Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
President Joe Biden urged Congress to ban assault weapons, expand background checks and implement other sensible gun control measures to address a string of mass shootings that have struck the United States https://t.co/hhKWQQ7ucW pic.twitter.com/IWi7whDNhK
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 3, 2022
National Security Council staffers and Jen Psaki briefed TikTok influencers about the U.S.’ strategic goals in Ukraine and answered questions on distributing aid, working w/ NATO and how the United States would react to a Russian use of nuclear weapons https://t.co/nTfFVlDYzI
— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) March 11, 2022
One of President Biden’s underrated gifts is that he genuinely likes people, which is a rarer talent among politicians than one would expect. He enjoys having people tell him about what they do — and he hires people who understand that people appreciate being appreciated. President-Granpa Joe may not understand ‘the cyber’, but he’s genuinely pleased that you’re willing to explain it to him!
Per the Washington Post:
On Thursday afternoon, 30 top TikTok stars gathered on a Zoom call to receive key information about the war unfolding in Ukraine. National Security Council staffers and White House press secretary Jen Psaki briefed the influencers about the United States’ strategic goals in the region and answered questions on distributing aid to Ukrainians, working with NATO and how the United States would react to a Russian use of nuclear weapons.
As the crisis in Ukraine has escalated, millions have turned to TikTok for information on what is happening there in real time. TikTok videos offered some of the first glimpses of the Russian invasion and since then the platform has been a primary outlet for spreading news to the masses abroad. Ukrainian citizens hiding in bomb shelters or fleeing their homes have shared their stories to the platform, while dangerous misinformation and Russian propaganda have also spread. And TikTok stars, many with millions of followers, have increasingly sought to make sense of the crisis for their audiences.
The White House has been closely watching TikTok’s rise as a dominant news source, leading to its decision to approach a select group of the platform’s most influential names.
This week, the administration began working with Gen Z For Change, a nonprofit advocacy group, to help identify top content creators on the platform to orchestrate a briefing aimed at answering questions about the conflict and the United States’ role in it. Victoria Hammett, deputy executive director of Gen Z For Change, contacted dozens with invitations via email and gathered potential questions for the Biden administration…
The briefing was led by Matt Miller, a special adviser for communications at the White House National Security Council, and Psaki. The Washington Post obtained a recording of the call, and in it, Biden officials stressed the power these creators had in communicating with their followers. “We recognize this is a critically important avenue in the way the American public is finding out about the latest,” said the White House director of digital strategy, Rob Flaherty, “so we wanted to make sure you had the latest information from an authoritative source.”…
The Media Village Idiots, of course, are furious! Biden people catering to a bunch of kids with no credentials or familial legacies, when they are so rude to Very Important News People like Pete Doocey!
Late Night Open Thread: The White House TikTok InitiativePost + Comments (43)
There are many theories about why murders have increased. Looks like it’s due in large part to a lot of people buying guns in the midst of an apocalyptic pandemic and then predictably using those guns in reckless and dangerous ways. https://t.co/zjgRcJ5WAX
— Samuel Sinyangwe (@samswey) June 16, 2021
When all you have is a tool designed to kill people, everyone looks like a target…
Predictable Outcomes Open Thread: Mo’ Guns, Mo’ ProblemsPost + Comments (75)
BREAKING: An attorney for Reality Winner says the former NSA translator is out of prison for good behavior. She had been serving a sentence of more than five years for passing classified information to a news outlet. pic.twitter.com/lkUaewN2MI
— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) June 14, 2021
Long overdue, IMO. She did the right thing, and paid a heavy price for it. Best wishes to her and her family, and bad cess to her enemies, including the ‘journalist’ Winner mistook for an ally.
Good News: Reality Winner Is Out of PrisonPost + Comments (126)
it sure is a good thing that Trump wasn't nearly as bad as the hysterical libs thought! https://t.co/QTYdis9F2S
— Quinta Jurecic (@qjurecic) June 11, 2021
As the Justice Department investigated who was behind leaks of classified information early in the Trump administration, it took a highly unusual step: Prosecutors subpoenaed Apple for data from the accounts of at least two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, aides and family members. One was a minor.
All told, the records of at least a dozen people tied to the committee were seized in 2017 and early 2018, including those of Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, then the panel’s top Democrat and now its chairman, according to committee officials and two other people briefed on the inquiry. Representative Eric Swalwell of California said in an interview Thursday night that he had also been notified that his data had been subpoenaed.
Prosecutors, under the beleaguered attorney general, Jeff Sessions, were hunting for the sources behind news media reports about contacts between Trump associates and Russia. Ultimately, the data and other evidence did not tie the committee to the leaks, and investigators debated whether they had hit a dead end and some even discussed closing the inquiry.
