Tag: rand paul

Sen. Rand Paul Warns RESTRICT Act Would Allow Feds to Nullify First Amendment

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has been a major critic of the RESTRICT Act, which has been sold to Congress and the public as a ban on TikTok.

He warned that it would authorize the federal government to censor any online communications it deems subversive and would nullify the First Amendment.

The popular social media app, which is controlled by a Chinese company with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, has more than 150 million monthly users in the United States alone and is used mainly by people under 30.

The app has been controversial for years, as concerns over security have led to several statewide bans of the app on government devices.

Legislation Faces More Opposition

Former President Donald Trump failed in his attempt to ban TikTok in the United States during his presidency, but momentum has been building ever since.

In April, President Joe Biden demanded that TikTok’s owners divest their stakes in the company or face a nationwide ban.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) co-sponsored the RESTRICT Act, which now has the support of over 20 senators, to give the Commerce Department the power to impose restrictions—up to and including outright bans—on TikTok and other technologies that may pose a national security risk.

It would mainly apply to foreign apps and software from countries deemed hostile to the United States, like China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba.

The legislation also empowers the Secretary of Commerce to unilaterally add any other country to the list.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said the House would draw up a bill to address the Chinese app, but the timeline is unclear.

On May 5, Paul published a column on conservative news website Townhall, warning that the bill “bestows an astonishing amount of power to the Executive branch in a manner that the Chinese Communist Party would approve of.”

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Rand Paul Warns Overclassification Being Used To Cover Up COVID Lab Leak

Senator Rand Paul warned Wednesday that over classification of information is being used to avoid oversight and institute cover ups, such as regarding the origins of COVID.

Appearing on Newsmax TV’s “Eric Bolling The Balance,” Paul explained “I think there’s an overclassification problem here. Everything’s classified. And in all likelihood, what we’ll find is this is not some sort of organized scheme to have the secrets to the nuclear weapon in [Biden’s] Corvette. I think it’s more likely than not that we’ve classified so many documents that it’s hard to find documents that are not classified.”

He continued, “The one problem with classifying so much is that there is, right now, to my knowledge, pretty good information out there in the intelligence community about the virus originating from the lab in China, and yet they classify it to try to prohibit people [like] me giving you the information that we already know that this came from a lab. And so this is a real problem.”

“We need to allow less classification so the American people can understand more about what’s going on with their government,” Paul urged.

He added, “I go to classified hearings, and I haven’t actually been to a classified hearing where I actually thought I heard a secret, to tell you the truth.”

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Rand Paul’s Annual ‘Festivus’ Report: $482,276,543,907 in Government Waste

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Friday continued the annual tradition of celebrating “Festivus,” airing out his many grievances as it relates to government waste.

Paul’s 2022 Festivus report highlights $482,276,543,907 in government waste and includes $2.3 million used by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for an experiment involving injecting puppies with cocaine, $202,000 used by the Department of Defense (DOD) on Starbucks espresso machines, and $3 million for the construction of a Gandhi museum.

“This will be the 10th year in a row that I’ve celebrated #Festivus with you. By celebrated I mean have a little fun at the expense of Washington. If we don’t laugh we might cry,” Paul wrote before sharing some of the highlights of the report to his social media page and invoking the infamous Seinfeld quote from Frank Costanza, “I’ve got a lot of problems with you people!”

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Rand Paul: Fauci Caused 7 Million People To Die; “We’ve Caught Him Red Handed, He Won’t Get Away”

Senator Rand Paul asserted Thursday that Anthony Fauci is directly responsible for funding dangerous research that likely killed millions of people, and that he “won’t get away.”

“Likely there is no public health figure who has made a greater error in judgement than Dr Fauci,” Paul declared in a Fox News appearance, adding “the error of judgement was to fund gain of function research in a totalitarian country.”

Fauci funded “research that allowed them to create super viruses, that in all likelihood leaked into the public and caused seven million people to die,” Paul declared.

“This is right up there with decisions, some of them malevolent or military to kill millions of people,” The Senator further urged.

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Congress Is Not Allowed To Know About TOP SECRET Gain Of Function Research Committee

Appearing on Fox News to discuss the first ever Senate hearing on gain of function research, Rand Paul revealed that there is a committee that is supposed to oversee such experimentation with potentially lethal viruses, but that it is above the oversight of Congress.

Paul noted that according to scientists who testified on Capitol Hill yesterday, “the committee that is supposed to review these viruses is secret.”

“We don’t know the names. We don’t know that they ever meet, and we don’t have any records of their meetings,” the Senator reiterated, adding “It’s top-secret. Congress is not allowed to know. So whether the committee actually exists, we’re uncertain.”

“We do know that they’ve met three times and there are thousands of gain-of-function research proposals. They’ve only met three times, they’ve only reviewed three projects,” Paul continued.

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Rand Paul Demands Answers After NIH Admits Redacting COVID-19 Origins Emails ‘To Prevent Misinformation’

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) is demanding answers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), after he says the agency “has repeatedly disregarded its responsibilities under FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) and the American people’s right to agency records,” according to a Wednesday letter from Paul to NIH Acting Director Lawrence A. Tabak.

“For almost two years, public interest groups and media organizations have been forced to engage in protracted litigation to obtain documents related to NIH’s involvement in COVID-19,” adding “The records NIH has produced have been heavily redacted.”

