Trump’s Plan to Neuter the White House Press Corps, and Neuter Our Democracy

Tyrants don’t allow open questioning, and they hate the free press. They want total control. That’s why, according to three senior officials on the transition team, the incoming Trump administration is considering evicting the White House press corps from the press room inside the White House and moving them – and news conferences – to a conference center or to …

Chase Purdy – Trump has gagged the US Agriculture Department’s research arm from publicly sharing its work

An order of silence has been handed down to the US Department of Agriculture’s research arm, prohibiting the taxpayer-funded agency from releasing its work to the public, according to a report by BuzzFeed. The message was handed down to the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) just days after Donald Trump was sworn into office as president. At least a couple of …

Lauren McCauley – Trump Issues Media Blackout at Multiple Federal Agencies

Though the majority of President Donald Trump’s controversial cabinet nominations have not yet been confirmed, his so-called “beachhead” teams have arrived at their respective agencies, carrying out orders that make clear that the “War on Science” has begun. On Tuesday, BuzzFeed broke the news that scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are no longer allowed to share information …

Obama Quietly Signs Propaganda Act to Counter ‘Fake News’ – EU to follow suit

By Graham Vanbergen – Fake news and propaganda driven by government’s and corporations is of course, nothing new. Brexit and the American election have brought the subject into sharp focus more recently as the political class have been unexpectedly losing important desired outcomes. Consequently, as TruePublica reported a week ago, in Britain, controversial laws have been introduced to stem free speech, …

Norman Solomon – WPost Won’t Retract McCarthyistic Smear

We still don’t have any sort of apology or retraction from the Washington Post for promoting “The List” — the highly dangerous blacklist that got a huge boost from the newspaper’s fawning coverage on Nov. 24. The project of smearing 200 websites with one broad brush wouldn’t have gotten far without the avid complicity of high-profile media outlets, starting with the Post. On …

Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group

THE WASHINGTON POST on Thursday night promoted the claims of a new, shadowy organization that smears dozens of U.S. news sites that are critical of U.S. foreign policy as being “routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.” The article by reporter Craig Timberg — headlined “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say” — cites a report by an anonymous website calling itself PropOrNot, …

BENJAMIN E. ZELLER – WHY KAEPERNICK’S REFUSAL TO STAND IS AN ACT OF RELIGIOUS DISSENT

This past Friday night, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick made the audacious choice to remain seated during the playing of the national anthem as a form of political protest against police violence and racism in America. The response against him has been swift, angry, and in many cases ugly. A series of commentators—mostly in the athletic and political spheres—lined up to rebuke him. …

Jason Leopold – The CIA Just Declassified the Document That Supposedly Justified the Iraq Invasion

Thirteen years ago, the intelligence community concluded in a 93-page classified document used to justify the invasion of Iraq that it lacked “specific information” on “many key aspects” of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs. But that’s not what top Bush administration officials said during their campaign to sell the war to the American public. Those officials, citing the same classified document, …

Robert Parry – Will We Miss President Obama?

From a “realist” perspective, there are plenty of reasons to criticize President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, particularly his timidity in facing down Official Washington’s dominant neoconservatives and liberal interventionists on Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine and even Syria – but he also has done more to steer the country away from additional military disasters than other establishment politicians would have. That is especially …