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      ‘Breeding grounds for radicalization’: Capitol attack panel signals loss of patience with big tech

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      ‘Breeding grounds for radicalization’: Capitol attack panel signals loss of patience with big techSubpoenas are an escalation in the committee’s efforts for answers as companies ignored information requests The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol has ordered several social media firms to hand over data relating to the attack, asignificant step toward transparency that could have broader privacy implications.Facebook whistleblower to claim company contributed to Capitol attackRead moreThe committee on Thursday subpoenaed Twitter, Meta, Alphabet and Reddit for private messages exchanged on the platforms about the attack aas well as information regarding moderation policies that allowed communities to remain online even as they incited violence in early 2021.Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the select committee, said the committee is seeking to answer two key questions: how the spread of misinformation contributed to the violent attack, and what steps social media companies took to prevent their platforms from “being breeding grounds for radicalizing people to violence”.The subpoenas mark an escalation in the committee’s efforts to get answers from the tech companies. Thompson added in his letter that the subpoenas came after “months of engagement” with the firms and that the four companies have so far ignored requests for information.“We cannot allow our important work to be delayed any further,” he said.The panel in August asked 15 tech companies, including the four subpoenaed on Thursday as well as TikTok, Snapchat, Parler and 4chan, for records related to the riot.In letters sent this week the tech firms, Thompson lamented their lack of response. In a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Thompson said that “despite repeated and specific requests for documents” related to Facebook’s practices on election misinformation and violent content, the committee had still not received these materials.Following the January 6 attack, social media platforms have been scrutinized for amplifying calls to violence, spreading misinformation and serving as an organizing tool for the rioters.Last March, lawmakers grilled the CEOs of Google, Twitter and Facebook about the platforms’ role in the Capitol riot. And in the months since, the major platforms have all announced initiatives to curb the spread of misinformation through their products.But still, much about the content moderation policies of major tech firms remains black box, with executives slow to reveal details of how misinformation and hate speech is moderated and how many resources are dedicated to mitigating such issues. Now, increased transparency could come by means of subpoena.For lawmakers, the problem came even more acutely into focus with papers leaked by whistleblower Frances Haugen in October 2021, which showed how Facebook failed to enforce policies that would rein in hate speech because they were detrimental to its bottom line. Speaking to Congress, Haugen called for more transparency from Facebook and other companies, including an independent oversight board.In a letter to Zuckerberg, the select committee cited revelations from Haugen, requesting access to the company’s internal analyses of the spread of misinformation and calls to violence relating to the 2020 election.In particular, the committee requested more information on the “Stop the Steal” movement and how it was regulated. A “Stop the Steal” Facebook group amassed hundreds of thousands of members and was used to coordinate some of the actions on January 6. While Facebook eventually took it down, other related pages stayed online, said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate.“It is absolutely crucial to understand the decision making process that led to them to leave those pages online – how they executed enforcement of their policies against violence, encouraging violence, intimidation, extremism and hate.”Similarly, Reddit has been requested to provide information on its community r/The_Donald, which was used to plan the January 6 action before it was banned weeks later on 27 January.Lawmakers were also seeking materials from Alphabet, the parent company of YouTube, because the video platform hosted significant communications by key players in the Capitol attack, including Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon and rioters livestreaming their movements on January 6.Activists say the need to hold companies accountable for how their policies contributed to the Capitol riots should be held in balance with civil rights and privacy protections.The subpoenas may bring up privacy concerns, said Evan Greer, deputy director of digital rights group Fight for the Future. “Forcing companies to hand over private messages of its users could have major privacy implications,” Greer said.“It’s essential to remember that government surveillance and demands for data from private companies are primarily weaponized against marginalized communities,” they said. “The white supremacists who stormed the Capitol deserve to be held accountable, but we should never cheer on expansions of surveillance or government overreach.”Twitter, Meta, Alphabet and Reddit did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment. TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsFacebookMetaTwitterAlphabetRedditfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Capitol attack panel subpoenas Google, Facebook and Twitter for digital records

