Taliban Members Get “Verified” Blue Checks on Twitter Thanks to Elon’s Genius Idea

Members of the Taliban were able to temporarily subscribe to Twitter’s pay-for-verification feature, adding blue check marks to their accounts that appeared to confer a degree of legitimacy on the extremist regime.

At least two Taliban leaders and four prominent supporters were able to subscribe to Twitter Blue, the BBC reported Monday. They included Hedayatullah Hedayat, head of the Taliban’s department for “access to information”; Abdul Haq Hammad, head of the media watchdog at the Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture; and Muhammad Jalal, who praised Twitter owner Elon Musk for “making Twitter great again” after acquiring a blue check.

As of Tuesday, two of the officials mentioned in the BBC’s report had lost their blue checks. Neither Twitter nor Musk has publicly commented on why that happened.

“The main goal of the Taliban regime is to receive recognition,” Joseph Azam, board chair of the Afghan-American Foundation, told The New Republic. “For all of its current challenges, Twitter is considered to be a place where people are platformed. And so, for them to get verified would be a significant platforming of them and would give them some legitimacy that they haven’t been able to get through other more formal, historically relevant channels.”

“It puts them on par with other governments, in a way, which is what they want,” Azam said. “That matters. When you can’t get a seat at the U.N. … the next best thing are these informal channels.”

Musk unveiled plans for Twitter Blue shortly after his chaotic takeover of the platform in October, arguing it would help bring in revenue. Subscribers pay $8 a month for the blue verification check mark and, crucially, priority visibility on the platform. The subscription plan initially launched in November but was halted due to people verifying fake accounts to trick other users. Twitter Blue launched again in December, this time in earnest.

Experts have warned that Twitter Blue would increase the spread of misinformation. They have also said that Musk’s various plans, which included firing Twitter’s content moderators and rolling back disinformation policies, would allow hate speech and extremism to spread unfettered on the platform.

The Taliban receiving Twitter verification, even temporarily, is a chilling example of those warnings coming to bear. Twitter’s blue check mark, once highly coveted, still conveys a level of credibility and legitimacy to a bearer.

“Unfortunately, Elon Musk–controlled Twitter has allowed Taliban officials to commit their violence through online discourse as well, where they offer false narratives about the situation in Afghanistan,” said Halema Wali, co-director of Afghans for a Better Tomorrow.

Azam explained that verifying Taliban accounts portrays them as “the one true source of information on Afghanistan.”

“Once that credence takes hold, what it does for everybody else is it makes their realities less relevant. It makes it harder for people who don’t agree with them and who don’t have the platform, or reach, to be heard.”

As the Taliban continues to tighten its grip on Afghanistan, including in a huge crackdown on women’s right to education and work, any degree of credibility given to it only strengthens its position on the global stage. Twitter verification, even temporary, further isolates the people still in the country.

“Afghans have run out of allies. They’ve run out of avenues for redress, they’ve run out of platforms, they’ve run out of ways to be heard,” Azam stressed. “The private sector and nongovernment, it’s actually one of the most important remaining tools that 40 million people in Afghanistan have. The governments have turned their back on Afghans. So the responsibility that companies like Twitter have … is to try to offset that, or not make the same mistake. And I think that’s the part of this that’s really disappointing.”

This post has been updated.

Just weeks after a 6-year-old shot his teacher, a gun trade show in Las Vegas is hosting a manufacturer promoting its “JR-15,” a child-size AR-15 rifle.

The JR-15 was first launched last year by gun manufacturer WEE1 Tactical. The launch sparked outrage as the company promoted the J.V. death machine with cartoon skulls and crossbones stylized as boys and girls. The presumed boy skull had a blonde mohawk and green pacifier, while the girl skull sported blonde pigtails and pink bows and a pink pacifier. Both cartoons had one eye patched with a rifle sight.

The company’s website from last year claimed that the JR-15, while smaller, “operates just like Mom and Dad’s gun.” The site also boasted “SWAG for Adults and Young Shooters” that matched the cartoonized promotional materials. “The BRAND is meant to be EDGY,” the site read.

Now, as WEE1 Tactical heads to the SHOT Show in Las Vegas, where the deadliest mass shooting by an individual in U.S. history took place, it is preparing to re-promote the same gateway gun with a more muted tone. The company’s latest flyer skips the “edgy” branding to focus more on the product specifications of the JR-15. One page is dedicated toward explaining the company’s “tamper resistant safety” switch that “requires strength and dexterity to release.”

Instead of lauding the gun as “just like Mom and Dad’s gun,” the company focuses on the “American Family Values” to be had by buying its gun, which helps “introduce young enthusiasts to the shooting sports.”

“WEE1 Tactical has adopted this supposedly kinder, gentler marketing approach because it knows from experience that most Americans are shocked and disgusted by the idea of manufacturing semiautomatic assault rifles designed for grade schoolers,” said Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center.

AR-15s or similar rifles were the primary weapons used in some of the deadliest mass shootings in recent American history: the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, the 2017 Sutherland Springs church shooting, the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, and the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting.

Just among this handful of American shootings, three were at schools. Most might recoil at a gross push to get even more weapons into people’s hands, especially young people’s. (After all, there’s an estimated 120 guns for every 100 people in America.)

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, however, responded to the tragic Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde by suggesting they would have been safer with JR-15s.

A failed MAGA Republican New Mexico legislative candidate, who refused to accept his election loss, was arrested for a series of shootings at the homes of local Democratic leaders.

