Liberals melted down when Florida Republican state Sen. Jason Brodeur proposed making paid bloggers who report on state government register similar to lobbyists to disclose who is paying them.
Somehow, it’s unthinking these same First Amendment defenders will be as up in arms over a proposal in Washington state.
According to The Blaze, Democratic state Rep. Bill Ramos, with the support of Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, has proposed a bill to create a 13-member state commission that would target “misinformation” or “disinformation.”
The intent is to crack down on “domestic violent extremism,” or DVE.
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The bill would also treat DVE as a public health issue, according to The Center Square.
Center Square also noted that last year Ferguson defined DVE as “various forms of extremist and political violence like threats, coercion, and intimidation, online disinformation, extremist recruitment and government infiltration efforts, and the general spread of extreme white supremacism and anti-government ideologies.”
In an interview with PBS in January, Ferguson said his goal would be to use public health intervention as a way to prevent people from becoming “radicalized.”
Center Square also reported that some critics argue that DVE could be defined as parents protesting at school board meetings — such as occurred in 2021, when U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, at the request of, and with the help of, the National School Boards Association issued a memo siccing the FBO on parents opposed to liberal sexual or racial indoctrination in public schools.
The NSBA wanted the federal government to designate parents’ complaints as “a form of domestic terrorism” under the Patriot Act.
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In an opinion column last week, Jason Rantz, a conservative talk-radio host in Seattle, called it the “most dangerous bill in legislative history.”
Rantz said that Ferguson “wants to create a Washington version of a Ministry of Truth to fund journalists to push his political agenda.”
“This commission is specifically designed to target conservatives and quash any government opposition, which is why the legislation purposefully ignores Antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM) extremists,” Rantz continued.
At a recent hearing on the bill, he added, a representative of the Anti-Defamation League stated without evidence that “white supremacists have a ‘common cause’ with ‘anti-mask and anti-vaccine narratives,’ ‘anti-critical race theory narratives,’ and criticisms of election security and gender extremism pushed on children in the classroom.”
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Rantz also pointed out that Ferguson wants to create a program for journalism “fellowships,” which would be funded by state government, for “strengthening” the reporting on misinformation and disinformation by local media.
“Ferguson is looking for creative ideas to criminally charge conservatives who protest government overreach,” Rantz argued.
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