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      Capitol attack panel subpoenas Google, Facebook and Twitter for digital recordsSelect committee seeks records related to January 6 attackMove suggests panel is ramping up inquiry of social media posts The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack subpoenaed Twitter, Meta, Alphabet and Reddit on Thursday for records related to the 6 January insurrection, as it seeks to review data that could potentially incriminate the Trump White House.Facebook is part of Meta and Google is part of Alphabet.The move by the select committee suggests the panel is ramping up its examination of social media posts and messages that could provide evidentiary evidence as to who might have been in contact with the Trump White House around 6 January, one source said.Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the select committee, said in a statement that he authorized the four subpoenas since those platforms were used to communicate plans about the Capitol attack, and yet the social media companies ignored earlier requests.The subpoenas to the four social media companies were the last straw for the select committee after repeated engagements with the platforms went unheeded, Thompson said in letters that amounted to stinging rebukes over the platforms’ lack of cooperation.Thompson said in the subpoena letter to Twitter that the select committee was interested in obtaining key documents House investigators suspect the company is withholding that could shed light on how users used the platform to plan and execute the Capitol attack.The chairman said the select committee was interested in records from Reddit, since the “r/The_Donald” subreddit that eventually migrated to a website of the same name hosted significant discussion and planning related to the Capitol attack.Thompson said House investigators were seeking materials from Alphabet, the parent company of YouTube, which was a platform for significant communications by its users who played key roles in the Capitol attack.The select committee has been examining digital fingerprints left by the Trump White House and other individuals connected to the Capitol attack since the outset of the investigation, on everything from posts that show geolocations to metadata, the source said.To that end, the select committee issued data preservation requests to 35 telecom and social media companies in August, demanding that they save the materials in the event the panel’s technical team required their release, the source said.The Guardian first reported that month that the select committee, among other individuals, had requested the telecom and social media firms preserve the records of the former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in addition to a dozen House Republicans.The select committee gave the social media companies a 27 January deadline to comply with the subpoenas, but it was not clear whether the organizations would comply. A spokesperson for Twitter and Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Congressman Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House minority leader who refused a request for cooperation late on Wednesday by the select committee, has previously threatened telecom and social media companies if they comply with the bipartisan panel’s investigation.“If these companies comply with the Democrat order to turn over private information, they are in violation of federal law,” McCarthy said at the time in August. “A Republican majority will not forget and will stand with Americans to hold them fully accountable under the law.”TopicsUS Capitol attackFacebookGoogleUS politicsSocial networkingAlphabetnewsReuse this content More

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      Facebook’s very bad year. No, really, it might be the worst yet

