Tag: memes

Total Fraud: Adam Schiff Demands AI Political Parodies Be Banned, Forgets He Lied About Trump and Called It Parody in 2019

A politician who’s built his career on lies is suddenly worried about truth in advertising?

California Sen. Adam Schiff, a man with a documented record of deception, has introduced two bills aimed at regulating political speech in election campaigns — including one that would add prohibitions on content generated by artificial intelligence to a law that already prohibits campaigns from impersonating their opponents.

Maybe Schiff has forgotten his own past when it comes to impersonations — and the lies behind his attacks on President Donald Trump.

In a career of lowlights that would make a masochist blush, Schiff achieved one of his most notorious moments during the 2019 hearings that led up to Trump’s first impeachment, when the then-California congressman fabricated quotes from a phone call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelenskyy.

Schiff then defended playing fast and loose with the truth by claiming he was engaging in “parody.”

Well, reasonable people can disagree about whether Schiff was engaging in political “parody” or sinking to the belly-crawling tactics of a lying coward to further the cause of assassinating Trump’s character.  (The vote here is “belly crawling,” just for the record. Schiff’s record is so crooked even his mortgage reeks of fraud.)

But there’s no question that Schiff’s motivation for filing the bill comes from the campaigns that led up to California’s primary elections in June.

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Judge Denies Immunity to Texas Cops in Meme Arrest Case

A federal judge has refused to throw out the civil rights lawsuit filed by a Texas journalist arrested over a satirical Facebook meme and declined to grant qualified immunity to the sheriff and investigator who put him in jail.

Chief US District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled on July 20 that Kolton Krottinger’s suit can move forward against Hood County Sheriff Roger Deeds and former deputy James Luckie.

We obtained a copy of the ruling for you here.

O’Connor wrote that Krottinger “sufficiently alleged that Luckie and Sheriff Deeds violated his clearly established rights to be free from arrest without probable cause, malicious prosecution, and First Amendment Retaliation.”

The ruling keeps alive claims of First Amendment retaliation, unlawful arrest, malicious prosecution, and Fourth Amendment violations.

Qualified immunity shields officers from suit unless they broke rights already clearly established in law, and it ends most cases of this kind before they reach discovery. O’Connor found that Krottinger cleared that bar.

Krottinger, a 36-year-old Navy veteran, runs several Hood County news pages on Facebook and a nonprofit, Anxiety Solutions of America, that operates a 21-acre ranch for veterans and first responders. Governor Greg Abbott named him an honorary admiral of the Texas Navy in January 2025.

His arrest traces to a satire image posted to a satirical page called Hood County Sheepdogs during a Granbury school board race. The meme made it look as though Tina Brown, a regular speaker at county commissioners’ meetings, had endorsed a candidate she actually opposed. Brown reported the post on October 6, saying she had not made it.

C.J. Grisham, a First Amendment attorney representing Krottinger, said the meme was meant “to poke fun at the two people who can’t stand each other…endorsing that person. That’s the joke of it.”

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Nude Shrek Text to Ohio State Senator Reportedly Lands Blogger in Jail

Last week, The Columbus Dispatch reported that D.J. Byrnes—an Ohio blogger who runs a Statehouse gossip Substack called The Rooster—was arrested on a misdemeanor warrant at the Ohio Statehouse. Byrnes’ arrest, according to reporting by Signal Ohio, likely stems from a picture he texted to state Sen. Jerry Cirino (R–Kirtland) on May 6. The offending image? A “digitally altered version of Shrek, the ogre with a titular children’s movie franchise, with his penis exposed,” according to Signal Ohio. Police records did not identify Cirino by name, but the outlet confirmed he was the “recipient of the text messages based on the text messages themselves and other details within the police report.”

An affidavit with Byrnes’ arrest report described the ogre as “fully nude with an exposed and erect humanlike penis engaged in an act of masturbation,” according to the outlet. The text exchange also included a message calling Cirino “Young Mussolini.”

On May 8, Cirino reportedly emailed the Kirtland Police Department asking officers to file charges against Byrnes.

“Not only is the message harassing but the disgusting picture is pornographic in nature and not something I want to see on any of my devices,” said the email sent to Kirtland police.

After his arrest on June 1, Byrnes was booked into the Franklin County Jail, where he says he spent 23 hours in custody, according to a statement posted on The Rooster. The Columbus Dispatch reported that he was released on bond on June 2. Byrnes wrote that he would not comment on the specifics of the allegations, but he says he believes he will be found innocent in court. He was arrested on telecommunications harassment charges, according to Signal Ohio, and could face up to six months in jail.

In its analysis of the case, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a pro–free speech organization, cautioned that, “as in essentially all First Amendment cases, context and details matter.” Based on the available facts, however, the organization wrote that “Byrnes should not be facing telecommunications harassment charges.”

