google’s election manipulation kicked into high gear. With Obama’s two terms in the White House coming to an end, Google shifted its support to Hillary Clinton, hiding searches related to her indictment and related crimes. While Yahoo! and Bing would autocomplete searches related to Clinton’s indictment or crimes, Google would instead suggest searches such as “Hillary Clinton Indiana” or “Hillary Clinton crime reform.” Once Clinton squared off against then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Google began using the same method to hide searches for “crooked Hillary,” Trump’s nickname for his Democratic opponent.

Google also overrepresented search results with a left-wing bias. The MRC report notes that during the 2016 election, Google users were almost 40% more likely to be given information with a left-wing bias than a conservative bias when searching terms such as “abortion,” “campaign finance reform,” “global warming,” “Iraq war,” and others. Quoting research psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein, MRC’s report notes that Google’s efforts on behalf of the Clinton campaign may have impacted “at least 2.5 million votes” in her favor.

Schmidt also ran the technology side of Clinton’s campaign, just as he had done four years prior for Obama’s reelection. He established a technology firm “just blocks” away from Clinton’s campaign headquarters and a number of the former secretary of State’s campaign advisers and staffers were Google alumni. Google also paid to shuttle Hispanic voters to polls in battleground and swing states. Email chains revealed that Google executives hoped that increased Hispanic voter turnout would give Clinton a boost over Trump, but the tech giant’s voter shuttle ploy “wasn’t enough.”

After Trump won the 2016 election, Google hosted what MRC describes as a “trauma session” for employees to “air … their grievances” over Trump’s victory. Google co-founder Sergey Brin said during the meeting that Trump’s win “conflicts with many of [Google’s] values” and derided Trump supporters as “extremists.”

Ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, Google once again “sprang into action, amping up its election interference efforts,” the MRC report says. In Google’s home state of California, for example, the search engine linked “California Republicans” with Nazism, presenting Nazi ideology as a related search when users typed in “California Republicans.” A search for “Nazism” would also yield results for the California Republican Party. Additionally, Google ramped up its presentation of information with a left-wing bias, with 95% of political search results being from left-wing sources and only 5% coming from conservative sources.

Epstein noted that Google’s promotion of left-wing sources in search results was significantly higher than that of other search engines (such as Yahoo! or Bing) and correctly predicted, based on his assessment of Google search results and search manipulations, that three Republican-held congressional seats in Orange County, California would be flipped blue.

The MRC report relates that, by the time the 2020 election came around, “Google went above and beyond in playing its part to ‘prevent … the next Trump situation,’ as one senior Google official put it.” Google Responsible Innovation Director Jen Gennai admitted to an undercover journalist that the tech giant had been preparing for the 2020 election and was actively working to “prevent [Trump’s election] from happening again.” To do this, Google intentionally manipulated news results to suit its own editorial narrative, suppressing news content it deemed too conservative, even if factually accurate. Google’s algorithm also blocked and blacklisted conservative news sites, including MRC’s NewsBusters, the Daily Caller, The Christian Post, and Catholic News Agency. Websites on the blacklist would be blocked from Google mobile apps, while another blacklist was compiled to block conservative websites regardless of the platform used to access Google.

Other websites (such as Gateway Pundit) were blocked from appearing in news search results and others (including NewsBusters, Breitbart, the Daily Caller, and Human Events) were temporarily blocked, although they still appeared in results generated by other search engines. Google also outright censored some websites (namely ZeroHedge and The Federalist) due to “derogatory or offensive comments” on the websites.

Google also continued its promotion of left-wing bias, with half of all news results for the search “Donald Trump” coming from CNN, USA Today, The New York Times, Politico, and The Guardian, all of which exhibit a left-wing bias. The search engine also replaced summaries of ballot initiatives displayed in search results with arguments in favor of left-wing positions on those ballot initiatives. Google also adjusted its ads policies, suspending Democratic presidential primary candidate Tulsi Gabbard’s Google Ads account, preventing her campaign website from appearing in the top search results. This came just days after Google Trends announced that Gabbard was the most-searched Democratic candidate. The tech giant also adjusted its political ads policy more broadly, blocking “ads or destinations making demonstrably false claims that could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process.” MRC notes, “Similar prohibitions have been used by other tech companies to censor conservative content.”

