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      The Powerful Lobbyist Behind Kevin McCarthy: Jeff Miller

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      Jeff Miller is the new House speaker’s top fund-raiser and closest confidant. He is also one of Washington’s most prominent corporate lobbyists, an arrangement that is drawing scrutiny.WASHINGTON — As he waged his messy campaign to become House speaker, Representative Kevin McCarthy turned to a longtime friend, Jeff Miller, to serve as a kind of field general.Mr. Miller, his closest confidant, top fund-raiser and sometimes enforcer, hosted a pasta dinner and strategy session for the McCarthy political team at his luxury condominium in Washington. He then set up shop in the speaker’s office in the Capitol for the week of the vote, working the phones to persuade holdouts, tamping down conservative criticism on social media and urging some donors to press for “yes” votes from members they had funded.When Mr. McCarthy won, so did Mr. Miller, who in addition to his wide-ranging volunteer roles for his friend is one of Washington’s most prominent Republican lobbyists, representing a spectrum of blue-chip corporate clients with issues at stake in Washington.Rarely has a lobbyist enjoyed the access to a House speaker that Mr. Miller has with Mr. McCarthy, a California Republican. As Mr. McCarthy has gained power, Mr. Miller’s prominent place in his orbit has drawn increased scrutiny from watchdog groups that track political influence as well as from conservatives who see him as an unaccountable power behind the throne whose presence is starkly at odds with their increasingly populist, anti-corporate message.Mr. Miller’s clients include Apple, Anheuser-Busch, Dow Chemical, General Electric, the Wall Street giant Blackstone, Occidental Petroleum, the drugmaker trade group PhRMA, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and other companies, some of them girding for scrutiny from Republicans eager to take on what they see as anti-conservative bias among “woke” corporations.Responding to a post on Twitter from a reporter who had spotted Mr. Miller headed into Mr. McCarthy’s office during the early rounds of the vote for speaker, when Mr. McCarthy was coming up short, Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican who was a leader of the opposition, tweeted, “McCarthy isn’t even speaker and the lobbyists are moving in!”Mr. Miller worked alongside Mr. McCarthy in his office during the speaker vote last month in the Capitol.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesAfter Mr. McCarthy became speaker, Representative Vern Buchanan, Republican of Florida, confronted Mr. McCarthy on the House floor. He was furious, according to an ally of Mr. Buchanan, because he felt that Mr. Miller and Mr. McCarthy had quietly thrown their weight behind the successful rival bid for the chairmanship of the powerful Ways and Means Committee by Representative Jason Smith, a Missouri Republican with whom Mr. Miller is friendly.An associate of Mr. Miller’s said he did not play any role in the battle over the Ways and Means chairmanship. But the perception among Republicans that he is already shaping the operations of Mr. McCarthy’s House majority is a telling indication of how Mr. Miller’s place at the intersection of power, money, influence and access has made him one of the most important behind-the-scenes figures in Washington.Mr. Miller declined to be interviewed. But he said in a statement that he “worked hard with Speaker McCarthy’s team during the speaker’s race because he’s my friend” and because Mr. McCarthy “knows how to build consensus around an agenda and then how to implement it.”Mr. Miller added, “I just want to be known as a guy who works hard for my clients and does right by my friends,” adding that “everything else is just noise.”Mr. McCarthy also declined to be interviewed. In a statement, Drew Florio, a spokesman for him, said the speaker and Mr. Miller are “lifelong friends,” and credited the lobbyist with playing “a key role in aiding Speaker McCarthy’s political fund-raising operation,” while stressing that his efforts were “on a volunteer basis.”But the blurriness of the lines between Mr. Miller’s lobbying and his support for Mr. McCarthy was underscored in the days after the speaker election.Mr. Miller helped organize three days of festivities to celebrate, including a gala dinner at which Mr. Miller took the stage to introduce Mr. McCarthy. “Man, Kevin, I have waited a long time to say this: Ladies and gentlemen, the speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy,” Mr. Miller told the audience of donors, corporate executives, members of Congress and other prominent Republicans, according to an attendee.The following morning featured a breakfast for donors and freshman House Republicans held at the Washington offices of one of Mr. Miller’s lobbying clients — Altria, the tobacco and e-cigarette company. Since July 2017, Altria has donated nearly $1.4 million to a super PAC associated with Mr. McCarthy and paid $1.3 million to Mr. Miller’s firm.Building InfluenceMr. Miller, 48, met Mr. McCarthy, 58, in the early 1990s. Mr. Miller was a high school student, and Mr. McCarthy was a district staff member for the Bakersfield, Calif., area’s congressman.After joining the Naval Reserves, Mr. Miller took a job with the county Republican Party, where he worked with Mr. McCarthy and began ascending the party ladder in California. He became a lobbyist, developing connections to major donors and politicians around the country, including Gov. Rick Perry of Texas.Mr. Miller moved to Austin and helped Mr. Perry build out a political operation that became the foundation for a 2016 White House bid; Mr. Miller served as campaign manager. When Mr. Perry bowed out of the race, he and Mr. Miller threw their support to Mr. Trump. After the election, Mr. Miller moved quickly to break into a Washington lobbying world that had been dominated by powerful firms with long track records and big names, but few connections to the incoming Trump administration.Mr. Miller served as the campaign manager for Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign in 2016.Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesMr. Miller was a finance vice chair for Mr. Trump’s inauguration and helped guide Mr. Perry through the Senate confirmation process to become Mr. Trump’s energy secretary. Within 13 months of Mr. Perry being sworn into office, Mr. Miller’s new firm, Miller Strategies, had registered to lobby for 24 clients — including energy interests for which he facilitated meetings with Mr. Perry — and collected nearly $3.4 million in lobbying fees. It was an impressive amount for a small new firm, but it was only the start.Mr. Miller, who spends much of his time with his family in Austin, paid nearly $3 million for a two-bedroom condominium at City Center, a location favored by the Trump set, that he would turn into the nerve center of what would become one of the leading influence operations in town.He began hosting fund-raisers, donor dinners and gatherings that drew a rotating cast of Trump world operatives, McCarthy allies, journalists and other prominent figures, with a well-stocked bar inside and guests smoking cigars on an expansive private outdoor deck. Mr. Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Mr. Perry were among his guests.According to Federal Election Commission records, Mr. Miller helped raise about $15 million for Mr. Trump’s unsuccessful re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee in the run-up to the 2020 election. But he raised far more than that for other campaigns and committees, including those associated with Mr. Trump and Mr. McCarthy, according to people familiar with his efforts.Mr. Miller said in a statement that he spends about half of his time making fund-raising calls for various Republican candidates and groups “that I’m passionate about.”Leveraging ConnectionsIn the fall of 2017, the microchip maker Broadcom, which was exploring major acquisitions that would need U.S. government approval, hired Miller Strategies to lobby the Trump White House and Congress.Two days after Mr. Miller registered to represent the company, its chief executive, Hock E. Tan, who until then had only made a single federal political donation, gave $65,000 to political committees linked to Mr. McCarthy, according to Federal Election Commission records.Two weeks later, thanks to Mr. Miller and his connections to Mr. Trump’s team, Mr. Tan was in the Oval Office, standing between Mr. Trump and Mr. McCarthy as cameras rolled, praising the president’s proposed corporate tax cuts and announcing Broadcom’s plan to return operations from Singapore to the United States. The relocation was seen partly as an effort to minimize potential U.S. government concerns about its planned acquisitions..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“Thanks to you, Mr. President, business conditions have steadily improved,” Mr. Tan said, as Mr. Miller stood unnoticed at the back of the room.After journalists left the room, Mr. Trump thanked Mr. Miller for his fund-raising assistance.