Month: January 2023

Federal Judge Upholds West Virginia Law Preventing Boys from Competing in Girls’ Sports

Admin

A federal judge ruled Thursday in favor of a West Virginia law that requires athletes to compete in sports on the basis of biological sex rather than gender identity.

Southern District of West Virginia Judge Joseph Goodwin ruled that the state’s H.B. 3293, commonly known as the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” is “constitutionally permissible” because its definitions of girl and woman on the basis of biological sex are “substantially related to the important government interest of providing equal athletic opportunities for females.” The ruling comes after a lawsuit, filed on behalf of 11-year-old Becky Pepper-Jackson, a transgender girl, argued that H.B. 3293 violated Pepper-Jackson’s rights under Title IX a federal law that prohibits discrimination of the basis of sex, and kept the student from joining the girl’s cross country team.

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Review: 10 Books Representing Fiction for the Ages

Admin

At Intellectual Takeout, we strive to offer not only commentary on current events but also tangible advice for engaging with our increasingly chaotic world. That’s why we’re proud to present this ongoing series of literature recommendations.

This week’s entries include fictional stories with timeless themes and insight into reality, in addition to being enjoyable tales in their own right.

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Harvard Med Research on mRNA Vax Spike Protein Undermines Fact-Checkers, COVID Censorship

Just the News

Fact-checkers and Big Tech lost another round with purported COVID-19 misinformation this week, when an American Heart Association journal published research suggesting the spike protein used in mRNA vaccines can harm some people.

The peer-reviewed study in Circulation reviewed 16 adolescents and young adults hospitalized at Massachusetts General Hospital or Boston Children’s with post-vaccination myocarditis from January 2021-February 2022. All had “markedly elevated levels of full-length spike protein” in their blood, “unbounded by antibodies.”

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Commentary: From What, Exactly, Is the FBI Protecting Us?

Admin

After the tiered releases of the Twitter files, many suspicions have been thoroughly confirmed. Namely, social media monopolies like Facebook and Twitter worked hand-in-glove with the FBI, as well as other government agencies, to suppress accounts and censor stories they jointly deemed misinformation, disinformation, or otherwise harmful to the country during the 2020 election.

The most significant malfeasance arises from the coordinated campaign to suppress the New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop. The laptop exposed in great detail Hunter’s dissolute lifestyle, along with his role as the family “bag man” for various overseas financial interests.

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SCOTUS to Vote on Hearing 2020 Election Case Against Biden, Harris, Pence, Senators, Congressmen

Just the News

The Supreme Court is set to consider hearing a 2020 election case regarding actions taken on Jan. 6, 2021 by former Vice President Mike Pence, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, 291 House members, and 94 senators.

The lawsuit, filed by Raland J. Brunson, alleges the defendants violated their oaths of office by refusing to investigate evidence of fraud in the 2020 election before accepting the electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, allowing for Biden and Harris to be “fraudulently” inaugurated.

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FDA Approves New Drug for Early Treatment of Alzheimer’s

Just the News

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved a new drug to treat Alzheimer’s disease, with testing reportedly showing considerable success in helping patients with the debilitating condition. 

The FDA said in a press release that it had approved the drug Leqembi for Alzheimer’s patients. The drug is “the second of a new category of medications approved for Alzheimer’s disease that target the fundamental pathophysiology of the disease,” the agency said. 

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New Louisiana Law Requires Government-Issued ID to Watch Porn

Georgia Star News Staff

A new Louisiana law went into effect this year requiring individuals who access porn websites to verify their age using government-issued identification.

Republican state Rep. Laurie Schlegel of Louisiana introduced the bill last February requiring commercial porn websites to verify the age of anyone who accesses its material with a government-issued ID, which Gov. John Bel Edwards signed into law in June. The bill, which went into effect over the weekend, makes companies who violate the law liable to civil claims while ostensibly prohibiting them from collecting users’ data.

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DOJ Announces Final Sentence in Operation Against Drug Traffickers Targeting Savannah

Eric Burk

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia announced the final sentence in its Operation Stranded Bandit which saw 34 defendants sentenced to up to 292 months for involvement in meth trafficking from Mexico to Savannah through Atlanta.

