Morning Note

YouTube’s plan to reinstate banned video creators is not going as free speech advocates hoped.

The company removed newly created accounts for Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes on Thursday, rejecting Jim Jordan’s claim that it would “offer ALL creators previously kicked off YouTube due to political speech violations to return to the platform.” 

“We terminated these channels as it’s still against our rules for previously terminated users to start new channels,” YouTube said. “The pilot program for terminations that many people have been referencing this week isn’t available yet and will be a limited pilot program to start. We’ll have more on how the program will work, who is eligible, and how creators can access it soon."

Jones and Fuentes originally got kicked off because of “hate speech,” which can only be defined as speech that the people in charge hate. You can loathe both men but still see why their voices shouldn’t be muffled. The free marketplace of ideas is supposed to be open to everyone. Speakers make their cases, and the people decide who’s right. There’s no reason for corporate America to interfere. 

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Is Ukraine planning a major strike on Russia? Volodymyr Zelensky is making it seem like they are.

The Ukrainian leader issued Russian government officials a thinly veiled threat on Wednesday, saying they should familiarize themselves with their nearest bomb shelter as their war continues. He also claimed the U.S. may supply his military with a weapons system that would bring Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, and that Donald Trump gave him permission to strike energy and infrastructure targets within Russia.

"They have to know where the bomb shelters are," he said. "They need it. If they will not stop the war, they will need it in any case."

While the plot of this war is constantly revolving, its basic truth remains unchanged. Russia is the world’s most prolific nuclear power, and Washington’s continued provocations play with fire. We struggle to understand how any of this helps the average American. 

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Barack Obama is very upset.

Donald Trump’s recommendation that pregnant women avoid Tylenol is a “violence against the truth,” the 44th president said on Thursday. It “undermines public health,” he added.

Is Obama aware that Tylenol itself advised pregnant women against taking the drug? The brand’s official X account issued the recommendation in 2017. Was that “violence against the truth” too? 

What about the Biden administration’s actually false medical claims? Remember when Biden told Americans they wouldn’t get COVID if they got the vaccine? How come Obama never attacked that as “violence against the truth”?

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Just 40% of the $110 billion the United States has invested into global HIV/AIDS prevention since 2003 actually went toward on-the-ground deliveries of life-saving medical supplies, according to a State Department audit. 

Where did the rest of the money go? The review found that the remaining funds were lost to overhead costs, steep executive salaries, and the pushing of "leftwing ideology,” including the funding of a "Transgender Day of Remembrance" and a "decolonizing development series.” 

You wouldn’t believe some of the ways the companies receiving these grants spent the money. A six-figure salary for a "DEI director position." The hiring of "working groups" tasked with "embedding" diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. A report on "white supremacy culture" being "evident in all facets of society, including research work." A $1.2-million CEO salary. All funded by American taxpayers with funds that were supposed to go toward fighting AIDS.

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If you live in California, we urge you to keep your head on a swivel. A “very mean squirrel” is on the loose.

“THIS IS NOT A JOKE. MORE THAN 5 PEOPLE HAVE BEEN ATTACKED BY A VERY MEAN SQUIRREL OVER THE PAST FEW DAYS ON DIABLO CIRCLE AND MOUNT LASSEN,” flyers in San Rafael’s Lucas Valley neighborhood read. 

The rambunctious rodent has sent two people to the ER. 

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We can’t say we spend a ton of time watching congressional hearings, but one caught our eye last week. It centered around one of America’s most underreported stories: Chinese Communist Party-affiliated drug gangs infiltrating the United States. 

This is no small thing. These foreign criminals are building a black-market marijuana empire across our country’s heartland, using homes, schools, and even churches as their undetected command centers to poison our communities from within. They’re lacing their weed with poisonous pesticides, laundering money, stealing power, and flooding the market with unregulated, chemical-laced drugs that could harm someone you love. It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry.

You won’t be surprised to learn exactly where this is happening: the parts of our country the ruling class cares about the least. Bethesda, Newport, and Brookline aren’t feeling this pain. Places like Oklahoma and Oxford County, Maine, are. 

That’s obviously no coincidence. Everyone knows Washington is considerably less inclined to fix problems tormenting average Americans than those inconveniencing their treasured donors. Why else would kindergarten teachers in Memphis pay higher tax rates than career traders on Wall Street? Yes, we’re journalists, but it doesn’t take a muckraking reporter to figure out what’s happening here. The entire system is rigged for the people at the top. 

This concept is not exclusive to politics. It exists in the press, too. In all your years of consuming corporate media, have you ever heard about the Chinese marijuana story? Even once? We doubt it. Establishment journalists refuse to cover it for the same reason their friends on Capitol Hill don’t try to fix it. They simply couldn’t be bothered. It has no impact on the people they care about.

Independent media is different. Unbound by corporate interests, networks like ours are completely free to cover whatever we want, however we want, without needing approval from C-suite overlords concerned with the needs of the powerful. Our entire existence revolves around you, the consumer. 

We’re proud to have covered the Chinese drug story in our documentary, High Crimes: The Chinese Mafia’s Takeover of Rural America. Is it the sole reason Congress held its hearing and shined a light on the issue? We can’t say for sure. But we like to think it made a difference. That’s why this entire network exists.