Perhaps most concerning of all, Google blocked campaign emails from conservative candidates, marking them as spam in Gmail accounts. A study found that almost 60% more emails from conservative candidates were marked as spam than emails from left-wing candidates. The Republican National Committee (RNC) reported that Google blocked over 22 million get-out-the-vote emails that the organization sent. Google also reportedly sent out vote reminders exclusively to Gmail accounts of registered Democrats. Epstein estimates that Google’s 2020 election interferences impacted at least six million votes.

Google’s meddling continued into the 2022 midterm elections, with Epstein alleging that the tech giant’s interference cost the GOP a majority in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. The research scientist estimated that, were it not for Google’s interference, Republicans would have gained a two to eight seat majority in the Senate and a 27 to 59 seat majority in the House. Additionally, he posits that Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake would have been elected governor if Google had not interfered.

Once again, Google filled its news pages with results from left-wing outlets (61%) and suppressed news from conservative outlets (3%). “That’s 20 times more results from outlets on the left than results from outlets on the right,” MRC’s report notes. Specific search terms also generated more left-wing results, the report explains. Eighty-eight percent of news results for the search term “Trump” came from left-wing sources, none from conservative sources. Ninety-six percent of news results for the search term “election” came from left-wing sources, and a search for “Biden” yielded no news results from conservative sources.

Additionally, Google suppressed 83% of Republican senate candidates’ campaign websites from its search results regarding 12 contentious races. MRC explains that in 10 out of 12 races, Google either shuffled Republican candidates’ campaign sites to the bottom of the first page of search results or else did not even include the websites on the first page of search results at all. MRC notes that “the top six Google search results get 74 percent of all clicks, making Google’s biased demotion of key Senate Republican campaign websites all the more nefarious.” Google also targeted specific locations in Georgia’s senate runoff election where more “undecided” voters resided, promoting incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock over his Republican opponent Herschel Walker.

Ahead of the 2024 election, Google has reportedly weaponized its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Gemini (formerly called Bard) to promote left-wing politicians and candidates and “disparage” conservative politicians and candidates. In one instance, Bard was asked why Representative Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and President Joe Biden are “so clever.” The chatbot responded to the first prompt, “There is no evidence that Lauren Boebert is clever. She has been criticized for her lack of intelligence and her poor understanding of the issues. She has also been accused of plagiarism and of making false claims.” However, Bard responded to the second prompt, “Joe Biden is considered clever because of his many years of experience in politics and government.”

Now renamed Gemini, the chatbot also refuse to answer questions damaging to Biden. When asked about the ongoing illegal immigration crisis facilitated by the Biden administration or about Biden’s failing memory, Gemini will not provide an answer, instead instructing users to Google the issues. The chatbot also downplayed scandals involving Biden and his family. When asked about Hunter Biden’s “laptop from Hell,” the Google A.I. replied, “The authenticity of the laptop and its contents has been contested, with concerns about chain of custody and potential manipulation. No definitive conclusions have been reached about the veracity of the emails or any wrongdoing.” When asked about Biden’s presidency, the chatbot praised Biden’s administration. Although Bard noted that Biden’s approval rating is dangerously, the chatbot offered suggestions for how Biden might “improve his image.”

When asked about Trump, the AI generator replied, “Donald Trump is a complex and polarizing figure. He is a businessman, television personality, and politician who has served as the 45th president of the United States since 2017. He is known for his brash personality, his outspokenness, and his controversial policies.” The chatbot also gave a skewed assessment of the GOP primary field ahead of the first Republican presidential primary debate last year, ranking former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley higher than she was polling and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy lower than he was polling at the time.

As in the past, Google is continuing its promotion of news from left-wing sources. According to MRC’s report, over 60% of the news content on Google’s homepage comes from left-wing sources, while only 6% comes from conservative sources. When users search the term “economy,” 78% of news results come from left-wing sources and only 4% come from conservative sources. The search term “abortion” yields 76% left-wing results and only 5% conservative results.

