Government Corruption Media Articles

Excerpts of Key Government Corruption Media Articles in Major Media

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

Former New York City Mayor's Office Senior Advisor for Public Health Jay Varma admitted to pushing monkeypox drug TPOXX despite the low risk of the disease to the general public, according to undercover video shared by podcaster Steven Crowder. Varma helped guide former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio's response to COVID-19, including crucial decisions about public schools and issuing a vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. He was exposed last week for having admitted to hosting large nude gatherings during the pandemic while urging city residents to remain isolated. In the new clip shared by Crowder, Varma revealed the risk of monkeypox to the general U.S. population is "very low," and it is mainly a concern for gay men who have unprotected sex. Despite this, Varma said he was pushing to receive FDA approval for TPOXX, otherwise known as Tecovirimat. "We want the Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, to approve our drug specifically for monkeypox," he said. Varma added the news cycle was a key component of his push to get approval for the drug. "We also need to keep up the people's belief that the [TPOXX] drug works," Varma said. "So, that's why spinning it in the media is helpful. Basically what we're trying to get the media to say is ‘oh, the drug didn't work because it was designed the wrong way, so they're going to do another study and it'll probably work,'" he added. "That's what we want the story to be."

Note: Back in 2022, Dr. Jay Varma appeared on a talk show, warning that he feared "monkeypox could become permanently entrenched." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and government corruption from reliable major media sources.

Border Patrol agents are warning that kids as young as 8 are being drugged and smuggled into the US by traffickers posing as their parents or family members – and nobody knows how common the horrifying practice is. Authorities have rescued children caught up in two different instances of such smuggling in recent weeks – including one instance in which the alleged traffickers had birth certificates for multiple kids to whom they weren't related, according to the Border Patrol. Authorities say it's not clear what is happening to the children once they are smuggled into the US – but many are vulnerable to being exploited for child labor and child sex trafficking. "Sometimes we encounter criminal actions so horrendous, they defy human decency," said Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol chief of California's El Centro sector in the southeast of the state, in response to the case. In one case, border agents rescued a child at the California border who had been "heavily dosed with sleep aids to prevent him from talking" to authorities, Bovino said Friday. Those agents found that the traffickers had birth certificates for more children. Under the Biden-Harris administration, the number of children crossing illegally into the US alone and without relatives has skyrocketed. Thousands of those children have also gone unaccounted for after they've been released to sponsors, who whistleblowers say aren't properly vetted, in the US.

Note: Why is this horrific issue not being discussed on a significant mainstream level? According to a report by The Center for Public Integrity, thousands have disappeared from sponsors' homes after the federal government placed them there. Watch our Mindful News Brief video on how the US government facilitates child trafficking at the border.

Tech companies have outfitted classrooms across the U.S. with devices and technologies that allow for constant surveillance and data gathering. Firms such as Gaggle, Securly and Bark (to name a few) now collect data from tens of thousands of K-12 students. They are not required to disclose how they use that data, or guarantee its safety from hackers. In their new book, Surveillance Education: Navigating the Conspicuous Absence of Privacy in Schools, Nolan Higdon and Allison Butler show how all-encompassing surveillance is now all too real, and everything from basic privacy rights to educational quality is at stake. The tech industry has done a great job of convincing us that their platforms – like social media and email – are "free." But the truth is, they come at a cost: our privacy. These companies make money from our data, and all the content and information we share online is basically unpaid labor. So, when the COVID-19 lockdowns hit, a lot of people just assumed that using Zoom, Canvas and Moodle for online learning was a "free" alternative to in-person classes. In reality, we were giving up even more of our labor and privacy to an industry that ended up making record profits. Your data can be used against you ... or taken out of context, such as sarcasm being used to deny you a job or admission to a school. Data breaches happen all the time, which could lead to identity theft or other personal information becoming public.

Note: Learn about Proctorio, an AI surveillance anti-cheating software used in schools to monitor children through webcams–conducting "desk scans," "face detection," and "gaze detection" to flag potential cheating and to spot anybody "looking away from the screen for an extended period of time." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.