FIRE argues that Byrnes’ “shrexting” did not amount to obscenity because the image fails to pass the three-prong obscenity test set by Miller. v. California: Would the average person see the work as appealing “to the prurient interest”? Does it depict sexual conduct in a “patently offensive way” as defined by state laws? And finally, does the work lack “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value”? The text was clearly a piece of “political mockery,” and it was not intended to “arouse anyone’s sexual interest,” FIRE wrote, meaning it fails the Miller test. The “handful of afternoon texts,” from what FIRE reviewed, did not constitute harassment either.

More details about Byrnes’ case may emerge when he appears in court, but if a public official did in fact direct the police department to arrest Byrnes because of his texts, that poses a clear threat to free speech. The Shrek image may be absurd, shocking, and hilarious (depending on your sense of humor), but being punished for exercising your free speech right to criticize and troll (or ogre) public officials is no laughing matter.

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Hawaii To Pay Up After Trying to Criminalize Political Memes

Hawaii has agreed to pay $118,237.47 in attorney’s fees and costs to The Babylon Bee and local activist Dawn O’Brien, closing the books on a failed attempt to make some political satire a criminal act.

The state chose not to appeal a January ruling that struck down its so-called deepfake law, Act 191, as facially unconstitutional. It tried to ban speech. It lost. Now, taxpayers are covering the bill.

The settlement comes with an unusual wrinkle. Hawaii can’t actually pay yet. The agreement is contingent on the state legislature appropriating the funds during its next session, which runs from January to May 2027. If the legislature doesn’t approve the money by September 1, 2027, the Bee and O’Brien retain the right to file a formal motion for attorney’s fees, meaning the case would reopen and the final number could climb.

Act 191, signed by Governor Josh Green in July 2024, banned the distribution of “materially deceptive media” during election seasons if it risked “harming the reputation or electoral prospects of a candidate” or “changing the voting behavior of voters.”

The only escape for satirists was to slap joke-killing disclaimers on their content, disclaimers that had to appear throughout the entirety of a video and be printed in letters as large as any other text on screen. Violations carried fines, civil lawsuits, and jail time.

The law didn’t require anyone to actually be harmed or deceived. It punished speech based on a speculative “risk” of harm, a standard so vague that the person posting had no reliable way to know whether they were complying. US District Judge Shanlyn Park found that the law “muddies the line between compliance and noncompliance by forcing speakers to base their conduct on their own risk assessment, rather than on clear, objective standards.”

She noted the law created an “inherently subjective assessment for enforcement agencies” that “could conceivably lead to discretionary and targeted enforcement that discriminates based on viewpoint.”

Hawaii argued the law was needed to protect election integrity. Park acknowledged that interest but found the state couldn’t show it had chosen the least restrictive means.

Hawaii’s own expert agreed that digital literacy education would work, objecting only that it “would require a larger investment of resources” compared to a ban. Park cited the Supreme Court: “The First Amendment does not permit the State to sacrifice speech for efficiency.”

ADF legal counsel Mathew Hoffmann said: “Hawaii’s war against political memes and satire has come to an end, thankfully. The First Amendment doesn’t allow any state to choose what political speech is acceptable and censor speech in the name of ‘misinformation.’ That censorship is both undemocratic and unnecessary.”

Hawaii follows California, which lost a similar fight against the Bee. Minnesota’s version is still being litigated before the full 8th Circuit.

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UK COUNTER-TERROR Police Ad Warns Teens Sharing ‘Funny’ Content Could Be TERRORISM

The UK’s Counter Terrorism Police have released a disturbing advertisement depicting a white teenager facing police seizure of devices and a potential criminal record simply for sharing a link he found “funny”—content, we are told, was later deemed terrorist material.

This move, part of the broader Prevent anti-radicalization strategy, underscores the UK regime’s push to police online activity among youth, framing it as a gateway to extremism while ignoring surging real-world dangers from mass migration.

In the ad, a teen laments: “I just got all my device taken away by the police… My mom couldn’t believe it. I might get a criminal record and not be able to go to college.” He then explains: “I only shared a link. I just thought it was funny, but it was terrorist content.”

Counter Terrorism Policing describes itself as “a collaboration of UK police forces working with the UK intelligence community to help protect the public and our national security by preventing, deterring, and investigating terrorist activity.”

A recent academic analysis in the Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism highlights the escalating involvement of family courts and Prevent in childhood radicalization cases, noting “the number of children referred to Prevent and Channel due to concerns that they might be at risk of, or from, radicalisation has been steadily increasing since 2015.”

It adds that professionals like teachers are “legally obligated to refer that child to the police under the auspices of Prevent” if suspecting risk.

Government guidance on Prevent duty in schools urges communication with parents to spot signs, but also empowers referrals if family members show vulnerability. As one factsheet states, referrals can come from “a family member, friend, colleague, or a professional.”

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