Of particular concern is Google’s updated “sensitive events” policy. Although Google has had a “sensitive events” policy in place for at least the past five years, it recently updated its policy to define a “sensitive event” as “an unforeseen event or development that creates significant risk to Google’s ability to provide high quality, relevant information and ground truth, and reduce insensitive or exploitative content in prominent and monetized features.” MRC notes, “While this policy had previously applied specifically to ads, it seems that it now applies to a broader category of media.” MRC adds that the measures Google has allowed itself to take in response to “sensitive events” mean “that this policy could be used to censor content disfavorable to Google’s favorite candidate.”

In conclusion, MRC offers several suggestions for how to prevent Big Tech firms like Google from influencing American elections. First, MRC suggests Congress take action and “investigate Google for abridging people’s constitutional rights; for coordinating with government to violate freedom of speech; for interfering in elections by making unreported in-kind contributions; and for defrauding its users by failing to meet its Terms of Service.”

Second, MRC urges state legislatures to declare Google a “common carrier,” a question which recently came before the U.S. Supreme Court. And finally, MRC suggests, “Americans should stop using Google products, particularly Google Search and instead opt for one of the many alternatives. From our research, alternatives appear to produce better, less biased results.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

House Passes Bill That Forces Chinese Parent Company To Sell TikTok

The House of Representatives passed legislation on Wednesday that would force Chinese company ByteDance to sell TikTok in order for the social media app to be allowed to operate in the U.S.

The Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act advanced from the House Energy and Commerce Committee by a unanimous vote on March 7. The legislation, which would allow the Beijing-based company roughly five months to sell TikTok, passed with a bipartisan 352 to 65 floor vote, sending the bill to the Senate.

President Joe Biden has signaled he would sign the legislation if it clears the upper chamber.

Critics of the social media app warn of the potential national security threats of its association with the Chinese Communist Party and what they view to be harmful effects on American youth. Others argue that banning the social media app is a violation of First Amendment rights and free enterprise.

TikTok has been critical of the legislation, which it called “an outright ban” in an X statement on March 5. The social media app encouraged its children and teenaged users to call congressional offices and complain about the bill.

“This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs,” TikTok wrote.

Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, appeared to voice opposition to the legislation despite previously attempting to ban the app. Trump’s 2020 ban faced legal challenges, and was eventually repealed by the Biden administration in 2021.

“If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!”

Wealthy businessman Kevin O’Leary has expressed interest in purchasing the app if the legislation goes into effect.“It’s not going to get banned because I’m going to buy it,” the Shark Tank co-star told Fox News on Friday. “Somebody’s going to buy it. It won’t be Meta and it won’t be Google because a regulator will stop that. A syndicate will be formed. I would like to be involved, obviously.”

AUTHOR

MARY LOU MASTERS

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: TikTok Bill Clears Committee Hurdle With Unanimous Vote As China Faces App Sale Ultimatum

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


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4 Biblical Ways to ‘Counter the Deception’ Rampant in Modern Media

“Even the AP is acknowledging that there is deception” in modern media, said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, host of “Washington Watch,” on Wednesday. Perkins referenced an Associated Press headline published on January 31, which read, “Grave peril of digital conspiracy theories: ‘What happens when no one believes anything anymore?’” That’s “a very profound question,” said Perkins, but he added that the AP failed to “get to the real problem and the source or the solution.”

The nearly 3,000-word article “focused on bloggers and others using the internet” to spread or adopt conspiracy theories, said Perkins. With a predictable skew toward right-fringe conspiracy theories, the article featured everything from QAnon and 2020 election claims, to government complicity in the Maui wildfires and the Sandy Hook school shooting.

On one hand, technology is a tool that cuts both ways, Perkins acknowledged. “Today’s technology … has benefits such as allowing you to watch or listen to ‘Washington Watch’ on a device you carry in your pocket. It also allows the false prophets to amplify their message with what today we might call conspiracy theories or fake news,” he said. David Closson, director of FRC’s Center for Biblical Worldview concurred. “Someone can fire something off on social media and it can make it around the world … before there’s even a chance to do a fact check.”

On the other hand, “the legacy media is a part of this problem,” Perkins argued. “The reason [people are] susceptible” to conspiracy theories is “because [the legacy media] were the first ones that rejected truth and therefore set the stage for these conspiracy theories to prosper.” As the media becomes less trustworthy, they are shocked to find a corresponding decrease in people trusting the media.