“I hear you’re doing great work for us,” Mr. Trump said, according to a person who attended the event. “They say nobody raises money like you.”In 2017, Hock E. Tan, the chief executive of Broadcom, made an appearance with Mr. McCarthy at the White House after Mr. Miller had registered to represent the company.Tom Brenner/The New York TimesAbout two weeks after the Oval Office event, Broadcom announced that it had finalized one of the acquisitions, having won approval from the U.S. government with assistance from Mr. Miller and his team. Broadcom’s larger acquisition — of the rival chip maker Qualcomm — was subsequently blocked by Mr. Trump, who cited national security concerns.Still, at the time, the Oval Office appearance was a victory for Broadcom and Mr. Tan. And it had benefits for the Trump White House, which used the event to sell the tax cut proposal that Mr. McCarthy, then House majority leader, helped shepherd through Congress and onto the president’s desk for signing weeks later.“That event was a perfect example of what makes Jeff so effective,” said Cliff Sims, the Trump White House aide who worked with Mr. Miller to arrange it. “He came with an idea that was helpful to what we were trying to accomplish, and his client ultimately benefited from it as well.”Even as Mr. Miller established himself as one of the go-to lobbyists for influencing the Trump administration, he retained his close ties to Mr. McCarthy, with the congressman’s political and government roles sometimes intersecting with the lobbyist’s work.Mr. Musk, the billionaire technology entrepreneur, has been a donor to Mr. McCarthy for more than a decade, and one of his companies, the rocket manufacturer and NASA contractor SpaceX, has operations in Mr. McCarthy’s hometown, Bakersfield, Calif.In 2020, Miller Strategies registered to lobby for SpaceX and has been paid more than $300,000 by the company since then, according to lobbying filings. One of Mr. Miller’s lead lobbyists on the account, George Caram, had worked for Mr. McCarthy as a congressional aide partly on space travel issues.Mr. Musk, who had been interviewed by Mr. McCarthy during a donor retreat organized by Mr. Miller in Jackson Hole, Wyo., last summer, and months later would acquire Twitter, declared his support last month for Mr. McCarthy’s bid to become speaker.Mr. Miller has also taken on hardball political tasks for Mr. McCarthy.As relations turned frosty last year between Mr. McCarthy and Representative Liz Cheney over her criticism of Mr. Trump, Mr. Miller quietly warned Republican political consultants to stop working for her re-election campaign in Wyoming or risk losing lucrative business from committees affiliated with Mr. McCarthy.Last year, Mr. Miller warned Republican political consultants to stop working for Representative Liz Cheney’s re-election campaign in Wyoming after her criticism of former President Donald J. Trump.Emily Elconin for The New York TimesMr. McCarthy would later officially endorse Ms. Cheney’s challenger in the Republican primary for her seat, Harriet Hageman, an unusual move for a congressional leader. It was followed weeks later by a fund-raiser for Ms. Hageman at Mr. Miller’s Washington condo touting Mr. McCarthy as a “special guest,” according to an invitation obtained by Politico.Tech TensionsBy the final year of the Trump administration, Miller Strategies’ lobbying revenues had grown to nearly $14 million. In 2021, with President Biden in office, the firm’s revenues dropped to less than $8 million.But Mr. Miller’s connections to Mr. McCarthy’s conference remained valuable for some of the world’s biggest companies.In June 2021, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a package of antitrust legislation targeting tech giants including Amazon and Apple, which had retained Miller Strategies in 2019.One bill was intended to loosen the control over the app marketplaces operated by Apple and Google. Another would have barred those platforms, as well as Amazon and Facebook, from giving preferential treatment to their products and services over those offered by competitors.Mr. Miller lobbied House Republicans against the bills, using the access he had built through fund-raising to urge lawmakers to take their names off the bills as co-sponsors — a bold ask.At a lunch at the private Capitol Hill Club, Mr. Miller pulled aside one Republican co-sponsor for whom he had raised money, Representative Lance Gooden of Texas.“He and I got into it, but, I mean, we weren’t fighting or anything — we were just disagreeing,” said Mr. Gooden.Mr. Gooden did not back down. But he said Mr. Miller is an effective lobbyist because “he’s a hustler” and “he was able to raise huge amounts of money for the Trump campaign, for House Republicans.” Mr. Miller “is constantly on the phone working to get Republicans elected. And if he’s not doing that, he’s working for his clients,” Mr. Gooden said.During the fight over the antitrust bills, Mr. Miller sometimes seemed to be doing both things at once.A few days after the bills were introduced, he stopped by a retreat he had organized for major donors to Mr. McCarthy’s political operation at the Hay-Adams Hotel, which featured a panel on the “growing threat of Big Tech censorship.” Mr. Miller had conversations there with at least two members of Congress in which he described the bills as government overreach that would empower Biden administration regulators and do nothing to mitigate the tech platforms’ stifling of conservatives, according to one attendee.Less than two weeks after the retreat, Mr. McCarthy offered what his office called a “framework to stop the bias and check Big Tech,” which echoed Mr. Miller’s arguments.But Mr. McCarthy’s efforts were not seen as a much of a threat to the tech companies.Mr. Florio, the spokesman for Mr. McCarthy, said in a statement that the framework was “the result of months of work between leaders of the conference, the House Judiciary Committee and the countless Americans whose free speech was silenced by Big Tech.”Critics thought they detected Mr. Miller’s fingerprints. The Fox News host Tucker Carlson asserted on his show, which is influential on the anti-corporate populist right, that Mr. Miller’s lobbying for Amazon and Apple was “one potential explanation” for Mr. McCarthy’s opposition to the antitrust bills.Mr. Carlson said that Mr. Miller was “Kevin McCarthy’s closest adviser.”“Are you shocked that Kevin McCarthy is doing what his corporate clients want him to do?” he added. “Maybe you shouldn’t be.”The two bills considered most aggressive toward Mr. Miller’s clients were never brought up for votes on the floor of the House, as technology companies lobbied furiously against them across party lines in both the House and the Senate.An employee at the Amazon Fulfillment center in Robbinsville Township, N.J. Mr. Miller’s role as a lobbyist for Big Tech is showing signs of becoming a flash point in a Republican Party.Julio Cortez/Associated PressAbout two weeks before the midterm elections, Miller Strategies terminated its contract with Amazon’s cloud computing arm before it was set to expire. Mr. Miller, a person familiar with his thinking said, did not like that his work for the company, a frequent target of tech critics across the political spectrum, was being wielded by detractors as a cudgel against Mr. McCarthy. Days later, Miller Strategies registered to lobby for more money for Oracle, which competes with Amazon’s cloud computing products and has top executives with ties to Republicans.But Mr. Miller’s role as a lobbyist for Big Tech is showing signs of becoming a flash point in a Republican Party increasingly split between a traditional pro-business wing and a populist right that is especially eager to rein in the big social media platforms and other corporations perceived as being sympathetic to the left.Last week, Representative Ken Buck of Colorado, who had joined Mr. Gooden among the co-sponsors of the antitrust bills in 2021, was passed over as chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, where he had been the top Republican last Congress. Instead, the subcommittee will be chaired by Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who opposes government spending and intervention in the economy, while the full committee is chaired by Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a close McCarthy ally.“Kevin McCarthy and Jim Jordan pretend like they’re conservative warriors against Big Tech, when in reality they’re doing Big Tech’s bidding by stopping bipartisan antitrust reforms that would hold Big Tech accountable,” said Mike Davis, a former Republican congressional lawyer who started a nonprofit group that pushes for antitrust enforcement.Mr. McCarthy “cares about keeping the lobbyists in Washington happy,” Mr. Davis said last month on a podcast, highlighting Mr. Miller’s work for Amazon and Apple and calling him “the campaign manager for Kevin McCarthy’s race for speaker.”But there is no sign that the criticism is hobbling Mr. Miller.Mr. Miller’s firm has signed six new clients since the month before the midterm elections, including the Federation of American Hospitals and the PGA Tour.Miller Strategies announced last month that it had hired three new employees — including Mr. McCarthy’s political director, Stephen Ruppel — in anticipation of a surge in business.And shortly thereafter, an invitation was sent out for a fund-raising dinner next week honoring Mr. McCarthy, with ticket prices starting at $50,000 and proceeds going to his political operation. On the invitation, obtained by Punchbowl News, Mr. Miller’s name is listed above those of a raft of top Republican congressional leaders. More

