Lisa Marie Presley Dies Suddenly at 54

Editor 1
-
0
Lisa Marie Presley Dies Suddenly at 54

(Headline USA) Lisa Marie Presley, the only daughter of Elvis Presley and a dedicated keeper of her father’s legacy, died Thursday after being hospitalized for a medical emergency. She was 54.

Presley’s death was confirmed by her mother, Priscilla.

“It is with a heavy heart that I must share the devastating news that my beautiful daughter Lisa Marie has left us,” Priscilla Presley said in a statement. “She was the most passionate, strong and loving woman I have ever known.”

It was unclear what may have triggered Lisa Marie Presley’s apparent heart attack on Thursday, just a day after she made an appearance at the Golden Globes, but it follows a series of unexplained medical emergencies that some have speculated may be linked to the experimental, gene-altering coronavirus vaccines.

“There are no indications that Presley suffered from an adverse reaction; we don’t even know for sure if she is vaccinated,” wrote conservative pundit JD Rucker on his America First Report. “But it has become necessary to question every time anyone relatively young and apparently healthy has a sudden medical emergency because a majority of Americans, including nearly all in corporate media journalists, are pretending like a connection is impossible.”

Presley, the only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, shared her father’s brooding charisma—the hooded eyes, the insolent smile, the low, sultry voice—and followed him professionally, releasing her own rock albums in the 2000s, and appearing on stage with Pat Benatar and Richard Hawley among others.

She even formed direct musical ties with her father, joining her voice to such Elvis recordings as “In the Ghetto” and “Don’t Cry Daddy,” a mournful ballad which had reminded him of the early death of his mother (and Lisa Marie’s grandmother), Gladys Presley.

“It’s been all my life,” she told the Associated Press in 2012, speaking of her father’s influence. “It’s not something that I now listen to and it’s different. Although I might listen closer. I remain consistent on the fact that I’ve always been an admirer. He’s always influenced me.”

Her birth, nine months exactly after her parents’ wedding, was international news, and her background was rarely far from her mind.

With the release last year of Baz Luhrmann’s major musical feature Elvis, Lisa Marie and Priscilla Presley had been attending red carpets and award shows alongside stars from the film.

She was at the Golden Globes on Tuesday, on hand to celebrate Austin Butler’s award for playing her father. Just days before, she was in Memphis at Graceland—the mansion where Elvis lived, and died—on Jan. 8 to celebrate her father’s birth anniversary.

Presley lived with her mother, an actress known for Dallas and the Naked Gun movies, in California after her parents split up in 1973. She recalled early memories of her dad during her visits to Graceland, riding golf carts through the neighborhood and seeing his daily entrances down the stairs.

“He was always fully, fully geared up. You’d never see him in his pajamas coming down the steps, ever,” she told the Associated Press in 2012. “You’d never see him in anything but ‘ready to be seen’ attire.”

Elvis Presley died in August 1977, when he was just 42, and she 9 years old. Lisa Marie was staying at Graceland at the time and would recall him kissing her goodnight hours before he would collapse and never recover. When she next saw him, the following day, he was lying face down in the bathroom.

“I just had a feeling,” she told Rolling Stone in 2003. “He wasn’t doing well. All I know is I had it [a feeling], and it happened. I was obsessed with death at a very early age.”

She would later make headlines of her own. Struggles with drugs and some very public marriages. Her four husbands included Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage.

Jackson and Presley were married in the Dominican Republic in 1994, but the marriage ended two years later and was defined by numerous awkward public appearances, including an unexpected kiss from Jackson during the MTV Video Music Awards and a joint interview with Diane Sawyer when she defended her husband against allegations he had sexually abused a minor.

Her other celebrity marriage was even shorter: Cage filed for divorce after four months of marriage in 2002.

“I had to sort of run into many walls and trees,” she told the AP in 2012.

“But now I can also look back at it and tell you all the stuff that was going on around me and all the different people around me and all the awww—and it was not a good situation anyway. That wasn’t helping,” she continued. “Either way, it was a growing process. It was just in a different way. It was just out in front of everybody all the time. Because it’s all documented of course.”

