Jan. 7: Zuckerberg to Fact-Checkers: Drop Dead

Israel steps up defense production; The Gulf of America; All hell

Jan 07, 2025

The Big Story

The reign of the fact-checkers is over.

On Tuesday morning, CEO Mark Zuckerberg (looking considerably more broad-shouldered than he did in 2016) announced that Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, would be eliminating the use of third-party fact-checkers on its platform and replacing them with a crowd-sourced Community Notes function similar to the one pioneered by Elon Musk on X. We’ll quote at length from Zuckerberg’s video announcement, with our highlights in bold:

A lot has happened over the last several years. There’s been widespread debate about potential harms from online content, [and] governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more.
A lot of this is clearly political, but there’s also a lot of legitimately bad stuff out there—drugs, terrorism, child exploitation. These are things that we take very seriously, and [that] I want to make sure we handle responsibly. So we built a lot of complex systems to moderate content. But the problem with complex systems is they make mistakes. Even if they accidentally censor just 1% of posts, that’s millions of people. And we’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.
The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point toward once again prioritizing speech. So we’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.
More specifically, here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes similar to X, starting in the U.S. After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they created, especially in the U.S.

In addition to ending the use of fact-checkers, Zuckerberg said:

We’re going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse. What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas. And it’s gone too far.

One can certainly question how genuine Zuckerberg’s change of heart has been. Democrats have been quick to accuse the Meta CEO of toadying to Trump; CNN’s Brian Stelter wrote on X that “Meta is facing an antitrust trial in April” and noted that Zuckerberg had dispatched one of his top deputies, global policy chief Joel Kaplan, to announce the policy change on Fox & Friends, one of the president-elect’s favorite TV shows. Meta’s change of heart also comes only two weeks before Brendan Carr is set to assume his role as head of the Federal Communications Commission. In November, you may recall, Carr sent a letter to Zuckerberg and the CEOs of Apple, Google, and YouTube warning them that their use of “so-called ‘fact-checking’ organizations” could jeopardize their immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Act.

Was that on Zuckerberg’s mind? Probably. But still, it’s progress. And as the writer Wesley Yang observes on X:

And we’d remind readers that the pressure on Facebook didn’t start with Biden, but with Barack Obama. As The Washington Post reported in April 2017, the outgoing president pulled Zuckerberg aside at a Nov. 19, 2016 conference in Lima, Peru to make a “personal appeal… to take the threat of fake news and political disinformation seriously,” implicitly blaming Zuckerberg for Trump’s victory.

So while we won’t be building a shrine to Zuckerberg anytime soon, we’re happy to see him catching up with Scroll editor emeritus Jacob Siegel, who delivered the definitive fisking to the fact-checking industry in an essay for Tablet in 2022.

IN THE BACK PAGES: Is Trump preparing to appoint an IC ally as his top intel official? Lee Smith reports in a Scroll exclusive

The Rest

→Israel is ramping up domestic munitions production to reduce dependence on the United States. The Times of Israel reports:

The Defense Ministry on Tuesday signed two major deals with Elbit Systems for the local arms contractor to supply the military with thousands of heavy bombs and establish a new facility to manufacture raw materials.
The deals were estimated at NIS 1 billion ($275 million), the Defense Ministry said.

“Both agreements will ensure sovereign capability in producing bombs and munitions of all types,” according to a statement by Defense Minister Director General Eyal Zamir. “This is a central lesson from the war that will allow the IDF to continue operating powerfully in all theaters.”

→After granting George Soros the Presidential Medal of Freedom over the weekend, Joe Biden on Monday approved a favor to another group of his party’s constituents: Yemeni terrorists, 11 of whom were released from custody in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We’re joking, sort of: The terrorists were from al-Qaeda, not from the administration’s favorite Iranian-backed Yemeni pet, the Houthis. The Pentagon stated that all the detainees went through a “thorough, interagency review by career professionals” who “unanimously” decided that their release was “consistent with the national security interests of the United States,” but the New York Post notes that two of the released men are former bodyguards of Osama bin Laden. One of those men has made comments indicating that he “maintains an extremist mindset,” according to a declassified U.S. intelligence assessment, while the other has been linked to an aborted airplane hijacking plot in Southwest Asia. The Biden administration is also attempting to use an additional Bin Laden associate, Muhammad Rahim al Afghani, to secure the release of three American hostages in a proposed prisoner swap with the Taliban, according to a Tuesday report in The Wall Street Journal.