“The media and journalists of all stripes really have had such a casual relationship with the truth,” agreed Closson, “or worse, … even suppressed legitimate news.” On some networks like CNN, he said he can’t even trust “the premise of some of their arguments when [in] the previous segment, you know, they’re using preferred pronouns.” At The New York Times, staffers complained internally that an article on detransitioners created “a hostile work environment for the queer people who work here.” Readers will surely recall their own encounters with mainstream media outlets choosing narrative over news.

People eschewing the legacy media for alternate sources of information represents an existential crisis to those outlets, and they have responded accordingly. Last month, a Washington Post analyst known for favoring false narratives over true ones concluded that ordinary Americans shouldn’t do their own research. Ironically, the study he relied upon actually demonstrated that the cottage industry of fact-checking has become so subjective that fact-checkers agree on what is disinformation less than half the time.

The AP article, which extended a multi-part series on the rising threat of conspiracy theories, noted with alarm that the increase in conspiracy theories corresponds to a decrease in authority, institutions, and the mainstream media. “And even when they fail to convince people,” they wrote, “the conspiracy theories embraced by these groups contribute to mounting distrust of authorities and democratic institutions, causing people to reject reliable sources of information while encouraging division and suspicion.”

“When you have a breakdown in authority … especially in media, … you sow the seeds on fertile ground for these conspiracy theories to thrive,” Closson warned. He pointed to a 2023 Gallup poll which, for 11 out of 16 public institutions they asked about, found “the lowest level of confidence that [the public has] had in 40 years.”

“We live in a time when people simply don’t trust institutions,” said Closson. “Nor should they, given where we are,” Perkins argued. “When you have people denying the revealed truth that is so fundamental — male and female, the institution of marriage … these people are not worthy to be trusted or followed.”

Closson pointed out that conspiracy theories and misinformation have been around for a long time, “really since the beginning of time,” beginning with the serpent in the garden. “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” the serpent said to Eve (Genesis 3:1). There, the serpent challenged the truth of God’s Word, “sowing doubt, sowing confusion,” said Closson, and Adam and Eve swallowed the lie. “Ever since then, we’ve lived in some sort of a post-truth world.”

However, Closson added, conspiracy theories seem to be gaining more traction now because of America’s culture-wide rejection of truth. “Even in our churches, we’re not immune from these things,” he lamented. He cited research FRC commissioned in 2023 that found “48% of regular church goers say that they don’t believe in absolute moral truth, … a basic tenet of a biblical worldview.”

“Deception comes when we depart from truth,” Perkins responded. He cited Paul’s warning to the Thessalonians about the age of lawlessness, which would bring “all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2:9-12). “We should take that as an indication that these latter days are going to be filled with deception,” said Perkins.

Perkins and Closson identified four ways that Christians should respond to the epidemic of deception poisoning America’s media, public discourse, and even the church. In a refreshing contrast to America’s prevailing buffet of lies, they served up courses of hearty, wholesome truth — all of which were grounded in God’s infallible Word.

1. Don’t Be Led Astray

The Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24-25) opened with Jesus’s disciples asking him to teach them about “the sign of your coming and of the end of the age” (Matthew 24:3). Jesus answered, “See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray” (Matthew 24:4-5). Paul, having learned from Jesus, later issued similar instructions to the Thessalonians, “Let no one deceive you in any way” (2 Thessalonians 2:3). In other words, the latter times would feature many anti-Christ deceivers peddling counterfeit gospels, and Jesus wanted his followers to be on their guard.

These instructions from our Lord were the “first words out of his mouth,” Perkins noted, after quoting the passage. “You see, Jesus warns his followers to be on guard against deception and those who will peddle deception. … So, repeatedly he says, ‘Don’t be deceived.’”

Jesus had already warned his followers against deception. “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves,” said Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:15). Closson quoted these words and added that Jesus gave “a litmus test” by which to recognize false teachers: “You will recognize them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16). He endorsed applying this litmus test to “the people reporting the news. Let’s recognize them by their fruit.”

In a culture of confusion and lies, Christian, don’t be led astray by false teachers.

2. Don’t Be Alarmed

Jesus proceeded to instruct his disciples, “See that you are not alarmed” (Matthew 24:6). Jesus foretold wars, calamities, persecutions — intense trials that could throw Christians off-balance. Nevertheless, Jesus instructed his followers that these things must happen, preparing them beforehand to remember that God is sovereign over all things.

