Censorship programs were forced onto Facebook and Instagram through outside pressure, said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who provided the details during an interview with Joe Rogan. Zuckerberg explained how programs for content moderation transformed into large-scale censorship systems after the COVID-19 outbreak. This ties in with his recent announcement that Meta will be ending these censorship practices, and working with the incoming Trump administration to push for freedom of expression globally.

A persecution of between 70 million and 100 million people has largely been hidden from the world, and western news outlets have played a role in concealing it from the public. The Chinese Communist Party launched a campaign of torture, killing, and live organ harvesting against the Falun Gong religious group in 1999. And while many news outlets even won awards in the early years for exposing the truth of the Chinese regime’s brutal actions, many mysteriously stopped covering it around 2003, and some have even flipped to parroting the communist party’s propaganda.

To learn more about this, and what has actually been taking place, we speak with Levi Browde, executive director of the Falun Dafa Information Center, a human rights organization that has been researching and exposing the persecution.

The fires in Los Angeles are not just a natural disaster. They’re also turning into a political disaster, as blame falls on California’s policies on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and environmental regulation. Many are now raising concerns over regulations that allegedly led to water shortages, policies on forestry management, and money for the Fire Department being diverted to programs for DEI.

Individuals who risk prosecution under the incoming Trump administration could receive preemptive pardons. President Joe Biden said he was considering issuing pardons like this in order to shield key figures from prosecution.

Biden demonstrated a novel use of pardons like this when he granted his son, Hunter Biden, a pardon for any potential crimes committed between January 2014 and December 2024. The president has been pressed to give similar pardons to others, although he has not fully committed to doing so.

Meta is ending its third-party fact-checking system on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, and looking to adopt a community notes system following in the footsteps of X.

This push for more freedom of expression was announced in a video from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, where he noted the problems that were caused by an increase in censorship in recent years, and he also explained how he plans to work with the incoming Trump administration to push back against censorship pressure coming to the United States from Europe.

President-elect Donald Trump is hoping to jumpstart his administration with one massive bill, covering everything from border policies to taxes to energy. With less than two weeks before the inauguration, he has held closed-door meetings to win support among key figures in Congress. The goal is to fast-track the agenda through Congress and get the package of legislation on Trump’s desk by the end of April.

Read 'China’s Massive Hacking Campaign Targeting the US': https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/ch­inas-massive-hacking-campaign-targeting-­the-us-5785939

It’s Jan. 6 yet again, and this time, it will be the electoral college votes for President-elect Donald Trump getting certified at the U.S. Capitol building.

Over the course of the last four years, and even after the election results were declared for 2024, Trump has faced legal actions that raised questions over whether he could be rendered ineligible for reelection. Despite the pressure, and some recent doubts that were cast over the election certification, Republicans and Democrats in Congress appear to remain in support of a peaceful transition of power.

A suspected terrorist attack killed at least 14 people in New Orleans on New Year’s Day. The suspect, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was killed in a shootout with police after driving a truck through a crowd of people celebrating the new year, and an ISIS flag was discovered inside the vehicle.

The FBI is now investigating whether the attack has any ties to another incident the same day, where a Tesla Cybertruck loaded with gas tanks and fireworks exploded outside the Las Vegas Trump International Hotel. Yet these incidents are also raising an additional concern. Just prior to this, a former CIA agent warned in an interview on the Shawn Ryan Show that the terrorist groups ISIS and al-Qaeda were planning a resurgence of attacks within the United States for 2025.

You may soon be seeing new engagement on Facebook, but this may not be from human users. Instead, it may be from AI bots, and you may be unable to tell whether or not you’re engaging with a real person. Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, has announced it will bring AI-generated characters to the social media platforms in a move to increase engagement on the platform, and users will be able to engage with these bots.

This is raising some concerns over what’s been referred to as the “dead internet theory.” This used to be a conspiracy that much of today’s internet is bots and AI-created content, while human users have been disengaging. And there are also concerns that the bot content could be used to drive different narratives or agendas.

A heated debate has erupted over H-1B visas, and now President-elect Donald Trump has chimed in. The debate was triggered by comments from Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will head the incoming Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Both came out in support of the visas, while many influencers with pro-Trump leanings came out strongly against the visa policies. The topic could become a key factor in the policies of the next Trump administration on immigration, domestic manufacturing, and American innovation.