→Donald Trump Jr. landed in Greenland on Tuesday, the morning after his father, President-elect Donald Trump, reiterated his desire to incorporate the Danish territory into the United States in a post on Truth Social. “I am hearing that the people of Greenland are ‘MAGA,’” Trump senior wrote, adding that “Greenland is an incredible place, and the people will benefit tremendously if, and when, it becomes part of our Nation.” Danish leaders have insisted that the island is not for sale—as they did in 2019, when Trump first floated the U.S. acquisition of the island. The difference is that now, Greenland is merely one of the Western hemisphere territories that Trump would like to add to the American real-estate portfolio. In December, he raised the idea of reclaiming the Panama Canal, and on Monday, following the resignation of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the president-elect wrote that “many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st state.” He also appears to be picking up on the recent progressive fad for renaming. “We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring,” Trump said on Tuesday. “The Gulf of America. What a beautiful name.”

→In the same Tuesday press conference in which he floated the “Gulf of America” idea, Trump reiterated his demand that Hamas release the hostages prior to his inauguration on Jan. 20 or “all hell will break out.” Asked by a journalist what that meant, Trump explained: “If those hostages aren’t back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East, and it will not be good for Hamas, and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone. All hell will break out. I don’t have to say anymore but that’s what it is.”

→Last Friday, Biden administration Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for cancer warnings on all alcoholic beverages. In an advisory, Murthy wrote that “alcohol is a well-established, preventable cause of cancer responsible for about 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually in the United States—greater than the 13,500 alcohol-associated traffic crash fatalities per year in the U.S.” According to Murthy, these risks are present even with moderate drinking, with cancer risk starting to “increase around one or fewer drinks per day.”

There are lies, damned lies, and statistics, and Murthy’s statistics are particularly bad, as Allysia Finley explains in The Wall Street Journal. In December, the National Academy of Sciences released a report on the health effects of moderate drinking, and found “insufficient evidence to support a link between moderate drinking and oral, pharyngeal, esophageal, laryngeal and other cancers.” While the risk of breast cancer was slightly increased, the study found a “lower risk of death generally and from cardiovascular disease specifically compared with never drinking.” As for alcohol being “responsible” for 100,000 cases of cancer per year, here’s Finlay:

This estimate is based on models of associations from cherry-picked observational studies. But even the report partially attributes only 17% of these estimated deaths to moderate drinking. Of the 609,820 cancer deaths in 2023, this would mean moderate drinking contributed to 3,400, or about 0.6%.

Finlay (read the whole article here) also provides a rundown of some of Murthy’s most amusing public health recommendations over the past four years, including the suggestion—which was news to us—that companies could improve employee “mental health” and reduce suicide by “mitigating harmful impacts in the work environment” with “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility” policies.

→As part of our ongoing commitment to providing you with the best deadly healthy misinformation we can, here’s our Cocktail Recipe of the Day:

The Blood Orange Spritz

2 oz blood orange juice
3 oz Aperol or Contratto
Pour into a cocktail shaker with ice and mix for 30 seconds
Top with sparkling white wine (dry prosecco or cava) to taste, adding club soda if you prefer a bit more fizz
Garnish with blood orange peel

Your Scroll editor can confirm that this wintry twist on the Aperol spritz was a big hit among his friends and family over the holidays.

SCROLL TIP LINE: Have a lead on a story or something going on in your workplace, school, congregation, or social scene that you want to tell us about? Send your tips, comments, questions, and suggestions to scroll@tabletmag.com.

The Deep State Strikes Back!

A frontrunner for the top White House intelligence job may be planning to run cover for the IC, sources say

by Lee Smith

Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail to make war against the Deep State. Now it seems the first battle may take place on home ground: the White House.

Congressional and intelligence sources tell Tablet that the candidate slotted in for the top intelligence spot on the National Security Council is ill-suited to serve the president’s agenda. Adam Howard, reportedly the frontrunner for the NSC’s Senior Director for Intelligence, is currently staff director for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HSPCI), chaired by Republican congressman Mike Turner. According to several current congressional sources, multiple House members have raised concern over an alleged boast made by Turner on Capitol Hill that he’s “taking over Trump’s IC [Intelligence Community].” Presumably, Howard is meant to be his instrument.

On Sunday, Joshua Steinman, an NSC official from the first Trump administration, posted a long thread on X reporting that the current NSC is being staffed with holdovers from the Joe Biden administration and others unlikely to serve Trump’s agenda, including Howard, whose intelligence experience is limited to the two years he’s served as HPSCI Staff Director. Biden’s senior director for intelligence is Maher Bitar, an anti-Israel activist once affiliated with the Students for Justice in Palestine. Bitar also came from HPSCI, where he worked under then congressman now Senator Adam Schiff, one of Trump’s most vocal opponents on Capitol Hill.

“Without an operational intelligence background, you can’t clean up the mess made by the current [Biden] team,” wrote Steinman.

The NSC’s Senior Director for Intelligence is the president’s interlocutor with the 18 intelligence agencies that make up the IC and ensures that the president’s initiatives are being fulfilled. The senior director administrates all covert action programs on behalf of the president and controls all classified information flow to and from the White House, most significantly the Presidential Daily Brief. He also has IC-wide oversight responsibility.

