Elon Musk’s Twitter Is Suspending Liberal Accounts for “Spam”

Several prominent—and predominantly liberal—Twitter accounts have had major issues this week, but no one really seems to know why.

Dean Baker, the senior economist at the Center for Economic Policy and Research, had his account suspended Thursday. He said Twitter claimed in an email that he had violated the platform’s spam rules.

“I have no idea,” Baker said, when asked why he was suspended. He appealed the suspension, and his account was reinstated, but his follower count had dropped precipitously, from about 67,000 to 400, although the number has grown.

Baker’s work is not political—economic research is numbers-driven and neutral—but he noted he makes the occasional joke about Twitter owner Elon Musk and has written about repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects platforms from liability over what people post.

Andrew Lawrence, founder of the left-wing blog Media Matters, also had his account temporarily suspended Thursday for “spam.” Although his account was reinstated within an hour, he told reporter Ben Collins he had “no idea why I was suspended.”

Other major users have also been having issues on Twitter. HuffPost reporter Nathalie Baptiste posted a screenshot of her notifications tab, which said she had none.

On Wednesday, The Nation tweeted at Musk directly, saying the outlet’s reporter Joan Walsh’s account had been hacked. “She’s contacted @TwitterSupport at least a dozen times—no answer,” The Nation said.

Since Musk’s chaotic takeover of Twitter, the company has been rife with controversy and problems. Musk immediately fired most of the top executives and the entire board of directors, followed soon after by nearly half the workforce. The remaining employees are leaving in droves.

Many accounts that had been suspended for spreading disinformation or inciting violence—such as former President Donald Trump’s and the personal account for Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene—have been allowed back online. Twitter also dropped its Covid-19 misinformation regulations on November 23, without fanfare.

Sam Bankman-Fried “didn’t try to commit fraud” and is “shocked” at how his gargantuan crypto empire collapsed and left customers down $8 billion.

On Wednesday, the FTX founder and former CEO spoke in a virtual interview at The New York Times’ Dealbook Summit, an event featuring speakers including Blackrock chairman and CEO Larry Fink, former Vice President Mike Pence, Israeli Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu, and Mark Zuckerberg.

From the Bahamas, Bankman-Fried attempted to paint himself as both responsible for the billions of missing customer dollars and remorseful and unimpeachable regarding those losses. “I was CEO of FTX … I had a responsibility,” he said. When asked whether FTX inappropriately loaned customer funds to Alameda Research, a crypto trading firm he co-founded, he said he “didn’t knowingly commingle funds.”

Bankman-Fried claimed to have distanced himself from Alameda, which was why he apparently didn’t understand the circumstances of the company. But Bankman-Fried lived with Alameda employees, including its CEO, his ex-girlfriend.

Bankman-Fried secretly used $10 billion in customer funds from FTX to prop up Alameda. At least $1.5 billion of that money is missing. Now, after FTX’s collapse and bankruptcy filing, more than a million customers are owed roughly $8 billion—an amount that FTX and its affiliates don’t have.

“I’ve had a bad month …” Bankman-Fried said at the summit, prompting laughter from the audience of people who paid $2,499 to attend. “But that’s not what matters here. What matters here is the millions of customers, what matters here is the stakeholders in FTX. And what matters is trying to help them out.” Even in times of crisis, Bankman-Fried is ever the effective altruist.

Bankman-Fried’s appearance on Wednesday comes during a broader media tour. Thursday morning, he appeared in an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopouols. He was also able to negotiate an embargoed interview with New York magazine, in which he echoed similar sentiments of remorse and “concern” for customers, while refusing to answer basic questions on his culpability or knowledge of customer funds being used to prop up Alameda.

Bankman-Fried has tried and will continue to try to present as someone who got caught up in the tribulations of being in charge of so much but apparently, at the same time, nothing at all. He ought not get away with it.

Georgia’s Republican lieutenant governor said he ultimately couldn’t bring himself to vote for Herschel Walker.

Geoff Duncan has been an outspoken critic of both Walker and Donald Trump, whose MAGA message Walker embraced on the campaign trail. Duncan said in October the former football player had earned neither his respect nor his vote.