“Our law enforcement partners built Operation Stranded Bandit on the foundation of prior investigations dismantling a network of drug traffickers operating inside and outside prisons to bring large quantities of methamphetamine to coastal Georgia,” U.S. Attorney David Estes said in a Thursday press release. “Getting gun-carrying drug traffickers off our streets, particularly those with gang affiliations, is a vital part of protecting our communities from violent crime.”

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Commentary: An Age of Decay

Georgia Star News Staff

America ran out of frontier when we hit the Pacific Ocean. And that changed things. Alaska and Hawaii were too far away to figure in most people’s aspirations, so for decades, it was the West Coast states and especially California that represented dreams and possibilities in the national imagination. The American dream reached its apotheosis in California. After World War II, the state became our collective tomorrow. But today, it looks more like a future that the rest of the country should avoid—a place where a few coastal enclaves have grown fabulously wealthy while everyone else falls further and further behind.

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Washington Lawmaker Introduces Proposal to Pay Prisoners Minimum Wage

The Center Square

A Washington legislator who served time behind bars contends it is time for the state to stop saving millions on the backs of inmates who are paid pennies for work in prison jobs.

“This is an evolution of slavery,” Rep. Tarra Simmons, D-Bremerton, told reporters. She is proposing that inmates be paid minimum wage when they work in the kitchen or produce furniture or other goods.

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Senate Democrats Criticize New Biden Border Plan

Georgia Star News Staff

On Thursday, four Democratic members of the U.S. Senate slammed Joe Biden’s most recent proposal for handling the immigration crisis, particularly the plans to slightly increase the number of deportations.

As reported by The Hill, ahead of Biden’s planned first trip to the southern border since taking office, the Biden Administration announced revised plans that involve temporarily expanding Title 42 to increase the number of daily deportations by turning away illegal aliens who present themselves at the border.

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U.S. Shells Out Another $3 Billion in Military Aid for Ukraine

Georgia Star News Staff

The U.S. announced a $3.1 billion security assistance package for Ukraine on Friday, including for the first time dozens of heavy infantry vehicles.

Of the total, $2.85 billion will come directly from existing U.S. weapons stocks, including 50 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles and 500 anti-missiles, according to a press release. Ukrainian officials expect Russia to conduct a second mobilization and renewed offensive in the coming months, according to Reuters.

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Commentary: Second Amendment a Blessing, Not a ‘Curse,’ in End-of-Year Examples of Defensive Gun Use

Georgia Star News Staff

The editorial board of a major New Jersey newspaper started the year off with an anti-Second Amendment screed, decrying the right to keep and bear arms as a “curse” perpetuated by a “fanatical” interpretation created by the Supreme Court in 2008.

Among other things, editors at the Newark-based Star-Ledger bemoaned that the Second Amendment keeps the nation from enacting “rational” gun control along the lines of Canada—which is a hair’s breadth away from banning all firearm sales—and called for readers to imagine the possibilities if the Supreme Court would just reinterpret the Constitution according to the justices’ personal perceptions of “reasonable” public policy.

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John Bolton Confirms He Will Run for President in 2024

Just the News

Former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton this week confirmed that he will be mounting a 2024 presidential bid, one meant in part to prevent former President Donald Trump himself from once again claiming the White House. 

Bolton told Good Morning Britain that he was planning on entering the race as a legitimate candidate and not merely a spoiler for Trump. “I wouldn’t run as a vanity candidate,” he told the show. “If I didn’t think I could run seriously, then I wouldn’t get in the race.”

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‘THE CHOSEN’ Star to Keynote First ‘Post-Roe’ March for Life in Nation’s Capital

Susan Berry, PhD

Jonathan Roumie, who plays the role of “Jesus” in the groundbreaking series THE CHOSEN, will keynote the 50th annual March for Life – the first since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade – in Washington, DC, the pro-life organization announced Thursday.

In a press release, the March for Life Education and Defense Fund announced actor, director, producer and voice-over artist Jonathan Roumie, who portrays “Jesus” in the fan-supported free streaming series THE CHOSEN, a drama about the life of Jesus and the calling of his first disciples, will keynote the pro-life organization’s Rose Dinner Gala on January 20.

