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Friday, April 10, 2026

State Dept. settles with conservative media outlets that sued for censorship during Biden admin

The State Department reached a landmark legal settlement with conservative media outlets to not “censor” their constitutionally protected speech — as was documented during the Biden administration.

A consent decree, signed off by a judge and filed Wednesday in a Texas federal court, will force the State Department to no longer throttle online engagement or seek to “fact check” American media for exercising their First Amendment rights, with exceptions for “obscenity, incitement to imminent violence or speech integral to criminal conduct.”

The decree will remain in effect until Jan. 31, 2036, and also mandate trainings for State employees and grantees to make them aware of their free speech-protection obligations.

The New Civil Liberties Alliance brought the suit in December 2023 against the Biden administration on behalf of The Daily Wire, The Federalist and other journalists who had their views suppressed on the COVID-19 pandemic, elections, voting issues, abortion, sexuality and transgenderism.

Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro, for example, had a June 2023 Facebook reel flagged, in which he mocked former President Joe Biden stumbling over his words before mistakenly spluttering: “We can only re-elect Donald Trump.”

A Federalist writer also had an article flagged for reporting on internal emails that showed then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci had privately said over-the-counter masks at drug stores aren’t “effective” in keeping COVID at bay.

An opinion piece by the conservative author Dennis Prager published by the Daily Wire that criticized the political left’s stances during the pandemic was flagged as well.

The suit alleged that, under the Biden administration, the State Department had both funded and promoted the development of technologies by private companies that were later used by social media companies or outside-of-government entities to suppress speech online.

“Today marks an important day for preserving free speech in the digital era,” said Daily Wire CEO Caleb Robinson. “The US government has acknowledged its censorship structures under the Biden administration, and will now be subject to limitations on similar behavior in the future.”

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche added that the “settlement is righting the historic wrong that they [the Biden administration] perpetrated against Americans, and today we say ‘never again’ will we tolerate these injustices.”

President Trump had signed an executive order in January 2025 aimed at reversing the Biden administration’s actions that “trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms.”

Lawyers in the Biden Justice Department downplayed the claims and opposed the suits in court — but that stance was reversed after Trump’s return to the White House.

Much of the content at issue had been flagged by the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio shut down in April 2025 over censorship concerns and a move by Congress to yank its funding.

GEC had “spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving,” Rubio said at the time, ripping the Biden administration for having funded its efforts.

In one instance, it gave a $100,000 grant to the London-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI) in 2021 and 2022, The Washington Examiner first reported, a media monitoring nonprofit that blacklisted at least 10 outlets with right-of-center opinion pages, including The Post, as spreaders “disinformation.”

The April 8 consent decree with the State Department was preceded by an earlier suit between the state of Missouri and the US Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA).

That also ended in a consent decree on March 25 barring the government agencies from threatening social media companies “unless they remove, delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected free speech.”

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), who brought the case as Missouri attorney general, called it “a massive win for the First Amendment and for every American who believes in free speech.”

“From COVID to Hunter Biden’s laptop to the border, Biden officials at the highest levels of government tried to use Facebook, X, and YouTube as their speech police,” Schmitt said. “This decision locks in Americans’ First Amendment rights, and guarantees that even in the digital age, the federal government cannot deplatform protected speech they simply disagree with.”

Both decrees were agreed to by the Department of Justice and offered to pay attorneys’ fees for the plaintiffs involved. Rather than a monetary award, the State Department agreed not to use tools, technologies or fund outside-of-government entities that “intentionally suppress, censor, demonetize, or downgrade” the US media outlet’s constitutionally protected speech.

https://nypost.com/2026/04/10/us-news/state-dept-settles-with-conservative-media-outlets-that-sued-for-censorship-of-covid-election-posts/

NY nuns fight gender law telling them to treat biological men as women at hospice

Just when we thought that gender ideology nonsense and pronoun tyranny had died off, there’s a story that reminds us how deeply entrenched it is in our society.

