WASHINGTON—Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard from Hawaii, who is President-elect Donald Trump’s intended nominee to serve as director of national intelligence, announced on Jan. 10 that she supports reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—a controversial statute criticized by both progressives and conservatives that she previously opposed.
Section 702 allows U.S. intelligence agencies to collect information en masse from foreign targets through large-scale surveillance programs, which may sometimes collect the non-public data of U.S. citizens and others inside the United States. Ordinarily, to collect such information, the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment requires the government to obtain a warrant against individual targets.
Critics of Section 702 believe the law’s provisions infringe upon the civil liberties of activists and dissidents. Conservatives, in particular, have assailed the law after its use in 2016 to surveil Trump campaign advisers during investigations of Russian influence.
Gabbard has been a longstanding critic of Section 702, including during her terms in Congress as a Democrat. She switched to the Republican Party last year.
“[T]he civil liberties of the American people have been trampled on under the blank check of Section 702 … [it’s] allowed our government to collect, retain, and search communications of everyday Americans without a warrant and with blatant disregard for our Fourth Amendment constitutional rights,” Gabbard wrote on Twitter in 2018. […]
— Read More: www.theepochtimes.com
Independent Journalism Is Dying
Ever since President Trump’s miraculous victory, we’ve heard an incessant drumbeat about how legacy media is dying. This is true. The people have awakened to the reality that they’re being lied to by the self-proclaimed “Arbiters of Truth” for the sake of political expediency, corporate self-protection, and globalist ambitions.
But even as independent journalism rises to fill the void left by legacy media, there is still a huge challenge. Those at the top of independent media like Joe Rogan, Dan Bongino, and Tucker Carlson are thriving and rightly so. They have earned their audience and the financial rewards that come from it. They’ve taken risks and worked hard to get to where they are.
For “the rest of us,” legacy media and their proxies are making it exceptionally difficult to survive, let alone thrive. They still have a stranglehold over the “fact checkers” who have a dramatic impact on readership and viewership. YouTube, Facebook, and Google still stifle us. The freer speech platforms like Rumble and 𝕏 can only reward so many of their popular content creators. For independent journalists on the outside looking in, our only recourse is to rely on affiliates and sponsors.
But even as it seems nearly impossible to make a living, there are blessings that should not be disregarded. By highlighting strong sponsors who share our America First worldview, we have been able to make lifelong connections and even a bit of revenue to help us along. This is why we enjoy symbiotic relationships with companies like MyPillow, Jase Medical, and Promised Grounds. We help them with our recommendations and they reward us with money when our audience buys from them.
The same can be said about our preparedness sponsor, Prepper All-Naturals. Their long-term storage beef has a 25-year shelf life and is made with one ingredient: All-American Beef.
Even our faith-driven precious metals sponsor helps us tremendously while also helping Americans protect their life’s savings. We are blessed to work with them.
Independent media is the future. In many ways, that future is already here. While the phrase, “the more the merrier,” does not apply to this business because there are still some bad actors in the independent media field, there are many great ones that do not get nearly enough attention. We hope to change that one content creator at a time.
Thank you and God Bless,
JD Rucker
