Media Research Center: Google Interfered in 41 U.S. Elections over 16 Years
A new study by the Media Research Center alleges that Google has repeatedly interfered in U.S. elections, favoring leftist candidates and suppressing conservative voices.
Google, the ultra-woke tech giant that dominates online search and advertising, has been accused of a staggering pattern of election interference spanning over 16 years and 41 separate instances, according to a bombshell report from the Media Research Center (MRC). The study, conducted by MRC’s Free Speech America division, levels severe allegations against the Silicon Valley giant, claiming it has systematically utilized its immense technological prowess to sway electoral outcomes in favor of left-leaning candidates.
“MRC researchers have found 41 times where Google interfered in elections over the last 16 years, and its impact has surged dramatically, making it evermore harmful to democracy. In every case, Google harmed the candidates – regardless of party – who threatened its left-wing candidate of choice,” asserted Dan Schneider, vice president of MRC Free Speech America, and Gabriela Pariseau, the division’s editor.
Breitbart’s Google search traffic on Joe Biden flatlined months before the 2020 election.
The study cites a litany of apparent infractions, ranging from algorithmic manipulation to outright censorship. Among the most egregious claims are allegations that Google favored Barack Obama over his Republican rivals John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012, refused to rectify a derogatory “Google bomb” smearing Rick Santorum during the 2012 GOP primaries, and excluded potentially damaging autofill results for Hillary Clinton in 2016 while not extending the same courtesy to Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders.
Moreover, the researchers assert that Google disabled Tulsi Gabbard’s ad account during the 2020 Democratic debates, suppressed negative coverage of Joe Biden, concealed most Republican campaign websites in 2022’s competitive Senate races, and is actively aiding Biden’s 2024 campaign by “burying in its search results the campaign websites of every one of his significant opponents.”
NEW YORK, NY – NOVEMBER 07: Rep. Tulsi Gabbard talks with SiriusXM’s “Breitbart News Daily” at SiriusXM Studios on November 7, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images for SiriusXM)
The authors of the study allege that this pattern of misconduct extends far beyond mere isolated incidents. “Utilizing the many tools in its arsenal, Google aided those who most closely aligned with its leftist values from election cycle to election cycle since as far back as the 2008 presidential election. Meanwhile, it targeted for censorship those candidates who posed the most serious threat,” they wrote, accusing the company of making election interference “an organizational mission.”
Supporting these claims, the study cites research from Dr. Robert Epstein, who concluded that Google’s algorithm likely shifted at least 2.6 million votes toward Hillary Clinton in 2016, while its “results and get-out-the-vote reminders favored Democrats and shifted the 2020 election results by at least 6 million votes.”
Google has adamantly refuted the allegations, asserting it has implemented robust safeguards to ensure unbiased and accurate search results. “There is absolutely nothing new here – just a recycled list of baseless, inaccurate complaints that have been debunked by third parties and many that failed in the courts,” a Google spokesperson told Fox News Digital, adding, “We have a clear business incentive to keep everyone using our products, so we have no desire to make them biased or inaccurate.”
Read more at MRC Free Speech here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
would joe biden have been elected if big tech had not censored/deleted info on the biden crime family???
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill: Big Tech Censorship Case Heads to U.S. Supreme Court
Ronald Reagan famously said, “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” When it comes to freedom of speech, that could not be more true.
One hundred and three pages of fact findings in district court, supported by five hundred and ninety-one footnotes, demonstrate a sprawling campaign of “unrelenting pressure from the most powerful office in the world” to “bend [social-media platforms] to the government’s will.” The Biden administration, however, claims that these platforms aggressively censored American voices because of Biden’s persuasive “eloquence,” rather than its threats and coercion.
While the White House insisted that social media platforms view themselves as “partners,” on the same “team,” and benefiting from the government’s “help,” those same officials were subjecting the platforms to relentless abuse, accusations, and blatant threats. Of course, this abusive relationship between Big Government and Big Tech didn’t begin this way. It was a slow burn starting as early 2017, when the FBI began coordinating secret meetings in Silicon Valley with content-moderation officers across seven platforms. Even then, the platforms were threatened with “legislation” if they did not censor more, with encrypted lists demanding mass-censorship flooding their inboxes.