This week, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, NY, who run Rosary Hill Home — a Catholic hospice for the impoverished — filed a lawsuit accusing the state of violating their constitutional rights. It relates to a 2024 law that requires the facility to affirm gender identity in regard to patients’ pronouns, room assignments and restroom usage.

New York’s LGBTQ Long-Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights was sponsored by Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal when he was a state senator. The state’s health department has sent three letters to Rosary Hill Home warning them about compliance.

But the idea that anyone can change their biological sex is contrary to Catholic belief.

“We Sisters have taken care of patients from all walks of life, ideologies, and faiths,” Mother Marie Edward, general superior of the Hawthorne Dominicans, said in a statement. “We treat each patient with dignity and Christian charity. We have never had complaints. We cannot implement New York’s mandate without violating our Catholic faith.”

Back in early March, the facility wrote to the state asking for an exemption to the law, but their request was met with silence, said their attorney Martin Nussbaum. He notes that the state has given one to facilities run by the Church of Christ, Scientist.

Rosary Hill Home has 42 beds and the sisters separate men and women by floors. But under the law, if a biological man said he was a woman and demanded to room with females, the nuns would have to oblige. Even over the objections of any women who also lay dying.

The facility itself has a unique history. It was founded in 1901 by Mother Mary Alphonsa, formerly Rose Hawthorne Lathrop. She was the daughter of “The Scarlet Letter” author Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The Sisters do the Lord’s work, providing comfort to the impoverished who are dying of cancer — and they’ve been doing it compassionately for over 100 years. To now insist that they adopt guidelines contrary to their teachings is not only a violation of their First Amendment rights, it’s pure insanity.

Take for example, the 57-page curriculum the state requires for workers to use as a guide.

It seems to be more interested in affirming gender fantasies than the tireless work of administering end-of-life care.

Caretakers are advised to not make assumptions about a patient’s identity: “Ask open-ended questions to help you better understand how they self-identify.” They are given an example of “Alex,” a “gender nonconforming resident who asks for directions to the restroom. And when a worker shows him the men’s room, “Alex frowns and walks away. That kind of assumption can unintentionally signal it is unsafe for residents to disclose” information about themselves.

Another section stresses the importance of pronouns and how they help to “affirm” identities. It even urges workers to share their pronouns.

No, thank you.

That kind of woke overreach was insulting in a corporate setting, never mind to Catholic nuns and the lay staff singularly devoted to providing comfort and dignity to the dying.

“They accompany people on their final journey in life. They are serving the neediest of the needy,” said Nussbaum of the nuns. And they are performing these charitable acts for free. But, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished — especially while operating under the thumb of progressive government overlords obsessed with identity politics.

A spokesperson for the State’s Department of Heath said that, while they don’t “comment on pending or ongoing litigation, the NYS Department of Health is committed to following state law, which provides nursing home residents certain rights protecting against discrimination including, but not limited to, gender identity or expression.” 

Violations can result in fines, loss of licensing and, ultimately, jail time.

“The implications are so much greater than whether to utter the words ’he’ or ’she,’” the nuns’ lawsuit states. “Indeed, to demand that a Catholic deny another’s sex is to require him or her to affirm another religious worldview.”

And we know adherents of the church of gender ideology are the most zerlous worshippers, unable to accept any kind of dissent.

Everyone must genuflect to the nonsense. Even nuns.

https://nypost.com/2026/04/10/opinion/new-york-nuns-forced-to-fight-back-against-crazy-gender-law/

Bessent summons bank executives over Anthropic cyber risk

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell brought together a group of bank executives this week to discuss cybersecurity concerns in the wake of Anthropic’s new Mythos model, multiple people familiar with the meeting told The Hill.

The meeting, held at the Treasury Department on Tuesday, came as Anthropic announced its latest AI model, Claude Mythos Preview, will be held back from public release because its capabilities are too advanced and risky to end up in bad actors’ hands.

Several of the executives were already in Washington for the Financial Services Forum, an advocacy organization of the country’s eight largest banks, The Hill’s sources said.