And yet, say congressional sources, Turner and his deputy Howard have over the past year neglected their constitutionally mandated oversight duties and instead covered for the IC. The sources say that they have impeded efforts to investigate anything that might ‘ve embarrassed Biden administration intelligence officials. When reached by Tablet, a HPSCI spokesman declined to comment for the record.

“[Is Howard] willing to expose IC dirty tricks targeting the President?” Steinman asked in his X thread. He was not outlining a hypothetical but rather referring to the NSC’s work in the first Trump White House uncovering the surveillance of the president and his aides. After the 2016 election, NSC staffers found that Obama officials had unmasked the names of transition team officials in transcripts of foreign intelligence intercepts, most notably Gen Michael Flynn. Trump’s one-time national security adviser was unmasked by at least 40 Obama officials—including now President Joe Biden.

The unlawful leak to the media of Flynn’s phone conversation with Russia’s U.S. ambassador led first to the combat veteran’s departure from the White House and subsequently the Special Counsel investigation that hobbled the first half of Trump’s first term in office. NSC holdovers from the Obama administration bogged down the Trump team and one holdover, CIA official Eric Ciaramella, teed up the first impeachment of Trump.

Turner in fact was excellent during the impeachment process, using the televised hearings to defend the president and break down Schiff’s anti-Trump witnesses. After Turner took over the committee, he was reportedly keen to reset relations with Schiff and the Democrats and move toward bipartisanship. The problem is that it’s hard to have comity with a faction led by an ambitious activist like Schiff who saw the committee as a political weapon to target opponents.

There’s a lot riding on the current NSC starting off on the strongest possible footing and with an eye to defending a commander-in-chief certain to be in the Deep State’s crosshairs. Steinman concluded his thread with the observation that if the new intel director “isn’t 100% on board with the Trump Agenda, we are in for trouble.”

The day after Steinman’s post, incoming national security advisor Mike Waltz wrote on Twitter, apparently responding to Steinman’s allegations, that “anyone working under President Trump in the NSC will be fully aligned with his America First agenda. Any rumors or suggestions to the contrary are fake news and a distraction from the mission. We will clear the decks to Make America Great Again.”

Waltz, a Colonel (Ret.) in the National Guard and a combat-decorated Green Beret, served on the House Intelligence Committee and is perfectly aligned with Trump’s priorities on the threats facing America—China, Russia, and Iran. He wrote to Tablet: “I will not be bringing any personnel—political appointees or detailees—who are not in line with the President’s agenda. Additionally, detailees will be dismissed on day one pending an assessment of President Trump and the NSC’s priorities.”

Steinman isn’t the only one who thinks Adam Howard doesn’t fit the bill.

After HPSCI finished its report on cases of sexual assault at the CIA, it was released only after victims complained. The victims have continued to raise concerns that the CIA has not been held accountable, and the House report seemingly praised CIA leadership and allocated more resources to the Agency to stop employees from sexually assaulting their colleagues. The report reasoned that the CIA was “unable to appropriately address the challenges due to its lack of certain tools and authorities. The Committee sought to provide CIA with what it needs to fix these gaps in the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024.”

According to Senate sources, with the 2024 Intelligence Authorization Act, Senate Intelligence Committee Republicans were keen to cut all funding for DEI programs across the IC and limit DEI management positions, and successfully did so in their version if the bill. But since Turner and his staff were willing to satisfy the Biden administration’s requests, the disparity weakened the GOP Senate’s provisions and the final bill.

Perhaps most oddly, Turner and Howard spooked the country with a vague warning of a security threat to prevent consideration of reforms to 702, the authority for the warrantless bulk data collection of American communications. When 702 was up for reauthorization in spring 2024, House Speaker Mike Johnson wanted to give the Judiciary committee the opportunity to make amendments protecting U.S. privacy rights. But Turner moved to block the bill from coming to the floor with an amendment process.

The HPSCI chair took the unusual step of publicly announcing that he had made available to House members classified information regarding a “serious national security threat” and called on President Biden to declassify all information related to it. Although Turner didn’t specify the threat at the time, it turned out to be a Russian space-based military capability—a serious threat, but not as urgent as Turner had made it seem. Lawmakers had been in possession of the intelligence for weeks prior to Turner’s announcement.

The point was that the information about the Russian space weapon was reportedly collected via 702. Turner’s announcement was meant to show that the controversial surveillance program was an indispensable tool and anyone who moved to reform it was playing fast and loose with national security and exposing Americans to danger.

Under Turner’s leadership, in other words, HPSCI has been making the IC’s case. But defending the interests of a cadre that’s abused its power by spying on Americans, including the president-elect, is the opposite of what Donald Trump had in mind when he swore he’d clean out the Deep State.

When contacted by Tablet, Steinman said: “President Trump has the greatest instincts in a leader I have ever seen. And he deserves a team that executes his vision with the tenacity and vigor befitting the mandate bestowed upon him by the American people.”