Duncan said he went to vote early Wednesday in the Senate runoff. “I was one of those folks who got in line and spent about an hour waiting,” he told CNN. But when it was his turn, “I had two candidates that I just couldn’t find anything that made sense for me to put my vote behind. And so I walked out of that ballot box showing up to vote but not voting for either one of them.”

He also said that Walker has not proven he wouldn’t simply be “Trump’s puppet” if elected. Duncan has been outspoken in denouncing the former president’s lies about the 2020 election being stolen.

Some people were quick to point out that it seemed odd that Duncan would still show up at a voting booth and wait an hour in line, even if he’s known all along that he was not going to vote for Walker.

Others also noted that if he had really wanted to take a stand, he would have crossed party lines and voted for Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock.

Record-high numbers of Georgians have turned out to vote in the highly contested runoff race between incumbent Warnock and Walker. Although Democrats have maintained control of the Senate, a victory in Georgia would give them an outright 51–49 majority, instead of the current 50–50 majority by tiebreak.

In the final days of the race, Warnock has sought to stress his opponent’s incompetency and lying. Walker also recently landed himself in hot water with both a viciously transphobic ad, just days after the Colorado Springs shooting, and by apparently not even legally living in Georgia.

President Joe Biden, also known as “Union Joe” and “Amtrak Joe,” is failing rail workers.

On Wednesday, the House voted 290–137 to support a labor agreement brokered by Biden in order to avert an impending rail strike. The House then voted 221–207 to add seven paid sick leave days to said agreement. Every Democrat in the House endorsed this amendment. Rail workers currently have no paid sick days.

Biden remained mum on the paid sick leave measure, only recognizing the success of the labor deal he arranged.

“This overwhelming bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives makes clear that Democrats and Republicans agree that a rail shutdown would be devastating to our economy and families across the country,” Biden said in a statement, failing to note the still significant Republican opposition to his labor agreement.

In a press conference Wednesday, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre carried the rest of the message: Of course Biden supports paid sick leave for workers, he is just not interested in working to make it a reality.

The White House is dressing up this inaction as concern for the impacts a nationwide rail strike would have on the economy. But given that a majority of rail workers have rejected Biden’s tentative agreement, there’s no guarantee his deal would stop a strike anyway.

Meanwhile, the White House has self-imposed a deadline of December 6 for Biden to sign any legislation, three days earlier than the deadline unions threatened before striking. The administration appears to be fomenting heightened urgency in order to avoid engaging with the basic fact that it is not going to bat for workers.

The paid sick leave bill, given to Biden on a platter by progressives, offered the president a second chance at getting it right for rail workers.

After every single present Democrat—218 of them—voted in support of the measure, Biden could have expressed excitement at the prospect of giving rail workers paid sick leave, blasted the 207 Republicans who voted against it, and even pressured the Senate to follow the House’s suit. After all, numerous Republican senators, including Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Josh Hawley, have expressed noncommittal support for rail workers. Biden could have turned the tables and forced them and other Republicans to put up or shut up. It would have been good politics, and morals too.

Instead, Biden is completely dropping the ball on advocating for workers. Once again.

The House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday finally obtained six years’ worth of Donald Trump’s tax returns, despite repeated efforts by the former president to prevent it.

The Democratic-led committee—and Democrats in general—have been trying to get Trump’s tax returns for three years, after he refused to release them during the 2016 presidential election, which is not required but is precedent. And now, CNN first reported, the Treasury Department has finally given them the receipts.

The Supreme Court last week denied Trump’s request to withhold his tax returns from the committee and ordered the Treasury to hand the documents over. This came about a month after a federal appeals court also ruled against him, declining to reconsider an August decision approving the committee’s request for the papers.

The House committee requested the tax returns for six years, primarily from his time in office. The documents include his personal tax information and that of several of his businesses.

Trump has fought long and hard to prevent the release of his tax returns, raising questions about why he would do so.

He seems to be fighting a multifront war, and it is not going super well. Senator Lindsey Graham was forced to testify last week before a Georgia grand jury over efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and former chief of staff Mark Meadows has been ordered to do the same.

The Supreme Court in January declined to stop the National Archives from turning over documents to the House January 6 committee, which is circling closer to Trump and his involvement in the riot.

Trump is under investigation by the FBI for taking classified documents to Mar-a-Lago, and the New York attorney general has filed suit against him, his family, and his business for fraud.

And the Republican Party in general just seems to be over him.