The inauguration may have been moved indoors, but the cold didn't deter enterprising MAGA merch sellers and various proselytizing religious groups from taking to the DC streets:
You never know who you may run into at an inaugural ball...
Watch Michael Tracey's interview with Jim McGovern (D-MA) at the progressive, anti-war themed "Peace Ball":
For years, U.S. officials and their media allies accused Russia, China and Iran of tyranny for demanding censorship as a condition for Big Tech access. Now, the U.S. is doing the same to TikTok. Listen below.
Hey @ggreenwald ,
Speaking of freedom of speech in Germany—this is our everyday reality. Here are screenshots from two of the most prominent mainstream media outlets in Germany. As always, The Comments re Turned Off.
Today is the last day of Scholz time in power (CDU wins tomorrow), and here is the first sentence of his speech today:
"Für mich ist ganz klar: Der ukrainische Präsident ist ein demokratisch gewählter Präsident. Er hat sich gegen Wettbewerber durchgesetzt, und das war ein ganz klares, deutliches Votum der Bürger und Bürgerinnen der Ukraine – für die Demokratie, für die Entwicklung des Rechtsstaates in der Ukraine."
Translation for those reading this post:
"For me, it is absolutely clear: the Ukrainian president is a democratically elected president. He prevailed against competitors, and it was a very clear and distinct vote by the citizens of Ukraine—for democracy, for the development of the rule of law in Ukraine."
This news article appeared today in Brazil’s largest newspaper, Folha de S.Paulo, in Portuguese; the translated article in English appears below.
The media company of U.S. President Donald Trump, along with the American video platform Rumble, filed a joint lawsuit in a U.S. federal court today against the notorious Brazilian Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes. The platforms seek a judicial declaration that Moraes’ recent orders — which mandate that Rumble close the account of right-wing commentator Allan dos Santos and turn over all of his user data — violates the sovereignty of the United States, the U.S. Constitution, and American law. Moraes issued the orders in secret, and required Rumble not to disclose the contents of the order.
Rumble left Brazil in December, 2023, due to what it described as numerous unjust “censorship orders” from Moraes to ban multiple creators and voices on the platform, including elected members of Congress. At the time, Moraes ordered Rumble to keep those orders secret, and threatened the company with being shut off in Brazil if it failed to immediately comply: similar to how, last August, Moraes ordered X closed in Brazil for failure to comply with orders banning users and removing posts.
We obtained and published a copy of one such secret order — directed to multiple platforms — in January, 2023. They gave the platforms two hours to comply or face substantial daily fines. Rumble shut off its service in Brazil rather than comply.
But with a new Trump administration vowing to protect American technology companies from censorship demands by foreign governments, and with Moraes recently withdrawing an order blocking the Rumble account of the podcaster Monark, Rumble made its content once again available in Brazil earlier this month. Almost immediately, Moraes sent orders to Rumble’s former lawyers in the country, directing them to once again represent Rumble so that they could receive his orders on the company’s behalf.
Moraes’ new order at the center of the lawsuit is one that directed Rumble to fully close the account of dos Santos and prevent him from opening any new ones. Unlike prior orders from Moraes, this one does not merely force the platform to block dos Santos’ content from being available in Brazil.
The order requires that Rumble ban dos Santos entirely from using or monetizing Rumble in any way, including outside of Brazil. As prior orders did, it gave Rumble only two hours to comply.
Dos Santos was charged in Brazil with several crimes relating to the alleged disinformation he posted about the STF and 2022 election. But in April of last year, the Biden administration rejected Brazil’s extradition request on the ground that such acts are not and cannot be considered crimes in the U.S., as they are protected by the right to free expression.
Under extradition treaties, countries generally refuse to extradite a foreign national if the acts that form the basis of the request are not crimes in that country. Dos Santos’ application for political asylum in the U.S. is pending, and he remains a legal resident of the U.S.
Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski said in a statement that the American rejection of that extradition request should have put an end to Moraes’ attempt to limit dos Santos’ speech in the U.S. Instead, he said, “[Moraes] is now attempting to sidestep the U.S. legal system entirely — using secret censorship orders to pressure American social media into banning the political dissident worldwide.”
Rumble’s lawyer E. Martin De Luca, of the large law firm Boies Schiller, said that, as a legal resident of the U.S., Dos Santos’ “speech is fully protected under the First Amendment.” The purpose of the suit, he said, is “to ensure that American businesses remain governed by American law and that no foreign court can unilaterally dictate what speech is allowed on American platforms without proper authorization from the U.S. government.”