The city's ex-COVID czar got the boot from his job at a pharmaceutical firm Monday – a week after he was caught bragging about hosting sex parties and attending an underground rave at the height of the pandemic. Dr. Jay Varma was serving as a senior health adviser to then-Mayor Bill de Blasio during COVID-19 when he and his wife put on the sex- and drug-fueled debauchery and attended a packed Wall Street rave, according to secretly recorded conversations the doctor had with a woman. "Varma boasted about harassing people into submission over the vaccine mandate and admitted to participating in illegal sex parties, all while he, former Health Commissioner Dr. David Chokshi, and then-Mayor Bill de Blasio imposed draconian measures that shut down the entire city," [city Councilman Bob Holden] said. Varma's seamy chats ... were made public last week. Michael Kane of Teachers for Choice said, "What disgusts me the most was hearing Varma say having drug-fueled group sex orgies was necessary for him to be his ‘authentic self' because COVID had him ‘pent up.'" Varma said at one point, "My wife and I had one with our friends in August [2020] of like that first summer." "So we rented a hotel ... we all took, like, you know, molly [MDMA] and like it was like eight or nine or us, eight to 10 of us were in a room and everybody had a blast because everybody was like so pent up."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and government corruption from reliable major media sources.

On Oct. 14, 2020, three weeks out from the election, with Joe and President Donald Trump neck and neck in the polls, the New York Post's first story about Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop exploded like a bomb. The front page featured an email from Hunter's Burisma paymaster, Vadym Pozharskyi, thanking him for "the opportunity to meet your father." It was hard to square with Joe's assertions throughout the campaign that he knew nothing about Hunter's seeming international influence-peddling operation. Even as Twitter and Facebook, in collusion with the FBI, censored The Post, and the mainstream media collectively looked the other way, the Biden campaign knew that the sheer weight of the evidence would eventually be impossible to ignore. [Antony] Blinken's solution was to set in motion one of the most brazen dirty tricks in US electoral history. Using the intelligence community to sound the false alarm of "Russian disinformation," ground already prepared by corrupt elements inside the FBI, he set out to discredit the whole laptop story. CIA veteran Mike Morell [organized] 50 intelligence colleagues to sign a letter falsely insinuating that the damning material from Hunter's laptop published by The Post was Russian disinformation. The Dirty 51 letter, as it came to be known, was timed to appear on the eve of the final presidential debate, to maximize its benefit to Joe, by giving him a "talking point to push back on [President] Trump on this issue," as Morell put it.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on censorship and intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.

At Fort Liberty, thousands of soldiers who were trained on the Army's antiterrorism policy saw slides that labeled several legitimate nonprofits as terrorist organizations – a blunder that went on for seven years before photos of the slides were posted to social media this summer, prompting outrage. Nonprofits that were incorrectly labeled as terrorist groups included People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, known as PETA, as well as the anti-abortion groups Operation Rescue and National Right to Life. The advocacy groups Earth First, Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front were also listed. "Incorrectly labeling legitimate organizations as terrorist groups not only undermines the credibility of the training, but also puts service members at risk of being unfairly scrutinized or penalized based on their associations or memberships," said Rep. Andy Kim, D-NJ. "We must be cautious and purposeful in how we define and identify threats to our national security." The soldier who created the slides was an employee of the local garrison and added the nonprofits based on open-source research. The Army didn't find any evidence that the soldier sought to subvert Defense Department policy or to further a personal political viewpoint. Members of Congress first became aware of Fort Liberty's antiterrorism training this summer, when photos of slides used during a July 10 training were shared online.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.

The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) internal watchdog has found that top agency officials retaliated against three staffers for expressing different scientific opinions. The employees who were victims of this alleged retaliation thought chemicals should be considered more toxic, while top officials sought to consider them safer, according to the reports from the EPA's inspector general. EPA scientist Sarah Gallagher says she thought the agency should consider the chemical as toxic to fetal development, while another official wanted to classify it as a lower-priority body weight issue. In another case documented in a report finding retaliation against scientist Martin Phillips, a senior science adviser allegedly changed an assessment in a way that removed "reproductive toxicity" as a concern from safety information that goes to people who work with the chemical. In a third report finding retaliation against scientist William Irwin, a manager also allegedly tried to remove evidence of reproductive toxicity. These instances appeared to have a chilling effect that could impact other agency scientists' willingness to stand up to management. "Other assessors noticed how those who disagreed with management were perceived," the reports said. They added that a person whose name was redacted testified that disagreeing or delaying the resolution of backlogged cases could cause management to label an employee "problematic."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals from reliable major media sources.

