National Review

When Facebook came under fire last week for banning various pro-Second Amendment pages without explanation, it appears the social-media giant may have sought retribution.

Last week, the owner of a firearms-parts company called “Tactical Sh*t” logged onto Facebook to discover his company’s page had been taken down without explanation. After he spoke with others in the gun industry, T. J. Kirgin discovered that multiple other pro-Second Amendment pages had also been mysteriously banned.

Immediately, Kirgin spoke out against what he alleged to be Facebook’s censorship, and, within 36 hours, his company’s page was restored. Since that time, Kirgin has continued to make media appearances telling his side of the story. But now, he believes that decision has cost him. As soon as he came off the air yesterday, Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, banned Tactical Sh*t, taking away a stream that accounts for 20 percent of Kirgin’s total revenue.

“It all culminated last night after I went on The Blaze with Tomi Lahren,” Kirgin says. “This morning when I woke up, they had not just unpublished our Instagram page with 221,000 fans, but they deleted it.”

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Last Tuesday, all eyes turned to House speaker Paul Ryan’s supposedly dramatic Wisconsin primary. But while the spotlight focused on Ryan’s congressional district, less than 150 miles away in northeastern Wisconsin’s eighth congressional district — the home of the Green Bay Packers — Republican state senator Frank Lasee, the establishment favorite, was losing badly in his bid to take over the seat of retiring Republican congressman Reid Ribble. Marine Corps veteran Mike Gallagher beat Lasee by 54 points.

“This is a year where people are so dissatisfied with the status quo,” Gallagher tells National Review in the aftermath of his primary victory. “Should I get elected, my intent is to treat it like a deployment and not like a career.”

Gallagher announced his insurgent candidacy in February — in the seven weeks that followed, his campaign raised half a million dollars. To date, the campaign has raised almost $1.2 million: “Ninety-eight percent of our donations in the primary came from individuals,” Gallagher explains, many of whom served with him in the military.

A former Marine Corps captain, Gallagher served as an intelligence officer during his seven years on active duty. He also worked with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the National Counterterrorism Center, and was a national-security adviser for Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s presidential campaign.

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In November, 28-year-old congressional candidate Justin Fareed will have the opportunity to end Democrats’ decades-long domination of the constantly changing districts across California’s central coast.

“I’m very optimistic that the electorate is looking for a new generation of leadership,” Fareed tells National Review. “What we are seeing today is Congress circumventing the big issues we face.”

As Democrat Lois Capps’s 18-year career in Congress comes to an end, donors have poured money into the race to replace her. Fareed has raised $1.2 million, and his Democratic competitor Salud Carbajal, Capps’s preferred successor, has raised $2.1 million.

“This seat was very much on the radar of the national parties. . . . This has been about politics for the Democrats,” Fareed says, arguing that they want to retain the seat without articulating a “vision for the central coast.”

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Facebook’s tendency toward political censorship accelerated swiftly this past weekend, when many pro-Second Amendment pages were banned without explanation.

“We found out we weren’t alone. Many other pro-gun pages — or pro-law enforcement pages or military pages — were unpublished over the weekend,” Tactical Sh*t owner TJ Kirgin tells National Review. In some cases, he says, even airsoft pages were included in the cull.

Tactical Sh*t is an online community for Second Amendment supporters that has over 30 million viewers per month. The company follows Facebook’s guidelines by limiting its commercial offerings to firearms accessories and extraneous gear. Yet it was banned from the site anyway.

Kirgin believes that Facebook is using an “algorithm” to ban pro-Second Amendment pages. The last time that a Tactical Sh*t post was flagged — about four months ago — he notes that it was removed and his punishment was decided in under 20 minutes. “No human being could have made that decision” so quickly, he says. “The targeting being done is most certainly algorithmic.”

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‘Donald Trump is losing because he is a weak candidate. Trump is weak. And I frankly question whether he has the stamina to make it through the election,” newly declared independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin told National Review this morning during the first on-the-record interview of his campaign.

“I see him imploding.”

McMullin, who announced his candidacy this morning, explained that the state of the presidential election has rendered him “distraught for the last several months.” And so, after months of waiting for other candidates to jump in and challenge Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, McMullin did it himself.

“I believe Donald Trump is a bona fide authoritarian,” McMullin said. “I am deeply concerned that if he were president of the United States he would act accordingly.”

McMullin is a devout Mormon who was born in Utah and raised in western Washington. While attending Brigham Young University, he began a ten-year career with the CIA. Along the way, he also earned an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and worked in the investment-banking division at Goldman Sachs. Until this morning, he was the chief policy director for the House Republican Conference.

Unsurprisingly given his previous work, McMullin seemed especially interested in foreign policy, and was keen to draw a contrast between himself and the other announced candidates.

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