E-Pluribus | April 9, 2026
Govt-funded 'disinfo' groups targeted conservative media. 9 years in prison for preaching 'orgasmic meditation.' Enforcing minimum wage—at gunpoint?
A round-up of the latest and best insight on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
Margot Cleveland: Government-Funded Censor Told State Dept. Its Testing Wouldn’t Focus On U.S. Audiences — It Then Targeted The Blaze
Three State Department-funded groups, charged with monitoring foreign disinformation campaigns, targeted a US-based conservative news outlet—after promising they wouldn’t focus on domestic media. Margot Cleveland at The Federalist outlines a lawsuit against the US government that brought the scandal to light:
Staff with the Global Engagement Center (“GEC”) told a State Department official that its testbed platform “will NOT focus on US audiences,” but then proceeded to fund a trial targeting The Blaze — a Texas-based media outlet. The Federalist uncovered this detail during discovery in its lawsuit against the State Department and the GEC, which the plaintiffs settled last week after the Defendants agreed to detailed prophylactic measures to prevent similar violations of Americans’ First Amendment rights.
The Federalist, along with The Daily Wire, sued the State Department and GEC in December of 2023, after learning that the defendants had funded the testing, development, and promotion of censorship technologies that demonetized, denigrated, and limited the reach of the media plaintiffs’ speech. The complaint alleged both a First Amendment claim and a claim that the defendants exceeded their statutory authority, which was limited to managing foreign affairs.
Discovery evidence confirmed those allegations and revealed that in the waning days of the first Trump Administration, the State Department’s GEC funded a test of three so-called “Countering Propaganda and Disinformation” technology groups, PeakMetrics, NewsGuard, and Omelas. According to a PeakMetrics’ report produced by the State Department, the three companies “collaborated to create a mockup of a joint dashboard incorporating all three companies’ capabilities.” The test ran from December 14, 2020 – January 7, 2021, with PeakMetrics stating it “performed a preliminary analysis on Omelas’ ‘Unrest and Violence in America’ narrative, which has risen exponentially this week, as expected.” PeakMetrics added that it then integrated its “technology enrichment for sources,” noting that an “[a]nalysis of this metadata can provide unique insights into networks of disinformation propagators.”
But who were these supposed “disinformation propagators?”
PeakMetrics’ report offered two examples: Sputnik News and The Blaze.
The Blaze is a Texas-based media outlet, making GEC’s targeting of that domestic media outlet well beyond its mandate to manage foreign affairs — a limitation GEC clearly understood — not to mention an abridgement of The Blaze’s First Amendment rights.
Elizabeth Nolan Brown: OneTaste Founder Nicole Daedone Gets 9-Year Prison Sentence
Nicole Daedone, owner of the wellness company OneTaste, is headed to prison for nearly a decade. OneTaste promoted a variety of eccentric practices, most notably “organismic meditation.” The federal government successfully prosecuted Daedone and her partner Rachel Cherwitz for sex trafficking. But as Elizabeth Nolan Brown reports, there were some seemingly serious flaws in the prosecution’s case:
The alleged victims in this case could come and go as they pleased. They were adult women. They had college degrees, outside professional opportunities, and sometimes even independent wealth. They testified in court that they remained affiliated with OneTaste—some as employees, some as volunteers, some simply as people who took classes from the company or lived in group houses that it maintained—because they believed in its mission, believed in Daedone and Cherwitz, or wanted to maintain social status within the OneTaste community.
The government’s assertions about how Daedone and Cherwitz employed “coercion” in this case are a huge affront to freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. Prosecutors suggested that the ideas Daedone and Cherwitz spread served as a form of brainwashing. These supposedly dangerous ideas include such things as being open to new sexual experiences and the notion that engaging in daily O.M.—a 15-minute, partnered, clitoral stroking session—could focus the mind and help empower practitioners, especially women. Daedone and Cherwitz appear to sincerely believe these ideas, which they saw as rooted in both Buddhism and feminism.
The government’s case was also a huge affront to the idea that women are fully agentic people capable of consent, sexual and otherwise. Prosecutors suggested that anxiety about being shunned by the OneTaste community was a harm so powerful that grown women were effectively “trafficked” by it. They argued that these women’s consent—to O.M., to participate in sexual fantasy scenes, to enter into and out of relationships, to engage in sex acts with OneTaste members or donors, or to pay for OneTaste classes—was rendered null by the force of fear of social exclusion and/or fear that stopping O.M. and other OneTaste practices would have a negative impact on their lives.
Ultimately, the case portends a dangerous new standard for what counts as forced labor and what counts as harm under federal trafficking statutes.
Emma Taggert: Rayner’s workers’ rights police get power to force their way into offices
In the UK, a newly created police-like bureaucracy has been empowered to forcefully enter private property, seize evidence and even arrest suspects as it enforces labor regulations. Critics are reasonably worried the euphemistically titled “Fair Work Agency” will abuse its expansive power:
The Fair Work Agency, championed by the former deputy prime minister, began to oversee the enforcement of the Employment Rights Act on Tuesday, with the power to carry out “unannounced” inspections and use force “where reasonable and necessary”.
Documents published by the Government show that enforcement officers will be able to obtain a warrant to search a property under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, granting them powers akin to police.
Agency officials will be able to search people, seize evidence and “arrest persons suspected of labour market offences”.
The Fair Work Agency, which has been dubbed Labour’s “jobs police”, is charged with enforcing various employment rights including minimum wage, modern slavery regulations, holiday pay and sick pay.
Ministers have empowered the agency to come up with new rules and regulations to enforce, urging it to “identifying where legislative, operational or strategic changes may be required” and explore “future remit expansion”.
The agency’s sweeping new powers were greeted with alarm by business leaders.
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The most startling statistics you’ll see this week:
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) defends a student newspaper at the University of North Carolina that was condemned by the school for posting satire—on April Fool’s Day.
The US Supreme Court has struck down Colorado’s ban on so-called “conversion therapy,” calling it viewpoint discrimination and thus illegal under the First Amendment. Good riddance.
