'A new bipolar order of speech': Musk caves to Europe as DOGE faces threats in review of USAID

Department of Government Efficiency head Elon Musk vows President Trump will shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Secretary of State Marcio Rubio took over Monday, for its "rank insubordination" and alleged belief that "their master is the globe and not the United States," as Rubio told Fox News. 

Musk's cited reasons include USAID funding projects such as a potential COVID-19 source's research and attempted censorship of Trump's tweets on the old Twitter, being a "radical-left political psy op" and for allegedly flouting the bulk of Trump's executive orders.

The billionaire entrepreneur is singing a different tune on censorship in the European Union, however, reflecting Musk's delicate position in hostile countries where he has substantial business interests, from Tesla in China to the EU's 100-million plus average monthly active users on his social media platform X.

X signed an expanded EU code of conduct on "countering illegal hate speech online +," which updated a code created during Trump's first campaign, along with platforms including Google's YouTube, ByteDance's TikTok and Meta's Facebook and Instagram, the last also led by a newly avowed defender of free speech and of Trump – Mark Zuckerberg.

They pledged to review "at least two-thirds of hate speech notices" from a network of nonprofit and public "monitoring reporters" within 24 hours of receipt, similar to a New York hate-speech reporting law blocked by a federal judge. 

Covered platforms "can adhere to the Code of conduct+ to demonstrate their compliance with the [Digital Services Act] obligation to mitigate the risk of the dissemination of illegal content on their services" in their yearly DSA audits, the European Commission said. 

Signatories are "encourage[d]" to disclose "the outcome of the measures taken, as well as additional data related to hate speech on their platforms," such as the "role of recommender systems and the organic and algorithmic reach of illegal content prior to its removal." They should present hate-speech data by categories including race, religion and gender identity.

While The Verge emphasized compliance is not legally binding on the signatories, Reclaim the Net noted the EC said adoption of the code "does not in itself presume compliance with the DSA and is without prejudice to the Commission’s assessment on a case-by-case basis."

X and other platforms also just participated in a "stress test" led by Germany and the EC to respond to threats to "civic discourse and electoral processes" ahead of early elections in Germany, where Musk has supported the anti-immigration AfD party.

Reclaim the Net said it's a preview of the EU's "disinformation" code, which becomes mandatory in July and requires platforms to devise “stronger measures to demonetize disinformation.”

Platform commitments seem to only be whetting the Old World's appetite for further control, as shown by Thursday's Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly.

The transcript shows politicians mentioned Musk and Zuckerberg, their companies and platforms nearly four dozen times at the 95-minute debate before voting on the CoE's report "Regulating content moderation on social media to safeguard freedom of expression," criticizing their influence, pullback on content moderation and supposed threat to democracy.

"In Trumpian rhetoric, the recurring term 'censorship' encompasses measures that are nonetheless necessary to moderate content and prevent misinformation," said Swiss Social Democratic Party member Valérie Piler Carrard, blaming Zuckerberg for "open[ing] the door to racist insults and hate speech inciting violence."

Belgian Socialist Party member Christophe Lacroix suggested a "conspiracy" among Trump, Musk, Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai to "continue to control the power of money" against EU regulation, working with "populists and the far right … to effectively interfere in the electoral process," citing Musk's support for Germany's anti-immigration AfD party.

He blasted the "little Goebbels in this House" who want to "continue to pour out their propaganda without limit, without regulation, to capture democracy," likely referring to Joseph Goebbels, the German Nazi Party's chief propagandist.

French Ecologists Party member Sandra Regol said freedom of expression, "in a crazy, absolute reversal of values, [is] now the tool that’s destroying" Europe's diversity through a "globalised, organised, monetised offensive" to "misinform, to lie, to make racist, anti-Semitic, misogynist, masculinist comments."

British Labour Party member Cat Eccles praised U.K. prosecution of social media users for posts, related to last summer's Southport riots, which would likely be legal in the U.S.  Freedom of expression "does not protect individuals from the consequences of their actions."

A two-thirds majority rejected three amendments, argued by Polish lawmaker Paweł Jablonski, that would prevent platforms from immediately removing content absent national security concerns and create judicial oversight. 

"There must be judicial control, otherwise it is censorship. We had that in Poland prior to 1989," under Soviet rule, he said.

The same lopsided vote approved an amendment to "collaborate with journalists and fact-checking organisations to effectively combat disinformation with information that adheres to the ethical and professional standards of journalism."

"We are living in a new bipolar order of speech" between Europe "doubling down on censorship" and the U.S. scaling back, said Paul Coleman, executive director of ADF International, sibling to the U.S.-based Alliance Defending Freedom.

Musk's DOGE team is facing threats of violence on Reddit and X alternative Bluesky – how credible isn't clear – after their identities were exposed by Wired and Mashable, prompting Trump's newly installed U.S. attorney in D.C., Ed Martin, to pledge to Musk he'll take "any and all legal action" against anyone who threatens them or "impedes your work." 

USAID sent Senate DOGE Caucus chair Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, and her staff "all kinds of threats" in response to her "trying to exercise my oversight capacity in Congress" nearly two years ago, she told Musk in an X Spaces event, later clarifying they were legal threats.

"They even responded back with a letter that was basically threatening us by saying, 'Well, if we allow you access to this information, it gets into the wrong hands, we can sue you,'" Ernst told The Daily Mail on Tuesday. "They were trying to scare us away from continuing to dig into this."

USAID did not respond to Just the News queries about Ernst's claims Monday and Tuesday.

Her April 2023 letter to USAID Administrator Samantha Power outlines the agency's shifting rationales for hiding its "negotiated indirect cost rate agreements" that cover humanitarian aid partners' expenses such as rent and lobbying, totaling nearly $15 billion and 5,800 transactions in fiscal year 2022. Ernst's staff estimated NICRAs constituted 30-40% of USAID awards.

USAID falsely claimed it had no NICRA database, then invented a legal duty to protect each "implementing partner's proprietary information" against congressional oversight, and finally admitted it was relying on "longstanding executive branch practice" to hide disclosure, the letter said. Taxpayers should not be paying "rent in Geneva or Rome or Paris."

After six months of negotiation, USAID let her staff review "very limited data" in a room but not take notes and they were surveilled "the whole time," Ernst told Musk early Monday. Their NICRA estimates turned out to be low – some were 50-60%, not including subcontractors. 

"So much of that taxpayer money is not even going to … starving children in name your country," she said. "It's going to support somebody's fancy dinner to entertain whoever."