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      Meet Kyrsten Sinema, Former Democrat of Arizona

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. I hope I’ve succeeded in turning you into a World Cup fan. In the meantime, any choice words about, or for, Kyrsten Sinema, former Democrat of Arizona?Gail Collins: Well, Bret, you’ve at least turned me into a fan of the Times coverage of World Cup … activities. I also sorta like times like this when there are a billion different games on TV — not just soccer — and for a while every day, people don’t feel obliged to think about the rest of the world.Bret: Such as …Gail: Such as Kyrsten Sinema. Not a fan of hers from the get-go. Always seemed as if her compulsive effort to prove she wasn’t really a loyal Democrat was less about political independence and more about making wealthy donors happy.Bret: And this is on the theory that other politicians don’t care for what their wealthy donors think?Gail: But her official spin is that the two-party system is broken, and virtue lies in standing outside as an independent. I hate that kind of thinking.Bret: Whereas I love it. To me, the choice these days between Republicans and Democrats is about as appealing as a dinner invitation from Hannibal Lecter: Either you get your heart cut out or your brain removed, and both get served with a side of fava beans and a nice Chianti.Seriously, you don’t see any virtue to wanting to break this awful political duopoly?Gail: Virtue, for me, lies in fighting to make the two parties better. Pick the one that’s closest to your beliefs and get busy. Fight for the good local leaders and nominees.It’s way easier to just announce you’re superior to both of them and start your own group. The new gang probably won’t last long, and even if it does, its big achievement will most likely be to draw votes away from the major party candidates you most agree with.Never recovered from Ralph Nader’s Green Party candidacy for president in 2000 — a noble quest on the issues front that wound up costing Al Gore the job.Bret: A few years ago I would have agreed with you. But the Republican Party is pretty much irredeemable, while the Democrats are … just not the team I’m ever going to bat for.Gail: Come on in. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are waiting with open arms …Bret: Not so sure the Dems would ever want me in the first place: I heart Texas not taxes.As for Sinema, having her join someone like Maine’s Angus King as an independent shows it’s at least possible to have an alternative. I realize she has some very self-interested political reasons for doing so, since the move will spare her a primary challenge from the left if she runs for re-election in 2024. But it also reminds the party establishments that they shouldn’t take their centrist voters for granted. Now I wish a few sane-minded Republicans might go ahead and join her. Lisa Murkowski, hello?Gail: Hey, weird that of the two of us, I’m the one who thinks somebody should try to save the Republican Party.Bret: Raising the dead is beyond our powers, Gail.Gail: You know I don’t do foreign affairs, but I do feel obliged to ask you about Brittney Griner. Do you think Joe Biden did the right thing in making the trade that got her out of prison in Russia?Bret: Well, obviously I’m happy for Griner and her family that she’s back after her 10-month ordeal. And it says everything about the moral difference between the United States and Russia that they will take a harmless person hostage so they can trade her for one of their most notorious gangsters.On the other hand, I don’t understand why we didn’t prioritize the release of Paul Whelan, an American who has been wrongfully detained in a Russian prison for four years but doesn’t have the benefit of Griner’s celebrity. Nor should we forget Marc Fogel, a 61-year-old American teacher trapped in one of Putin’s prisons. My advice to the Biden administration is to tell Russia that $1 billion of its foreign reserves will be seized for every additional day these two stay in prison.Gail: Hope they’re listening.Bret: Oh, and speaking of dealing with gangsters — your thoughts on the current crop of legal cases against the former guy?Gail: I’ve never thought — and still don’t — that a former president is going to go to jail, even for stealing federal documents or rousing violent crowds to march on the Capitol.Bret: Agree. Alas.Gail: But I’ve always had a yearning that he might wind up bankrupt and, say, living in a Motel 6. Knew that was impossible — told myself to remember all the money he can make just on speaking tours or hosting parties at Mar-a-Lago.Bret: Pretty depressing how American culture has descended from “My Dinner With Andre” to that dinner with Kanye.Gail: Now, though, I’m sort of wondering. Is there going to be a market for this guy — chooser of terrible Senate candidates and breaker of bread with neo-Nazis — even just as a celebrity?Bret: I had nearly lost hope that the day would ever come, but I think we are finally watching Trump self-destruct before our eyes even faster than anyone else can destroy him. The midterm results seem to have persuaded a critical mass of Republican voters and politicians that he’s toxic for their chances. Dinner with his antisemitic pals seems to have been the icing on the cake — or whatever the exact opposite of “icing on the cake” is. Toxic algae in the cesspool?Gail: Rotting rutabaga in the refuse? Sorry, that doesn’t actually make much sense. I was seduced by all the R’s.Bret: Gail, would you mind if I rant for a minute?Gail: Bret, I love it when you rant. Even when I hate it.Bret: There’s a special place in hell for the Paul Ryan Republicans — let’s call them PRR’s. What I mean is a certain type of well-heeled, intellectually minded conservative who never liked Trump’s person or politics and who occasionally tut-tutted at his vilest excesses, but who consistently made excuses for him and his presidency while heaping scorn on Never Trumpers as a bunch of virtue-signaling prigs. These Trump-appeasing PRR’s were prepared to defend and vote for him again until the day after the midterms, when they finally realized that he was a titanic political liability.Gail: Well, I truly do love this rant. Go on.Bret: To adapt something Winston Churchill purportedly said to Neville Chamberlain after Munich in 1938: In 2016 conservatives were given the choice between electoral defeat and personal dishonor. They chose dishonor. In the end, they still got defeated.Gail: You know I’m going to ask who’s a Churchillian pick in the Republican world. For instance, Ron DeSantis was never a huge Trump pal, but I think that was only because he was eyeing his job.Bret: So, weirdly, I have much less of a moral objection to those Republicans like DeSantis who liked Trump to begin with, whether because they agreed with most of his policies or appreciated his thumb-in-the-eye personality, or both. At least they came about their support for Trump honestly, without convoluted rationalizations and self-exculpations and various suspensions of disbelief. Of course I don’t agree with them, but I long ago stopped disdaining them.Speaking of disdain, any views on all of these disclosures about Twitter’s speech policies?Gail: Is there any way we can make it illegal for the richest man in the world to own one of the largest social networks? Guess not, huh?Bret: Probably not, though I doubt Musk will profit from the acquisition.Gail: Definitely felt sorry for the Twitter workers who discovered that Musk was putting beds in their work space. And his wild political seesawing would ruin the influence of anybody who wasn’t closing in on a quarter of a trillion dollars.But here we are, and I don’t have any great strategy for making him behave in a more responsible way when it comes to things like … keeping violent hatemongers off his platform. Do you have one?Bret: Violent hatemongers aside, I thought it was pretty appalling to see the lengths to which pre-Musk Twitter went to ban legitimate news stories, like The New York Post’s scoop about Hunter Biden’s laptop, and to downplay views that went against conventional wisdom, like the Stanford professor of medicine who warned about the ill-effects of lockdowns, and to coordinate its decisions with the Biden team — and then mislead the public about what it was doing. Even progressives like Ro Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley in Congress, warned Twitter about its anti-free speech attitude, which is entirely to his credit and not at all to theirs.Gail: Bret scores …Bret: I guess the point is, we don’t want giant corporations banning political speech, whether it comes from the left or the right, and that goes especially for companies whose entire business model relies on the principle of free speech. For exposing this, I have to give Musk credit.Gail: We’ll pick this up again, Bret. Somehow I suspect Elon Musk will follow us into the new year.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Inside the Face-Off Between Russia and a Small Internet Access Firm