This soon escalated to more aggressive practices. By 2018, CISA, or the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, was highlighting “disinformation” from state and local officials to be censored across platforms, and in 2020, the “Election Integrity Partnership” was launched — a colossal mass-surveillance and mass-censorship project that entangled government agencies, the Stanford Internet Observatory, and social media platforms into an Orwellian knot. In time, this would be rebranded as “The Virality Project,” with the capability to monitor tens of millions of social media “engagements” per week and spur extensive censorship.
By the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, this shadowy Ministry of Truth had completely embedded itself into the very fabric of our digital communications. As a result, it wasn’t difficult for President Biden to double down on such an insidious system, one conveniently engineered for “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” Like water carving into rock, the unrelenting pressure from the “highest (and I mean highest) levels of the White House” proved too much for these tech companies to bear, with one hand offering them a carrot for compliance and the other threatening the complete annihilation of their business model. One by one, they folded to pressure from the Biden White House, responding with “total compliance,” even when it meant censoring truthful information that did not violate existing platform policies.
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty of Louisiana granted an historic injunction in response to our 2022 lawsuit Louisiana and Missouri v. Biden on July 4, 2023. On appeal, the Fifth Circuit affirmed it — twice. Both courts have confirmed that the government’s coordinated campaign to censor domestic speech through private institutions violates the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans. Yet the Biden administration continues to unapologetically coerce platforms into censorship to this day, resulting in an oppressive editorial power that affects every American.
Biden’s attorneys have also made it clear that this administration has no intention of ceasing its unconstitutional conduct. Instead, they’ve expressed the firm intention to continue. That is why this case at the U.S. Supreme Court is so important to our nation. These censorship efforts were never vague or abstract but extremely specific, right down to individual speakers and posts flagged for “misinformation” or “disinformation” because they dared to criticize the government’s narrative. But the government does not have the power to secretly distort the marketplace of ideas or actively manipulate public discourse to suit its needs. Moreover, “a state may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish” (Norwood v. Harrison).
Our limited discovery has uncovered extensive suppression of speech that goes against the fundamental nature of American liberty. For our government, its institutions, or its officials to actively censor protected speech strikes at the core of who we are as citizens of a free nation with a government created by the people, for the people.
I invite you to listen to our oral argument on March 18, where evidence rather than Orwellian “eloquence” will be front and center.
Liz Murrill is the Attorney General of Louisiana. She previously served as the state’s Solicitor General and has been with this case from the beginning. The case is Murthy v. Missouri, No. 23-411 in the Supreme Court of the United States.
AMERICA SHOULD AS THE BANKSTERS' RENT BOY ERIC HOLDER WHAT HE, OBAMA AND JOE BIDEN DID FOR BLACK AMERICA. ABSOLUTELY NADA!
Holder: Media Will Change Coverage and That’ll Help Biden Win
On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” former Attorney General Eric Holder commented on President Joe Biden’s poll numbers by stating that “as the media turns its attention to making this a binary choice between a person who’s got some age and cognitive issues — that would be Trump — against somebody who has actually accomplished a lot, I think we’ll do just fine.”
Host Bill Maher asked, “What do you make of the fact that the Democrats, by every poll I read, are, I would just say, losing their base? If you look at non-white working-class voters, there has been a 61-point shift, that’s an incredible amount, from 2012, that’s in twelve years. Obama, in 2012…I think won it by 67 points, that demographic. Biden won it by 48. Now he’s only up by six. What’s going on there?”
Holder answered, “I think, first off, you’re measuring March against November. We’re looking at where people are right now, I think you’ll probably see a movement with regard to working-class people of all races towards Biden by the time you get to November. You’re also comparing an extremely — an unbelievably popular African American running for the first time and who really galvanized people in all strata of life. And so, I think, in some ways, that’s not a fair comparison. But I think we should not be too alarmed by these March polls, you’ve got to take them into consideration. But March is a fundamentally different month than October and November, and we’ll see where these things turn out when we get to that part of the calendar year.”
