The root cause of the September 11, 2001 attacks was US interventionism, for example. As I said in a presidential debate a few years later, they came over here because we were over there. But instead of looking to that root cause it was determined that the real problem was not enough government. So, taking advantage of the crisis, Congress created a Director of National Intelligence, a Department of Homeland Security, and passed the Patriot Act.

The “Russiagate” crisis was invented by the Hillary Clinton campaign as a dirty trick to use against Donald Trump in the 2016 election campaign. It may not have defeated Trump, but it hobbled his presidency. The result of this manufactured claim that the Russians (and Chinese and Iranians, etc) are meddling in our affairs and manipulating our elections is that the federal government determined that the First Amendment no longer applies to us.

They have decided that consuming certain media should not be allowed – for our own safety –  so they have denied Americans the right to access media from countries the US government considers “enemies.” In the name of fighting imaginary foreign meddling in our elections, it’s Americans who find their rights curtailed.

They even created an entire government entity within the State Department – the “Global Engagement Center” (GEC) – right after the phony “Russiagate” operation was launched to “recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States…”

As it turned out, this “Center” was not at all about countering foreign “bad actors” but about silencing Americans who held views the powers-that-be in DC do not like. As Roger Kimbell wrote in a recent article about the GEC, “Because the GEC could not operate against Americans directly, it did so indirectly by funding entities like the British-based Global Disinformation Index, which compiled a list of publications and individuals that said things the regime did not like. That list was consulted by advertisers wary of winding up on the wrong side of the government…. Result? Millions of dollars of ad revenue dried up, imperiling the future of those outlets.”

And, as Kimbell further points out, even when they were caught red handed violating our rights they just hid the beast within leviathan. Thus, even though funding for the GEC was cut from Speaker Johnson’s 1,500 page omnibus spending bill, the beast lives on. The Biden Administration has re-named the Center the “Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) Hub” and retained the same old GEC employees.

Now that this switch has been exposed, however, there is a chance – for once – to finally kill a bad government program. Elon Musk was one of the first to expose the evil of the GEC and as it turns out he is now working with the Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.) to cut this exact kind of government overreach. No more hiding government censorship programs with new names and new branding. Not another dollar should be spent censoring Americans!

Here is an update.

Birx is continuing on her quest to stir up a new bird flu scare in America, and to build public support for a government response harmful to health and liberty. A recent stop on Birx’s bird flu fearmongering campaign was a Friday interview at CNN in which she warned that, like coronavirus early on, bird flu is not being addressed sufficiently by the United States government. Now, she said, routine weekly testing of people who may have been exposed to bird flu needs to be undertaken.

This testing Birx suggested mirrors testing that was pursued to build up fear of coronavirus through jacking up the number of coronavirus cases via testing that shot out many false positive results. Indeed, Birx stated in the interview that with bird flu much increased testing is needed because “we know from covid most of the spread was asymptomatic.” Got that? The testing is purposed to identify people as sick despite the fact that they are not sick.

Birx has her pandemic propaganda process down pat.

In her CNN interview pitch, Birx tried to butter up her potential victims, declaring “I find the American public to be incredibly smart.” Hopefully, most Americans will prove too smart to fall for Birx’s new fearmongering campaign and the attacks on health and liberty it supports.

The most convincing argument for US government funding of NPR has faded away over the decades since the media organization’s creation in the pre-internet and even quite limited cable television age. Nowadays, there is easy access to news and entertainment sources aplenty at the click of the mouse or remote control. There is no arguable need for Uncle Sam to provide a helping hand to a select media organization.

Fundamentally, though, the US government supporting NPR has been wrong from the beginning. Providing news and entertainment to Americans is an activity many steps removed from the few powers the US Constitution sets forward as delegated to the US government. Further, it is inconsistent with the tenor of the First Amendment for the US government that is prohibited from making any law abridging the freedom of the press to be selectively providing funding for one media organization, thus giving it a leg up on the competition.

Relevant for the Trump administration and Republicans in the US House of Representatives and Senate as well would be that NPR, since the 2016 presidential election, has placed a target on Trump’s back. Attacking Trump relentlessly has been pursued across NPR programs for the past eight years. How is it acceptable for the US government to be funding a media organization that has as part of its editorial policy the belittling and demonizing of this man who for most of this time period was either serving as president or running for president? Election interference anyone? Hopefully, some Democratic Congress members would join in condemning the unfairness of the situation even though their presidential candidates were the beneficiaries.

On April 9, longtime NPR employee Uri Berliner went public with his insights on how “an open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR” and how instead there is a “distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.” He also discussed how NPR engaged in “efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency.” If, like most Americans, you listen little or not at all to NPR, Berliner’s article, which you can read here, is a good introduction to some of the intense bias you have missed out on hearing.

To reach two trillion in savings, Musk and Trump would certainly find some spending cuts difficult. Eliminating US government support for NPR, in contrast, seems like something that should be an easy choice.