Well Spoken, Paul Ryan
It took a big story to unseat Mark Zuckerberg’s Hill testimony as the top headline of the day — but the news of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) retirement was exactly that. Just three years after stepping into a role that Ryan never sought, the Wisconsin leader announced that he was leaving for another full-time job: dad.
It took a big story to unseat Mark Zuckerberg’s Hill testimony as the top headline yesterday — but the news of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) retirement was exactly that. Just three years after stepping into a role that Ryan never sought, the Wisconsin leader announced that he was leaving for another full-time job: dad.
Nineteen years into his congressional career, Speaker Ryan felt the tug of home in his heart. Contemplating on the fact that he lost his father at the same age his oldest is now — 16 — prompted a redirection. “My kids aren’t getting any younger,” the dad of three told reporters, “and if I stay, they’ll only know me as a weekend dad. That’s it right there.” To be clear, Ryan said, “I am not resigning. I intend to fully serve my term as I was elected to do, but I will be retiring in January, leaving this majority in good hands with what I believe will be a bright future.”
Ryan, who was just 28 when he was elected, had always been considered a rising political star. From working tables at Tortilla Coast to being elected speaker of the House was a path even he couldn’t have predicted. “You all know I did not seek this job,” Ryan said, addressing reporters. “I took it reluctantly. But I have to thank my colleagues for giving me this opportunity and this honor. I have no regrets.” After the tumultuous reign of John Boehner, Ryan took the gavel with the goal to bring the fractured parts of the party together. Even now, with a record number of conservatives on the Hill, that’s been difficult — if not, at times, downright impossible.
Despite the struggle of presiding over a deeply divided House, Ryan managed to bring his caucus together when it counted, passing more pro-life bills out of the House than any of his recent predecessors. As he told the hundreds of thousands at the March for Life, “The pro-life movement is on the rise because we have love on our side. We believe every person is worthy of love and dignity.” And he believed that. Several times, he led to the charge to defund Planned Parenthood, passing the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act twice, the Conscience Protection Act twice, the Born Alive Survivor’s Protection Act, and last year’s House omnibus spending bill, which had more new values riders than ever before. Unfortunately for Paul Ryan, those — along with so much of the progress he tried to make on social issues — died in a Senate wasteland, where the Republican majority was either too slim or too comfortable with the status quo to finish the job.
In an era when the American people desperately wanted to repeal Obamacare, Speaker Ryan shepherded repeal bills through the House and finally made the sweeping tax reforms that motivated him to run for Congress to begin with. For Ryan, a self-described budget wonk, there was probably no greater thrill than overseeing the most significant tax changes since the Reagan era. During four standing ovations in yesterday’s GOP meeting, he mentioned it among his proudest moments, along with giving the military a long-overdue funding boost.
Although Ryan’s announcement is only hours old, the race to replace the speaker is already well underway. The two leading contenders to pick up the gavel are House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA). While both men are friends and have solid conservative ideologies, this contest for House speaker, which is primarily a contest among House members, will be more about the political process than political ideology. There is a lot of pent-up frustration among conservatives in the House that the GOP hasn’t fought harder to hold the line on core conservative principles — the latest example being the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill. Conservative members, whose ranks have grown significantly since 2010, will demand greater representation within the circle of committee leadership and a more open process that allows members to freely debate and amend legislation.
What the House does in the next four to five months will determine who sits in the speaker’s chair. If the GOP continues its posture with votes on Balanced Budget Amendments rather than real efforts like a rescission proposal on the omnibus spending bill that would eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood and chart a path toward a budget similar to the one the Trump administration presented, it may not have to worry about the speaker’s race. If Nancy Pelosi’s party recaptures the majority in the House, expect a revolution among the GOP members when it comes to their leadership.
Originally published here.
A Faceoff Over Facebook
It was a Zuckerberg zoo on Capitol Hill again yesterday, where the Facebook CEO sat down for his second day of questioning before dozens of House and Senate members. By far the most anticipated hearings of the year, the 33-year-old billionaire was grilled on everything from the company’s privacy policy to its position on free speech. After all, if Facebook is unfriending anyone lately, it’s conservatives!
Just this year, the company announced a change to its algorithm that seems to have radically affected conservative news feeds. The Western Journal’s analysis points to a huge rise in liberal site promotion, while conservative publishers are losing an average of roughly 14 percent of their Facebook traffic. Coincidence? Not hardly. While the company insists it’s all part of its “news curation” strategy, Hill members agree: It’s more like code for political censorship. As George Upper explains:
This algorithm change, intentional or not, has in effect censored conservative viewpoints on the largest social media platform in the world. This change has ramifications that, in the short-term, are causing conservative publishers to downsize or fold up completely, and in the long-term could swing elections in the United States and around the world toward liberal politicians and policies.
Facebook has argued that the company is “taking a step to try to define what ‘quality news’ looks like and give that a boost.” But who defines what “quality news” is? Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) made that exact point in his questioning of the tech mogul Tuesday.
Mr. Zuckerberg, I will say there are a great many Americans who I think are deeply concerned that that Facebook and other tech companies are engaged in a pervasive pattern of bias and political censorship. There have been numerous instances with Facebook. In May of 2016, Gizmodo reported that Facebook had purposely and routinely suppressed conservative stories from trending news, including stories about CPAC, including stories about Mitt Romney, including stories about the Lois Lerner IRS scandal, including stories about Glenn Beck.