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Texas Sues Biden Admin over Policy Loosening Restrictions on Illegal Immigrants Seeking Welfare Benefits

Georgia Star News Staff

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the Biden administration over its changes to a policy that will allow illegal immigrants to more easily obtain welfare benefits.

President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) implemented changes to the rule Dec. 23 to no longer consider certain nutrition, health and housing benefits when deciding whether a noncitizen can legally stay in the country, according to DHS. Paxton is requesting not just action in a Texas court, but is also asking that the Supreme Court intervene, he announced Thursday.

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Idaho Supreme Court Finds No ‘Explicit Right’ to Abortion, Upholds Ban

Georgia Star News Staff

The Idaho Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a state abortion law that bans the procedure except in cases of rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother, rejecting the claim that the state’s constitution provides a right to abortion.

Idaho’s abortion law went into effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022, but has been challenged in the courts multiple times by pro-abortion advocates.  The court ruled 3-2 to uphold the ban, stating that Idaho’s law that bans abortion under most circumstances does not violate due process or the right to privacy.

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Incentives Unknown for Window Replacement Company Building Georgia Plant

The Center Square

A full-service window replacement company plans to build its first manufacturing facility in Georgia. However, it’s unclear whether Georgia taxpayers will be on the hook for any part of it.

Renewal by Andersen, a division of Bayport, Minnesota-based Andersen Corporation, said it would spend more than $420 million on the manufacturing facility. Economic development officials said the company would create 900 new jobs as part of the project at The Cubes at Locust Grove in Henry County.

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Commentary: An Agenda for the GOP House

Georgia Star News Staff

Hopefully, it will prove easier for House Republicans to govern than it has been for them to elect a speaker. There is good reason for such hope because the enemy no longer will be Kevin McCarthy and the Ghosts of Republican Speakers Past but instead Joe Biden, the Ghost of Nancy Pelosi, and the specter of a Diversity-Equity-Inclusionary BIPOC-LGBTQIA+ Kamala-Buttigieg ticket. That should end the GOP divisions and even restore amicable relations between Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

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Critics Blast Biden After Federal Report Shows Killing Keystone Pipeline Cost Thousands of Jobs

The Center Square

The Biden administration has drawn fire for admitting that killing the Keystone Pipeline cost the U.S. economy thousands of jobs and billions of dollars.

A report from the Department of Energy showed the pipeline would have supported tens of thousands of jobs, though the number is hard to nail down.

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Commentary: President Trump, the Pro-Life Movement Doesn’t Need Pro-Abortion Politicians

Georgia Star News Staff

President Donald J. Trump started 2023 with a post on Truth Social which drew the ire of many in the pro-life community. Trump wrote, “It wasn’t my fault that the Republicans didn’t live up to expectations . . . It was the “abortion issue,” poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters.” Trump went on to say, “Also, the people that pushed so hard, for decades, against abortion, got their wish from the U.S. Supreme Court, & just plain disappeared, not to be seen again.”

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Commentary: Some Invasions Don’t Require Armies

Georgia Star News Staff

Amid the growing fears of many Americans that their country is slowly disintegrating, a debate about whether or not the United States is being invaded is bubbling to the surface. At stake is something far more than semantics: the future of the country as we know it may hang in the balance. 

Ducey v. Moore, currently being litigated in an Arizona federal district court, is a case that is testing states’ rights to defend themselves from invasion by Mexican drug- and human-smuggling cartels. In response to the well-documented influx of foreign nationals entering the country illegally, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey placed shipping containers along the state’s southern border to stem the flow. The federal government now claims that the shipping containers violate various federal regulations that it says apply to the Roosevelt Reservation area near the border, and seeks removal of the containers.

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New Oklahoma Legislation Seeks to Ban Health Care Providers from Administering Sex Change Procedures to Patients Under 26

Georgia Star News Staff

A Republican senator introduced a bill Wednesday aimed at blocking health care providers from administering or recommending medical transitions to patients under age 26.