It has become a top goal of American technology companies to enlist the Trump administration in their fight against political censorship imposed by foreign governments. When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in January that Facebook’s “fact-checking program” would end, he asked the U.S. Government to protect tech companies against foreign governments who are “going after American companies and pushing to censor more.” When asked about Meta’s announcement, Trump expressed approval for it.
Lawyers for Trump’s media company argue that any attempt to disrupt Rumble’s operations in Brazil would also harm Trump’s company, Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. (Trump Media), and its Truth Social media platform. Rumble provides Truth Social with the cloud services on which the site depends. Any blocking of Rumble, Trump Media argues, will destabilize Truth Social as well, giving the company a legal basis to challenge Moraes’ orders directed at Rumble.
The political consequences of this new lawsuit could be at least as significant as its legal implications, perhaps more so. Many key figures in Trump’s new government have long harbored animosity toward Moraes and toward what they see as Brazil’s increasingly repressive censorship regime. Focusing a light on Moraes and depicting his orders as an attack on American sovereignty, American companies and the free speech rights of U.S. residents is likely to inflame tensions among Moraes’ now-powerful American opponents.
Chief among those is Elon Musk, the person arguably most powerful in the new American government. During X’s battle with the STF, Musk launched multiple harsh rhetorical attacks on Moraes, calling him “a tyrannical dictator masquerading as a judge” and a “criminal.” In August, Musk published an AI-generated photo of Moraes behind prison bars and wrote: “One day, @Alexandre, this picture of you in prison will be real. Mark my words.”
The decision by Trump’s media company to join Rumble’s lawsuit against Moraes undoubtedly signals the new administration’s intent to combat many of the Brazilian judge’s censorship orders. Thus far, the Trump administration has largely avoided specifically targeting Brazil with the kinds of retaliatory tariffs, demands and punishments imposed on other countries. But this lawsuit against Moraes from Trump’s media company can, and almost certainly will, inflame these latent conflicts between the two governments.
In addition to seeking a ruling that Moraes’ order violates American sovereignty and law, the lawsuit also requests an order be issued to Apple and Google, requiring them not to abide by any directives from Moraes to remove Truth Social or Rumble’s platform from their stores. It also requests a jury trial to determine the validity of the companies’ claims against Moraes.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald has a contract with Rumble to provide exclusivity for his online show for 12 hours; Rumble has no editorial control (or any other control) over the show or Greenwald’s journalism.
The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.
System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!
First: The German-based journalist, James Jackson, has been covering free speech attacks in Germany extensively and he will be here with us tonight to explain all of them.
Then: Several top national security officials of the Trump administration – including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump envoy, Steve Witkoff – met today in Saudi Arabia with senior Russian officials including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. It was the first real dialogue between high-level officials of both countries – by the way, the world’s two largest nuclear superpowers – that took place in many years and there is every reason to celebrate even, indeed, – to breathe a sigh of relief – over the fact these two countries are now agreeing to maintain open dialog and work together, cooperatively, not only to end the devastating war in Ukraine but on numerous issues of common interest beyond Ukraine as well.
Plus: there was a bizarre and extraordinary hate crime that took place in Miami over the weekend that you likely heard very little about. A Jewish American man who identifies as an ardent Zionist shot and tried to kill two people solely because he thought they were Palestinian. The two men he shot were actually Israeli.
For their part, the two victims also mistook the ethnic background of their shooter: they announced on social media that he was Arab and that he tried to kill them just for being Israelis and then added on their social media accounts, “Death to Arabs.”
There's a lot to say about this incident, especially the reaction to it or, more accurately, the very subdued lack of reaction.
The interview: James Jackson
The issue on which our show has mostly focused over the last year or so has been the relentless assault on free speech after October 7. It resulted in all sorts of executive orders in the U.S., purporting to ban criticism of Israel or activism against it, the shutting of pro-Palestinian groups on campuses and even the shutting of TikTok as one very prominent senator admitted over the weekend: the true impetus for shutting down TikTok in the United States was that it was perceived to permit too many criticisms of Israel.
Meanwhile, throughout Europe, the targeting of Israel critics and pro-Palestinian activists, particularly people engaged in activism against the Israeli war in Gaza, has been even more severe. While it's taken place throughout Europe, undoubtedly the country where it has been most extreme is Germany, which has furnished immense amounts of arms to Israel that it used to bomb and destroy Gaza and therefore has a very intent motive to prevent anyone from claiming that those are war crimes or genocide because it would make Germany complicit – a strain Vice-President JD Vance did not mention when criticizing Europe for the attacks on free speech at the Munich Security Conference, last week.