Holder continued, “There’s work to be done, but I’m actually optimistic that, if we stay committed, focused, and as the media turns its attention to making this a binary choice between a person who’s got some age and cognitive issues — that would be Trump — against somebody who has actually accomplished a lot, I think we’ll do just fine. And what you said in the monologue was really good, though, Trump’s popularity rating is higher now than it ever was during his presidency. It’s like, hey, America, remember? … People, they’re saying, are you better off now than you were four years ago? You’re damn right we are. So, let’s not lose sight of the chaos, the corruption, and all the negative things that Donald Trump meant and put a good man back in the White House.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” former Attorney General Eric Holder commented on President Joe Biden’s poll numbers by stating that “as the media turns its attention to making this a binary choice between a person who’s got some age and cognitive issues — that would be Trump — against somebody who has actually accomplished a lot, I think we’ll do just fine.”
Host Bill Maher asked, “What do you make of the fact that the Democrats, by every poll I read, are, I would just say, losing their base? If you look at non-white working-class voters, there has been a 61-point shift, that’s an incredible amount, from 2012, that’s in twelve years. Obama, in 2012…I think won it by 67 points, that demographic. Biden won it by 48. Now he’s only up by six. What’s going on there?”
Holder answered, “I think, first off, you’re measuring March against November. We’re looking at where people are right now, I think you’ll probably see a movement with regard to working-class people of all races towards Biden by the time you get to November. You’re also comparing an extremely — an unbelievably popular African American running for the first time and who really galvanized people in all strata of life. And so, I think, in some ways, that’s not a fair comparison. But I think we should not be too alarmed by these March polls, you’ve got to take them into consideration. But March is a fundamentally different month than October and November, and we’ll see where these things turn out when we get to that part of the calendar year.”
Holder continued, “There’s work to be done, but I’m actually optimistic that, if we stay committed, focused, and as the media turns its attention to making this a binary choice between a person who’s got some age and cognitive issues — that would be Trump — against somebody who has actually accomplished a lot, I think we’ll do just fine. And what you said in the monologue was really good, though, Trump’s popularity rating is higher now than it ever was during his presidency. It’s like, hey, America, remember? … People, they’re saying, are you better off now than you were four years ago? You’re damn right we are. So, let’s not lose sight of the chaos, the corruption, and all the negative things that Donald Trump meant and put a good man back in the White House.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
Sen. J.D. Vance Files Brief in Ohio Lawsuit Against Google
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) filed a brief in favor of Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s case against Google, arguing the big tech platform should be regulated like a common carrier, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.
Vance’s brief in the case encourages the court of common pleas to give the case a full hearing and explains the legal rationale for Ohio’s case.
The Ohio populist’s brief is in support of Yost’s motion for summary judgment and to oppose Google’s motion to dismiss the case.
In his brief, Vance calls out Google’s “hypocrisy,” as the big tech platform claims in varying legal cases that it is sometimes a “neutral platform” and other cases it is not a utility because Google search result webpages are “Google’s own creation or selection.” He wrote:
Whether this is true or not—and it is not—Google is playing fast and loose with the facts. Google has claimed the exact opposite about its search service in other cases and before other courts. When seeking to limit its liability for user content under Section 230 of the Communications Act, it has asserted that its search services are “neutral tools,” Google Rep. Mem., 2017 WL 3188006, Gonzalez v. Google, 282 F.Supp.3d 1150 (N.D. Cal. 2017), that are solely “information provided by another.” Google Br., 2018 WL 3496264, at *3, Marshall’s Locksmith Service, Inc.v. Google, 925 F.3d 1263 (D.C.Cir. 2019).