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      The cat-and-mouse experience of Proton, a Swiss company, shows what it’s like to be targeted by Russian censors — and what it takes to fight back.After Moscow erected a digital barricade in March, blocking access to independent news sites and social media platforms to hide information about its unfolding invasion of Ukraine, many Russians looked for a workaround. One reliable route they found came from a small Swiss company based nearly 2,000 miles away.The company, Proton, provides free software that masks a person’s identity and location online. That gives a user in Russia access to the open web by making it appear that the person is logging in from the Netherlands, Japan or the United States. A couple of weeks after the internet blockade, about 850,000 people inside Russia used Proton each day, up from fewer than 25,000.That is, until the end of March, when the Russian government found a way to block Proton, too.Targeting Proton was the opening salvo of a continuing back-and-forth battle, pitting a team of about 25 engineers against a country embarking on one of the most aggressive censorship campaigns in recent memory.Working from a Geneva office where the company keeps its name off the building directory, Proton has spent nine pressure-packed months repeatedly tweaking its technology to avoid Russian blocks, only to be countered again by government censors in Moscow. Some employees took Proton off their social media profiles out of concern that they would be targeted personally.The high-stakes chess match mirrors what is playing out with growing frequency in countries facing coups, wars and authoritarian rule, where restricting the internet is a tool of repression. The blocks drive citizens to look for workarounds. Engineers at companies like Proton think up new ways for those people to secretly reach the open web. And governments, in turn, seek out new technical tricks to plug leaks.The digital censorship battle is reaching “an inflection point,” said Grant Baker, a research analyst for technology and democracy at Freedom House, which recently reported that internet censorship globally had reached a new high in 2022. While Russia has spent years working on a more closely controlled, sovereign internet, the controls imposed after the war are “a stark contrast” to anything Moscow had ever done before, Mr. Baker said.Companies rarely discuss being targeted by an authoritarian government out of fear of escalating the conflict. But Andy Yen, Proton’s founder and chief executive, said that after a period of trying to keep its “head down,” Proton wanted to raise awareness about the increasing sophistication of governments, in Russia and elsewhere, to block citizens from reaching the open web and the need for technologists, companies and governments to push back.Proton’s account provides a rare inside look at what it’s like to be entangled in Russia’s censorship net as President Vladimir V. Putin tries to suppress information about the war and mounting battlefield losses in Ukraine.Dozens of VPN services have been blocked inside Russia, but Proton, perhaps best known for its encrypted email service, seemed to receive extra attention from the authorities. In June, Russia’s internet regulator labeled the company a “threat.”“We’re gearing up for a long fight,” Mr. Yen said in an interview at the company’s office. “Everybody hopes this will have a happy ending, but it’s not guaranteed. We don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, in fact, but you keep going because if we don’t do it, then maybe nobody else will.”The VPN team at Proton, whose virtual private network gives users a way around government internet restrictions.Aurélien Bergot for The New York TimesProton, which makes money by selling $10-a-month subscriptions for extra features, was founded in 2014 by a team of young engineers from the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, the institute outside Geneva where the worldwide web was created. Their main project was working on the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, a $5 billion instrument built to unlock some of the world’s biggest scientific mysteries.After the disclosures of mass digital surveillance that were made by Edward Snowden, the former U.S. intelligence contractor, Mr. Yen and a few colleagues created an email service that encrypts messages so they cannot be intercepted, simplifying use of a technology that had been too complicated for many people. It became popular with activists, journalists and privacy-conscious consumers.The State of the WarStriking Deep in Russia: In its most brazen attack into Russian territory, Ukraine used drones to strike two military bases hundreds of miles inside Russia, showing an ability to take the war beyond its borders.Weaponizing Winter: Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure have left millions without power, heat or water as the snow begins to fall. The Daily looks at what life is like in Ukraine as winter sets in.Russian Oil Price Cap: The E.U. agreed on a $60-a-barrel limit for Russian oil, the latest effort by Western allies to try to deprive Moscow of revenue to finance its war in Ukraine. Here’s how it will work.Mr. Yen, who grew up in Taiwan, said the threat of Chinese aggression looming over the island’s democracy had shaped his worldview. Privacy and fighting censorship were core to Proton’s mission from the start, he said, and the company seemed to almost relish confronting authoritarianism.In 2017, after several governments, including Turkey and Russia, temporarily blocked access to the email service, Proton created its virtual private network, or VPN, a technology used to sidestep internet restrictions.The technology behind a VPN traces back to the 1990s. It is a relatively basic tool used most commonly by people trying to pirate movies or watch a sports broadcast available only in another country. Yet in recent years the systems, which are easy to use and often difficult to detect, have become a vital tool for circumventing internet restrictions.The Kremlin spent years building the legal foundation and technological abilities to control the internet more closely. Yet even as Russia blocked certain websites and interrupted access to Twitter last year, few thought it would outright block major social media platforms and independent news websites. While television has always been heavily censored, the internet had been less restricted.The crackdown in March interrupted communications and commerce for many otherwise apolitical Russians, said Natalia Krapiva, tech-legal counsel at Access Now, a group focused on online speech-related issues. VPN use was already high among tech-savvy Russians, she said, but the blocks and news of harsh punishment for online protest led even more casual internet users to seek ways around the restrictions.Demand for VPNs surged in Russia, with downloads in March jumping 2,692 percent from February, said Simon Migliano, head of research for the review site Top10VPN.com. Proton was a popular choice, he said, hovering among the 10 most popular products despite being slower than some other choices.Since then, VPNs have become a way of life for many. Roskomsvoboda, a Russian civil society group focused on internet freedom, estimates that a quarter of the Russian population is using one.“To simply read independent news or to post a picture, you had to open your VPN,” said Viktoriia Safonova, 25, who now delivers food by bike in Sweden after she fled Russia in July. Both she and her husband were racked by anxiety after the invasion. Finding independent news and information was difficult. Workarounds often weren’t reliable.