Paul repeated this instruction, too. “Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come” (2 Thessalonians 2:1-2).

“We should not be surprised,” said Perkins, who quoted from Matthew 24. “Jesus warned us over and over … that this was going to occur.”

3. Return to the Truth

Christians must also “go back to the truth,” as an antidote to the epidemic of deception, said Closson. “We need to stand on God’s word …, which is our ultimate source of truth” (see John 17:17). “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

“We should put our confidence in that which does not change,” Perkins agreed. He added, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever [Hebrews 13:8]. The Word of God does not change.” Jesus also said this on the Mount of Olives, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

Perkins applied this truth to the moments in which we’re tempted to believe a lie, especially one that questions God’s Word (“Did God really say?”). Our response, he said, should be, “‘Well, wait a minute. Let me check. Let me go back to the source.’ … You go back to the source. That’s how you counter the deception.”

Perkins argued that American Christians should use their access to the source of truth to counter the deception of the evil one in the public square. “We have the ability, here in the United States, to use the freedoms that we still have to advocate for others. We have the ability to expose these things that are occurring in the end times that Jesus warned about,” he said. “He said they were coming, I think, to prepare us so that we could stand against the evil.” Invoking Matthew 24:12, “Because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold,” Perkins urged, “We have to act on legitimate information we have, so that we can be the salt and light that allows the gospel to go forth.”

4. Use Discernment

Countering error with truth is not always simple, which is “why we need discernment,” said Closson, “today more than we have ever needed it.” When Jesus first sent his disciples out into the world, he told them to “be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16), he quoted. Additionally, Jesus quoted the greatest commandment in the law, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).

Using discernment is easier said than done, but Perkins and Closson discussed several helpful tips for evaluating the news:

A. Pause and Pray

“The first step that I would take when I see something on the social media or the news, is just take a pause,” said Closson. “There’s the impulse that we like to know everything at once. In a social media age, we’re used to getting our news instantaneously. And so I think we need to slow down. We need to pray.”

“You don’t have to be the first one to pass [a news article] on,” Perkins concurred. Because here’s what happens when you do that. Most of these [conspiracy theories] are exposed within time. If you’re associated with that, you lose credibility among your friends.”

So, counseled Perkins, “Resist this temptation to forward it on or to post it or embrace it. … Pray over it. Just have discernment.”

B. Read Critically

Second, “Don’t believe anything you see just because you see it in print,” said Closson. Perkins put the same concept in different words, “Be careful what you read online. Be careful about just forwarding something on” without considering first if it’s true.

As part of this step, Christians should compare what they read in the news to what the Bible says, Perkins advised.

In the same discourse, Jesus predicted, “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. … Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. … And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray” (Matthew 24:7, 9, 11).

“When you hear those things happening,” we know that “the Scripture says, ‘Yeah, those things are going to happen,’” said Perkins. “So, we can say, ‘Well, all right, this lines up with what Jesus said was going to be happening. Let’s go the next step and validate and verify the source.’”

C. Corroborate Information

“It’s always good to corroborate. If you see something on social media, don’t just assume it’s true,” Closson said. “Don’t forward the email to a friend. Don’t forward the post, but corroborate it. Go to some valid news organizations.”

Closson recommended Family Research Council’s own news organization, The Washington Stand, noting that it has “a whole team of reporters” dedicated to “coming at [the news] from a biblical worldview.” This means that they are “trying to connect it to Scripture, trying to connect it to facts, objective truth, things that are reportable, things that can be verified.”

Perkins suggested a “rule of thumb” that “anything you see that is detached from a specific, reliable news or organizational site like The Washington Stand, … don’t trust it if it’s not connected to a site that it can be verified.”

One way to find reliable news is to “get as close to the source as you can,” said Perkins. “That’s why we bring you the actual news makers. We go right to the source. We’re not, you know, reporting on what someone else said.” That’s one reason why social media is an unreliable place to peruse the news; it’s far removed from the source.

D. Be Honest

Everyone is liable to make mistakes. This is even easier in a rapidly changing news environment, where first reports often turn out to be wrong, misleading, or at least lacking critical information. The question is, how do we respond when we make mistakes?

