On April 5, Candace Owens publicly invited her former Daily Wire colleague Ben Shapiro to a debate about "Israel and the current definition of antisemitism." It was Owens' criticisms of U.S. financing of Israel, and her criticisms of Israel's war in Gaza, that caused her departure from the Daily Wire two weeks earlier.

Both Shapiro and Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing responded by saying they would like to arrange the debate requested by Owens. That night, Shapiro appeared to accept her offer, writing on X: "Sure, Candace. I texted you on February 29th offering this very thing." The Daily Wire co-founder added: "Let's do it on my show this Monday at 5pm at our studios in Nashville; 90 minutes, live-streamed."

After Owens objected to the format and timing, she and Boreing exchanged several tweets in which they appeared to be negotiating, and then agreeing to, the terms and format for the debate. Owens had suggested the debate be moderated by Joe Rogan or Lex Fridman. Shaprio said he wanted no moderator. They ultimately agreed to the terms, with Boreing offering a series of conditions, including a no-moderator debate, and with Owens publicly accepting. 

Two weeks later, many readers of both Shapiro and Owens noticed, and complained, that the debate had not yet happened. On April 24, Owens addressed those inquiries by explaining that the Daily Wire had yet to propose dates, while reiterating her strong desire to ensure the debate happened.

But the debate was never going to happen. That is because the Daily Wire -- in secret and unbeknownst to its readers -- sought a gag order to be placed on Owens after she had called for a debate. They did this under the cover of secrecy, before a private arbitrator, at exactly the same time that they were claiming in public that they wanted this debate and were even negotiating the terms with her. To this date, the Daily Wire has not informed its readers, seeking to understand why the much-anticipated debate had not yet happened, that they had sought and obtained a gag order against Owens.

When seeking a gag order to be imposed on Owens, the Daily Wire accused her of violating the non-disparagement clause of her agreement with the company. To substantiate this accusation, the company specifically cited Owens' initial tweet requesting a debate with Shapiro as proof of this disparagement, along with concerns she voiced that Shapiro appeared to be violating the confidentiality agreement between them by publicly maligning Owens's views to explain her departure from the company. While the company claimed before the arbitrator that it did not object in principle to a "healthy debate," it urged the imposition of a gag order on Owens by claiming that the way she requested the debate constituted disparagement of Shapiro and the site.

To justify the gag order it wanted, the company also cited various criticisms of the Daily Wire and Shapiro on X that Owens had "liked." This proceeding took place as part of an exchange of legal threats between the parties after the public agreement to debate about Israel was solidified. Those threats arose from the fact that various Daily Wire executives and hosts, in both public and private, were castigating Owens as an anti-Semite. On March 22, Daily Wire host Andrew Klaven published a one-hour video that hurled multiple accusations, including anti-Semitism, at Owens. The Daily Wire cited Owens' response to that video -- her defense of herself from those multiple accusations -- as further proof that she needed to be gagged.

The initial tweet from Owens not only requested a debate, but also included a video from the popular comedian Andrew Schulz, who had mocked the Daily Wire for firing Owens over disagreements regarding Israel, and specifically mocked Shapiro for his willingness to debate only undergraduate students. The tweet underneath Owens's original debate request included a summary of Schulz's mockery of Shapiro which stated: Schulz now "realizes Ben Shapiro is only good at debating college liberals & can’t win debates against serious competition." 

After the prior restraint hearing sought by the Daily Wire and Shapiro, the arbitrator sided with them and against Owens. The arbitrator agreed with the Daily Wire that Owens' call to debate Shapiro, and her follow-up negotiations of the debate, constituted "disparagement" of the company and Shapiro. The company argued that any further attempt by Owens to debate, as well her suggesting that the debate would expose the Daily Wire's real "priorities," constituted criticisms of the site and of Shapiro, criticisms that the arbitrator concluded Owens was barred from expressing under her contract with the company.