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      Facebook’s very bad year. No, really, it might be the worst yet From repeated accusations of fostering misinformation to multiple whistleblowers, the company weathered some battles in 2021It’s a now-perennial headline: Facebook has had a very bad year.Years of mounting pressure from Congress and the public culminated in repeated PR crises, blockbuster whistleblower revelations and pending regulation over the past 12 months.And while the company’s bottom line has not yet wavered, 2022 is not looking to be any better than 2021 – with more potential privacy and antitrust actions on the horizon.Here are some of the major battles Facebook has weathered in the past year.Capitol riots launch a deluge of scandalsFacebook’s year started with allegations that a deadly insurrection on the US Capitol was largely planned on its platform. Regulatory uproar over the incident reverberated for months, leading lawmakers to call CEO Mark Zuckerberg before Congress to answer for his platform’s role in the attack.In the aftermath, Zuckerberg defended his decision not to take action against Donald Trump, though the former president stoked anger and separatist flames on his personal and campaign accounts. Facebook’s inaction led to a rare public employee walkout and Zuckerberg later reversed the hands-off approach to Trump. Barring Trump from Facebook platforms sparked backlash once again – this time from Republican lawmakers alleging censorship.What ensued was a months-long back-and-forth between Facebook and its independent oversight board, with each entity punting the decision of whether to keep Trump off the platform. Ultimately, Facebook decided to extend Trump’s suspension to two years. Critics said this underscored the ineffectiveness of the body. “What is the point of the oversight board?” asked the Real Oversight Board, an activist group monitoring Facebook, after the non-verdict.Whistleblowers take on FacebookThe scandal with perhaps the biggest impact on the company this year came in the form of the employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen, who leaked internal documents that exposed some of the inner workings of Facebook and just how much the company knew about the harmful effects its platform was having on users and society.Haugen’s revelations, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, showed Facebook was aware of many of its grave public health impacts and had the means to mitigate them – but chose not to do so.For instance, documents show that since at least 2019, Facebook has studied the negative impact Instagram had on teenage girls and yet did little to mitigate the harms and publicly denied that was the case. Those findings in particular led Congress to summon company executives to multiple hearings on the platform and teen users.Facebook has since paused its plans to launch an Instagram app for kids and introduced new safety measures encouraging users to take breaks if they use the app for long periods of time. In a Senate hearing on 8 December, the Instagram executive Adam Mosseri called on Congress to launch an independent body tasked with regulating social media more comprehensively, sidestepping calls for Instagram to regulate itself.Haugen also alleged Facebook’s tweaks to its algorithm, which turned off some safeguards intended to fight misinformation, may have led to the Capitol attack. She provided information underscoring how little of its resources it dedicates to moderating non-English language content.In response to the Haugen documents, Congress has promised legislation and drafted a handful of new bills to address Facebook’s power. One controversial measure would target Section 230, a portion of the Communications Decency Act that exempts companies from liability for content posted on their platforms.Haugen was not the only whistleblower to take on Facebook in 2021. In April, the former Facebook data scientist turned whistleblower Sophie Zhang revealed to the Guardian that Facebook repeatedly allowed world leaders and politicians to use its platform to deceive the public or harass opponents. Zhang has since been called to testify on these findings before parliament in the UK and India.Lawmakers around the world are eager to hear from the Facebook whistleblowers. Haugen also testified in the UK regarding the documents she leaked, telling MPs Facebook “prioritizes profit over safety”.Such testimony is likely to influence impending legislation, including the Online Safety Bill: a proposed act in the UK that would task the communications authority Ofcom with regulating content online and requiring tech firms to protect users from harmful posts or face substantial fines.Zuckerberg and Cook feud over Apple updateThough Apple has had its fair share of regulatory battles, Facebook did not find an ally in its fellow tech firm while facing down the onslaught of consumer and regulatory pressure that 2021 brought.The iPhone maker in April launched a new notification system to alert users when and how Facebook was tracking their browsing habits, supposedly as a means to give them more control over their privacy.Facebook objected to the new policy, arguing Apple was doing so to “self-preference their own services and targeted advertising products”. It said the feature would negatively affect small businesses relying on Facebook to advertise. Apple pressed on anyway, rolling it out in April and promising additional changes in 2022.Preliminary reports suggest Apple is, indeed, profiting from the change while Google and Facebook have seen advertising profits fall.Global outage takes out all Facebook productsIn early October, just weeks after Haugen’s revelations, things took a sudden turn for the worse when the company faced a global service outage.Perhaps Facebook’s largest and most sustained tech failure in recent history, the glitch left billions of users unable to access Facebook, Instagram or Whatsapp for six hours on 4 and 5 October.Facebook’s share price dropped 4.9% that day, cutting Zuckerberg’s personal wealth by $6bn, according to Bloomberg.Other threats to FacebookAs Facebook faces continuing calls for accountability, its time as the wunderkind of Silicon Valley has come to a close and it has become a subject of bipartisan contempt.Republicans repeatedly have accused Facebook of being biased against conservatism, while liberals have targeted the platform for its monopolistic tendencies and failure to police misinformation.In July, the Biden administration began to take a harder line with the company over vaccine misinformation – which Joe Biden said was “killing people” and the US surgeon general said was “spreading like wildfire” on the platform. Meanwhile, the appointment of the antitrust thought leader Lina Khan to head of the FTC spelled trouble for Facebook. She has been publicly critical of the company and other tech giants in the past, and in August refiled a failed FTC case accusing Facebook of anti-competitive practices.After a year of struggles, Facebook has thrown something of a Hail Mary: changing its name. The company announced it would now be called Meta, a reference to its new “metaverse” project, which will create a virtual environment where users can spend time.The name change was met with derision and skepticism from critics. But it remains to be seen whether Facebook, by any other name, will beat the reputation that precedes it.TopicsFacebookTim CookMark ZuckerbergUS CongressUS Capitol attackAppleUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      VR experience offers journey into US president's nuclear bunker – video