Presley had two children, actor Riley Keough and Benjamin Keough, with her former husband Danny Keough. She also had twin daughters with ex-husband Michael Lockwood.

Benjamin Keough died by suicide in 2020 at the age of 27. Presley was vocal about her grief, writing in an essay shared with People magazine last August that she had “been living in the horrific reality of its unrelenting grips since my son’s death two years ago.”

“I’ve dealt with death, grief and loss since the age of 9 years old. I’ve had more than anyone’s fair share of it in my lifetime and somehow, I’ve made it this far,” she wrote.

“But this one, the death of my beautiful, beautiful son?” she continued. “The sweetest and most incredible being that I have ever had the privilege of knowing, who made me feel so honored every single day to be his mother? Who was so much like his grandfather on so many levels that he actually scared me? Which made me worry about him even more than I naturally would have?” the essay continued. “No. Just no … no no no no …”

Lisa Marie became the sole heir of the Elvis Presley Trust after her father died. Along with Elvis Presley Enterprises, the trust managed Graceland and other assets until she sold her majority interest in 2005. She retained ownership of Graceland Mansion itself, the 13 acres around it and items inside the home. Her son is buried there, along with her father and other members of the Presley family.

Lisa Marie Presley is a former Scientologist—her son was born in 1992 under guidelines set by Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, according to an AP story at the time—but later broke with Scientology.

Lisa Marie and Priscilla Presley would make regular trips to Graceland during huge fan celebrations on the anniversaries of Elvis’s death and birthday. One of the two airplanes at Graceland is named the Lisa Marie.

After her first album To Whom It May Concern, in 2003, some fans came out to see her perform just out of curiosity given her famous family, she told the AP in 2005.

“First I had to overcome a pre-speculated idea of me,” she said of the barriers to becoming a singer-songwriter.

“I had to sort of burst through that and introduce myself, and that was the first hurdle, and then now sing in front of everybody, and then that was the second one, and I’m the offspring of—you know, who I’m the offspring of—I had a few hurdles to get through, no doubt about it,” she continued. “But the scales never tipped in the other direction too much.”

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Republicans Defend Participation in WEF’s Annual Davos Meeting

Ken Silva
-
0
Republicans Defend Participation in WEF’s Annual Davos Meeting

Update: After the publication of this article, Rep. Mike Gallagher’s office informed Headline USA that the congressman will not attend the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. Headline USA has updated the story to include an additional statement from Gallagher’s office and to accurately reflect the number of Republicans attending the meeting, but has otherwise kept the original article intact.

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) At least three Republican lawmakers are among the gaggle of oligarchs, politicians and deep-state actors set to flock to Davos for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting next week.

The WEF has been heavily criticized for promoting anti-liberty and anti-human policies, including lockdowns, vaccine mandates and trans-humanism—as summarized by its slogan: “Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better.”

The Republican participants listed to attend the event include Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, as well as Reps. Darrell Issa of California, Maria Salazar of Florida and Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin—the latter having recently been appointed to chair the Select Committee on China.

Republican Sen. James Risch of Idaho is also listed as an attendee, but his communications director informed Headline USA that he is not, in fact, attending the forum.

Gallagher’s office told Headline USA that he is headed to the “belly of the beast” to warn other attendees about the “existential threat” posed by the Chinese Communist Party.

“Rep. Gallagher things it’s time for the world to wake up to the existential threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party and to selectively decouple our economies,” said Gallagher’s communications director, Jordan Dunn.

“He’s taking his warning to the belly of the beast and putting everyone there on notice: You’re either with us, or with a genocidal communist regime hellbent on destroying America,” Dunn added.

Dunn later sent another statement that the congressman is not, in fact, attending the meeting.

“He was invited but is not going. He’s staying back to continue setting up the Select Committee on the CCP and to lay groundwork for future hearings,” Dunn said.