The legislation, pre-filed ahead of Oklahoma’s 59 legislature, would ban gender transition procedures including puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries, while also imposing felony conviction and revocation of medical license, should the law be broken, according to the legislation. The legislation would also ban public funding from being used to fund any services related to gender transitions for people under 26.

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McCarthy Wins Speakership in Dramatic 15 Round Voting Marathon for the History Books

Just the News

House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy captured the House speakership in dramatic fashion early Saturday, winning enough votes on a historic 15th ballot that saw 20 renegade Republicans changing their votes under enormous pressure after winning significant concessions about how Congress will operate going forward.

The final vote was 216-212-6.

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House Adjourns Until 10 p.m. After McCarthy Comes Up Short for Speaker in 13 Rounds

Just the News

The House of Representatives convened on Friday for the fourth day of voting for speaker and House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy has picked up 15 votes from GOP holdouts but he’s still short of the simple majority needed to win.

The House passed a motion to adjourn until 10pm. McCarthy told reporters he’s confident he will have the votes to win Friday evening.

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Bills Damar Hamlin Has Breathing Tube Removed, Team Says He Continues to Make ‘Progress Remarkably’

Just the News

Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin is breathing on his own after having a breathing tube removed by doctors, his team said on Friday. 

The Bills said in a statement posted to their website that “per the physicians at [University of Cincinnati Medical Center], Damar’s breathing tube was removed overnight. He continues to progress remarkably in his recovery.”

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Lawmakers Profit from Sending Billions in Aid to Ukraine

Georgia Star News Staff

Members of Congress raked in profits from defense contractor stocks after voting to send billions in military aid to Ukraine, according to financial disclosures and voting records reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Congress approved more than $20 billion worth of military aid to Ukraine between Jan. 24, a month before Russia invaded, and Nov. 20, including $12.7 billion in direct drawdowns from existing U.S. weapons stocks, according to data compiled by the Council on Foreign Relations. To make up for that aid, top defense companies have boosted production, and lawmakers trading on company stocks saw a financial windfall as a result, according to publicly available stock trading data.

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Social Media Use in Children Linked to Significant Brain Changes

Susan Berry, PhD
Person on phone with Twitter open

A new study from the University of North Carolina shows children and teens who frequently check social media may become more sensitive in the long term to “social feedback” in the form of “likes” and “dislikes” at a time when the brain is experiencing significant developmental changes.

In the study, published at the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Pediatrics, researchers Maria Maza, et al, investigated whether the frequency with which middle-school age children check their Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat social media accounts is associated with long-term changes in brain development as they mature further into adolescence.

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South Carolina Supreme Court Axes State’s Abortion Ban

Georgia Star News Staff

South Carolina’s Supreme Court on Thursday struck down the state law restricting abortions at around six weeks, finding that it violated the state constitution.

Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed a bill into law in February 2021 barring abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which can happen at around six weeks into a pregnancy. The state can limit a woman’s privacy rights with regard to abortion decisions, but only after she’s been given “reasonable” time to pursue an abortion legally, the court found.

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Ex-Capitol Police Boss Says Politics Hampered January 6 Security Under Pelosi: ‘Recipe for Disaster’

Just the News

The Capitol Police chief who handled the Jan. 6 riot says political bureaucracy under Speaker Nancy Pelosi put optics over safety and hampered his department from crafting an appropriate security plan to protect the home of Congress that fateful day.

Steven Sund, who resigned as the head of the $600 million a year Capitol Police Department after the tragedy, told the “Just the News, No Noise” television show on Wednesday that significant lapses occurred inside his department, inside the political leadership of Congress and across federal law enforcement and security agencies in the days before the Capitol riot.

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District 9 Chairwoman Rebecca Yardley Announces Campaign for Georgia GOP Chair

Eric Burk

Georgia GOP (GAGOP) District 9 Chairwoman Rebecca Yardley announced her campaign to chair the Georgia Republican Party; current Chairman David Shafer hasn’t yet decided if he will run, but Yardley will likely face him or one of his allies in the June convention.

“Our Party deserves a chairman who is fully focused on taking the steps required to win Georgia elections. I’ve witnessed firsthand the incredible work done on the county and district levels. Now it’s time to have our top leadership at the state match the same energy, concentration, and drive shown by our local members daily,” Yardley said in a Thursday press release.