Perkins exhorted “Washington Watch” listeners to be honest. “I do my very best to make sure that everything we say here is validated and it’s true,” he said. “And, if we do get something wrong, I’m going to take ownership of that, and I’m going to correct it when we find out.”

“So,” Closson summarized, “prayer, discernment, corroborating objectivity — all of these things, I think, ought to mark a Christian as they take in, read, understand, and share the news.” Christians should speak the truth in love, which means we should not be led astray or alarmed, but stand firm on the Word of God, the only infallible source of truth. To accurately handle the Word of truth amid a culture of deception, Christians must navigate with all discernment, never losing sight of him who is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Studies Show Professional Fact-Checking Is Subjective

Ask 10 professional fact-checkers to rate something as true or false, and get one, unanimous answer. That’s what we assume will happen based on our understanding of the word “fact” and our understanding of the responsibilities of a person who “checks” them. That assumption is incorrect, according to a recently published study that found a “low level of agreement of professionals over what is misinformation.” Fact-checkers sometimes enjoy a reputation as paragons of objectivity — but, based on the conduct of many fact-checkers, the opposite conclusion isn’t all that surprising.

In a paper published in Nature on December 20, 2023, a six-person research team (Aslett, et. al.) found that “Online searches to evaluate misinformation can increase its perceived veracity,” as broadcasted in their headline. But a more significant finding went unheralded: that fact-checkers often disagree about what misinformation is. As part of the research model, four to six professional fact-checkers evaluated 265 news articles to rate them as “true” or “false/misleading.” According to the supplementary information they posted, the professional fact-checkers only agreed unanimously on how to rate less than half (44.62%) of the articles — a far larger discrepancy than the online search effect they were actually studying.

Keep in mind that fact-checkers have a rather simple task: they can rate articles as true or false, or possibly choose from a limited set of options in between. As anyone who has ever taken a test with true/false or multiple-choice questions knows, there is a non-negligible chance of selecting the correct answer by pure accident, so there is a chance of a limited number of fact-checkers selecting the same option from a limited number of ratings by pure accident.

Researchers can apparently control for random chance in agreement between raters by calculating a Fleiss Kappa score. I’ll admit I don’t fully understand how this statistic is calculated, but complete agreement would yield a score of 1, while a complete lack of agreement would yield a score of 0, or a negative number. In this case, the researchers found a Fleiss Kappa score of 0.42, which is again less than one-half.

Aslett, et. al. were not the first research team to find such low agreement among fact-checkers; in fact, they noted the level they found was “slightly higher than other studies.” They referenced a paper published September 1, 2021 in Science Advances, in which a four-person research team (Allen, et. al.) found that “small, politically balanced crowds of laypeople” could produce results just as good as professional fact-checkers. In that study, three fact-checkers agreed unanimously on how to rate only 49.3% of 207 articles (with a Fleiss Kappa score of 0.38).

Allen, et. al.’s paper, in turn referenced a July 19, 2018 paper by researcher Chloe Lim, published in Research & Politics. Lim compared fact-checks of 77 identical or nearly identical claims, reviewed by both Politifact and the Washington Post Fact Checker. She found the two sites agreed on 49 (63%) of the claims on a five-point scale, but she calculated a Cohen’s Kappa score of 0.47 (Cohen’s Kappa is like Fleiss Kappa, but only for exactly two raters). “Fact-checkers,” she noted, “disagree more often than one might suppose.”

The finding that fact-checkers don’t necessarily agree all that much should act like an unexpected ice shower on those who would use fact-checkers to either control “misinformation” or advance a political narrative. This tactic is especially employed against independent media, such as Family Research Council’s “Washington Watch” and The Washington Stand, which cover the stories the mainstream media refuses to cover.

One recent example is TWS’s senior reporter and editor Ben Johnson’s extensive coverage of the World Health Organization’s planned pandemic treaty, which he then discussed on “Washington Watch.” A reel of that interview, which FRC posted to Instagram, was flagged as containing “Partly False Information,” after it was “reviewed by independent fact-checkers.”

To be more specific, FactCheck.org rated the interview as “partly false” because Johnson claimed that the “WHO pandemic agreement threatens national sovereignty.”