A MintPress News investigation into the funding sources of U.S. foreign policy think tanks has found that they are sponsored to the tune of millions of dollars every year by weapons contractors. Arms manufacturing companies donated at least $7.8 million last year to the top fifty U.S. think tanks, who, in turn, pump out reports demanding more war and higher military spending, which significantly increase their sponsors' profits. The only losers in this closed, circular system are the American public, saddled with higher taxes, and the tens of millions of people around the world who are victims of the U.S. war machine. The think tanks receiving the most tainted cash were, in order, the Atlantic Council, CSIS, CNAS, the Hudson Institute, and the Council on Foreign Relations, while the weapons manufacturers most active on K-Street were Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and General Atomics. There is obviously a massive conflict of interest if groups advising the U.S. government on military policy are awash with cash from the arms industry. The Atlantic Council alone is funded by 22 weapons companies, totaling at least $2.69 million last year. Even a group like the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, established in 1910 as an organization dedicated to reducing global conflict, is sponsored by corporations making weapons of war, including Boeing and Leonardo, who donate tens of thousands of dollars annually.

Note: Learn more about arms industry corruption in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

One day after pagers detonated across Lebanon, reportedly killing twelve people ... a second wave of explosions has been reported across the country. Today's detonations were reportedly through the manipulation of walkie-talkies made by ICOM, a Japanese firm whose American branch also serves as a significant supplier to the U.S. military. The combined confirmed death toll has already reached 26, and roughly 3,000 people have been reported injured. The Tuesday explosions are primarily linked to the ICOM IC-V82, an electronic receiver with both military and civilian uses. ICOM, based in Osaka, Japan, has a global footprint. U.S. government disclosures show that the company's American affiliate has received at least $8.2 million in contracts with the U.S. federal government since 2008. The series of explosions in Lebanon have raised concerns about the future of war that includes infiltration of supply chains and limitless exploits through electronically connected devices. The attacks will likely fuel increased scrutiny over military and civilian supply chain security, which has long been a potential vulnerability. The two rounds of blasts happened one day after Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant reportedly stepped up demands for the U.S. to support "military action" against Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militia linked to Iran. Social media posts have also claimed that ATMs, solar panels, and other electronic devices across Lebanon exploded today.

Note: Intelligence agencies from several countries have infiltrated computer supply chains to spy on people more easily. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

Two large-scale, coordinated attacks this week rocked Lebanon – the latest iteration in a historical pattern of booby-trapping electronics. On Tuesday, one attack caused pagers to explode across Lebanon and Syria, injuring thousands of people and killing at least 12. A second wave of bombings unfolded on Wednesday, when explosives detonated inside a slew of hand-held radios across the country, leaving nine dead and 300 wounded. Israel, which is widely assumed to be behind both attacks, reportedly booby-trapped pagers used by Hezbollah members, carrying out a similar feat with the hand-held radios. The bombings appear to be supply-chain attacks – meaning the gadgets were tampered with or outright replaced with rigged devices containing explosives and a detonator at some point prior to arriving in the hands of the targets. The tactic of turning an electronic gadget into an explosive device ... dates back at least half a century. Field Manual 5-31, titled simply "Boobytraps" and first published by the U.S. Department of the Army in 1965, describes the titular objects as explosive charges "cunningly contrived to be fired by an unsuspecting person who disturbs an apparently harmless object or performs a presumably safe act." In 1996, the Israeli Security Agency, also known as Shin Bet, is said to used a similar technique to detonate a small charge of explosives near the ear of Hamas bomb-maker Yahya Ayyash.

Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

In a Brooklyn subway station on Sunday afternoon, police shot and injured three people and a fellow New York Police Department officer over a $2.90 fare. Sunday's police shooting should be a lesson in why the subway should not be teeming with cops, responding to "crimes" of poverty – like fare evasion and panhandling – with deadly force. The NYPD recorded more stops of New Yorkers in 2023 than it has in nearly a decade, and 89 percent of those who were stopped are Black and Latine. A staggering 93 percent of riders arrested for subway fare evasion were Black or Latine. Police have arrested 1,700 people for fare evasion and ticketed another 28,000 people so far this year. Overtime pay for police in the subways skyrocketed from $4 million in 2022 to $155 million in 2023. "The NYPD spent $150 Million *extra* last year to catch people who weren't able to afford to pay the subway fare. They owed just $104,000," wrote civil rights attorney Scott Hechinger on X, referring to the total of fares unpaid by fare evaders caught by police in 2023. "$150 million could buy free fares ... for 95,000 poor New Yorkers." It would be naive, however, to overlook the deeply entrenched political economy of carceral punishment in New York and throughout the country – treating poor people, particularly Black people, as accounts from which to extract fines or bodies to fill jails and prisons. It will take more than fiscal sense to upend the current bipartisan political consensus around "law and order."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.

Two years after former President Richard M. Nixon launched a war on drugs in 1971, calling substance use the nation's "public enemy No. 1," he made a startling admission during a meeting in the Oval Office. Speaking to a small group of aides and advisers at the White House in March 1973, Nixon said he knew that marijuana was "not particularly dangerous." Nixon, who had publicly argued that curbing drug use globally warranted an "all-out offensive," also privately expressed unease about the harsh punishments Americans were facing for marijuana crimes. The remarks were captured on the president's secret recording system amid a set of tapes that were only recently made widely available. The comments, on scratchy, sometimes hard-to-hear recordings, provide a surprising glimpse into the thinking of the president who implemented the federal government's drug classification system and decided that marijuana belonged in a category of substances deemed most prone to abuse and of no proven medical value. Over five decades, that designation has led to millions of arrests, which disproportionately affected Black people and hobbled efforts to rigorously study the therapeutic potential of cannabis. Experts on the Nixon years said that they were previously unaware of the recordings of Nixon speaking about marijuana and that the remarks were significant in light of the policies he had championed, which remain the backbone of today's drug laws.

Note: Our investigative Substack article explores the dark truths behind the US war on drugs that the mainstream media ignores. For more, watch our Mindful News Brief on who's really behind the war on drugs. Check out our database of concise and revealing news summaries on the war on drugs from reliable media sources.

For nearly 40 years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, [Anthony] Fauci had served as the ... director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a subsidiary of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Prior to COVID-19, Fauci had long supported funding pandemic research that other scientists found risky, if not downright dangerous. In 2014, there was a series of embarrassing safety lapses at U.S. government labs. In October 2014, President Barack Obama's administration paused federal funding of gain-of-function research that could make ... viruses transmissible via the respiratory route in mammals. In 2017, the White House produced the ... P3CO framework. Under P3CO, the NIH would forward grant proposals involving research on known pandemic pathogens or research that might create or enhance such pathogens to a new P3CO committee within HHS for a department-level risk-benefit analysis. To date, the P3CO committee has vetted just three research proposals involving so-called enhanced potential pandemic pathogens, out of potentially dozens that should have been examined. Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins ... found a way to skirt the oversight process. They "realized that if they don't [forward proposals to HHS for review], there is no review." In 2014, [EcoHealth Alliance] received a five-year, $3.7 million NIAID grant to collect virus samples from human beings and bats in China and then experiment on these viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. EcoHealth announced that it intended to create "chimeric" or hybrid viruses out of spike proteins, the part of a virus that allows it to enter and infect hosts cells, from SARS-like coronaviruses discovered in the wild and the backbone of another, already-known SARS virus. When EcoHealth's year five report was eventually submitted two years late, in 2021, it showed that additional chimeric viruses created in Wuhan demonstrated both enhanced transmission and lethality in humanized mice. By that time, the COVID-19 pandemic was already well underway.

Note: Don't miss our Mindful News Brief on the origins of COVID. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID-19 and government corruption from reliable major media sources.