The arbitrator thus imposed a gag order of prior restraint on Owens. Among other things, the order banned Owens from saying or doing anything in the future which could tarnish or harm the reputation of the Daily Wire and/or Ben Shapiro. Given that the Daily Wire had argued, and the arbitrator agreed, that Owens' offers to debate Shapiro about Israel and anti-semitism were themselves "disparaging," the Daily Wire has ensured that the debate with Owens that they publicly claimed to want could not, in fact, take place. Any such debate would be in conflict with the gag order they obtained on Owens from expressing any criticisms of the site or of Shapiro.

When asked for comment to be included this story, Owens replied: I "wish I could comment on this but I can’t." She added: "can neither confirm nor deny."

Boreing said: "your story is inaccurate to the point of being false," though he did not specify a single inaccuracy, nor did he deny that the Daily Wire had sought and obtained a gag order on Owens at the same time they were publicly posturing as wanting a debate with her. The confirmation we obtained of all these facts is indisputable. Boreing added: "I’m sure you can appreciate how fraught a high profile break-up like this is. For that reason, we are trying to resolve our issues with Candace privately."

It certainly seems true that the Daily Wire is attempting to achieve all of this "privately." Nonetheless, Ben Shapiro has constructed his very lucrative media brand and persona based on his supposed superiority in debating, a reputation cultivated largely as a result of numerous appearances at undergraduate schools around the country where he intrepidly engages with students who are often in their teens or early twenties. Both Shapiro and the Daily Wire have also predicated their collective media brand on an eagerness to engage in free and open debate with anyone, and to vehemently oppose any efforts to silence people, especially those in media, from expressing their political views.

It was the imperatives of this media branding that presumably led the Daily Wire and Shapiro to publicly agree to a debate with Owens over Israel and anti-semitism in the first place. Indeed, when it became apparent early after the start of Israel's war in Gaza that Owens had major differences with Shapiro, Boering responded to calls from Israel supporters for Owens to be fired by proclaiming in November: 

[E]ven if we could, we would not fire Candace because of another thing we have in common - a desire not to regulate the speech of our hosts, even when we disagree with them. Candace is paid to give her opinion, not mine or Ben’s. Unless those opinions run afoul of the law or she violates the terms of her contract in some way, her job is secure and she is welcome at Daily Wire.

But a mere four months later, Owens, despite being of one of the company's most popular hosts, was out. The company had concluded that her increasingly vocal criticisms of Israel, opposition to U.S. financing of it, and her views on anti-semitism were incompatible with the Daily Wire's policies.

All of those issues would likely have been the subject of the public debate that Owens sought, and that the Daily Wire claimed to want. Instead, the Daily Wire has succeeded in obtaining a gag order that, on its face, prevents Owens, in advance, from questioning or criticizing both the Daily Wire or Shapiro in any way.

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Good evening. It's Wednesday, May 1. 

Tonight: A massive show of police force was deployed at various colleges throughout New York City, designed to forcibly shut down protests and arrest protesters with the largest presence at Columbia. Many journalists who have covered protests around the world said they have never seen so much police force gathered to crack down on political dissent. Meanwhile, a group of pro-Israel counter-protesters appeared at UCLA and violently attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment, screaming anti-Palestinian vulgarities and using force, including wood and other weapons, to attack the protesters long gathered there. 

It was really remarkable to watch how much propaganda and even lies were so glaringly unleashed and spread by the American media to attempt to demonize the protest against the U.S.-supported and financed Israeli war in Gaza. As just one example, it was alleged by the NYPD and then mindlessly recited by media outlets that are obsessively pro-Israel, such as CNN, that the wife of a known terrorist was a menacing presence at the Columbia protests. 