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      Nuclear Biscuit, a simulated experience, allows US officials to wargame a missile attack and see the devastating consequences of their choices. 
      Players experience what the president would have to do in the event of a nuclear crisis: make a decision that would end many millions of lives – and quite possibly civilisation on the planet – with incomplete information and in less than 15 minutes. Here’s a snippet of the game as completed by Julian Borger, our world affairs editor

      ‘15 minutes to save the world’: a terrifying VR journey into the nuclear bunker More

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      Instagram CEO testifies before Congress over platform’s impact on kids

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      Instagram CEO testifies before Congress over platform’s impact on kidsAdam Mosseri defends platform and calls for creation of body to determine best practices to help keep young people safe online The head of Instagram began testimony before US lawmakers on Wednesday afternoon about protecting children online, in the latest congressional hearing scrutinizing the social media platform’s impact on young users.Adam Mosseri defended the platform and called for the creation of an industry body to determine best practices to help keep young people safe online. Mosseri said in written testimony before the Senate commerce consumer protection panel the industry body should address “how to verify age, how to design age-appropriate experiences, and how to build parental controls”.“We all want teens to be safe online,” Mosseri said in opening statements. “The internet isn’t going away, and I believe there’s important work that we can do together – industry and policymakers – to raise the standards across the internet to better serve and protect young people.”Instagram and its parent company, Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook), have been facing global criticism over the ways their services affect the mental health, body image and online safety of younger users.In opening statements, Senator Richard Blumenthal promised to be “ruthless” in the hearing, saying “the time for self-policing and self-regulation is over”.“Self policing depends on trust, and the trust is gone,” he said. “The magnitude of these problems requires both and broad solutions and accountability which has been lacking so far.”In November, a bipartisan coalition of US state attorneys general said it had opened an inquiry into Meta for promoting Instagram to children despite potential harms. And in September, US lawmakers grilled Facebook’s head of safety, Antigone Davis, about the impacts of the company’s products on children.The scrutiny follows the release of internal Facebook documents by a former employee turned whistleblower, which revealed the company’s own internal research showed Instagram negatively affected the mental health of teens, particularly regarding body image issues.Ahead of Wednesday’s hearing, Instagram said it will be stricter about the types of content it recommends to teens and will nudge young users toward different areas if they dwell on one topic for a long time.In a blogpost published on Tuesday, the social media service announced it was switching off the ability for people to tag or mention teens who do not follow them on the app and would enable teen users to to bulk delete their content and previous likes and comments.In the blogpost, Mosseri also said Instagram was exploring controls to limit potentially harmful or sensitive material, was working on parental control tools and was launching a “Take a Break” feature, which reminds people to take a brief pause from the app after using it for a certain amount of time, in certain countries.Democratic senator and chair of the panel, Richard Blumenthal called the company’s product announcement “baby steps”.“They are more a PR gambit than real action done within hours of the CEO testifying that are more to distract than really solve the problem,” he told Politico.Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn criticized the company’s product announcement as “hollow”, saying in a statement: “Meta is attempting to shift attention from their mistakes by rolling out parental guides, use timers and content control features that consumers should have had all along.”An Instagram spokeswoman said the company would continue its pause on plans for a version of Instagram for kids. Instagram suspended plans for that project in September amid growing opposition to the project.TopicsInstagramUS CongressUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Elon Musk targets Bernie Sanders over tax: ‘I keep forgetting you’re still alive’