Issa’s office also provided a written statement, in which the congressman promised to speak out against WEF policies.

“Throughout my career, I have worked to take the message of American Exceptionalism everywhere it needs to be heard. Sometimes, that means places that may not agree,” Issa said in a statement that’s also posted on his site.

“Over the years, the World Economic Forum has gotten much wrong—from crippling COVID lockdowns, to climate extremism, to exacerbating the global energy crisis, to the manifest dangers of the Chinese Communist Party,” he continued. “I’m not afraid to say this in front of the conference, and this year is no exception.”

Issa promised not to be a “silent observer” at the forum.

“I will continue to be a forceful voice for our conservative values of liberty and freedom and the best of what makes America great,” he said.

Issa’s communications director, Jonathan Wilcox, added the following statement in an email to Headline USA: “Anyone who thinks Darrell Issa would go anywhere in the world and not have America’s back doesn’t know him at all.”

Salazar’s and Kemp’s offices did not immediately respond to queries about why they’re participating.

Salazar’s office said they were “processing” the query. Headline USA will update with any response.

Kemp’s office gave no reply at all. However, in an article published by Gateway Pundit, journalist Leo Hohmann raised one possible reason for Kemp’s attendance, noting his history of encouraging Chinese companies to invest in his state.

“[Kemp] has courted the Chinese Communist Party to invest in Georgia, literally making promotional videos on how wonderful it is for Georgia to partner with the Chinese communists in various business ventures,” Hohmann noted.

Kemp is listed as a speaker on a panel with Democrat Sens. Chris Coons of Delaware, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. They will discuss “what we can expect from a reshaped legislative landscape in the United States,” according to WEF’s website.

The other Republican lawmakers are not listed as speakers.

Along with the politicians, other American participants include FBI Director Christopher Wray; Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines; and former Obama United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power, who is currently the Biden White House’s administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Haines is a longtime WEF member who participated in Event 201—a WEF-sponsored event that simulated a global pandemic in October 2019, just weeks before the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed.

Powers, for her part, while serving on the Obama administration’s National Security Council, was instrumental in the 2011 overthrow of Libya’s government. Libya is now a failed state with a flourishing open-market slave trade, thanks to Obama’s coup.

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

New Twitter Files Confirm Dems Knowingly Lied about Russian Bots

Ben Sellers
-
0
New Twitter Files Confirm Dems Knowingly Lied about Russian Bots

(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) In the latest batch of Twitter Files, journalist Matt Taibbi confirmed the widely held suspicion that Democrats knowingly lied about the presence of Russian bots that, they claimed, spread disinformation using viral hashtag campaigns.

Among the most egregious offenders was Rep. Adam Schiff of California—who was, at the time, the ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee.

He, along with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who was ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, published a letter on Jan. 23, 2018, demanding that Twitter and Facebook conduct an investigation of Russian bot interference, even though Twitter had earlier provided evidence to debunk the claims that the accounts in question were of Russian origin.

Schiff notoriously exploited the fact that a memo by Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the House Intelligence chair, had been classified to intentionally dupe the public about its contents and sugges the opposite.

As they had done with the bogus Steele Dossier, the Democrat lawmakers—joined also by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Ct.—used a flimsily sourced website to support their claims.

The Hamilton 68 site was, in fact, created by a former FBI counterintelligence official Clint Watts.

Twitter’s Global Policy Communications Chief Emily Horne warned that the information coming from the site was false calling it a “comms play” for Watts’s activist front group, the Alliance for Securing Democracy.

Even Yoel Roth, the social-media platform’s now disgraced Trust and Safety chief, who oversaw significant censorship campaigns at the behest of the intelligence community, disputed the claims after running an investigation of some of the accounts that Watts had claimed were Russian.

Many were using the hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo to urge government officials to declassify Nunes’s analysis. But instead, the viral hashtag seemed to have been driven by influencers including Wikileaks.

Other organic hashtags likewise faced the same accusation from Democrats anytime an unfavorable story began to trend on the platform.

