Senator Cruz Figure Out Who Was President From 2018 To 2020 Challenge; Impossible

from the up-is-down,-day-is-night dept

I have a simple question for Senator Ted Cruz: Who was president in 2018? How about 2020?

I ask because Cruz just released a “bombshell” report claiming that the Biden administration “converted” CISA into “the Thought Police.” There’s just one tiny problem with this narrative: Cruz’s own report shows that everything he’s mad about started under Donald Trump, under whose leadership CISA was created. And also that Cruz’s researchers think responding to false information is censorship. Also, studying disinformation is, somehow, censorship.

But, most importantly, apparently Ted Cruz doesn’t seem to know how time works.

Look, we’ve been through this dance before. The Supreme Court, in a decision written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, already examined these exact claims about government “censorship” and found them to be bullshit. Barrett’s decision mentions “no evidence” at least five times and includes a devastating footnote explaining how the “evidence” was “clearly erroneous.”

The Fifth Circuit relied on the District Court’s factual findings, many of which unfortunately appear to be clearly erroneous. The District Court found that the defendants and the platforms had an “efficient report-and-censor relationship.” Missouri v. Biden, 680 F. Supp. 3d 630, 715 (WD La. 2023). But much of its evidence is inapposite. For instance, the court says that Twitter set up a “streamlined process for censorship requests” after the White House “bombarded” it with such requests. Ibid., n. 662 (internal quotation marks omitted). The record it cites says nothing about “censorship requests.” See App. 639–642. Rather, in response to a White House official asking Twitter to remove an impersonation account of President Biden’s granddaughter, Twitter told the official about a portal that he could use to flag similar issues. Ibid. This has nothing to do with COVID–19 misinformation. The court also found that “[a] drastic increase in censorship . . . directly coincided with Defendants’ public calls for censorship and private demands for censorship.” 680 F. Supp. 3d, at 715. As to the “calls for censorship,” the court’s proof included statements from Members of Congress, who are not parties to this suit. Ibid., and n. 658. Some of the evidence of the “increase in censorship” reveals that Facebook worked with the CDC to update its list of removable false claims, but these examples do not suggest that the agency “demand[ed]” that it do so. Ibid. Finally, the court, echoing the plaintiffs’ proposed statement of facts, erroneously stated that Facebook agreed to censor content that did not violate its policies. Id., at 714, n. 655. Instead, on several occasions, Facebook explained that certain content did not qualify for removal under its policies but did qualify for other forms of moderation.

Cruz and his team apparently missed all that. Or they know about it and have decided to misrepresent it. I’m not sure which is worse.

The centerpiece of Cruz’s report is CISA—the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency. According to Cruz, this agency was created with pure intentions under Trump but was then “converted” by Biden into a censorship machine.

Cruz’s report repeatedly undermines its own thesis. He writes:

“Beginning in 2018, CISA organized and attended regular meetings with industry and government officials to push its censorship agenda”

2018, Ted. Who was president then, Ted? Do you know? I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t Joe Biden.

Oh, and remember how Cruz claimed that dealing with misinformation wasn’t part of CISA’s original plan? Well, CISA was created on November 16, 2018. So if they started these “regular meetings” in 2018, that means… they started immediately. Under Trump. As part of the original plan.

Also, Cruz keeps calling this a “censorship agenda,” but his own report shows that CISA’s role was coordination and information sharing. You know, the thing they were explicitly created to do.

The supposed smoking gun in Cruz’s report is something called “switchboarding”—where CISA would pass along reports from state election officials to social media companies. Cruz presents this as evidence of censorship.

But here’s what actually happened: Election officials would flag potential election misinformation to CISA, specifically where such misinformation might undermine the integrity of the election system (i.e., telling people to vote in the wrong place or on the wrong day). CISA would forward it to platforms with a clear disclaimer that this was not a demand. Platforms would then review the content against their own policies.

Every single message CISA sent included this disclaimer:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is not the originator of this information. CISA is forwarding this information, unedited, from its originating source-this information has not been originated or generated by CISA. This information may also be shared with law enforcement or intelligence agencies.

In the event that CISA follows up to request further information, such as a request is not a requirement or demand. Responding to this request is voluntary and CISA will not take any action, favorable or unfavorable, based on decisions about whether or not to respond to this follow-up request for information.

Throughout the report, Cruz makes baseless claims that his own sources immediately contradict. He says CISA “directly instructed social media companies to moderate specific content.” Then, in the very same paragraph, admits that what actually happened was CISA forwarding content with disclaimers, and platforms reviewing it “based on their policies.”