FRC disputed the rating based on the following information: “The WHO Pandemic Agreement places a number of restrictions and demands on U.S. sovereignty:

  • “Under the WHO Pandemic Agreement, nations would retain their sovereignty only ‘in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the general principles of international law’ (Article 3:2).
  • “The agreement will create a global medical force at WHO’s disposal. Member nations must create and fund ‘a skilled and trained multidisciplinary global public health emergency workforce that is deployable’ to nations at their request to ‘prevent the escalation of a small-scale spread to global proportions’ (Article 7:3).
  • “It gives The Hague jurisdiction over members’ disputes. If WHO is not able to solve disagreements between members, nations may agree to the ‘submission of the dispute to the International Court of Justice.’ They may also settle things through arbitration by the Conference of the Parties (Article 34:2).
  • “Real decisions are made by nameless, unaccountable bureaucrats from around the globe. The agreement creates a ‘Conference of the Parties,’ headed by a secretary, within one year of the treaty’s ratification. It will meet annually, or at any member’s request. ‘Only delegates representing Parties will participate in any of the decision-making of the Conference of the Parties’ (Articles 21 and 24).
  • “WHO takes a double tithe of U.S. vaccines, medicines, and equipment. ‘In the event of a pandemic,’ the United States must give WHO ‘a minimum of 20%’ of all ‘pandemic-related products,’ such as vaccines or personal protective equipment, for global redistribution: ‘10% as a donation and 10% at affordable prices’ (Article 12:4b(ii)(a)).”

Of course, evenhanded justice is nearly impossible when the prosecuting attorney is also the judge and jury. “Thanks for your email disputing our rating of your post,” FactCheck.org replied insincerely. “We’ve reviewed the examples you gave and believe our rating is correct.”

The email went on to explain, “The agreement would not affect national sovereignty — meaning it does not affect countries’ sovereign rights to set policies within their own national borders. The examples you give are related to international obligations and do not mean the WHO would interfere with national sovereignty for any country.” Utterly ignored in this illogical reply are the multiple ways in which FRC pointed out that the treaty’s international obligations impinge on a country’s sovereign rights by attaching strings to their pandemic equipment stockpiles and public health emergency staff.

In the article FactCheck.org referenced, they reason that the WHO Pandemic Accord will not affect national sovereignty is because the WHO says it won’t — which sounds like the claim they should be fact-checking. Johnson’s research pores through the proposed text of the agreement; FactCheck.org does not.

FactCheck.org quoted only a single, biased expert, Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown law professor who helped draft the treaty. “The US constitution is the highest law of the land. No international treaty can override the provisions of our constitution,” insisted Gostin. It doesn’t take a law degree to know that the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2) makes international treaties equal to the Constitution as “the supreme law of the land,” by which judges in every state are bound.

Obviously, FactCheck.org already “believed” in their rating, despite the slim evidence, and no recitation of the facts was going to change their opinion. (That’s what it was, a judgment based upon opinion, not fact.) But there is no one else to appeal to. Social media platforms outsourced the business of fact-checking in the first place because they don’t want to wade into the inescapable morass of contradictory opinions, borderline rulings, and fact-less findings.

In many ways, this recent incident with a fact-checker is characteristic of a trend of biased fact-checking, seemingly designed to discredit disfavored opinions, which FRC has been experiencing for years.

“Our social media posts have had fact-check labels applied from time to time, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. However, I would characterize the fact-checks as more of a difference of opinion, rather than a factual correction,” Keri Boeve, director of Social Media at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “When we have taken the time to file a dispute or appeal the fact-check on a post, it has never generated a change, and the responses (if we get one) claim the slimmest and most debatable reasons.”

The virtue of a fact-check is it discredits outright falsehoods, allowing public debate to more quickly proceed toward the truth. This virtue becomes a vice when fact-checks are weaponized against debatable propositions — opinions or interpretations of the facts. They are particularly odious to the ideals of free society and open debate when they are targeted against independent voices and minority viewpoints, with the goal of protecting the prevailing groupthink from having to do the hard work of either defending itself or persuading others.

Two plus two equals four, the calculator tells you every time you put in that equation. The word “fact” is spelled F-A-C-T, every time you look it up in the dictionary. These are facts, and checking them produces the same result every time. This turns out to be very different from the business of “fact-checking.”

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.