Indeed, this hypocrisy has led at least one federal judge to conclude it is “a fair point” that Google is judicially estopped from claiming that “the blind operation of ‘neutral tools’” [in its algorithms and other sorting techniques] is actually “editorial discretion.” NetChoice v. Paxton, 49 F.4th 439, 467–68 (5th Cir. 2022), cert. granted in part, 144 S. Ct. 477 (2023). In short, Google cannot claim that there are no factual questions about whether its services are susceptible to common carrier regulation suitable for resolution at this stage of litigation—because at the very least, this Court must determine which version of the facts about search engines Google actually asserts. [Emphasis added]
Amicus Brief by Breitbart News on Scribd
Vance argues that Google operates in many ways like a common carrier, saying “its functions are essentially the same as any communications network: it connects people by transmitting their words and exchanging their messages. It functions just like an old telephone switchboard, but rather than connect people with cables and electromagnetic circuits, Google uses indices created through data analysis. As such, common carrier regulation is appropriate under Ohio law.”
This follows a May 2022 ruling that Yost’s lawsuit against Google, which labels the tech giant a common carrier subject to special regulations and litigation, can proceed.
Vance and the Claremont Institute filed in September 2021 an amicus brief in support of this case against Google.
Common carriers are strictly regulated about who they can deny service to. Common carriers include utilities and telecommunications companies.
“Courts have held that infringing on a private actor’s speech by requiring that actor to host another person’s speech does not always violate the First Amendment,” wrote Ohio County Court Judge James P. Schuck wrote in his ruling. “There are several examples in which private companies involved in mass communications were prohibited from censorship.”
Professor Adam Candeub, who led the Trump administration’s efforts to curb tech censorship, told Breitbart News at the time that this was a welcome ruling.
“The court recognized that the First Amendment does not prevent reasonable anti-discrimination requirements on companies that hold themselves out as transmitters of speech,” Candeub explained.
The case is State of Ohio v. Google in the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas, No. 21 CV H 06 0274
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.
Biden’s cyber-mess flying under the radar
Joe Biden’s presidency has hit new lows in 2024. Despite what many media outlets and talking heads on the left wanted to portray as an “energetic” and “fiery” State of the Union address last week, most Americans were not impressed by the speech, as the customary post-SOTU polling spike that most presidents enjoy hasn’t been there for Joe Biden.
In fact, multiple polls released in the days since the speech have gone in the opposite direction for Biden. According to the Yahoo News/YouGov poll, Biden’s approval rating went from 40% prior to the speech to 39% this week. This increasing dissatisfaction with the current president was echoed in polling conducted by FiveThirtyEight, where, prior to the SOTU, Biden held a 38% approval rating on March 6 vs. a 37% approval rating on March 12.
The speech itself was a clinic in Beltway gaslighting, with Biden making a number of questionable to outright dishonest claims related to job growth, inflation, and so many other issues of concern to Americans.
On job growth, Biden’s claim to have created “15 million new jobs” in three years fails to acknowledge the fact that about 12 million of those jobs can and should be classified as post-COVID “Return-to-Work” jobs that were actually created by his predecessor, President Donald Trump.
On the topic of inflation, Biden actually told the joint session of Congress that the United States had achieved the “lowest in the world.” But in reality, the United States is experiencing higher inflation than a number of industrialized nations and new reports show that the rate has actually ticked upward.
Despite all the misleading chest-pounding during the address, one major issue that President Biden mostly stayed away from was America’s crumbling cybersecurity infrastructure. This was most likely by design, as the current administration has failed to distinguish itself as a global leader in the cybersphere.
Twenty twenty-three was a tough enough year for the U.S. in dealing with cyber events, with ransomware attacks, intrusive browser hijackers, and countless other threats compromising devices deployed for use in both the private and public sectors. But the first few months of 2024 have seen a rash of attacks against critical sectors, including health care, telecom, and state and local governments.
These attacks come at a time where the cyber landscape has changed tremendously, with major changes at the top for tech giant Microsoft, as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission ushering in a new era of forced private sector compliance regarding cyber events.
One of the more critical attacks has been the cyber-attack against Change Healthcare. The health care technology giant manages the medical records for roughly one third of American patients and manages billions of health care transactions annually. As of mid-March, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has launched an investigation into the attack, due to the “unprecedented magnitude of the cyberattack.”
The Change Healthcare attack represents one of the largest data hauls ever accessed in the history of cyber-crime. The reason for this kind of attack boils down to one simple motive: money. On the “dark web,” where the personal data of victimized Americans is bought and sold every day, medical records sell can fetch as much as $60 per person, compared to $15 for a Social Security number or $3 for credit card information.