“This suggests NIH is censoring the information it releases to the public about the origins of the pandemic.“

Paul cites an article by journalist and former Chuck Grassley investigator Paul D. Thacker, which notes an egregious admission by the NIH in Court that the agency “is withholding portions of emails between employees because they “could be used out of context and serve to amplify the already prevalent misinformation regarding the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.””

In an 18-page declaration to the court, NIH FOIA Officer Gorka Garcia-Malene detailed how the NIH redacts documents in compliance with the law. In the case of Exempt 6 privacy concerns, Garcia-Malene declared:

Exemption 6 mandates the withholding of information that if disclosed “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(6). Exemption 6 was applied here due to the heightened public scrutiny with anything remotely related to COVID-19.

Mr. Garcia-Malene also claimed that information had be redacted “because of the amount of misinformation surrounding the pandemic and its origins.” Seriously, the NIH is now arguing in court that because there is so much misinformation about how the pandemic began, they can’t release facts that might clear up misinformation about how the pandemic began.

The NIH was responding to a case brought by US nonprofit Right to Know, after the NIH deleted coronavirus sequences that Chinese researchers added to the NIH’s Sequence Read Archive. As Thacker notes, “These datasets involved key studies that virologists were using at the time to promote the now discredited theory that the COVID-19 virus may have passed from pangolins to humans.“

In the case at hand, the NIH attempted (and succeeded) at sealing the name of a Chinese researcher which had already been made public.

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Ukrainian Government Publishes List of American Individuals Who are Allegedly “Russian Propagandists” 

The government of Ukraine recently published a list of individuals who it believes are “promoting Russian propaganda.” As Finn McRedmond of UnHerd noted, this list includes “a number of prominent Western intellectuals.” 

On July 14, 2022, the “Center for Countering Disinformation”, published a list on its website of academics, activists, and politicians who are “promoting Russian propaganda.” These included notable intellectuals and politicians such as Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, geopolitical analyst Edward Luttwak, international relations scholar John Mearsheimer, and independent leftist journalist Glenn Greenwald. 

The list does not provide any specific consequences for the people who are mentioned on it.

This institution was set up in 2021 under the watch of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and was headed by former lawyer Polina Lysenko. The CCD is under the purview of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine.

The CCD’s goal is to find and combat “propaganda” and “destructive disinformation” and to stop the “manipulation of public opinion.”

McRedmond observed that the “exact criteria for inclusion are also unclear, although next to each name the report lists the ‘pro Russian’ opinions the individual promotes.” In the case of Edward Luttwak, he earned the Ukrainian state’s ire by suggesting that “referendums should be held in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions”, referring to the breakaway republics that declared their independence following the Maidan Revolution of 2014.  Mearsheimer is an outspoken critic of American involvement in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. His remarks that “NATO has been in Ukraine since 2014” and that “NATO provoked Putin” were what prompted the Ukrainian government to label him as a “pro-Russian propagandist.” 

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Rand Paul Says Gun Control Bill Was Kept ‘Secret’ And Senators Not Allowed Time To Read It

As the Senate passed a gun control bill this week with fifteen Republicans siding with Democrats, Senator Rand Paul noted that no one had time to even read the legislation because it was “assembled in secret.”

“Unfortunately, this legislation was assembled as many are — in secret, absent well-placed leaks to journalists,” Paul tweeted, adding “There doesn’t appear to be a willingness or time provided to read, understand, debate or amend this bill.”

The Senator further vowed to try to introduce amendments to the bill to “correct the constitutional deficiencies.”

The Senate voted 64-34 Tuesday night to advance the bill. 

How can any elected official sincerely decide on legislation without reading it or debating it?

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Rand Paul: ‘Elitists Want A One World Government; It’s Not A Conspiracy Theory’

Senator Rand Paul appeared on Fox News Thursday and discussed the ongoing World Economic Forum gathering in Davos Switzerland, remarking that it is not a conspiracy theory to suggest the organisation is seeking a one world government, rather it is “in their mission statement.”

Paul urged that “The real danger here that’s even more dangerous than all their phony caring about carbon footprint, the real danger is this; look how bad your government is in a country where you get to vote for these people.”

“This would be a government, a world government where you don’t get to vote on anybody. This is everybody’s worst nightmare,” Paul asserted, referring to the ‘penetration’ of the WEF, to quote its head Klaus Schwab, into national governments.

“The bureaucracy that we have trouble in our United States because we don’t get to vote on them, we vote indirectly,” Paul said, adding “Can you imagine the one-world bureaucracy of all these elitists and their private jets that would rule our country and we wouldn’t get to vote?”

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US Borrowing Money From China to Fund Ukraine: Sen. Rand Paul

The United States can’t afford to send money to Ukraine without borrowing from China and taking on more debt to finance its obligations, said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in a May 18 interview on the Breitbart News Daily Podcast.

On May 16, a bipartisan majority of U.S. senators voted to advance a $40 billion Ukraine aid package over an earlier objection from Paul. The Senate is on track for final consideration of the bill sometime later this week and is expected to pass the legislation.

“I think it’s important to know that we don’t have any money to send. I mean, we have to borrow the money from China to send it to Ukraine,” Paul explained. “And I think most people kind of get that, and many Republicans will say that and understand it when it’s a new social program, but if it’s military aid to a country, they’re like, ‘Well, we can borrow that. That’s a justified borrowing.’”

Currently, the U.S. national debt is inching toward $30.5 trillion, with annual federal spending outpacing annual federal revenue by over $2 trillion. To continue to fund obligations appropriated by Congress, the United States has to take on debt, much of which is purchased by Chinese buyers.

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