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      Elon Musk targets Bernie Sanders over tax: ‘I keep forgetting you’re still alive’
      Tesla founder responds to senator’s ‘fair share’ tweet
      Musk sold nearly $7bn of stock after controversial Twitter poll
      Biden approval ratings plunge amid crisis over inflation
      Elon Musk waded into yet another Twitter controversy on Sunday, the Tesla owner and world’s richest person responding to a tweet about tax from Senator Bernie Sanders by writing: “I keep forgetting that you’re still alive.”If the super-rich want to live for ever our planet is truly doomed | John HarrisRead moreSanders, 80, wrote: “We must demand that the extremely wealthy pay their fair share. Period.”Musk, 50, is also the owner of SpaceX and has a personal worth estimated at around $271bn, making him by some counts the richest person ever.He also tweeted: “Want me to sell more stock, Bernie? Just say the word …”Sanders did not immediately respond. Melissa Byrne, a progressive activist and former Sanders staffer, tweeted: “Folks, quit buying Tesla. Don’t reward abusive men.”This week, Musk sold nearly $7bn of shares in Tesla, more than $5bn after asking Twitter followers to vote on whether he should do so and more than $1bn on Friday.Jason Benowitz, senior portfolio manager at Roosevelt Investment Group in New York, told Reuters: “We expect the share sales will continue, as Musk holds millions of options worth billions of dollars that would otherwise expire worthless, and he has also prearranged share sales.”Tesla’s share price fell after Musk’s Twitter followers said he should sell stock. But the shares remain hugely valuable.Musk staged the Twitter poll to make a point about a “billionaires tax” proposed by Democrats in Congress, saying: “Note, I do not take a cash salary or bonus from anywhere. I only have stock, thus the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock.”Proponents of the billionaires tax say they want to target “unrealised capital gains”, meaning rises in the value of stocks owned by ultra-rich Americans who currently pay very little in tax.Sanders is a democratic socialist independent from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats in the Senate. He rose to global prominence with strong runs for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020, losing out to Hillary Clinton and then Joe Biden.As chair of the Senate budget committee and a champion of fairness in taxation, Sanders is pushing for Biden’s Build Back Better package of spending on health and social care and climate crisis mitigation to make it out of Congress and into law.Build Back Better would be funded by tax increases on corporations and the very wealthy. The billionaires tax is not part of the package but its chief proponent, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, condemned Musk’s Twitter stunt last week.Saying he wanted to “ensure billionaires pay tax every year, just like working Americans”, Wyden added: “Whether or not the world’s wealthiest man pays any taxes at all shouldn’t depend on the results of a Twitter poll.”Musk has a history of controversial – and sometimes costly – behaviour on social media. In October, he responded to Wyden’s tax proposals with a tweet.“Eventually they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you.”TopicsElon MuskUS taxationBernie SandersUS politicsUS domestic policyTeslanewsReuse this content More

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      Prince Harry says he warned Twitter boss a day before Capitol riot

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      Prince HarryPrince Harry says he warned Twitter boss a day before Capitol riot‘I warned him his platform was allowing a coup to be staged. I haven’t heard from him since,’ Harry says01:18Sarah Marsh@sloumarshWed 10 Nov 2021 06.24 ESTLast modified on Wed 10 Nov 2021 08.55 ESTPrince Harry has said he warned Twitter’s boss Jack Dorsey about his platform allowing political unrest a day before the Capitol riot that led to five deaths.The Duke of Sussex made the comments at the RE:WIRED tech forum in the US. He said: “I warned him his platform was allowing a coup to be staged. That email was sent the day before. And then it happened and I haven’t heard from him since.”On the day of the 6 January riots, Donald Trump tweeted allegations of vote fraud before a rally in Washington DC. Members of the Proud Boy movement, a rightwing militia, stormed the Capitol to disrupt the official certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the White House race, as part of an attempt to overturn the election result.Harry was speaking via video chat at a session discussing whether social media was contributing to misinformation and online hatred. Dorsey, who is Twitter’s chief executive, has so far not commented.A study released in October by the social media analytics service Bot Sentinel identified 83 accounts on Twitter that it said were responsible for 70% of hateful content and misinformation aimed at Harry and his wife, Meghan.Harry said that “perhaps the most disturbing part of this [study] was the number of British journalists who were interacting with them and amplifying the lies. But they regurgitate these lies as truth.”He said social media companies were not doing enough to stop the spread of misinformation, and the internet was “being defined by hate, division and lies”.He also argued that the word “Megxit”, used by the British press to describe the couple’s decision to quit their royal duties, was misogynistic.Harry said the word was an example of online and media hatred. “Maybe people know this and maybe they don’t, but the term ‘Megxit’ was or is a misogynistic term, and it was created by a troll, amplified by royal correspondents, and it grew and grew and grew into mainstream media. But it began with a troll,” he said. He did not elaborate.Harry and Meghan moved to California last year to lead a more independent life. He has said that part of the reason for their departure was the racist treatment of Meghan, whose mother is black and whose father is white, by the British tabloid media.TopicsPrince HarryTwitterJack DorseyUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      Senator behind billionaires tax denounces Elon Musk Twitter poll stunt