But William P. Barr revived languishing leak investigations after he became attorney general a year later. He moved a trusted prosecutor from New Jersey with little relevant experience to the main Justice Department to work on the Schiff-related case and about a half-dozen others, according to three people with knowledge of his work who did not want to be identified discussing federal investigations…
Bloody Bill Barr, most underrated sneak thief of his class…
Flashback: May 2019
Harris: Has the president or anyone at the WH ever asked or suggested that you open an investigation of anyone?
Barr: Um.
…
Harris: Seems you'd remember something like that and be able to tell us.
Barr: Yeah, but I'm trying to grapple with the word suggest. pic.twitter.com/y8ewAgVAgE— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 11, 2021
Trump Crime Cartel Open Thread: Bill Barr, Spying on His Capo’s ‘Enemies’Post + Comments (56)
Explainer: China’s Mojiang mine and its role in the origins of COVID-19 https://t.co/mWDMYdp4WG by @DavidStanway pic.twitter.com/xbkVInYlmQ
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 9, 2021
If COVID-19 did come from a ‘lab leak’ — no more than a 15% probability, IMO — 99% odds it was an accidental-exposure failure, not an OMG the ChiComs are plotting to kill us all horror-movie scenario:
Top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has urged China to release information about six labourers who fell ill after working in a mine in Yunnan province in 2012, and are now seen as a key part of efforts to find the origins of COVID-19.
The workers, ages 30 to 63, were scrubbing a copper seam clean of bat faeces in April 2012. Weeks later, they were admitted to a hospital in the provincial capital of Kunming with persistent coughs, fevers, head and chest pains and breathing difficulties. Three eventually died…
According to the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Shi Zhengli, China’s top bat coronavirus researcher, the workers’ pneumonia-like symptoms were caused by a fungal infection. Shi and her team also said in research published last November that they had retested 13 serum samples from four of the patients and found no sign they had been infected with SARS-CoV-2…
From 2012 to 2015, WIV researchers identified as many as 293 coronaviruses in and around the mine.
The institute in November 2020 disclosed the existence of eight other “SARS-type” coronavirus samples taken from the site.
In a preprint last month, Shi and other researchers said none of the eight was a closer match to SARS-CoV-2 than RaTG13. Crucially, none of them possessed the key receptor binding domain that allows SARS-CoV-2 to infect humans so efficiently.
The paper concluded that “the experimental evidence cannot support” claims that SARS-CoV-2 was leaked from the lab, and called for “more systematic and longitudinal sampling of bats, pangolins or other possible intermediate animals” to better understand where the pandemic originated.
As the specialists have been saying for the last fifteen months, a pandemic wasn’t a matter of if, but a matter of when.
Coronavirus ‘Bioweapons’ From China: Bats in A MinePost + Comments (64)
Reality Winner was the FBI’s ‘head on a pike’ for Trump. It’s time to set her free. …My column, pegged to a new documentary that makes her mistreatment painfully clear https://t.co/rH1M3sY9Ru
— ?? Margaret Sullivan (@Sulliview) May 12, 2021
Margaret Sullivan, at the Washington Post:
At 25, Reality Leigh Winner was a remarkable young woman. Fluent in Farsi and other languages spoken in Iraq and Afghanistan, she was, in 2017, a decorated Air Force veteran working as a contractor for the National Security Agency.
She was more than smart enough to see something significant, and alarming, in a classified document on Russia’s efforts to hack into election-related websites and voter-registration databases in the United States. She thought it was something the public should know about.
But she also made some unwise decisions.
She anonymously mailed a copy of a single document to the investigative news organization the Intercept. But despite that outlet’s reputation for taking top-secret information and turning it into news stories, its staffers didn’t take all the precautions that might have protected their source. Then, when a fleet of FBI agents showed up at her home, Winner didn’t insist on first consulting a lawyer.
Soon, she was indicted under the Espionage Act and eventually pleaded guilty to one felony count of transmission of national defense information. No one has ever received a longer sentence, more than five years, for leaking classified information to a media outlet.
A heartbreaking — and infuriating — new documentary about how the Trump Justice Department went after her reinforced my long-held belief that, although her prison term is due to end in November, it’s high time for our government to set Winner free.
The centerpiece of “United States vs. Reality Winner” is an appalling audio recording that the filmmakers obtained through a Freedom of Information request. We hear the voices of the FBI agents who blindsided her, failing to inform her of her Miranda rights. This was in the wake of James B. Comey’s promise to President Donald Trump that he’d pursue those who gave inside information to the media, according to the former FBI director’s own memo about a February 2017 meeting in the Oval Office…
President Biden could send her home a few months early. That wouldn’t make things right — but it would help.