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Commentary: The Coup We Never Knew

Georgia Star News Staff

Did someone or something seize control of the United States?

What happened to the U.S. border? Where did it go? Who erased it? Why and how did 5 million people enter our country illegally? Did Congress secretly repeal our immigration laws? Did Joe Biden issue an executive order allowing foreign nationals to walk across the border and reside in the United States as they pleased?

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Top Zelensky Adviser Rejects Peace Talks with Russia

Just the News

Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov this week rejected the idea that Kyiv would engage in peace talks with Moscow as the Russian invasion of Ukraine rages on.

“There’s no way to have conversations with them; you can’t talk with terrorists,” he told NatSec Daily, adding that Ukraine would not end the war until it had reclaimed all of its territory, including Crimea.”

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Commentary: Make Elections Normal Again

Georgia Star News Staff

Americans can’t seem to agree on much of anything anymore. We’re deeply divided on a wide range of issues: abortion, illegal immigration, gun rights, and so-called climate change, to name a few. In fact, one would be hard pressed to find a major political issue on which Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly agree.

Political polarization is nothing new: Many countries experience it at one point or another. In America, we once could put our differences aside and settle things at the ballot box. Our electoral system, when functioning as intended, transcends partisan politics. Things are different today, though. COVID-era voting policies need to be reversed in order to restore faith in our electoral process.

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Six Policies That Anti-Abortion Leaders Expect a Pro-Life House Majority to Prioritize

Georgia Star News Staff

A letter signed by leaders of more than 40 pro-life organizations has been sent to every Republican member of Congress, urging action on eight related bills.

“We write to urge you to exercise Congress’s constitutional authority to legislate abortion policy at the federal level and pursue a robust pro-life agenda,” reads the letter to House and Senate Republicans authored by organizations ranging from March for Life and Live Action to The Heritage Foundation. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)

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Soros Doubles Donations to Far-Left Group Seeking to Pack Supreme Court

Georgia Star News Staff

Far-left billionaire George Soros has increased his financial support for a radical group that is determined to pack the Supreme Court of the United States, continuing to wage a war in favor of a policy that is widely unpopular with the American people.

As the Washington Free Beacon reports, Soros’ Open Society Foundation donated $4.5 million in 2021 to the group Demand Justice, which “supports policy advocacy on court reform.” Open Society had previously donated $2.5 million to the same group in 2018, the year Demand Justice was first created out of opposition to Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the high court.

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Kohberger Murder Affidavit: Left-Behind Knife Sheath, DNA Led to Capture, Arrest

Just the News

The man accused of stabbing four University of Idaho college students to death was identified through DNA evidence left on a knife sheath at the crime scene and cellular data showed his phone was in the area of the Moscow, Idaho, crime scene at least a dozen times before the murders, officials said in an affidavit released Thursday.

The Idaho State Lab discovered DNA on a knife sheath left on the bed next to victim Madison Mogen, Moscow Police Department Cpl. Brett Payne said in the affidavit. 

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House Adjourns After 11th Failed Vote to Elect McCarthy Speaker, Deal Reportedly in the Works

Just the News

The House of Representatives has adjourned for the evening after California Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy failed to win the speaker’s gavel for the 11th time.

The speaker election started Tuesday but McCarthy has fallen short of reaching the simple majority threshold needed to win in the 222-212 GOP-led House.

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Damar Hamlin Doctors: ‘Appears His Neurological Condition and Function Is Intact’

Just the News

Doctors treating Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin said Thursday his neurological condition and function appears “intact” and that he’s made “remarkable improvement” after having gone into cardiac arrest three days earlier on the football field after making a tackle.

The doctors at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where Hamlin was taken Monday night after being injured in a game against the Cincinnati Bengals, gave an update early Thursday through the Bills, then in a news conference.

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Left-Wing Tech Group Doles Out $500K in Grants to Jurisdictions for Future Elections

Georgia Star News Staff
Vote Here / Election Day

Although about half the states ban private dollars from funding local governing of elections as a response to Mark Zuckerberg’s controversial grants in 2020, a tech-aligned group will dole out individual $500,000 grants to jurisdictions for future elections. 