In February 2023, government recruiters came to the student union at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. Activists had come to protest the expansion of Camp Grayling, already the largest National Guard training facility in the country. "Want blood on your hands?" read the flyers activists distributed on recruiting tables. "Sign up for a government job." When the recruiters returned from lunch, two protesters rushed in, dousing the NSA recruiting table and two Navy personnel with fake blood sprayed out of a ketchup container. The local sheriff's office in Oakland County, Michigan, documented the incident in a case report as a hate crime against law enforcement. The FBI recorded the incident as part of a terrorism investigation. Treating the Stop Camp Grayling protesters as terrorists is the latest episode in a worldwide trend of governments smearing climate and environmental activists as terrorists. Misapplication of the terrorism label frequently serves as pretext for invasive surveillance and sustained scrutiny. Stop Camp Grayling – like most other movements organized around environmental activism – is not engaged in any type of systematic criminal activity. Movement adherents have never endangered human life. Yet the FBI saw fit to share an activist zine with military intelligence, drag in other alphabet agencies, and justify physical surveillance operations – all underpinned by the designation of the movement as worthy of a domestic terrorism investigation.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.

[Kevin] Hall's work at the National Institutes of Health presents an existential challenge to the food industry, which has staked its business model for decades on developing ultra-processed meals that are cheap, easy to prepare. The NIH invested just over $2 billion on nutrition research last year. That includes both research, like Hall's, done in government facilities, and grants to outside scientists at universities. The agency, meanwhile, spent nearly $11.9 billion on neuroscience, $8.9 billion on brain disorders, and $5.1 billion on neurodegenerative diseases. Hall's first study on ultra-processed foods ... housed 20 adults at the NIH's clinical hospital. For half the time, participants were fed a diet of ultra-processed foods, and the other half, they got unprocessed foods. Participants had no control over what they ate, except that they could eat as much or as little ... as they wanted. The study found that people ate, on average, over 500 calories more on the ultra-processed diet. The results made Hall a minor celebrity by NIH standards. "The take-home lesson from this was absolutely unambiguous: If you're worried about weight, don't eat ultra-processed foods," [NYU professor of nutrition and public health Marion] Nestle said. "The idea that the NIH isn't sinking a fortune into this is just shocking to me," said [Nestle], who called Hall's first clinical trial on ultra-processed foods "the most important study in nutrition that's been done since vitamins." "Nutrition funding represents around 4 to 5% of total obligations from the NIH ... Which is like – compared to the impact that nutrition and food can have – just a really low number."

Note: For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of revealing news articles on health and food system corruption.

From the start of U.S. investigations into the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the question of whether the Saudi government might have been involved has hovered over the case. New evidence has emerged to suggest more strongly than ever that at least two Saudi officials deliberately assisted the first Qaida hijackers. Most of the evidence has been gathered in a long-running federal lawsuit against the Saudi government by survivors of the attacks and relatives of those who died. The court files also raise questions about whether the FBI and CIA, which repeatedly dismissed the significance of Saudi links to the hijackers, mishandled or deliberately downplayed evidence of the kingdom's possible complicity in the attacks. The plaintiffs' account still leaves significant gaps in the story of how two known al-Qaida operatives, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, avoided CIA surveillance overseas, flew into Los Angeles under their own names and then ... settled in Southern California. Still, the lawsuit has exposed layers of contradictions and deceit in the Saudi government's portrayal of Omar al-Bayoumi. FBI agents identified Bayoumi as having helped the two young Saudis rent an apartment, set up a bank account and take care of other needs. Bayoumi, then 42, was arrested on Sept. 21, 2001, in Birmingham, England. After pressure from Saudi diplomats, Bayoumi was freed by the British authorities without being charged. U.S. officials did not try to have him extradited.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on 9/11 from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our 9/11 Information Center.