Take the following for example:

During the 2020 election, CISA directed state and local election officials to report supposed election-related MDM to CISA. CISA would then review the reports and forward them to social media companies so they could remove the content. This process is referred to as “switchboarding.” As Mr. Scully, who led the CISA team performing this work, explained, switchboarding “was essentially an [election] official…identify[ing] something on social media they deemed to be disinformation aimed at their jurisdiction. They could forward that to CISA, and CISA would share that with the appropriate social media companies.”

The emails below between Scully, the Maryland State Board of Electors, and Twitter illustrate how the switchboarding process worked. Step One: the Maryland Official emailed Scully a few tweets regarding mail-in ballots. Step Two: Scully forwarded that email to Twitter. Step Three: Twitter immediately responded that it would “escalate” the tweets and later confirmed that the “[t]weets have been actioned for violations of our policies.”

We’ve covered this before, but let’s cover it again. Anyone could (and still can!) flag any content on Twitter, saying that it violates their policies. It is true that most sites also did set up separate portals to handle such flags from government actors, in part because those might require extra legal scrutiny.

And, note what happened: Twitter reviewed the content to see if they violated its policies. They did not take them down because the government requested it, but because they violated policies.

And we know, for a fact, that Twitter (and other social media sites) actually rejected the vast majority of such flags. Hell, in Cruz’s own report he includes a quote from a CISA employee, Brian Scully, noting that they knew the companies would review it against their own policies:

According to Scully, CISA knew social media companies would apply their content moderation policies to “disinformation” if CISA alerted them to it. “The idea was,” he explained, that social media companies “would make [a] decision on the content that [CISA] forward[ed] to them based on their policies.” He acknowledged that if the content had not been brought to social media companies’ attention, the platforms would not have otherwise moderated it.

Also, Scully couldn’t possibly know that last line is true. Because he has no idea what sort of monitoring the companies would do otherwise or who else might flag the same information to them. And, just the fact that Cruz’s report doesn’t quote Scully and only summarizes that he “acknowledged” such a claim is suspect.

So, I did what Cruz didn’t do for the readers of the report and looked up Scully’s full deposition to see how that conversation actually went down. And… Cruz is totally misrepresenting what was said. Scully notes that they only shared information for the companies to decide what to do with it.

Q. Switchboard work, what does that mean?

A. It was essentially an audit official to identify something on social media they deemed to be disinformation aimed at their jurisdiction. They could forward that to CISA and CISA would share that with the appropriate social media companies.

Q. And what was the purpose of sharing it with social media companies?

A. Mostly for informational awareness purposes, just to make sure that the social media companies were aware of potential disinformation.

Q. Was there an understanding that if the social media platforms were aware of disinformation that they might apply their content moderation policies to it?

A. Yes. So the idea was that they would make decision on the content that was forwarded to them based on their policies.

Q. Whereas, if it hadn’t been brought to their attention then they obviously wouldn’t have moderated it as content; correct?

A. Yeah, I suppose that’s true, as far as I’m aware of it.

Note the full consistency all along here. At no point was the idea here about censorship. It was always flagging content for the platforms to decide what to do with it (and later reports showed they took no action on over 60% of the URLs reported).

There’s also a subtle, but very important, nuance in that final question. The question was not about whether or not the moderation would or would not have happened if CISA called it out. It just says “if it hadn’t been brought to their attention.”

Cruz’s team pretends Scully was only asked about whether or not action would have occurred if CISA flagged it. Cruz’s report pretends CISA “acknowledges” here that the takedown would only occur because of CISA, which is not what Scully actually said.

It’s finally halfway through the report that Cruz tries to tie all this to the Biden administration, by suggesting that there was a change under Biden. But, as per usual, he is taking things out of context and presenting them in the most misleading light possible.

Cruz claims that CISA ramped up its “speech policing” efforts under Biden, while his own report shows they actually stopped switchboarding in 2022:

CISA told the Committee that it stopped switchboarding in 2022. Brian Scully testified that former CISA Director Jen Easterly apparently made the decision to forgo this work… as Scully explained, switchboarding “was not a role [CISA] necessarily wanted to play” any longer “because it is very resource intensive.”

So let me get this straight, Ted: Biden supposedly ramped up the censorship operation… by shutting it down? That’s some 4D chess there.

The most absurd part of Cruz’s report comes when he tries to explain how CISA supposedly “groomed” private organizations to continue the work after they stopped switchboarding. His smoking gun? CISA introduced two organizations doing similar work so they wouldn’t duplicate efforts.

That’s it. That’s the conspiracy.