Twitter warned the Democrat accusers that they stood to “look silly” once the truth emerged.

But Blumenthal persisted in lodging the false claims and proceeding to make unreasonable demands that Twitter investigate every allegation thereafter.

Finally, Twitter executives came to the conclusiong that Blumenthal’s intention was never to get to the bottom of a serious issue, but simply to grandstand and flex his power over the company.

They likened it to the children’s book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, in which the titular mouse keeps making greater and greater demands that snowball on to one another.

Nonetheless, Twitter’s own far-left ideology and its desire to avoid political snares led the company to play along and act like it was taking seriously the spurious requests.

That, in turn, fueld lazy mainstream media outlets like the Associated Press, NBC, Politico and Rolling Stone to continue to legitimize the false claims in their breathless coverage of the Russian bots.

None of the Democrats involved ever sought to correct the record, and Nunes alone was left to speak the truth while routinely being ridiculed by fake-news outlets, Taibbi noted.

The release was the latest in the series, based off information from new Twitter CEO Elon Musk. Among the other episodes, the Twitter Files have confirmed collusion between the intel community and social-media companies to censor information in order to push false narratives that helped sway the 2020 election.

They also have revealed that pharmaceutical companies pressured Twitter to censor valid concerns about the untested coronavirus vaccines.

Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/realbensellers.

Emails Link Hunter to Penn Biden Think-Tank as Charges Seem Imminent

Contributing Author
-
0
Emails Link Hunter to Penn Biden Think-Tank as Charges Seem Imminent

(Headline USA) Federal charges against Hunter Biden for alleged illegal tax deductions may be imminent, according to the New York Times.

David Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware who has been investigating Biden for alleged tax fraud and money laundering, is close to deciding whether to prosecute Biden on charges relating to his late filing of tax returns in 2016 and 2017 and alleged false claiming of at least $30,000 in deductions for business expenses.

Weiss is also reportedly considering charging Biden for lying on a U.S. government form that he filled out to purchase a handgun in 2018. On the form, he denied that he was using drugs when he has already admitted to a severe drug addiction at that time of his life.

Hunter Biden’s business dealings have come under intense scrutiny over the past couple of years, especially insofar as they are connected to President Joe Biden. Emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, for example, suggest the first son was interested in using a Biden-linked thinktank to advance his career.

On April 25, 2016, Creative Artists Agency agent Craig Gering emailed Hunter Biden with “confidential notes from our meeting,” in which Gering listed potential future plans for Joe Biden after he was done with the Obama administration. One of those plans included “wealth creation” with a reference to the Penn Biden Center, a think tank that had not yet been formed.

Gering suggested that if the Penn Biden Center was launched, Hunter Biden might be able to land a job with it.

“The Biden Institute of Foreign Relations at the University of Pennsylvania,” Gering’s email read. “Focus on foreign policy. In addition to the institute at U of Penn, the school has an existing office in DC that will be expanded to house a DC office for VP Biden (and Mike, Hunter and Steve?). Operates like The Clinton Global Initiative without the money raise.”

Hunter replied and said plans for the think tank needed to be kept “confidential” because his father had not yet agreed to the plan.

“Yes,” Hunter replied, “in theory that’s the way I would like to see it shake out— BUT please keep this very confidential between us because nothing has been set in stone and there’s still a lot of sensitivity around all of this both internally and externally. He hasn’t made any decisions and this could all be changed overnight.”

Even if the DOJ does not find that Joe Biden was involved in Hunter’s business plans, or that any of Hunter’s business dealings were worthy of criminal prosecution, congressional Republicans have made it clear that they plan to continue their investigation into the Biden family.

“Now that Democrats no longer have one-party rule in Washington, oversight and accountability are coming,” Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the new chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement this month. “For years, the Biden family peddled influence and access around the world for profit, often at the expense of our nation’s interests.

“The American people must know the extent of Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s shady business deals and if these deals threaten national security and his decision-making as president,” he added.