As it turns out, they were referring to the wife of former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian, who was arrested right after 9/11 and became the first test case for how far the Patriot Act could be stretched when the Bush administration accused him of “material support for terrorism” as a result of his fundraising for charities in Gaza that were alleged to be linked to groups the U.S. had designated as terrorist organizations. I followed and reported on that case very closely at the time, including interviewing Al-Arian and his family while he was under house arrest. It was really one of the worst abuses of the criminal justice system I had ever seen. Al-Arian was acquitted by a jury on the most serious charges, namely providing material support to terrorism, even though the government had been spying on him for many years. While that trial produced a hung jury on the more minor charges, and yet he was never let go, he ended up being consigned for years under house arrest, until he finally agreed to be deported to Turkey as the only way to finally end that case and the persecution of his family. His daughter, the longtime broadcast journalist Laila Al-Arian, will be with us to discuss this case. 

But perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all of this is how cynically these alleged human rights concerns are weaponized. Whenever the officially designated “bad countries,” such as Russia, China, or Iran, send police to arrest protesters and crush protest movements in Hong Kong or Tehran or throughout Russia, it is immediately denounced in the United States as pure evil tyranny. Yet when dictatorships that are the U.S.'s closest allies crush protests with police force—say, Saudi Arabia or Egypt—that is ignored because there's no benefit in denouncing the world's most savage, pro-American tyrants. And yet, when the U.S. engages in the same human rights abuses, when it indefinitely imprisons Julian Assange or tries to kill him, or when the government deploys massive police force to crack down on political protesters, that same act is cheered by the people who feign horror when done by America's enemies. We'll examine all this propaganda and deceit surrounding this use of police power over the last week to try and finally end these protests against the foreign government in Tel Aviv.

Then: The House of Representatives today, by an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 320 to 91, enacted a law designed to wildly expand the official definition of “anti-Semitism,” a definition that, as we will show you now, explicitly includes all sorts of common, valid, normal criticisms of the Israeli government. By doing so, Congress is proclaiming that the desire to shield this foreign country and its government is more important than preserving the free speech rights of American citizens. We will look in detail at this bill and the vote to examine all its implications. It has horrified even many people on the right who are supportive of Israel, and yet who are saying that this is one of the gravest attacks on the First Amendment in years. 

For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now. 

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Good evening. It's Tuesday, April 30. 

Tonight: For months, Democrats were accusing House speaker Mike Johnson of being all the things Democrats always call people whom they dislike; a racist, a fascist, a religious fanatic, a pro-Kremlin asset, etc., etc. But then, Speaker Johnson began radically reversing many of his longstanding views to become the most valuable tool or the most reliable ally of the Biden White House and the U.S. security state. And now, for understandable reasons—I don't blame them—Congressional Democrats speak of Mike Johnson not with scorn, but with affection. And now, in response to a motion by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, and Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, one that's designed to exploit the thin majority that Republicans have in the House and will attempt to remove Mike Johnson from his speakership, similar to the way they did Kevin McCarthy before him, House Democrats today, led by their minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, of New York, announced that they would protect Mike Johnson and keep him as speaker by giving him all the votes he needs to remain. That Johnson has become such a popular and useful fellow among Democrats and the intelligence agencies in the Biden White House, speaks volumes about how Washington works and how easily it exploits those like him, who are desperate to cling to any modicum of power. We'll tell you about the latest with this bizarre spectacle and examine all of its implications. 

Then: The intrepid independent journalist Lee Fang has a new article today on how the gutting of the American industrial base is one of the reasons the U.S. is bizarrely incapable of keeping up with the Russians when trying to arm Ukraine. We'll speak to him about his latest report, as well as the genuinely disturbing trend of so many Republicans and conservatives embracing the very censorship and safetyism theories they long claim to loathe, all to restrict free speech and the right of protest in the United States to protect the foreign country called Israel. 

Finally, Doctor Jill Stein, an actual medical doctor, not a doctor Jill Biden type of doctor, is running for president again this year on the Green Party ticket. She's the only Jewish candidate running of the major presidential candidates. Earlier this week, she was arrested along with dozens of students at Washington University in Saint Louis while protesting against the Israeli war in Gaza and U.S. support for it. Doctor Stein will be here to talk about all of that, as well as the other primary issues driving her presidential campaign and how she sees the 2024 election. 

For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.