In addition to that, Facebook has initially shut down the Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day page, has blocked a post of a Fox News reporter, has blocked over two dozen Catholic pages, and most recently blocked Trump supporters Diamond and Silk’s page, with 1.2 million Facebook followers, after determining their content and brand were, quote, ‘unsafe to the community.’ To a great many Americans that appears to be a pervasive pattern of political bias. Do you agree with that assessment?
Zuckerberg replied that he understood where the concern is coming from since “Facebook and the tech industry are located in Silicon Valley, which is an extremely left-leaning place.” He told the group that he’s tried to make sure “that we do not have any bias in the work that we do.” Unfortunately, not very effectively. After insisting that no Republicans had been marginalized by his new algorithms, the House’s Fred Upton (R-MI) read a campaign announcement from a conservative candidate for state senate in his home state that mentioned being pro-life and pro-Second Amendment. Facebook said it violated its standards. Zuckerberg faltered, suggesting that it might be an error, and they would follow up.
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) continued the theme, zeroing in on life. “There are some really passionately held views about the abortion issue on this panel today. Can you imagine a world where you might decide that pro-lifers are prohibited from speaking about their abortion views on your content — on your platform?” Zuckerberg replied that he “would not want that to be the case,” only to go on to explain how artificial intelligence (AI) is proactively looking at content, which, as even he admits, will “create massive questions.” No one, Sasse continued, would want the Facebook CEO to leave and think “there’s sort of a unified view in the Congress that you should be moving toward policing more and more and more speech.” On the contrary, he continued, “Sex traffickers and human traffickers have no place on your platform. But vigorous debates? Adults need to engage in vigorous debates.” But, he shook his head:
I think you guys have a hard challenge. I think regulation over time will have a hard challenge. And you’re a private company so you can make policies that may be less than First Amendment full-spirit-embracing in my view. But I worry about that. I worry about a world where when you go from violent groups to hate speech in a hurry — and one of your responses to the opening questions, you may decide, or Facebook may decide, it needs to police a whole bunch of speech, that I think America might be better off not having policed by one company that has a really big and powerful platform. Can you define hate speech?
“I think that this is a really hard question,” Zuckerberg replied. “And I think it’s one of the reasons why we struggle with it. There are certain definitions that — that we — that we have around, you know, calling for violence or…” He didn’t finish. Unfortunately, he didn’t need to. As conservatives know, Facebook — just like Google, YouTube, Twitter, and others — have increasingly filtered out or shut down conversations on anything from pro-life movie trailers to its employees’ pro-Trump chatroom.
At the end of the day, what most Americans want is transparency. If Facebook holds itself out as a public service, a virtual public square, then it can’t have an algorithmic bouncer kicking people out just because it disagrees with their political or moral views. As Sen. Sasse pointed out, Facebook may be a private entity, but it’s virtually monopolizing the public square. And with that responsibility comes a higher expectation that civil conversations will be allowed. Just because Zuckerberg — or his leadership team — disagrees with someone doesn’t meant he should shut them down. This growing understanding that Big Tech is picking and choosing who can speak in the virtual public square may help explain why there’s been a jump in the number of Americans who want to see more government regulation. And in the end, that isn’t the answer. Responsible ownership is.
Originally published here.
Can Evangelicals Save the GOP?
In an election that will almost certainly come down to turnout, there’s some genuine anxiety that Republicans won’t be able to close the midterm gap. What role will evangelicals play in that equation? A big one, some strategists say.
They were the winning ticket for Donald Trump — a 2016 base of animated churchgoers. But will they do the same for Congress’s Republicans in the midterm? Conservative leaders are worried the answer is no. In a new column for McClatchy News, a scrambling GOP thinks the evangelicals who supported Trump aren’t as motivated to save them in 2018.
They’re right to be worried. Despite majorities in the House and Senate, most pro-lifers were hoping for a bigger return on their congressional investment. The inability to repeal Obamacare and defund Planned Parenthood only frustrated voters more. With just a handful of months to keep their grip on Washington, if Republicans want to convince Americans they can be trusted with the reins of government, they need to be focused on making good on promises made.
And while some in the left-leaning media have pinned the flagging excitement on the rumors about Donald Trump’s past, the problem isn’t the president. On the contrary, I think the president is actually the key to a successful midterm election. Evangelicals are motivated by the agenda that Trump has embraced — which is, in most ways, our agenda. If Republicans want to generate more enthusiasm, they need to point to the policy gains of the Trump administration and remind voters that the only way to protect them is to elect conservatives who will defend them.
Tuesday, I spoke to a group of Southern Baptist Convention mega-church pastors here in DC, and I can tell you: Evangelicals aren’t frustrated. They’ve watched the president restore the understanding of religious freedom in the country — which is giving pastors the ability to fulfill their calling. Like us, they understand that the way to transform the culture is by transforming lives, which is only accomplished by the gospel, and that’s given many pastors a sense of urgency. Now is the time to reach out and evangelize — to challenge people to live out their faith. I challenged the pastors to seize this moment and reminded them that the people in the pews will only be as courageous as the pastors in the pulpit.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