Alec Baldwin May Face Criminal Charges Within Weeks

Contributing Author
-
0
Alec Baldwin May Face Criminal Charges Within Weeks

(Headline USA) Potential criminal charges against actor Alec Baldwin and other production members of the fatal Rust film could be coming this month, according to reports.

The Santa Fe District Attorney’s Office is ramping down its investigation into the fatal Rust shooting, during which Baldwin fired a live round from a prop gun, killing director of photography Halyna Hutchins and injuring one other.

New Mexico’s Board of Finance reportedly granted more than $317,000 to cover costs for investigating possible prosecutions, indicating that four people could be charged. One of the possible defendants, according to Santa Fe District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies, is Baldwin.

Carmack-Altwies plans to make a final decision on the matter before the end of January, according to TMZ.

“If the facts and evidence warrant criminal charges under New Mexico law then charges will be brought. No one is above the law,” Carmack-Altwies’s spokesperson said last year.

Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza had previously warned that no one is “off the hook” for their role in the shooting.

“It’s too early to rule anything out right now,” he said last year when asked whether Baldwin had committed a criminal act. “I think there was complacency on the set. There was disorganization, and a degree of negligence. Whether that rises to a criminal level, that will be up to the district attorney.”

Baldwin has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, claiming in an interview that he never pulled the trigger of the prop gun. He also complained recently that he’s had a difficult time lining up work as a result of the ongoing criminal investigation.

“I got fired from another job yesterday,” he told CNN last year. “There I was all set to go to a movie, jump on a plane. I’ve been talking with these guys for months and they told me yesterday we don’t want to do the film with you because of this.”

Dozens of House Dems Renew Push for Reparations, ‘National Apology’

Contributing Author
-
0
Dozens of House Dems Renew Push for Reparations, ‘National Apology’

(Headline USA) House Democrats reintroduced legislation this week that would set up a commission to explore whether reparations and a national apology for slavery are necessary.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, and 52 other House Democrats introduced the legislation, which has been considered several times before, including last year when Democrats were in charge. The bill never made it out of the House Judiciary Committee.

Still, Jackson Lee said she is hopeful that Congress will move towards reparations, not just as a means of financial compensation, but also to better “come to grips with the legacy of slavery.”

“Though some have tried to deflect the importance of these conversations by focusing on individual monetary compensation, the real issue is whether and how this nation can come to grips with the legacy of slavery that still infects current society,” she said. “Through legislation, resolutions, news and litigation, we are moving closer to making more strides in the movement toward reparations.”

Jackson Lee argued that financial compensation is necessary because “economic issues are the root cause of many critical issues in the African American community today.”

“The call for reparations represents a commitment to entering a constructive dialogue on the role of slavery and racism in shaping present-day conditions in our community and American society,” she added.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., endorsed the commission when it was proposed last year and did so again this week, arguing that black Americans still suffer from lingering effects of slavery.

“We’re not going to move on because after slavery, [there was] Jim Crow and the rise of the KKK,” Jeffries said in 2021. “And the lynching epidemic. And Plessy v. Ferguson. And Black Wall Street in 1921 destroyed.”

The legislation does not specify which kinds of financial compensation the commission will consider, or how the government will provide the compensation. All it says is that the commission must examine how to provide “full reparations” for slavery, including a “formal apology” from the government, and help determine who would be eligible for them.

Tennessee Lawmakers Introduce “Tennessee Bullion Depository Act”

Matthew Cortez
-
0
Tennessee Lawmakers Introduce “Tennessee Bullion Depository Act”

Tennessee Lawmakers Introduce “Tennessee Bullion Depository Act”

(Nashville, Tennessee, USA – January 12th, 2023) – Building on the success of passing a full sales tax exemption on precious metals (HB 1874 and SB 1857) in 2022, lawmakers in Tennessee have set their sights on another pro-sound money effort: an in-state bullion depository.