Additionally, warnings issued earlier this year from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the FBI, and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), highlighted new threats against municipal and county governments, emergency services, educational institutions, public health care facilities, and critical infrastructure related to the Phobos ransomware gang.
It has become apparent that the Biden administration is handling our digital borders as poorly as they have handled out physical southern border with Mexico, and the best advice we can take here is to become as vigilant as we possibly can when dealing with our own personal online security. Educating ourselves regarding new attack vectors that include phony security pop-up scams and backdoors, which negate normal authentication procedures to access a system, is critical.
Other than that, there really is little we can do to prevent the major data breaches that continue to afflict major data warehouses, but with commonsense precautions, we can make 2024 a safer year online as we hope for a much-needed leadership change in 2025.
Julio Rivera is a business and political strategist, cybersecurity researcher, and a political commentator and columnist. His writing, which is focused on cybersecurity and politics, is regularly published by many of the largest news organizations in the world.
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
House Majority Whip Signals Biden’s Overtly Political SOTU May Have Blown Up Tradition
House Majority Whip Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) suggested this weekend that Democrat President Joe Biden’s overtly political State of the Union address may have disintegrated the tradition of presidents being invited to deliver the annual speech before the House chamber.
While Republicans, including Emmer — who has endorsed former President Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee in 2024 — hope Trump defeats Biden in November, if somehow Biden comes back and wins the election this year, Emmer said that House Republicans might not welcome Biden back for a State of the Union address next year.
“That was about the most divisive State of the Union — I wouldn’t extend him an invitation next year, if that’s what we’re going to get,” Emmer said in an interview with Axios published on Sunday.
This may set things down a slippery slope, too, whereby Republicans do not invite Democrat presidents to give a State of the Union address and vice versa in divided government.
President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol, Thursday, March 7, 2024, in Washington. (Shawn Thew/Pool via AP)
In Biden’s speech, he attacked Trump more than a dozen times — repeatedly calling Trump “my predecessor” throughout the speech. Biden also laid out an aggressively leftist agenda replete with tax increases, more spending, radical border and immigration policies, and even for sending U.S. military forces into Gaza to build a port to send aid there. Biden, in addition, regularly attacked the Republicans in the chamber.
Nonetheless, Emmer’s argument extends even beyond Biden continuing as president and said that Congress should reconsider welcoming a president to deliver a speech to give their State of the Union update to Congress. For many years throughout U.S. history, a State of the Union address from the president to Congress just simply did not happen. In fact, while George Washington — the nation’s first president — did address Congress in person, it was not until President Woodrow Wilson in 1913 that presidents began appearing in person before Congress to give what has become known as the State of the Union address.
U.S. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) speaks to reporters as he leaves a House Republican candidates forum on October 23, 2023, in Washington, DC. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
“Since Washington’s first speech to Congress, U.S. Presidents have ‘from time to time’ given Congress an assessment of the condition of the union. Presidents have used the opportunity to present their goals and agenda through broad ideas or specific details. The annual message or ‘State of the Union’ message’s length, frequency, and method of delivery have varied from President to President and era to era,” the White House website from the George W. Bush administration said, explaining the history of the address. “For example, Thomas Jefferson thought Washington’s oral presentation was too kingly for the new republic. Likewise, Congress’s practice of giving a courteous reply in person at the President’s residence was too formal. Jefferson detailed his priorities in his first annual message in 1801 and sent copies of the written message to each house of Congress. The President’s annual message, as it was then called, was not spoken by the President for the next 112 years. The message was often printed in full or as excerpts in newspapers for the American public to read.”
Emmer seemed to suggest that Congress might do well to return to that model of doing business, given the fact that Biden seems to have ruined the tradition with his address this year.
“He’s not going to be there next year — it’ll be a different president,” Emmer told Axios. “But I think you’ve got to rethink issuing invitations for a State of the Union if it’s not going to be a State of the Union, and that was not. That was a campaign speech.”
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