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      US taxationSenator behind billionaires tax denounces Elon Musk Twitter poll stuntTesla owner offers to sell 10% of shares – as poll demandsRon Wyden has proposed tax to help fund Biden plans Martin Pengelly in New York@MartinPengellySun 7 Nov 2021 14.19 ESTFirst published on Sun 7 Nov 2021 07.45 ESTAfter Elon Musk asked his Twitter followers to vote on whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock, the architect of the proposed billionaires tax that prompted the move dismissed the tweet as a stunt.It’s not all about the culture war – Democrats helped shaft the working class | Robert ReichRead more“Whether or not the world’s wealthiest man pays any taxes at all shouldn’t depend on the results of a Twitter poll,” said Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and chair of the Senate finance committee. “It’s time for the billionaires income tax.”When the poll closed on Sunday, nearly 3.5 million people had voted: 58% said Musk should sell the Tesla stock and 42% said he should not.Asked for comment, he tweeted: “I was prepared to accept either outcome.”Musk, who also owns SpaceX, was named by Forbes magazine as the first person worth more than $300bn. Reuters calculated that selling 10% of his Tesla shareholding would raise close to $21bn.Wyden has led Democrats pushing for billionaires to pay taxes when stock prices go up even if they do not sell shares, a concept called “unrealised gains”.Proponents of the tax say it would affect about 700 super-rich Americans, who would thus help pay for Joe Biden’s $1.75tn 10-year public spending proposal, which seeks to boost health and social care and to fund initiatives to tackle the climate crisis.Unveiling his proposal last month, Wyden said: “There are two tax codes in America. The first is mandatory for workers who pay taxes out of every paycheck. The second is voluntary for billionaires who defer paying taxes for years, if not indefinitely.“The billionaires income tax would ensure billionaires pay tax every year, just like working Americans. No working person in America thinks it’s right that they pay their taxes and billionaires don’t.”Musk has a history of controversial behaviour on Twitter. Responding to Wyden’s original proposal, he tweeted: “Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you.”On Saturday, he said: “Much is made lately of unrealised gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?“I will abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes. Note, I do not take a cash salary or bonus from anywhere. I only have stock, thus the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock.”In one response, the Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman tweeted: “Looking forward to the day when the richest person in the world paying some tax does not depend on a Twitter poll.”When Wyden introduced his proposed billionaires tax, Chuck Marr of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan think tank, used the example of Jeff Bezos, with Musk a competitor for the title of world’s richest person, to explain how the proposal would work.The Amazon founder, Marr said, would contribute to the federal government on the basis of unrealised gains from his stock holdings, worth around $10bn, rather than a declared salary of around $80,000.Citing a bombshell ProPublica report from June this year which showed how little Bezos, Musk and other super-rich Americans pay into federal coffers, Marr titled his analysis: “Why a billionaires tax makes sense – or why the richest people in the country should pay income taxes as if they were the richest people in the country.”Democrats ‘thank God’ for infrastructure win after state election warningsRead moreThe Biden spending plan Wyden wants to help fund, known as Build Back Better, remains held up in Congress. House centrists are demanding nonpartisan analysis of its costs while centrist senators remain opposed to many of its goals.Democrats are also split over the proposed billionaires tax. Among those opposed is Joe Manchin, the senator from West Virginia who with Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona stands in the way of Build Back Better, wielding tremendous power in a chamber split 50-50 and therefore controlled by the casting vote of Vice-President Kamala Harris.Speaking to reporters in October, Manchin said: “Everybody in this country that has been blessed and prospered should pay a patriotic tax.“If you’re to the point where you can use all of the tax forms to your advantage, and you end up with a zero tax-liability but have had a very, very good life and have had a lot of opportunities, there should be a 15% patriotic tax.”TopicsUS taxationElon MuskUS domestic policyBiden administrationUS SenateUS CongressUS politicsnewsReuse this content More