April 1, 2026

WELL: In Historic Settlement, NCLA Strikes Fatal Blow to State Department’s Censorship Industrial Complex.

The New Civil Liberties Alliance has reached a settlement in our The Daily Wire, The Federalist, Texas v. State Dep’t lawsuit against State Department-funded censorship of American media. The Department acknowledges that our clients engaged in constitutionally protected speech concerning Covid-19, sexual ethics, the biological reality concerning sex, and election integrity. Defendants agree they will not use, finance, or promote technology that suppresses or fact-checks the constitutionally protected speech of Americans and domestic media outlets. The settlement also bars the State Department from working with foreign governments or NGOs—formally or informally—for those purposes. Representing The Daily Wire and The Federalist, NCLA celebrates this important victory safeguarding American free speech and press.

NCLA’s lawsuit has revealed that the State Department used federal funding to promote some 300 “Countering Propaganda and Disinformation” tools, some of which mainly targeted domestic speech or press outlets. The Department actively encouraged private companies, government bodies here and abroad, and NGOs to use these technologies to target Americans’ speech and media outlets, pushing social media companies to ferret out what it deemed misinformation and disinformation on domestic policy topics like Covid-19 and vaccines.

Much more at the link.

Posted at 3:50 pm by Stephen Green

IT’S TOO DANGEROUS A WORLD FOR THE US NAVY TO HAVE JUST 11 FLATTOPS: USS Gerald R. Ford’s ‘record-breaking’ deployment could last 11 months, top admiral says/ “If the Ford and its crew end up spending 11 months away from home, it would mark one of the longest carrier deployments since the end of the Vietnam War. The USS Nimitz returned home in 2021 after spending 341 days at sea during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to that, the USS Abraham Lincoln deployed for 294 days between 2019 and 2020.”

Long deployments are hard on the crews and hard on the ships.

Posted at 2:48 pm by Stephen Green

KIND OF SAD, ACTUALLY:

Posted at 2:32 pm by Stephen Green

ALL OF THIS:

Posted at 2:02 pm by Stephen Green

BRIDGET PHETASY: Leave Me Behind.

My grandparents were Depression-era kids and survived World War II. Big deal, I thought at the time. They don’t know what I’m going through now. I was so certain their experience had nothing to teach me. And they had the grace not to argue about it. They just waited. Because they knew something I didn’t: That wisdom isn’t persuasive to people who haven’t earned it yet, and that trying to make it persuasive is a fool’s errand.

I was a fool. Now I’d give anything for their wisdom and it’s too late.

The part the platform-chasers don’t understand: You cannot reason a twenty-three-year-old out of positions they were algorithmically radicalized into. You’re not going to win them over by learning their dumb slang and nodding along with their worst impulses. All you’re going to do is lose yourself. And your audience—your actual audience, the people who showed up because you had something to say—will watch you do it in real time.

I never peaked. I say that without self-pity. I got a late start, I never had the massive Fox show or the viral Comedy Central moment, and for a while, that bothered me. But it turns out never peaking is a kind of freedom. There’s no high to chase, no glory days to recreate, no slide into irrelevance to panic about. There’s just the work. Territory, not hierarchy. You do it because it’s yours to do, and you hope the right people find it, and if the coveted demographic thinks you’re an oldhead who doesn’t understand the vision—good. I only want to do my work.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

HOLLYWOOD FOR UGLY PEOPLE: Op-ed: Let’s talk about TMZ turning its sights on DC politicians, and why that’s a good thing.

To be fair, they’ve been there before, sans the traditional Hollywood ending: Ex-DEA public affairs chief pleads guilty to brazen scam. “A former head of public affairs for the Drug Enforcement Administration who later worked as a producer for TMZ has admitted to a fraud scheme that involved posing as an undercover CIA operative in order to swindle government contractors out of over $4 million. Details of the complex scam carried out by Garrison Courtney, 44, became public Thursday morning as he pleaded guilty to a felony wire fraud charge in Alexandria, Va., before U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady.”

 

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

BEFORE THE ADVENT OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS, AMERICA WAS AMONG THE MOST LITERATE NATIONS ON EARTH:

Posted at 12:56 pm by Glenn Reynolds

ICYMI:

Posted at 12:36 pm by Stephen Green

INSIDE EVERY “PROGRESSIVE” IS A TOTALITARIAN SCREAMING TO GET OUT:

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

NEW CIVILITY WATCH: ‘F*ck Him To His Face:’ Democrat Lawmaker Deletes Unhinged Late-Night Post About Trump.

Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV) deleted a profane X post about President Donald Trump after it drew backlash online.

Lee made the comment early Wednesday in response to reports that Trump planned to attend Supreme Court oral arguments in a high-stakes birthright citizenship case.

“So f*cking f*cked up. I’ll pray they f*ck him to his face,” Lee wrote at around 1 a.m. Eastern Time Wednesday in the replies to an Associated Press story about the visit. “Sorry, I say f*ck a lot these days.”

The post was later deleted, but she appeared to defend herself in a subsequent post on Wednesday morning.

“Clearly my language touched a nerve — my nerve was touched by the attacks on our Constitution and its separation of powers. I took an oath to protect and defend it,” Lee wrote.

The posts were both made from her personal account, where the banner touts a claim that she is “America’s #1 Most Bipartisan Member of Congress.”

Past performance is no guarantee of future results:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll