Guests - Ann Vandersteel, Janet Wittenbraker, Spencer Morrison, Dave Smith

Anne Vandersteel: Section 230 Supreme Court Case Update

"Our case that is going before the Supreme Court—it'll be making the decision to hear it or not this June 18th—I'm literally putting posts out right now," announced Anne Vandersteel, co-founder of American Made Foundation, breaking news during her appearance on Winn Tucson.

The conversation focused on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a law passed in 1996 that was intended to help internet platforms grow by providing immunity for online computer services with respect to third-party content generated by users. However, as Vandersteel argues, the law has been weaponized through judicial misinterpretation.

"It was supposed to protect online forums, but has it really been unintended?" Vandersteel questioned. "I'm going to say—and I'll probably get a lot of flack for this—no, it's completely intended because every single agency out there and we're filing lawsuits against agencies now. We're going after the problem: this public-private partnership."

The crux of the issue, according to Vandersteel, lies in judicial interpretation rather than the law itself. "Section 230 was actually a good law. The problem is, and what we're seeing now, is witnessing with the recent judicial tyranny... it's the courts that are twisting the language inside that act, and it's literally one word that has flipped the law," she explained.

She pointed specifically to the 9th Circuit Court, which she claims "twisted the phrase 'the publisher' into 'a publisher,' and that one word has flipped the law where we were supposed to protect platforms for hosting speech is now shielding them for censoring it."

The impact has been significant. Rather than providing a neutral hosting environment, platforms actively engage in content moderation, prioritization, and filtering—actions that Vanderstiel argues should make them co-publishers rather than mere hosts protected by Section 230.

"Under the section 230 F3 clause, an information content provider is an entity that isn't responsible in whole or in part for the creation or development of content," she explained. "Courts have incorrectly ruled that only creating new content qualifies. But development of content includes organizing it, prioritizing it, removing it, or filtering it."

This distinction is crucial. "If I'm on Facebook and you just post something on there and I do nothing to it, I'm acting as a host content provider. But if all of a sudden I say 'I don't think that's really in our ideology' so I suppress it, or worse, I delete it, now I'm partially a co-publisher."

The American Made Foundation has filed an amicus brief in support of the Fyk versus Facebook lawsuit, which is headed to the Supreme Court for the third time. This time, it comes with support from 34 additional signers including Dennis Prager, Laura Logan, and Sidney Powell.

"Jason Fyk's case against Facebook—I've been following Jason's case since 2018," Vandersteel noted. "I remember speaking to him for several hours, and I looked at my husband and said, 'This guy has figured it out, and he's going to go to the Supreme Court.'"

Vandersteel sees this as a critical moment for free speech in America. "This is why it is so critical, and this is why the Supreme Court, which is our highest court in the land, it's the court of common law that interprets the Constitution, needs to step in and look at these activist judges."

The Supreme Court's intervention is crucial because, as Vandersteel sees it, "We don't need any new legislation—the courts just have to follow the statute text and structure as is." She argues that 230 provides an affirmative defense, not immunity from suit, and that good faith should be a requirement for immunity.

The impact extends beyond legal technicalities. Vandersteel pointed to her personal experience during COVID, when her LinkedIn profile was deleted after she posted about patents for SARS-CoV-2 from 2015, which she says proved the virus was man-made.

"They blew my LinkedIn profile off the face of the planet because that post was getting 200,000 shares," she recounted. "They couldn't have it because, of course, that would have debilitated their ability to do what they did with COVID."

Without proper interpretation of Section 230, Vandersteel warns of a future where digital imprisonment becomes possible: "Environmental social governance, where they limit your money because you're now in a digital system, and you said something that was against their rules, now you can't spend money... They can literally shut you down and imprison you digitally."

The Supreme Court decision on whether to hear the case is expected on June 18th, and Vandersteel emphasized that the outcome will be critical for the future of free speech in America.

Tucson's Crime Crisis: Janet Wittenbraker on Taking Back the City

Janet Wittenbraker, running for City Council in Ward 3, joined the program to promote an evening meet-and-greet event featuring city council candidates and special guests focused on addressing Tucson's growing crime problem.

"Tucson has a crime problem," Wittenbraker stated bluntly. "People that don't live here—the news of our crime is spreading nationwide. So what that does is it stops people who would maybe come here from coming here, and it stops businesses from coming here. And if we're going to have prosperity in Tucson, the crime is the first thing that we need to clean up."

Wittenbraker didn't hesitate to place responsibility on the current city leadership. "The city of Tucson mayor and council appoint the magistrate, meaning all of the judges that work in the city court system, and they're failing to prosecute these misdemeanor crimes that lead to larger crimes."

She highlighted a particularly concerning issue in the city: "They're allowing camping in our washes, and by doing so, they've made the Loop, which is a recreational area I personally used to enjoy and no longer enjoy because they've made it dangerous."

The dangers extend beyond simply making recreational areas unusable. Wittenbraker described finding remnants of fentanyl outside her neighborhood: "If a child comes by and touches those remnants, or you yourself, you can die from a fentanyl OD, especially from carfentanil, the newest iteration."

The event, hosted by Turning Point Action and GAMOS at the Tucson Firefighters Association, would feature speakers including Steve Christy (Pima County Supervisor for District 4), Monica Carlson from the Tucson Crime Free Coalition, and Nat Foster from the Tucson Police Protective League.

Wittenbraker emphasized that the goal isn't to criminalize homelessness but to address criminal behavior and safety concerns. "It is not my goal as a candidate, it is not the goal of the Crime Free Coalition or any other law enforcement to criminalize homelessness. It is our goal to protect our communities as well as get the help these people need."

She continued, "In the cases where they're openly breaking the laws, such as open air drug use or stealing from people's neighborhoods, they need to endure the consequences of such behavior. And if we start dealing with the criminal aspect, the illegal activities, then we can focus our attention on helping those people who truly need help."

Wittenbraker pointed to a lawsuit by Hendrick Acres that sued the city government for not enforcing laws, which the plaintiffs won. She also described the deteriorating safety conditions in parts of Tucson, including at Speedway and Alvernon, where people under the influence of drugs or suffering from mental illness wander through drive-through lanes and around businesses, creating an unsafe environment.

"We have people in their own neighborhoods that don't feel safe," she concluded. "You've got to feel safe. Otherwise you leave, you go where you're safe—your family's safety, your safety."

Spencer Morrison: Trump's Tariffs and Reshoring American Manufacturing

Spencer Morrison, author of "Reshore: How Tariffs Will Bring Our Jobs Home and Revive the American Dream," joined the program to discuss President Trump's new tariff doctrine and its potential impact on American manufacturing.

Morrison explained that tariffs have a deep history in American economic policy: "Tariffs funded the entirety of the American government for over 150 years. The first major piece of legislation that was signed into law by George Washington was a Tariff Act of 1789. Every founding father, including Thomas Jefferson, eventually came on board with tariffs."

According to Morrison, tariffs were the foundation of America's industrial might: "Tariffs are the reason that America was able to industrialize and turn into the biggest manufacturing hub that the world has ever seen. Remember, by 1945, America produced half of all economic output, especially manufactured goods, in the world. We produced 60% of all the steel in the world."

This manufacturing dominance began to erode in the 1970s and 80s due to offshoring: "We've seen 60,000 factories close. We've seen over six and a half to seven million manufacturing jobs disappear. They're gone, those people out of the labor force. They're not working, they're on welfare, they're on drugs."

Morrison attributes this decline to several factors, including America becoming "a victim of our own success" after World War II. "The American government was literally cutting these asymmetrical trade deals with nations in Africa and South America and East Asia to try to take them out of the orbit of the USSR." The problem, he notes, is that "the USSR collapsed over 30 years ago, and the American government continued to do this and in fact ramped it up in the 1990s with trade agreements like NAFTA."

There was also an ideological component: "The neoliberal powers that be were sort of banking on this free trade leading to political liberalism and democracy in these countries, and of course that didn't happen—it backfired spectacularly."

Morrison emphasized that for tariffs to effectively bring manufacturing back to America, they must be applied broadly, not just to China: "We can't just focus tariffs on China and expect the jobs to come back home. That's not going to happen. What we need is high and stable tariffs across the board, across all of these developing countries."

He specifically warned about India: "India is poised to be China 2.0. There's a lot of pressure on putting tariffs on China, and rightly so, but the problem is that if we have asymmetrical tariffs between India and China and all these other developing countries, all that's going to happen is businesses like Apple are going to say, 'Look, it's no longer profitable to do business in China, we're just going to move the factories over to India.'"

Morrison also highlighted how China has systematically stolen American technology: "The CCP has got agents in the patent office. They've got agents on all sorts of boards of American companies, and they are pilfering America's technology." He shared a story of an inventor who no longer files patents because "if he files a patent, the Chinese come out with a copycat product in six months. If he refuses to file a patent, it takes them two years to reverse engineer it."

The problem extends to American companies doing business in China: "When an American company goes to do business in China and they set up a plant in China, they have to joint venture with a Chinese company that owns 50% of it. But not only that, the Chinese workers do the work on the ground, which means we have to send our engineers out there to train them, and then we have to give them our technology."

Morrison's book, "Reshore: How Tariffs Will Bring Our Jobs Home and Revive the American Dream," is available on Amazon in a newly released second edition.

Dave Smith: Pima County Governance and Tucson's Homelessness Problem

Dave Smith, former law enforcement officer, joined the program to discuss Pima County's governance issues and Tucson's growing homelessness crisis.

Smith didn't mince words about the Pima County Board of Supervisors: "What a group of leftist psychos it's become. Thank God for Steve Christy," he said, referring to the lone Republican supervisor. "There is not a leftist trope that they won't salute."

He criticized the board's spending priorities and accountability: "The left comes up with a reason to spend your money, folks, if you're a constructive member of this county or city. But they never account—they're never accountable, and they always fail because they don't look at the whole picture."

On crime and homelessness, Smith emphasized the importance of consequences: "It's a simple solution to crime—it's punishment, frankly. That's the one sociological event we have ever found to reduce crime: the certainty of punishment."

Smith noted that faith-based groups often have more success in addressing addiction and homelessness than government programs: "You see far more success out of faith-based groups in dealing with addictions or homelessness than you do with these institutionalized state-type houses."

He critiqued the concept of "affordable housing" as the new catch phrase used by the left to justify more spending without addressing root causes: "That's what math hinds—the ultimate grifter, this guy's a part-time employee for the county, he quit his job at the emergency room, and he doesn't do doctoring anymore... his new grift is going to be this affordable housing."

The conversation touched on the diminishing safety in Tucson, with Smith lamenting the devaluation of life: "We have devalued life in this state. You know, you have abortion right up until birth now. We have all these things—when you devalue life, it isn't just the life of the unborn, it's all life becomes devalued. And that's become the mundane. We're a culture of death now."

Smith criticized the county's budget approach: "The Pima County Board of Supervisors has become a dogmatic leftist clown show. And the thing is, they have the power of the first over you folks—to a hard-working citizen who owns your house, they can take more money from, and they're going to. They're going to increase your rate."

He pointed out that many services have deteriorated despite increasing taxes: "My streets are terrible. The sheriff needs a new jail, he says, and yet nothing gets done. And at the same time, they have all these social programs going to give me a road diet so I make sure I'll ride bikes more often."

Smith advocated for a more accountable approach to governance: "If I was—and you and I were sitting down and trying to solve it—we'd come up with a program, we'd implement it effectively, and then we'd get feedback, and we'd say, what is our metric for success? Simple thing: how do we know if we failed? It's easy. What do we need? What's the feedback to change the process? But we never do. We send it off, fail, and never sunset. Millions go out, and nothing gets better. In fact, it gets worse."

He encouraged citizens to take action: "Get involved. You've got a pocketbook. The government wants to take that money—why don't you decide where it goes and help the candidates that you care about? Come to meetings like the Board of Supervisors, the City Council, the School Board, and express your ideas, opinions."