Bloomberg, which first reported the meeting, said Bessent and Powell convened the group to warn of the possible risks the Mythos model could present to banks, citing anonymous people familiar with the matter. Reuters reported the meeting sought to ensure the banks were taking steps to defend their systems.

Anthropic said this week it has been in discussions with US government officials about Claude Mythos Preview and “its offensive and defensive capabilities.”

Those attending the meeting included Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser, Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick, Goldman Sachs Group CEO David Solomon and Wells Fargo & Co. CEO Charles Scharf, Bloomberg reported. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon was not able to attend, one of the people familiar confirmed to The Hill.

Representatives for the banks and the Federal Reserve declined to comment. The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to The Hill.

The Claude Mythos Preview model will be available to a select group of technology firms, including Apple, CrowdStrike, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, according to Anthropic.

These companies, aligned with more than 40 organizations that build or manage critical software infrastructure, will use Claude Mythos Preview in their defensive security work and findings will be shared by Anthropic with the whole industry.

The consortium is part of Anthropic’s new initiative, Project Glasswing, which was formed after the company discovered the capabilities of Claude Mythos Preview.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5826021-anthropic-mythos-model-risks/

Meta Should Face Instagram Youth Addiction Lawsuit by Massachusetts

Meta Platforms must face a lawsuit by Massachusetts' attorney general alleging that the Facebook and Instagram parent deliberately designed features to addict young users, the state's top court ‌ruled on Friday.

The ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court marked the first time a state high ‌court has considered whether a federal law that generally shields internet companies from lawsuits over content posted by their users would also bar claims that companies like Meta knowingly addicted young users.

Meta has denied the allegations and says the company takes extensive steps to keep teens and young users safe on its platforms.

The decision comes in the wake of a landmark trial in which a Los Angeles jury on March 25 found Meta and Alphabet's Google negligent for designing social media platforms that are harmful to young people. ‌It awarded a combined $6 million to a ⁠20-year-old woman who said she became addicted to social media as a child.

A separate jury a day earlier found Meta owed $375 million in civil penalties in a lawsuit by New Mexico's ⁠attorney general accusing the company of misleading users about the safety of Facebook and Instagram and of enabling child sexual exploitation on those platforms.

Thirty-four other states are pursuing similar cases against Meta in federal court. The case by Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, a Democrat, is one of at least nine that state attorneys general have since 2023 pursued in state court, including ‌one filed Wednesday by Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, a Republican.

Campbell's lawsuit garnered early headlines because of allegations it first aired about how CEO Mark Zuckerberg had been dismissive of concerns that aspects of Instagram could have a harmful effect on its users.

The lawsuit alleged that features on Instagram such as push notifications, "likes" of user posts and a never-ending scroll were designed to profit off teens' psychological vulnerabilities and their "fear of missing out."

The state alleged that internal data showed the ‌platform was addicting and harming children, yet top executives rejected changes its research showed would improve teens' well-being.

Menlo Park, California-based Meta had sought to duck the Massachusetts case based on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, a federal law that broadly shields internet companies from ‌lawsuits over content posted by users.

The state argued Section 230 does not apply to false statements it said Meta made about the safety of Instagram, its efforts to protect its young users' well-being or its age-verification systems to ensure people under age 13 stay off the platform.

A trial court judge agreed and said the law also did ‌not apply to allegations concerning the negative impacts of Instagram's design features because the state was "principally seeking to hold Meta liable for its own business conduct," not content posted by third parties.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-must-face-youth-addiction-135900643.html

IMF Executive Board Discusses the Adequacy of the Funds Precautionary Balances

The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded the 2026 Review of the Adequacy of the Fund’s Precautionary Balances.[1] This review took place on the standard two-year cycle, following the 2024 Review. An interim assessment of precautionary balances was conducted within the Review of the Fund’s Income Position for FY2025 and FY2026, concluded in April 2025.