The U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, established in April,  will award individual grants of $500,000 to at least two local jurisdictions out of 10 that the organization accepted into the program.

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Latest Twitter Files Reveal Adam Schiff’s Collusion with Platform to Censor Opponents

Georgia Star News Staff

On Tuesday, the eleventh and twelfth installments of the Twitter Files highlighted the role that Congressman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) played in censoring conservative accounts on the platform.

As reported by Fox News, the two back-to-back threads posted by journalist Matt Taibbi revealed that Twitter “received an astonishing variety of requests from officials asking for individuals they didn’t like to be banned.” One example was in November of 2020, when Schiff’s office emailed Twitter demanding the banning of several “QAnon conspiracists” on Twitter, which they claimed were responsible for “harassment” against Schiff aide Sean Misko.

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Grassroots Parents Organization Files Complaints Claiming Discrimination in Schools Separating Students Based on Race

Susan Berry, PhD

Parents Defending Education (PDE), a grassroots parental rights organization, filed three complaints Tuesday with the Biden Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) that allege discrimination in schools that formed “racial affinity” groups or “community circles” to separate students based on their race.

The complaints allege that discrimination occurred in schools in Oregon, Maine, and Vermont where students were organized according to their race, which, the complaints argue, is in violation of the 14th Amendment.

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Another Record: Nearly 314,000 Apprehensions, Gotaways at Southern Border in December

The Center Square

December was another record month for Border Patrol agents tasked with apprehending foreign nationals illegally entering the U.S. through the southwest border.

Agents apprehended at least 226,050 people and reported at least 87,631 who evaded capture by law enforcement last month. Combined, they total at least 313,681 – an increase from November’s record breaking number of 306,069.

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Kemp Announces $234 Million in Grants to Expand Broadband Access

Eric Burk

Governor Brian Kemp announced $234 million in 29 grants for broadband expansion using American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds; the money will go to 12 internet service providers in 28 counties and will be matched with other funds for a total $455 million to support 76,000 locations.

“Georgia is again leading the nation in identifying where the digital divide is the deepest and acting on that knowledge to improve service for hardworking people all the way from Seminole County to Gordon County and beyond,” Kemp said in a Wednesday press release.

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Commentary: With Schools Ditching Merit for Diversity, Families of High Achievers Head for the Door

RealClearWire

Alex Shilkrut has deep roots in Manhattan, where he has lived for 16 years, works as a physician, and sends his daughter to a public elementary school for gifted students in coveted District 2. 

It’s a good life. But Shilkrut regretfully says he may leave the city, as well as a job he likes in a Manhattan hospital, because of sweeping changes in October that ended selective admissions in most New York City middle schools. 

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Judge Completely Blocks Oregon’s Restrictive Gun Law

Georgia Star News Staff

A judge on Tuesday placed a hold on a portion of Oregon’s recently passed gun law that enhances background check requirements for firearm purchases, leaving the legislation completely blocked.

The ruling is another setback for the law, Ballot Measure 114, which is now entirely paused as legal challenges to various portions of the law make their way through Oregon’s court system. The judge determined that the law’s heightened background check requirement could not be implemented while the court continues to debate the other portions of the law, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting, as plaintiffs argue the law violates the state’s constitution.

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Regulator Fines Tech Giant Millions for Showing Targeted Ads Based on User Activity

Georgia Star News Staff

An Irish data privacy regulator has issued fines totaling €390 million — roughly $410 million — against Facebook and Instagram parent Meta over practices related to its monitoring of users’ behavior on its services in order to create targeted ads, according to a Wednesday press release by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC).

Meta had previously argued to the commission that it had the right to tailor ads to users based on their online activity because the Terms of Service that users agreed to to use the service amounted to a contract, and that gathering this personalized data was a core part of that contract, according to the DPC. Although the DPC originally agreed with this argument, it reversed its position after other European regulators challenged this view during a standard peer review process, finding that Meta was “not entitled” to consider the Terms of Service agreement as sufficient legal basis for its actions.

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