Fifteen-year-old Tiara Channer was 13 when she was diagnosed with prediabetes – a condition 1 in 5 American kids faces that causes an increased risk of Type 2 diabetes, chronic kidney disease and cardiovascular disease. She and her mother, Crystal Cauley, blame her diagnosis on a poor diet. By transitioning from a diet of ultra-processed foods to healthier whole foods and getting more active, Tiara overcame or shed her prediabetes diagnosis – and lost 50 pounds in the process. But it wasn't an easy journey for her, given the challenge of understanding what's healthy and what's not. Ultra-processed food ... comprise over half of an average American adult's diet and two-thirds of an American child's. Lawmakers like Sen. Bernie Sanders say the FDA, the agency that regulates 80% of the country's food, hasn't done enough to protect consumers. Almost half of the approved food additives in the U.S. fall under a category known as GRAS – Generally Recognized As Safe. The nonprofit Environmental Working Group found 99% of the 766 food chemicals introduced between 2000 and 2021 avoided FDA scrutiny using the GRAS designation. Experts like Emily Broad Leib, the director of Harvard's Food Law and Policy Clinic, say GRAS has become a loophole that gives companies a provisional green light to put new additives in food. "Thousands of substances have entered the food supply using that mechanism," explained Broad Leib.

Note: Read our latest Substack article on how the US government turns a blind eye to the corporate cartels fueling America's health crisis. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and food system corruption from reliable major media sources.

Days after the French government arrested Pavel Durov, CEO of the encrypted messaging app Telegram, for failing to monitor and restrict communications as demanded by officials in Paris, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that his company, which owns Facebook, was subjected to censorship pressures by U.S. officials. Durov's arrest, then, stands as ... part of a concerted effort by governments, including those of nominally free countries, to control speech. Durov's alleged crime is offering encrypted communications services to everybody, including those who engage in illegality or just anger the powers that be. If bad people occasionally use encrypted apps such as Telegram, they use phones and postal services, too. The qualities that make communications systems useful to those battling authoritarianism are also helpful to those with less benign intentions. There's no way to offer security to one group without offering it to everybody. Given that Telegram was founded by a free speech champion who fled his home country after refusing to monitor and censor speech for the authorities, it's very easy to suspect that Pavel Durov has run afoul of authoritarians operating under a different flag. The Twitter Files and the Facebook Files revealed serious pressure brought to bear by the U.S. government on social media companies to stifle dissenting views and inconvenient (to the political class) news stories.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on censorship and government corruption from reliable major media sources.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the House Judiciary Committee that his company's moderators faced significant pressure from the federal government to censor content on Facebook and Instagram–and that he regretted caving to it. In a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan (R–Ohio), the committee's chairman, Zuckerberg explained that the pressure also applied to "humor and satire" and that in the future, Meta would not blindly obey the bureaucrats. The letter refers specifically to the widespread suppression of contrarian viewpoints relating to COVID-19. Email exchanges between Facebook moderators and CDC officials reveal that the government took a heavy hand in suppressing content. Health officials did not merely vet posts for accuracy but also made pseudo-scientific determinations about whether certain opinions could cause social "harm" by undermining the effort to encourage all Americans to get vaccinated. But COVID-19 content was not the only kind of speech the government went after. Zuckerberg also explains that the FBI warned him about Russian attempts to sow chaos on social media by releasing a fake story about the Biden family just before the 2020 election. This warning motivated Facebook to take action against the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story when it was published in October 2020. In his letter, Zuckerberg states that this was a mistake and that moving forward, Facebook will never again demote stories pending approval from fact-checkers.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on censorship and government corruption from reliable major media sources.

A whistleblower group is suing the Department of Justice over its efforts to "secretly surveil" congressional staff conducting oversight on the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation. Empower Oversight Whistleblowers and Research says in a civil suit filed Tuesday that the DOJ has repeatedly stonewalled records requests involving the "undisputed" surveillance. Its suit seeks to force the Justice Department to hand over records related to the alleged unconstitutional surveillance. Empower's founder, Jason Foster, discovered in October that he was one of those congressional staff members surveilled by the Justice Department while serving as Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley's chief investigative counsel. "Last fall, @Google told me @TheJusticeDept forced it to secretly turn over my comms records in 2017," Foster posted on X, referencing a Sept. 12 subpoena that year for his private cell phone and email communications. Foster confirmed the DOJ and FBI also "targeted a dozen or so other Capitol Hill attorneys' personal accounts – from both political parties" who were looking into the FBI misconduct that included Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses as well. Both federal law-enforcement agencies later imposed non-disclosure orders for six years on Google and other big tech giants such as Apple and Verizon that had been subpoenaed for congressional staff communications.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.

Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.