The Fund’s precautionary balances—which consist of general and special reserves—are a key element of the IMF’s multilayered framework for managing financial risks. Precautionary balances provide a buffer to protect the Fund against potential losses resulting from credit, income, and other financial risks. As such, they help protect the value of reserve assets represented by member countries’ positions in the Fund and underpin the exchange of assets through which the Fund provides financial assistance to countries with balance of payments needs.

The review was based on the assessment framework established in 2010 and reaffirmed in 2024, which uses an indicative range for precautionary balances, linked to a forward-looking measure of total IMF non-concessional credit, to guide decisions on adjusting the medium-term target over time. It takes into account the macroeconomic environment, the characteristics of Fund lending, and other financial risks faced by the Fund. The framework also allows for judgement in setting the target based on a broad range of factors that affect the adequacy of precautionary balances.

Executive Board Assessment[2]

Executive Directors welcomed the review of the adequacy of the Fund’s precautionary balances, following the last review in March 2024 and the interim update in April 2025 within the Review of the Fund’s Income Position for FY2025 and FY2026 (2025 Update). They emphasized that maintaining an adequate level of precautionary balances remains a key element of the Fund’s multilayered risk management framework to mitigate financial risks, safeguard the strength of the Fund’s balance sheet, and protect the value of members’ reserve positions in the Fund. Given the current heightened global uncertainty, Directors underscored the importance of continued vigilance and close monitoring of risks, as well as updating the Board as needed.

Directors welcomed the continued increase in precautionary balances since reaching the SDR 25 billion medium-term target at the end of FY2024. They generally agreed that the overall balance of risks and risk mitigants to the Fund remain broadly unchanged, stressing that the composition of risks has evolved, with credit risks having edged up, reflecting higher exposure to and greater concentration toward the largest borrowers. Among mitigating factors, Directors observed that precautionary balances have continued to grow broadly as expected in the 2025 Update, with rising coverage of credit outstanding, total commitments, and upcoming obligations.

Directors noted that precautionary balances are expected to remain above the target, including assuming additional distributions to the Interim Placement Administered Account (IPAA) in coming years. They observed that medium-term net operational income remains strong, but subject to concentration risk, while the medium-term outlook for investment returns remains reasonably positive, notwithstanding elevated investment risks.

Directors broadly agreed that the current target of precautionary balances, together with other elements of the Fund’s financial risk management framework and the IFRS 9 provisioning framework, continue to provide a robust level of financial protection for the Fund’s balance sheet and creditor claims. Most Directors supported retaining the current medium-term target for precautionary balances at SDR 25 billion, while a few Directors favored raising the target. Directors generally agreed to retain the current floor for precautionary balances at SDR 20 billion, noting that it provides an important safeguard against shocks and helps ensure the Fund retains sufficient buffers.

Directors noted that the current medium-term target remains within the indicative range and above its midpoint in the most plausible lending demand scenarios, and that precautionary balances are projected to remain above the current target over the medium term under all scenarios. Directors cautioned that the Fund’s income and precautionary balances projections are subject to heightened uncertainty including from financial market volatility and intensifying downside risks to global growth stemming in particular from geopolitical developments in the Middle East. They emphasized that this environment calls for continued vigilance and close monitoring of income developments and the adequacy of precautionary balances to ensure that the Fund remains financially strong. Looking ahead, while agreeing that the current rules-based adequacy framework remains broadly appropriate, a few Directors saw merit in considering further refinements to better capture evolving risks and enhance its robustness. More generally, a few Directors considered that the timely implementation of the 16th General Review of Quotas could further strengthen the Fund’s resource base. Recognizing the uncertain environment, in the event that precautionary balances rise well above the target, a few Directors saw merit in considering an early review of charges and the surcharge policy in due course.

Directors supported maintaining the biennial review cycle, with an interim update, as well as earlier reviews should developments materially affect the adequacy assessment—such as significant deviations of Fund lending from staff projections or material increases in credit or other financial risks.

https://www.imf.org/en/news/articles/2026/04/09/pr-26114-imf-executive-board-discusses-the-adequacy-of-the-funds-precautionary-balances