“If the one you’re using gets blocked, you have to find another VPN,” Ms. Safonova said.She recalled the paranoia that set in as new internet restrictions and surveillance took effect. She and her husband, Artem Nesterenko, worried about whether they could criticize the war online, even on international social networks. He recalled how the police had come to check on their building after he scrawled “No to war” in the elevator. He feared being arrested for things he posted online.As people turned to VPN services to avoid the blocks, Proton struggled to keep up. Over a weekend in March, engineers scrambled to buy and configure more than 20 new servers to avert a crash of its entire network.At the same time in Moscow, censors were at work trying to patch holes in the government’s internet controls.The first block that took down Proton, at the end of March, was a technically basic interruption that company engineers quickly overcame, but they figured more powerful attempts loomed.The battle took on a “Spy vs. Spy” dynamic in Proton’s headquarters. Mr. Yen said a network of people within the government, telecommunications firms and civil society groups had helped Proton operate in Russia, providing access to local networks and sharing intelligence about how the censorship system worked. But those contacts began to go dark as the Kremlin’s crackdown on dissent intensified.At the start of June, censors struck again.The service, which had more than 1.4 million daily users inside Russia at this point, collapsed as employees were going about their day. Complaints from Russian users poured into Proton’s customer service email. The company concluded that the government had deployed more sophisticated software that could filter through all internet traffic to identify when a person was trying to connect to Proton’s VPN service. Russia had used similar technology to block Twitter and other social media sites.Around this time, the company noticed a suspicious spike in negative reviews of its service in the Apple and Google app stores, reducing its search ranking.“They had clearly studied us,” said Antonio Cesarano, a senior engineer working on the VPN project.Some at Proton questioned whether they should continue the fight with Russia. It was costing millions of dollars and slowing down development of other products. But after Proton faced criticism in 2021, when the French police obtained the IP address of a climate activist using its email service, backing down from Russia could have added another bruise to the company’s reputation.Over about two weeks in June, Proton created yet another workaround that bounced internet traffic to servers in different geographical areas faster than censors could track. It was a technically complex move that would take considerable resources for Russia to counter.The fix worked — for about six weeks.Mr. Yen was interrupted during a staff meeting in mid-July with news that Russian censors had come up with an even more elaborate block. A corporate chart from the time shows use dropping off a cliff. Russian engineers had identified what is known as an authentication “handshake,” the vital moment when Proton’s VPN connection gets established before reaching the wider web. Blocking the link made Proton’s service essentially unusable.“We had no idea what was happening and how they were doing it,” Mr. Cesarano said.By August, after working around the clock for days to find a fix, Proton acknowledged defeat and pulled its app from Russia. The company has spent the months since then developing a new architecture that makes its VPN service harder to identify because it looks more like a regular website to censorship software scanning a country’s internet traffic. Proton has been successfully testing the system in Iran, where Proton has seen a sharp increase in VPN use during recent political demonstrations.In Russia, Proton has reintroduced its apps using the new system. Mr. Yen acknowledged that it probably wasn’t a long-term fix. He has confidence in the new technology, but figures Russian engineers will eventually figure out a new way to push back, and the game will continue. More

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      Your Tuesday Briefing: Rishi Sunak to Lead Britain

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      Plus Chinese markets react to a stronger Xi Jinping and young Chinese pursue quiet dissent.“We now need stability and unity, and I will make it my utmost priority to bring my party and country together,” Rishi Sunak said yesterday.Aberto Pezzali/Associated PressRishi Sunak to lead BritainRishi Sunak, who lost to Liz Truss just under seven weeks ago in the contest to lead Britain, will become prime minister today.Sunak, 42, prevailed in a chaotic Conservative Party leadership race yesterday after Penny Mordaunt, his remaining rival, withdrew. Sunak, the former chancellor of the Exchequer and the son of Indian immigrants, will be the first person of color to lead Britain.His immediate challenge: reunite his deeply divided party and rebuild its reputation. Some Tories view Sunak as Boris Johnson’s political assassin — his resignation from Johnson’s cabinet in July led to his boss’s fall and Britain’s political upheaval. And Conservatives lag behind the opposition Labour Party by more than 30 percentage points in polls.Sunak faces profound economic challenges, especially a cost of living crisis. Britain is also reeling from the self-inflicted damage of Brexit and of Truss, whose free-market economic agenda, featuring sweeping tax cuts, upended markets and sunk the pound.What’s next: While Sunak’s warnings about inflation and his fiscal conservatism may have cost him the post in September, his accurate assessments may help undo the damage left by his predecessor. India: Indian news media celebrated his historic ascension, but people were more focused on celebrating Diwali.Reaction: Calls are growing for a broader political reassessment. “I think we should have had a general election because of all the mistakes the previous two prime ministers made,” one woman told The New York Times.A Beijing vegetable market last month. China’s economy has already been dragged down by its commitment to “zero Covid” policies.Gilles Sabrié for The New York TimesMarkets react to Xi’s consolidationInvestors unnerved by Xi Jinping’s power grab — and the state-heavy agenda of China’s top leader — sent Chinese shares tumbling yesterday.In Hong Kong, share prices plummeted more than 6 percent, reaching 13-year lows as traders dumped huge numbers of shares. In mainland China, markets fell nearly 3 percent, even though Beijing puts heavy pressure on institutional investors not to sell during politically fraught moments. And the renminbi dropped to a 14-year low against the dollar.The heavy selling was particularly striking given that the Chinese government said the economy grew 3.9 percent in the three months that ended in September, from the same period a year earlier. The data, released yesterday, was stronger than expected but still fell short of Beijing’s target of 5.5 percent for this year.Analysis: Xi has put a premium on politics and security — and a stringent “zero Covid” policy — even at the cost of slowing economic growth and employment.Details: The nosedive in financial markets was particularly focused on the shares of Chinese internet companies, which have been a key target of Xi’s campaign to strengthen the Communist Party’s economic control.Background: During last week’s Communist Party congress, Xi pushed out longtime economic policymakers like Premier Li Keqiang and Wang Yang, an architect of the free-market economic boom in southeastern China.A protestor hung banners openly bashing Xi Jinping from Sitong Bridge, in central Beijing.Dake Kang/Associated PressYoung Chinese quietly dissentThis month, a demonstrator unfurled two banners on a highway overpass in Beijing, denouncing Xi Jinping as a “despotic traitor.”China’s censors went to great lengths to scrub the internet of any reference to the act of dissent, prohibiting all discussion and shutting down many offending social media accounts.But the slogans didn’t go away, my colleague Li Yuan writes. Instead, young Chinese, frustrated with censorship, repression and Xi’s “zero Covid” policies, have used creative ways to amplify and spread his message. They graffitied the slogans in public toilets and used Apple’s AirDrop feature to send fellow subway passengers photos of the messages, even though they’re forced to remain anonymous — often from one another.In doing so, members of a generation known for toeing the government line are overcoming their fear of the repressive government, their political depression and their loneliness as political heretics in a society that espouses one leader, one party and one ideology.Context: The protester, who is now viewed as a hero, was last seen being detained by the police. He’s being called the “Bridge Man,” a reference to the “Tank Man,” who stood in front of tanks during the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing in 1989.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificAustralia’s government will release its budget today, Reuters reports. Growth is expected to slow as inflation cuts into consumer spending.North Korea and South Korea exchanged warning shots along a disputed sea boundary, The Associated Press reports.Around the World“They are not preparing to exit now,” a top Ukrainian official said yesterday, of Russian troops. “They are preparing to defend.”Nicole Tung for The New York TimesThere are growing signs that Russia’s occupation government in Kherson is preparing the city for fighting ahead of a possible Ukrainian counteroffensive.Math scores fell in nearly every U.S. state, a sign of the pandemic’s toll.Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s president, and conservative lawmakers are trying to criminalize incorrect election forecasts after polls underestimated his support. The presidential runoff is on Sunday.Other Big StoriesThe first formal peace talks between Ethiopia’s government and Tigrayan rebels are scheduled to begin today in South Africa.Top U.S. executives are heading to a major business conference in Saudi Arabia, despite the Biden administration’s misgivings.OpinionsIn a short documentary, Maria Fredriksson asks: Should Sweden’s tax agency let an Indigenous Sami woman deduct her reindeer-herding dog?Ellen R. Wald, the author of “Saudi, Inc.: The Arabian Kingdom’s Pursuit of Profit and Power,” explains why OPEC is cutting oil production.Noam Shuster Eliassi, a comedian who lives in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, lived through a terrorist attack. She realized that not everything can be funny.A Morning ReadPolitical scientists say the pattern shows how white fear of losing status shaped the movement to keep Trump in power.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesIn the U.S., the white majority is shrinking disproportionately fast in districts represented by Republican lawmakers who refused to accept Donald Trump’s defeat.Their constituents also lagged behind in income and education. Rates of so-called deaths of despair, like suicide, drug overdose and alcohol-related liver failure, were notably higher as well.Lives lived: Ngo Vinh Long was the most prominent Vietnamese in the U.S. to campaign against the war in Vietnam. He died at 78.CLIMATE FOCUSWhy attack a painting?On Sunday, climate activists in Germany threw mashed potatoes on a painting by Claude Monet, “Grainstacks.” The action came just days after activists in London threw tomato soup on “Sunflowers,” a painting by Vincent van Gogh.The attacks on art, intended to draw attention to climate change, have drawn widespread reaction online. Neither painting was harmed — an intentional choice by the activists. Still, many worried about the paintings’ safety and described the form of protest as misguided.But the dramatic tactic may have a lasting impact, Andreas Malm, the author of “How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire,” argues in a guest essay for the Opinion section. The tactic has historical precedent, he says: Even though paintings are hardly responsible for the climate crisis, the point is to “create enough disorder to make it impossible to ignore the ongoing climate breakdown.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookLennart Weibull for The New York TimesIf you can boil water, slice an onion and use a strainer, you can make niku udon, a Japanese beef noodle soup. It’s Kenji López-Alt’s go-to weeknight dinner.What to Read“The Pachinko Parlor” is a powerful story of dislocation and self-discovery set in Tokyo.The CosmosA solar eclipse will be visible today across Europe and Asia. Here’s how to watch.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Tall and thin (five letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. Vox named Zeynep Tufekci, a Times Opinion columnist, to its inaugural list of 50 people working to make the future better.The latest episode of “The Daily” is on election denial in the U.S.You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      Censorship Is the Refuge of the Weak

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      Some threats to freedom of expression in America, like online harassment and disinformation, are amorphous or hard to pin down; others are alarmingly overt. Consider these recent examples of censorship in practice: A student newspaper and journalism program in Nebraska shut down for writing about L.G.B.T.Q. issues and pride month. Oklahoma’s top education official seeking to revoke the teaching certificate of an English teacher who shared a QR code that directed students to the Brooklyn Public Library’s online collection of banned books. Lawmakers in Missouri passing a law that makes school librarians vulnerable to prosecution for the content in their collections.In Florida today it may be illegal for teachers to even talk about whom they love or marry thanks to the state’s so-called Don’t Say Gay law. Of course, it goes far beyond sex: The Sunshine State’s Republican commissioner of education rejected 28 math textbooks this year for including verboten content.This year alone, 137 gag order bills, which would restrict the discussions of topics such as race, gender, sexuality and American history in kindergarten through 12th grade and higher education, have been introduced in 36 state legislatures, according to a report released last month by PEN America, a free speech organization. That’s a sharp increase from 2021, when 54 bills were introduced in 22 states. Only seven of those bills became law in 2022, but they are some of the strictest to date, and the sheer number of bills introduced reflects a growing enthusiasm on the right for censorship as a political weapon and instrument of social control.These new measures are far more punitive than past efforts, with heavy fines or loss of state funding for institutions that dare to offer courses covering the forbidden content. Teachers can be fired and even face criminal charges. Lawsuits have already started to trickle through the courts asking for broad interpretations of the new statutes. For the first time, the PEN report noted, some bills have also targeted nonpublic schools and universities in addition to public schools.It wasn’t all that long ago that Republican lawmakers around the country were introducing legislation they said would protect free speech on college campuses. Now, they’re using the coercive power of the state to restrict what people can talk about, learn about or discuss in public, and exposing them to lawsuits and other repercussions for doing so. That’s a clear threat to the ideals of a pluralistic political culture, in which challenging ideas are welcomed and discussed.How and what to teach American students has been contested ground since the earliest days of public education, and the content of that instruction is something about which Americans can respectfully disagree. But the Supreme Court has limited the government’s power to censor school libraries, if not curriculums. “Local school boards may not remove books from school libraries simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to ‘prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion,’” Justice William Brennan wrote in a 1982 decision.There may not even be wide disagreement over what American students are being taught. Despite the moral panic over teaching about gender and race, American parents overwhelmingly say they are satisfied with the instruction their children receive. A poll from National Public Radio and Ipsos earlier this year found that just 18 percent of parents said their child’s school “taught about gender and sexuality in a way that clashed with their family’s values,” while 19 percent said the same about race and racism. Only 14 percent felt that way about American history.And yet, some Republican candidates are using the threat of censorship as a show of strength, evidence of their power to muzzle political opponents. Last year in Virginia, Glenn Youngkin won the governorship after a campaign in which he demagogued the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Beloved” by the Nobel Prize-winning Toni Morrison. Other candidates are looking to make issues around censorship a centerpiece of their pitch to voters in the midterm elections in races from Texas to New Jersey.Some want to extend censorship far beyond the classroom. In Virginia, a Republican state representative tried to get a court to declare as obscene two young adult books that are frequently banned in schools, “Gender Queer,” by Maia Kobabe, and “A Court of Mist and Fury,” by Sarah Maas. The case was dismissed on Aug. 30, but if it had been successful, it could have made it illegal for bookstores to sell the books to children without parental consent.Right-wing lawmakers are also looking to restrict what Americans can say about abortion. Model legislation from the National Right to Life Committee, which is circulating in state legislatures, aims to forbid Americans to give “instructions over the telephone, the internet or any other medium of communication regarding self-administered abortions or means to obtain an illegal abortion.” That prohibition would extend to hosting websites that contain such information.Even when such bills fail, these efforts to censor create a climate of fear. Across the country, libraries in small towns are being threatened with closure and library staff members are being harassed and intimidated. The Times reports that librarians “have been labeled pedophiles on social media, called out by local politicians and reported to law enforcement officials. Some librarians have quit after being harassed online. Others have been fired for refusing to remove books from circulation.” The American Library Association has documented nearly 1,600 books in more than 700 libraries or library systems that have faced attempted censorship.There are factions on both the left and the right that are insecure enough in their ideas that they’ve tried to ban discussion of certain facts or topics out of discomfort, or simply to score political points. But only right-wing legislators are currently trying to write censorship into law. This is not only deeply undemocratic; it is an act of weakness masquerading as strength. A political project convinced of the superiority of its ideas doesn’t need the power of the state to shield itself from competition. Free expression isn’t just a feature of democracy; it is a necessary prerequisite.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      How Conservatives and Progressives Reacted to Musk Buying Twitter