Albuquerque police arrested Solomon Peña on Monday for conspiring with and paying four men to carry out shootings in recent weeks at the homes of two Bernalillo County commissioners and two state legislators. No one was injured in the attacks.

Police said they suspected Peña was angry that he lost his race for the state House of Representatives. Peña received a mere 26 percent of the votes to Democratic incumbent Miguel Garcia’s 76 percent, according to the New Mexico secretary of state’s office.

“He had complaints about his election he felt being rigged,” police spokesperson Gilbert Gallegos said at a press conference Monday evening. “As the mayor said, he was an election denier—he doesn’t want to accept the results of his election.”

Despite the not at all close race, Peña refused to concede, tweeting, “I dissent. I am the MAGA king,” the night of November 9. A few days later, when Donald Trump announced he was running for president again, Peña tweeted his support for the former leader and said he had not conceded his own race.

“Now researching my options,” he added ominously.

Peña embraced Trump’s election denialism, even appearing to attend the January 6, 2021, rally that turned into the insurrection, according to a photo he shared on Twitter. He repeatedly insisted that his own election was rigged. After the results were in, he approached three of the four targeted Democratic officials at their homes, claiming he had proof the election was fraudulent and arguing it should not be certified. The Bernalillo County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to certify the election results.

Over the course of 2022, Peña also made almost two dozen donations to the Lyndon Larouche PAC, which was founded by far-right political activist and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche.

Albuquerque’s Democratic Mayor Tim Keller praised Peña’s arrest, urging city residents to “push back against hate in all forms and stop political violence.”

Peña is just the latest example of politically motivated attacks, particularly around the midterm elections. Election workers have seen a massive increase in threats and harassment since Trump refused to accept the 2020 election results. States ramped up protections for poll workers ahead of the midterms in November, especially after there were reports of armed self-appointed poll watchers showing up at ballot boxes.

And just weeks before the midterms, a man broke into Nancy Pelosi’s home in San Francisco and attacked her husband with a hammer.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned Congress on Friday that the nation will hit the debt ceiling on Thursday, January 19. If lawmakers don’t suspend or raise the debt ceiling, Yellen wrote, there will be “irreparable harm” to the U.S. economy as well as global financial stability.

A breach of the debt ceiling could interrupt federal spending on things like Social Security, Medicare, or even just salaries of federal employees. It would also tank America’s credit rating.

Yellen said the Treasury will go to “extraordinary measures” to avoid default, giving lawmakers until early June to come up with a deal. These measures include redeeming existing and suspending new investments of the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund and suspending reinvestment in separate retirement savings funds for federal workers.

Now Republicans and Democrats have a limited time to negotiate on what happens next in order to prevent a global crisis. Unfortunately, the situation primarily offers no-win scenarios.

Kevin McCarthy promised to leverage the debt ceiling to cut spending in exchange for gaining the House speaker’s gavel. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has said there are no plans for such cuts, or negotiation at all on something that should be a bipartisan move to avoid crisis.

Worse, right-wing media is ratcheting up pressure on Republicans to leverage the debt ceiling for political demands, something that surely could push spineless Republicans to follow suit (even while it would harm their own base).

Democrats, tasked with advocating for good governance, are then stuck between holding the line and forcing Republicans’ hands to cooperate (risking potential national economic crisis if Republicans dig their heels in) and negotiating with them in order to avoid such disaster by potentially agreeing to cut essential social spending.

“What we’re creating is a showdown where Democrats are trying to show that the Republicans are being irresponsible, but the cost of proving that irresponsibility is an economic worldwide catastrophe,” Laura Blessing, senior fellow at Georgetown’s Government Affairs Institute, told The New Republic the last time this all happened.

Kevin McCarthy made countless concessions to become speaker of the House, but one of those deals could pose a major risk to security in the Capitol.

Matt Gaetz, who staunchly opposed the California Republican’s bid for the speakership, revealed Thursday evening to CNN that McCarthy had agreed to release all the security camera footage from the Capitol on the day of the January 6 insurrection. McCarthy also indicated Thursday he was open to releasing the video footage.

The Capitol Police Board says the final decision isn’t even up to McCarthy. The board, which is made up of the House and Senate sergeants at arms and the architect of the Capitol, opposes making the footage public because doing so could inadvertently help the people who overran the Capitol two years ago—as well as people who might want to do it again.

Releasing the footage could reveal strategic locations in the Capitol, such as safe rooms and security cameras. It could also help give people a better sense of the building’s layout, thus jeopardizing Capitol security.

The Justice Department and Capitol Police have previously pushed back on releasing the more than 14,000 hours of footage from January 6. USCP Chief Sean Gallagher said in a court affidavit from July that his department “continues to consider any interior footage of the U.S. Capitol to be highly sensitive information, and that access to it should be strictly limited.”

The Justice Department also argued that releasing the footage could reveal sensitive information pertaining to the cases of people arrested in connection to the insurrection. The FBI has arrested about 900 people connected to the insurrection and has the identities of hundreds more. A total of about 3,000 people could be charged over storming the Capitol, when all is said and done.

It’s not clear what Republicans think they will gain by releasing the footage. Many GOP lawmakers, including Gaetz, Andy Biggs, and Louie Gohmert have previously called for the videos to be made public in an effort to exonerate people connected to the riot. House Republicans have also formed a House Judiciary subcommittee dedicated to investigating ongoing criminal investigations, such as the ones into January 6.

There is also a chance, which Republicans do not seem to have considered, that releasing the footage will backfire spectacularly. The videos could reveal even more damaging information about the Republicans already under scrutiny for their actions before and during the attack.