Commentary: Foreign Censorship Threatens American Free Speech

Facebook User

On the eve of a highly-anticipated live X “Spaces” conversation between Elon Musk and former president Donald Trump, the powerful European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton warned in August that authorities would be “monitoring” the conversation for “content that may incite violence, hate, and racism.” 

While reminding Musk that the EU was already investigating X for alleged failures “to combat disinformation,” Breton said he and his colleagues “will not hesitate to make full use of our toolbox … to protect EU citizens from serious harm.”

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TikTok Sues U.S. Government over New Law Banning App

TikTok User

On Tuesday, the Chinese social media app TikTok and its parent company filed a lawsuit against the federal government of the United States over a new law threatening to ban the app if it is not sold to another company by next year.

ABC News reports that the lawsuit, filed by TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance, claims the new law is a violation of the First Amendment rights of TikTok’s users. The bill was signed into law by Joe Biden last month, with the TikTok ban being one provision of a larger $95 billion foreign aid package. The law requires ByteDance to sell TikTok within 9 months, or else the app will be banned from use in the United States.

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Commentary: Immigration Drove America’s Biggest Population Growth Ever Recorded

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

Immigration is behind the biggest annual population increase in the history of the United States, according to an independent research firm.

“US population grew +3.8M in 2023 – the largest one-year increase in US history,” tweeted Eric Finnigan of John Burns Research and Consulting (JBREC) earlier this month.

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Analysis Ties Surge in Inflation to Increased Spending, Value of Debt

The U.S. government and those of other countries could be using higher inflation to lessen the value of growing public debt resulting from increased spending during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new analysis by a Harvard economist working with The Heritage Foundation. 

The study covers government spending from 2020 through 2022, the high point of the pandemic, and looked at the U.S. and 20 other economies in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD. 

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