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      When Elon Musk reached a deal to buy Twitter on Monday, he promised to return free speech and debate to the platform, saying it was “the bedrock of a functioning democracy.”Whether a less moderated social network will be a good or bad thing has become a top topic of debate on Twitter itself among influencers and politicians from across the political spectrum.On the right, the deal was widely celebrated. Mr. Musk’s ownership, many conservatives tweeted, presaged a new era of free speech — where topics that were previously moderated could now be aired openly.Several members of the far right started testing the limits of a less regulated platform, tweeting criticism of the transgender community, doubting the effectiveness of masks, or claiming that the 2020 election results were fraudulent — topics that had been moderated by labeling or removing the false information or suspending accounts that spread it.“Millions of Americans have been choking back their thoughts and opinions on this platform for YEARS out of fear of being suspended/canceled,” John Rich, a member of the country music duo Big and Rich, said in a tweet that received more than 50,000 likes. “I have a feeling the dam is about to break.”Michael Knowles, a conservative podcaster, repeated on Monday the false claim that “the 2020 presidential election was obviously rigged,” receiving more than 70,000 likes. Representative Andy Barr, a Republican from Kentucky, said that stories about “Hunter Biden’s laptop or evidence that COVID originated in the Wuhan lab” could no longer be censored.And Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia known for pushing conspiracy theories, asked that several banned accounts — including those of former President Donald J. Trump, the conspiracist podcaster Alex Jones and even her own personal account — be reactivated.“Something is deeply wrong in this country when one person can buy a social media company on a whim for $44 billion while others have to skip meals to keep their kids fed,” said Representative David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat.Justin T. Gellerson for The New York TimesHer sentiment was echoed off the platform among members of the far-right who were banned from Twitter after violating its terms of service. Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser for Mr. Trump who is now aligned with the QAnon conspiracy theory, reposted a message on his Telegram account suggesting that Twitter could be used to recruit — or “wake up” — others to their cause.“This is mind blowing,” read the post, which was originally posted by a user, named BioClandestine, who was also banned from Twitter. “The impact of the Twitter buyout is going to be colossal as it pertains to waking normies. It’s already begun.”On the left, much of the conversation was focused on how the deal exemplified the outsize power of billionaires.“Something is deeply wrong in this country when one person can buy a social media company on a whim for $44 billion while others have to skip meals to keep their kids fed,” said Representative David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat who is backing antitrust reforms to target the tech giants, in a tweet. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said Mr. Musk’s purchase was a sign the United States needed to institute a wealth tax.Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said that “protection of Americans’ privacy must be a condition of any sale.” Former antitrust officials have said they think regulators will look closely at the deal but may struggle to find a cause to block it since Twitter does not compete with Mr. Musk’s other major holdings. More

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      Cancel culture is real but it’s not the ‘woke mob’ you should worry about | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Cancel culture is real but it’s not the ‘woke mob’ you should worry aboutArwa MahdawiBooks deemed anti-church or containing LGBTQ issues are being banned across the US at a terrifying rate by the conservative right Hello, my name is Arwa Mahdawi and I would like to cancel myself, please. I have a book to sell, you see, and it would seem that the easiest way to drum up a lot of free publicity these days is to declare yourself the latest victim of cancel culture. Suddenly everyone is inviting you on the telly to wax on about how you’ve been cruelly silenced by the woke mob. “Nobody can say anything any more!” the usual pundits lament in their 972nd piece on whether cancel culture has gone too far. “Free speech is dead! It’s just like Nineteen Eighty-Four!”I don’t know if Big Brother is going to let me share this, but I have something terribly shocking to tell you about cancel culture. Here we go: you should definitely be worried, but it’s not the woke mob you need to be worried about. A depressing amount of energy is being expended on arguing whether calling someone out for using language a lot of people perceive as bigoted is “cancel culture”. But, while endless arguments rage about the intolerant left, free speech is under a terrifying assault from the right.Want to know what real cancel culture looks like? Well, just sit back and look at the unprecedented surge of book banning efforts happening across the United States. Last year, for example, a county prosecutor’s office considered charging library employees in a conservative Wyoming city for stocking books about sex education and containing LGBTQ themes. Around the same time, Moms for Liberty, a rightwing advocacy group, tried to get a number of books banned from Tennessee schools because they contained content that disturbed them. They deemed a book about Galileo to be “anti-church”, and were outraged that a book about Martin Luther King contained “photographs of political violence”.More recently, a school board in Tennessee banned Maus, Art Spiegelman’sPulitzer prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, from its classrooms. Their reasoning? It contained eight swear words and a picture of a naked cartoon mouse. Yep, you read that right. What upset these people most about a book detailing how Jewish people were gassed to death in concentration camps by Nazis were some curse words.Let’s be clear: there is nothing particularly novel about uptight school boards in conservative areas getting worked up over material they deem offensive. However, what is happening in the US at the moment is a lot scarier than a few over-involved parents clutching their pearls over naked mice. As the American Library Association noted last year, there has been a “dramatic uptick in book challenges and outright removal of books from libraries.” The free-speech organisation, PEN America, has voiced similar concerns. “It’s a pretty startling phenomenon here in the United States to see book bans back in style, to see efforts to press criminal charges against school librarians,” the organisation’s chief executive recently told the New York Times.It’s not just school boards trying to police what kids can read about: it’s politicians, too. Last year, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, introduced proposed legislation that would let parents sue schools for teaching critical race theory to kids. To be cute, he called this the Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (W.O.K.E) Act. Now, Florida is trying to pass a bill that critics have nicknamed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which would let parents sue schools or teachers who bring up topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity. (Just a little reminder to everyone that DeSantis loves describing Florida as a beacon of freedom, in what he deems to be an increasingly authoritarian America.)In an interview with the Washington Post last week, Spiegelman warned that what is happening now should be seen as a “red alert”. Maus being banned was no anomaly, but “part of a continuum, and just a harbinger of things to come”. What can I say? If it’s the “woke mob” that scares you after all this, then you must be fast asleep.
