The biggest fraud of the 2020 election had nothing to do with ballots or voting machine or even liberal officials. This election was rigged by something else entirely: Big Tech. And now, days before the results are even certified, Silicon Valley is making it clear — they aren’t done.

Americans are used to the mainstream media putting their thumb on the scales. In the Trump era, no industry has been more blatant about its disgust of the Republican leader and his supporters than the press. The veneer of neutrality, if anyone even remembers those days, is long gone — replaced by a ferocious bias against anything resembling conservatism. With just nine percent of the country convinced the media is credible, a lot of Americans turned to places like social media to have the honest debate journalists won’t. Turns out, Big Tech isn’t interested in a free forum anymore, and there’s no better proof than this year.

With its Chinese-level censorship, skewed algorithms, and rolling conservative blackouts, “nobody meddled in the 2020 election like Big Media and Big Tech,” Mollie Hemingway argued. On one hand, they suppressed information that would hurt Democrats on one hand and silenced voices of truth on the other. And this wasn’t just one platform — this was a coordinated effort across Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and its parent company, Google.

Now, with legal challenges still ongoing, YouTube has decided to turn its thought control up a notch. In an announcement Wednesday, the company announced that it would no longer allow videos questioning the election’s results or irregularities. “Yesterday was the safe harbor deadline for the U.S. Presidential election,” the company posted, “and enough states have certified their election results to determine a president-elect. Given that, we will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or any time after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election…”

For example, the company warned, “we will remove videos claiming that a presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or counting errors. We will begin enforcing this policy today and will ramp up in the weeks to come.”

In other words, if YouTube has declared Joe Biden president, everyone else must too. It’s a breathtaking display of information suppression — the kind we’d expect out of the former Soviet Union, not the United States. The message from our tech overlords is simple: “We’ll decide what you see and how you think about it.” Frankly, it’s mind-boggling the lengths that these companies will go to just to stop Americans’ exposure to a variety of facts and opinions. It’s even scarier, many have pointed out, that almost “all information in the English-speaking world travels through a single company, Google.” That’s a problem when the majority of our political conversations occur online.

This liberal monopoly — the quiet political conspiracy between Big Tech giants — is what’s driving so many Republicans to demand change. Right now, Americans have absolutely recourse when these companies attack their free speech. Twitter, Facebook, Google — they’re all immune from government accountability under the outdated law that’s regulating communications. So when President Trump talks about stripping Big Tech of their liability, he means that it’s time to crack down on anyone who would try to control American messaging. And thanks to examples like YouTube, conservatives will be more than motivated to try.

Already, 48 states have filed anti-trust lawsuits to break apart the Facebook empire. The Federal Trade Commission is suing as well, on a parallel track. Making matters worse for Big Tech, Democrats wouldn’t mind seeing them succeed. They don’t mind the conservative censorship, of course, but they do mind monopolies. And that’s what these companies have — both sides would argue — in more ways than one.

Originally published here.

Here Comes Electors Clause!

If Joe Biden wins the presidency because state officials ignored their own laws, it won’t just be Donald Trump who’s lost — it’ll be the people of Texas, Alabama, South Carolina, Florida, and so many others who’ve lost their right to be represented. Those voters deserve to be heard. And thanks to 18 state attorneys general, they might finally get the chance.

Like the 40 other lawsuits challenging the November 3rd results, the media doesn’t give this one a chance. But unlike the 40 other lawsuits, the press has decided to lift its blackout and comment. Could they be worried about the Texas case? Their over-the-top reaction certainly makes it seem that way. In outlets all across the country, reporters are frantically trying to dismiss the states’ argument, calling it “laughable,” “utter garbage,” “far-fetched,” and “doomed.” But is it? Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), who’s leading the effort to get House Republicans on board, doesn’t think so. If there’s fraud (and pages of court filings say there was) and a coordinated effort to rewrite local election laws, then any state that Trump won has a legitimate beef. Texas, Indiana, Louisiana, Kansas — you name it — they’ll have been deprived of representation. And that’s what’s at the heart of the case that President Trump calls “the big one.”

“For [the media] to say it’s a Hail Mary pass and a last-minute effort is sort of comical,” Mike told listeners on “Washington Watch.” “…[T]here was a lot of irregularity, fraud and hijinks all around the country. And it takes a while to digest all of that. An election fraud case, election irregularity case, is a notoriously difficult thing to litigate. It takes a Herculean effort to assemble the evidence, put it in a format that is presentable, and make the requisite arguments. It’s, of course, even more complex when you’re doing it in so many different jurisdictions simultaneously around the country in a national election.” In other words, these states filed this as soon as they could.

What makes their case unique, Mike explains, is that — because these states are suing other states (Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), this goes straight to the Supreme Court. Texas believes the American people deserve to be heard on three major violations of the Constitution in each of these four states: 1) they made changes to voting rules and procedures through the courts and executive actions — not their state legislatures, which is a breach of the Electors Clause; 2) there were even different voting rules for different counties within the states, which violates the Equal Protection Clause; and finally 3) the voting irregularities in those states taints the whole election.

The bottom line is that by ignoring Article II and the 14th Amendment, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are disenfranchising the voters of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia. Every one of these states has skin in the game. As Mike said, “Look, it’s a national election. All of our votes, at some stage, get lumped in together. And you’re diluting the lawful votes of persons who had constitutional systems in place when you allow this to go unchecked elsewhere in the country.”

An overwhelming number of House Republicans agree. They’re filing their own brief, insisting that they represent millions of Americans “who are deeply concerned with the integrity of our election system.” Because, as Mike rightly pointed out, “This is about not just one election, but about the integrity of the system itself…” One of the things “that’s presupposed in a constitutional republic,” he said, “is you’re going to have free and fair elections. This is sacrosanct in our system and in our nation. And if we lose that, if we lose the people’s faith in that, we’re in a very desperate time as a nation.”

What most conservatives, including Mike, don’t understand is: what are liberals so afraid of? (The truth, for one thing.) But on something this important, “Why wouldn’t you want the highest court in the land to take a look at all of this? If you think there’s nothing there, and there’s no smoke and fire, then why all the outrage? Why all the objection to this? Just let it go through the process. We have to exhaust the legal remedy.” Democrats, of course, are ready to move on. They want to coronate Joe Biden and make all of this go away. “But if they’re allowed to do that, then this will be the future of every election in America,” Mike shook his head. “I fear that. So if we don’t litigate it, then we’re in deep trouble.”

Originally published here.

This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.