Sen. Frank Niceley has introduced Senate Bill 150, the Tennessee Bullion Depository Act. SB 150 would establish a depository to operate either exclusively or nonexclusively as a precious metals depository and may be held and operated privately. A House version of the bill, sponsored by Rep. Bud Hulsey, is expected to be introduced soon

Sen. Niceley and Rep. Hulsey are steadfast champions of sound money, earning them the 2022 Sound Money Legislator of the Year award last year for their work on eliminating Tennessee’s state sales tax on gold and silver.

The depository would serve as the custodian, guardian, and administrator of certain bullion and specie that may be deposited with the depository by the state of Tennessee, a political subdivision, another instrumentality of the state, or by a private individual, party, or other entity.

Additionally the measure calls for annual reports to the commissioner of financial institutions on all the depository’s activities for the preceding year. The depository would be subject to annual audit by the comptroller of the treasury. The audit would include annual reports and all books of accounts and financial records and the depository itself would bear the cost of the audit.

After the audit, the commissioner of financial institutions is required to gather the information collected and submit a report to the governor, the speaker of the senate, the speaker of the house of representatives, and the legislative librarian. The report would also be made available to the entire general assembly.

Privately owned and operated, a state-chartered depository enables citizens to store their precious metals for a fee. And the involvement of the state in an otherwise private depository potentially provides an additional layer of constitutional protection against federal-government aggression, such as the gold expropriation of 1933.

Using a depository account, citizens could also engage in transactions using gold and silver electronically. An account holder could make a purchase and pay the seller by transferring precious metals to the seller’s account. The funds being transacted could also be converted to Federal Reserve Notes and deposited into an account at a typical bank.

States that help set up depository systems will help further to bring gold and silver into use as an alternative to the inflationary paper-money system.

With the passage of last year’s sales tax exemption on precious metals, Tennessee leapt from 36th place to 9th place in the 2023 Sound Money Index, a yearly ranking of all 50 states’ laws pertaining to sound money.

Along with the Volunteer State, South Carolina, Mississippi, Missouri, Alaska, Alabama, and West Virginia are just a few of the other states fighting their own sound money battles in 2023.

The Sound Money Defense League is a non-partisan, national public policy group working to restore sound money at the state and federal level and publisher of the Sound Money Index.

 

Dem. Rep. Cites Bible Verse on House Floor to Justify Infanticide

Jacob Bruns
-
0
Dem. Rep. Cites Bible Verse on House Floor to Justify Infanticide

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Rep. Hillary Scholten, D-Mich., cited Holy Scripture to justify her pro-infanticide views in a speech Wednesday on the House floor, Life News reported.

“As a pro-choice Christian who chose life, this issue is so personal to me,” Scholten said, citing a previous miscarriage and other suffering related to pregnancy, which she said justified her pro-abortion stance.

She claimed that because the Bible does not explicitly say that there should not be state-funded abortions, it is ethically sanctioned by scripture.

“I’m guided by passages like Jeremiah 1:5, which states, ‘I knew you before I formed you and placed you in your mother’s womb,’” she said.

“It doesn’t say the government’s womb or the speaker’s womb, it says the mother’s womb,” she continued. “I believe life is precious, but I reject the idea that if I embrace the sanctity of life, I also must be forced to invite the federal government in to regulate it.”

Of course, Scholten entirely ignored the fact that the “pro-choice” movement from its origins has aimed at not only legalizing abortion, but removing social stigma around it and even funding the procedure as an inalienable “right” of women.

She continued on to argue that, though she personally is Christian, she would not want to act like one in her public capacity.

“My faith informs my actions but it doesn’t dictate the policy of an entire nation.”

For Scholten, choosing to abort a baby is one of “the most sacred and personal decisions of our lives and our children’s lives,” she said.

Federal Gov’t Still Seeking Ways to Infiltrate Local News Coverage

Molly Bruns
-
0
Federal Gov’t Still Seeking Ways to Infiltrate Local News Coverage

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) The Government Accountability Office recently released a report proposing that the federal government needs to get more involved in local journalism in order to combat so-called “misinformation.”