      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
      TopicsCensorshipOpinionFreedom of speechLibrariesUS politicsLGBT rightsReligioncommentReuse this content More

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      Three Months After Coup, Myanmar Returns to the ‘Bad Old Days’

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      Every night at 8, the stern-faced newscaster on Myanmar military TV announces the day’s hunted. The mug shots of those charged with political crimes appear onscreen. Among them are doctors, students, beauty queens, actors, reporters, even a pair of makeup bloggers.Some of the faces look puffy and bruised, the likely result of interrogations. They are a warning not to oppose the military junta that seized power in a Feb. 1 coup and imprisoned the country’s civilian leaders.As the midnight insects trill, the hunt intensifies. Military censors sever the internet across most of Myanmar, matching the darkness outside with an information blackout. Soldiers sweep through the cities, arresting, abducting and assaulting with slingshots and rifles.The nightly banging on doors, as arbitrary as it is dreaded, galvanizes a frenzy of self-preservation. Residents delete their Facebook accounts, destroy incriminating mobile phone cards and erase traces of support for Myanmar’s elected government. As sleep proves elusive, it’s as if much of the nation is suffering a collective insomnia.Little more than a decade ago, the most innocuous of infractions — owning a photograph of pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi or an unregistered cellphone or a single note of foreign currency — could mean a prison sentence. Some of the military’s Orwellian diktats rivaled those of North Korea.Security forces search for protesters as they crack down on a peaceful demonstration against the military coup in Yangon, in April.The New York TimesThree months after Myanmar’s experiment in democracy was strangled by the generals’ power grab, the sense of foreboding has returned. There is no indication that it will ease. For the better part of 60 years, the military’s rule over Myanmar was animated not by grand ideology but by fear. Today, with much of the population determined to resist the coup-makers, a new junta is consolidating its grip by resorting, yet again, to a reign of terror.“Myanmar is going back to the bad old days when people were so scared that their neighbors would inform on them and they could get arrested for no reason at all,” said Ko Moe Yan Naing, a former police officer who is now in hiding after opposing the coup.Prisons are once again filled with poets, Buddhist monks and politicians. Hundreds more, many young men, have disappeared, their families ignorant of their whereabouts, according to a group that tracks the military’s detentions. More than 770 civilians have been killed by security forces since the putsch, among them dozens of children.As they did years before, people walk the streets with the adrenaline-fueled sense of neck hairs prickling, a glance from a soldier or a lingering gaze from a passer-by chilling the air.Protesters fight with security forces in Yangon in March.The New York TimesYet if the junta is reflexively returning to rule by fear, it is also holding hostage a changed country. The groundswell of opposition to the coup, which has sustained protests in hundreds of cities and towns, was surely not in the military’s game plan, making its crackdown all the riskier. Neither the outcome of the putsch nor the fate of the resistance is preordained.Myanmar’s full emergence from isolation — economic, political and social — only came five years ago when the military began sharing power with an elected government headed by Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi. A population that barely had any connection to the internet quickly made up for lost time. Today, its citizenry is well versed in social media and the power of protests tethered to global movements. They know how to spot a good political meme on the internet.Their resistance to the coup has included a national strike and a civil disobedience movement, which have paralyzed the economy and roiled the government. Banks and hospitals are all but shut. Although the United Nations has warned that half the country could be living in poverty by next year because of the pandemic and the political crisis, the democratic opposition’s resolve shows no sign of weakening.More than 770 civilians have been killed by security forces since the putsch.The New York TimesIn late March, Ma Thuzar Nwe, a history teacher, branded her skin with defiance. The tattoo on the nape of her neck reads: “Spring Revolution Feb. 2021.”The police are now stopping people on the streets, looking for evidence on their phones or bodies of support for the National Unity Government, a civilian authority set up after the elected leadership was expelled by the military. A popular tactic is to affix an image of Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the coup leader, on the sole of a shoe, smashing his face into the ground with each step. During spot checks, the police now demand that people show their soles.Ms. Thuzar Nwe says she wears her hair down to cover her tattoo, hoping the police won’t be too inquisitive.“In Myanmar culture, if a woman has a tattoo, she’s a bad girl,” she said. “I broke the rules of culture. This revolution is a rare chance to eradicate dictatorship from the country.”But the Tatmadaw, as the Myanmar military is known, has built an entire infrastructure dedicated to one purpose: perpetuating its power for power’s sake.Its bureaucracy of oppression is formidable. An army of informers, known as “dalan,” has reappeared, monitoring whispers and neighbors’ movements.The blandly named General Administration Department, a vast apparatus that remained under military control even after the army had started sharing authority with the civilian government, is once again pressuring administrators to keep tabs on everyone’s political views. And local officials have taken to banging on doors and peering in homes, as a dreaded system of household registration is reintroduced.Military vehicles during the national Armed Forces Day in Naypyidaw, Myanmar, in March.Associated PressEach morning, as residents count the dead and missing, the military’s media present its version of reality, all the more pervasive since the junta has revoked the publishing licenses of major private newspapers. Democracy will return soon, the military’s headlines insist. Banking services are running “as usual.” Health care with “modern machinery” is available. Government ministries are enjoying English-proficiency courses. Soft-shell crab cultivation is “thriving” and penetrating the foreign market.The Tatmadaw may have modernized its military arsenal, acquiring Chinese-made weapons and Russian fighter jets. But its propaganda is stuck in a time warp from back when few challenged its narrative. There is no mention in its media of the military’s killing spree, the broken economy or the growing armed resistance. On Wednesday, the State Administration Council, as the junta calls itself, banned satellite TV.For all the fear percolating in Myanmar, the resistance has only hardened. On Wednesday, the National Unity Government said it was forming a “people’s defense force” to counter the Tatmadaw. Two days before, ethnic insurgents fighting in the borderlands shot down a Tatmadaw helicopter.Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing in 2016.Hein Htet/European Pressphoto AgencyIgnoring such developments, the Tatmadaw’s media instead devote space to the supposed infractions of thousands of civilians who must be locked up for “undermining state peace and stability.” Among them are AIDS patients so weak they can barely walk.More than for the civilian population, such propaganda is meant to convince the military ranks that the coup was necessary, Tatmadaw insiders said. Sequestered in military compounds without good internet access, soldiers have little ability to tap into the outrage of fellow citizens. Their information diet is composed of military TV, military newspapers and the echo chambers of military-dominated Facebook on the rare occasions they can get online.Still, news does filter in, and some officers have broken rank. In recent weeks, about 80 Myanmar Air Force officers have deserted and are now in hiding, according to fellow military personnel.“Politics are not the business of soldiers,” said an air force captain who is now in hiding and does not want his name used because his family might be punished for his desertion. “Now the Tatmadaw have become the terrorists, and I don’t want to be part of it.”Myanmar’s citizens are now well versed in social media and the power of protests tethered to global movements, since the country opened up a few years ago.The New York TimesIn the cities, almost everyone seems to know someone who has been arrested or beaten or forced to pay a bribe to the security forces in exchange for freedom.Last month, Ma May Thaw Zin, a 19-year-old law student, joined a flash mob protest in Yangon, the country’s biggest city. The police, she said, detained several young women and crammed them into an interrogation center cell so small they barely had room to sit on the floor.For a whole day, there was no food. Ms. May Thaw Zin said she resorted to drinking from the toilet. The interrogations were just her and a clutch of men. They rubbed against her and kicked her breasts and face with their boots, she said. On the fourth day, after men shoved the barrel of a pistol against the black hood over her head, she was released. The bruises remain.Since she returned home, some family members have refused to have anything to do with her because she was caught protesting, Ms. May Thaw Zin said. Even if they hate the coup, even if they know their futures have been blunted, the instincts of survival have kicked in.“They are afraid,” she said, but “I can’t accept that my country will go back to the old dark age.”Riot police prepared to remove protesters who attempted to block a motorcade of security forces in February.The New York Times More