James Jackson is an independent journalist and broadcaster from the United Kingdom who is based in Berlin. He hosts Mad in Germany, a current affairs podcast. He has previously covered news, business and culture in Germany and Central and Eastern Europe for publications like the BBC, Sunday Times, and Time Magazine. He has really become one of my top two or three go-to sources for understanding events in Germany, particularly these assaults on free speech. We are delighted to welcome him to his debut appearance on System Update.
G. Greenwald: James, it's great to see you. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us. I know it's late there.
James Jackson: Hi Glenn. Thanks so much for having me on here. You know, long-time reader and follower of yours. So, really great that you've picked up the free speech cause in Germany particularly because it's not something that has got very much attention until, of course, the vice president of the United States and “60 Minutes” as well brought it to the world's attention. But it's been something I've been trying to get the message out on for a while. So, I'm happy that it's gone global, but as you said, the most egregious attack on free speech JD Vance did not mention and that is the assault in Israel. I think we understand why, you know, politics plays a very important role in this.
G. Greenwald: Right, sometimes politicians do constructive or positive acts or take constructive and positive steps even if it's always not for the best motives. And who knows, you know, JD Vance is politically constrained. I've never heard him defend or demand censorship of pro-Palestinian activism but in any event, he certainly did end up generating a lot more attention to this issue.
I want to just step back from current events taking place in Germany which we'll get to in a minute including what happened today at this film festival. I think one of the very first articles I ever wrote when I became a journalist or a blogger back in 2005, 2006, was precisely about the fact that there is a vastly different tradition in Western Europe when it comes to perceptions of free speech than there is in the United States. One of the few unifying views in the United States was, at least until recently, the idea that even the most horrendous political views are permitted to be expressed. The state can't punish you for them. And I remember what prompted my article was a conviction in Austria of the British historian David Irving for having engaged in revisionism and denial of the Holocaust. He was criminally convicted and sentenced to a prison term. I essentially wrote that these things are unimaginable in the United States but they're common in Europe and in Germany in particular. After World War II, you could even say, for understandable reasons, there emerged these restrictions on speech particularly when it came to denying the reality of the Holocaust, its magnitude, trying to revise what happened, as well as praise for Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party and the Nazi ideology. And so, you started off with this kind of exception to free speech justified by these extreme events of World War II and they've obviously, as we're seeing now, have expanded aggressively as censorship usually does. That's its trajectory. It starts off justified by some extreme event that people can get on board with and then before you know it, it's a power that is being used all over the place.
We’re back with another Weekly Update to give you every link to all of Glenn’s best moments from Monday (February 10th) to Friday (February 14th). Let’s get to it.
In this episode, we discussed…
Sinister, uncovered programs influenced by USAID;
Why Rumble has returned to Brazil after yearlong exile;
How the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau empowers Wall Street;
In this episode, we covered…
The Trump plan to invent Gaza-a-Lago;
Netanyahu’s consistent efforts to sabotage a lasting ceasefire deal;
In this episode, Glenn examined…
How we can understand Trump and Hegseth’s olive-branch signals to Europe;
What the gerontocracy looks like, with Daniel Boguslaw;
In this episode, a subscriber-favorite voice discusses Israel, the United States, and the Middle East.
Here’s a repeat announcement for all of you:
We noticed that many of you didn’t submit recorded questions, possibly because the process was unclear. Regardless, we’re here to announce that our submission feature is now LIVE. Simply follow the Rumble Studio link included in our Tuesday and Thursday Locals after-show announcements to record your questions, share praise for our editors, or comment on current events.
Again, please be aware that shorter questions are easier to include in the after-show!
Maybe you've seen this message already? We're going to release a submission guide later this week!
For now, it means that our subscribers’ questions will be relegated to our new LIVE Friday mailbag, where Glenn will pull from the best questions, recorded and written, from the past week across all of our community-exclusive posts and discussions. Now, in other words, your questions will be seen by our entire Rumble audience. Rewards will be given for proper grammar and spelling. But there’s more!
In addition to our rescheduled question-and-answer segment(s), there will also be an increasing number of paywalled third segments, meaning that only you (our loyal Locals community members) will have access to the full range of System Update-related content. To be clear, this will happen slowly over the next month, so don’t be too alarmed. Be a little alarmed. Actually, a moderate level of alarm is appropriate—like 45% alarmed.
“Stay tuned for a Weekly Update update!”
— System Update Crew