“There was a point where one of the platforms was concerned about too much kind of duplicate reporting coming in, and so we did have some conversations with EIP and CIS on how to kind of better manage that activity to make sure we weren’t overwhelming the platforms.” Scully further testified that CISA “facilitated some meetings between Stanford folks, the Center for Internet Security, and election officials, where they had discussions about how they would work together.”

That doesn’t sound like “grooming” agencies for censorship. It sounds like CISA seeing that multiple private groups were duplicating efforts and living up to its coordination and information sharing mandate by… connecting them, so they could coordinate and share information.

Beyond not understanding linear time, it’s not clear if Ted Cruz understands what words mean.

Throughout this trainwreck of a report, Cruz consistently conflates “monitoring and responding to misinformation” with “censorship.” He quotes the Election Integrity Partnership saying that no government agency has the explicit mandate “to monitor and correct” election misinformation, then claims this proves they didn’t have authority “to censor.”

But “monitor and correct” is not “censor.” Correcting misinformation means responding to it with accurate information—you know, counter-speech. The thing the First Amendment actually protects.

The entire report boils down to this: Ted Cruz thinks that studying misinformation, sharing information about it, and responding to it with factual corrections constitutes “censorship.” By that logic, every fact-checker, every news organization, and every person who’s ever said “actually, that’s not true” is engaged in censorship.

Like here, Ted, I’m correcting your bullshit. Is that censorship?

Again, I have to remind you, because it’s important, anyone can flag any content for any social media website, and that website will review it against its policies, and if they find it violates those policies, they will take action.

And yet, Ted Cruz pretends that’s censorship:

The Committee found evidence indicating that CISA directly instructed social media companies to moderate specific content. For instance, in one document the Committee reviewed, a lawyer hired by Twitter reviewed Twitter’s communications with government entities and summarized the instances in which CISA had either raised its “direct concerns” with Twitter or forwarded an email from an election official about “inaccurate” information on the platform, and Twitter “took action.”125 Documents like these reinforced the Committee’s suspicion that CISA was hiding the true extent of its relationship with social media companies and its content moderation pressure campaign.

The first sentence claims that CISA “directly instructed social media companies to moderate specific content.” So you would think there would be evidence of that. Instead, what the rest of the paragraph shows is, as described above (and publicly throughout the past five years) CISA would pass along content—with a clear statement that it wasn’t from CISA and it wasn’t a demand—and platforms would independently review it to see if it violated their policies. And if it did violate the policies, they would take action.

Okay, but what about CISA work on “mis- and disinformation” through its “MDM subcommittee.” Again, it’s not clear Ted Cruz understands English. Because the report notes that this was a key recommendation of that group:

“[R]apidly respond—through transparency and communication—to emergent informational threats to critical infrastructure. . . . These response efforts can be actor-agnostic, but special attention should be paid to countering foreign threats.”

Yes. Rapidly responding, through transparency and communication.

Does that sound like “censorship” to anyone other than Ted Cruz?

Up is down, black is white, day is night. Ted Cruz is either a mendacious liar. Or an idiot.

Let’s be clear about what actually happened here. CISA was created by Donald Trump in November 2018. According to Cruz’s own timeline, it immediately began the work he’s now calling “censorship” or “speech policing” though anyone looking at the details would realize it was no such thing. That work continued through 2020—still under Trump. Biden took office, and then CISA scaled back these activities in 2022.

So Cruz is literally blaming Biden for things that didn’t happen, but the things he misinterpreted are things that started under Trump and were reduced under Biden.

This isn’t just wrong—it’s historically illiterate and spectacularly, embarrassingly wrong. And it’s part of a broader pattern of MAGA lies about government “censorship” that the Supreme Court has already debunked.

The goal here isn’t accuracy. It’s creating a false narrative to justify actual retaliation against platforms that don’t toe the line. Cruz knows that most people won’t read the actual documents or check his timeline. They’ll just see “Biden censorship” in the headlines and accept it as fact.

But the documents don’t lie, even when Ted Cruz does. His own report proves that everything he’s (misleadingly) mad about started under Trump, operated under the legal authorities Trump granted, were not actually about speech policing, and were scaled back under Biden.

Ted Cruz either doesn’t know who was president when, or he’s counting on you not knowing. He also either doesn’t know what actual censorship is, or he’s… counting on you not knowing. Either way, it’s a pretty damning indictment of a sitting U.S. Senator.

The entire 22-page report boils down to this: “How dare the agency Donald Trump created to coordinate information sharing… coordinate information sharing.”

And sadly, because Cruz put “censorship” and “Biden” in the same sentence, many people will now treat this nonsense as gospel truth.

Filed Under: brian scully, cisa, content moderation, donald trump, election integrity partnership, information sharing, joe biden, ted cruz