According to the Daily Wire, the GAO report indicated that local news outlets are not economically viable, with over 2,000 domestic newspapers closing since the early 2000s, and have left a vacuum that the government could fill.

“[T]he market may not produce public interest content sufficient for a well-informed society,” stated the GAO. “Experts conveyed that the main goal of journalism is to have a well-informed society, and policies that aim to support this goal need to be innovation-friendly, forward-looking, and inclusive.”

Tax incentives, tax credits, federal funding, government advertising, and taxpayer-sponsored grants or loans and other forms of government intervention are being treated as possible solutions to boost local news outlets.

The report also insisted that the government must establish policies to protect “public interest journalism.”

“According to literature and participants, direct government funding and tax incentives supporting nonprofit news organizations can be useful in addressing market failure if there are sufficient safeguards to ensure independence,” stated the report.

The GAO added that “public interest journalism” is a “public good.”

The public is not interested in government-sponsored journalism. GAO asserted that this is likely because citizens do not know of the many benefits having a single, government-approved message might bring to the news cycle.

“[W]hen consumers do not perceive or internalize the benefit of this information to them, or when they expect to receive it for free, they are not willing to pay for this type of journalism,” stated the GAO.

GAO also cautioned against a decentralized news system, such as allowing social media outlets like Twitter to spread “disinformation,” warning that they could harm the public interest.

Some believe that this sudden interest in local news outlets might stem from the government’s interest in federally-funded censorship.

The now-defunct Disinformation Governance Board was the Biden administration’s first attempt at government censorship of social media platforms and private citizens.

The GAO sent the report to Federal Communications Commission chair Jessica Rosenworcel, who has previously advocated for “chang[ing] local journalism.”

Florida Announces Bill Making Firearm Purchases Untrackable

Molly Bruns
-
0
Florida Announces Bill Making Firearm Purchases Untrackable

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Florida officials introduced a bill on Tuesday that would ban data collection on purchases for firearms and ammunition, stating that the practice is in violation of the Second Amendment.

According to the Daily Caller, the Florida Arms and Ammo Act was introduced by state Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson, along with Republican state Sen. Danny Burgess and Republican state Rep. John Snyder.

Recently, the International Organization for Standardization implemented a merchant code for firearms stores which credit card companies and other financial institutions can use to track firearm-related purchases.

If the bill is passed, credit card companies would no longer be able to track firearm-related purchases in the state of Florida. Every tracked purchase would incur a $10,000 fine per violation.

“The ‘Florida Arms and Ammo Act’ draws a line in the sand and tells multi-national progressive financial institutions, and their allies in Washington, that they cannot covertly create a backdoor firearm registry of Floridians—or else,” Simpson said in a press release.

The ISO is a private organization that works to create business standards across the globe. There are 167 countries that are active members.

A bank based in New York requested that the ISO put together a separate code for guns and ammunition. The group initially refused the request under the guise that it was concerned about the change negatively affecting small businesses.

The ISO changed its tune after Visa, American Express and Mastercard all announced they would adopt the code should the ISO put it together

Lawyers and other legal consul stated that this policy—which bears similarity to the controversial Operation Choke Point tactic waged by the Justice Department during the Obama administration—could result in greater surveillance of American citizens, and several Republican attorneys general vowed to fight the move in court.

“If you go into a gun store, presumably, particularly with larger purchases, they’re going to at least try to infer that it is probable you bought a firearm,” said John Harris, a lawyer who heads the Tennessee Firearms Association.

“It could expand the trend we see where certain banks or credit card companies may say ‘we’re not going to allow a company with a particular ISO code to use our services.’”

Democrats insisted that the implementation of the new ISO code would help the police limit gun-related crimes, such as mass shootings.

They continue to push credit card companies to track purchases of guns and ammunition.

“If governments or credit card companies start to require certain purchase patterns at gun stores be reported to police, that could put a lot of innocent people under suspicion depending on how broad the criteria are,” said Stephen Gutowski, a gun expert who founded firearms policy outlet The Reload.

1...2,2452,2462,247...3,893Page 2,246 of 3,893