“We find that the White House, acting in concert with the Surgeon General’s office, likely (1) coerced the platforms to make their moderation decisions by way of intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences, and (2) significantly encouraged the platforms’ decisions by commandeering their decision-making processes, both in violation of the First Amendment.”
—A three-judge panel of the The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, substantially upholding a lower court’s preliminary injunction in The State of Missouri et al v Joseph R. Biden, Jr., et al,
The Per Curiam opinion is here, and its legal and ethical clarity cannot be overstated. The Court wrote in part,
. . . On multiple occasions, the officials coerced the platforms into direct action via urgent, uncompromising demands to moderate content. Privately, the officials were not shy in their requests—they asked the platforms to remove posts “ASAP” and accounts “immediately,” and to “slow[] down” or “demote[]” content.
It is uncontested that, between the White House and the Surgeon General’s office, government officials asked the platforms to remove undesirable posts and users from their platforms, sent follow-up messages of condemnation when they did not, and publicly called on the platforms to act. When the officials’ demands were not met, the platforms received promises of legal regime changes, enforcement actions, and other unspoken threats.
What the Biden Administration engaged in is totalitarian stuff and obviously so, as Ethics Alarms and its non-biased, non-progressive brainwashed commenters have maintained from the beginning. This is, recall, the same White House that executed this spectacular exercise in projection, hypocrisy, disinformation, propaganda and “It isn’t what it is”….
…calling its opponents “fascists” while it was engaging in blatant suppression of free speech to entrench its power. I believed that the 5th Circuit’s ruling was a slam-dunk certainty, just as I believe that a Supreme Court review, if the Democrats are foolish enough to ask for one, will reach the same conclusion, perhaps even unanimously. The threats of “legal regime changes, enforcement actions, and other unspoken threats” are an attack on democracy itself “for the greater good,” and proof positive that the people we have placed in charge of the government not only cannot be trusted, but create an existential danger to the nation itself.
The ruling also confirms what, again, Ethics Alarms saw and explained in multiple essays: not only the dastardly and unethical effort to intimidate and mislead the American public into the disastrous Wuhan pandemic lockdowns and restrictions on individual choice and liberty, but to illegally undermine Donald Trump’s chances of re-election as well. Remember this opinion every time a media source uses the apparently mandatory phrase “baseless claims” that the 2020 election was stolen.
The opinion also holds that the Federal Bureau of Investigation used coercion in its interactions with the social media companies, which took down 50 percent of the material online that the bureau’s agents flagged as information the government did not want the public to receive. Again, you knew this, or should have, but a Federal appeals court’s confirmation is vital.
The court did limit the scope of the injunction, which prohibited officials from many agencies from contacting the social media platforms, limiting the injunction’s sweep to the White House, the Surgeon General’s Office, the F.B.I., and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The White House, however, represents the top of one third of the government. This is a major, significant, brutal indictment of this Presidency and this President.
Good.
In sad and typical Pavlovian fashion, the now totally corrupt New York Times tried mightily to spin the decision, further debasing itself and American journalism in the process. The Times framed its news story by describing the the ruling as “another twist in a First Amendment case that has challenged the government’s ability to combat false and misleading narratives about the pandemic, voting rights and other issues that spread on social media.” Disgusting. The self-proclaimed standard-bearer for U.S. journalism has an obligation to be a clarion-voiced defender of the First Amendment, and instead reveals itself as an ally of government censors.
Naturally, this aspiring totalitarian regime continues to insist that its undemocratic conduct protects democracy, reacting to the Firth Circuit slap-down with
“This administration has promoted responsible actions to protect public health, safety and security when confronted by challenges like a deadly pandemic and foreign attacks on our elections. Our consistent view remains that social media platforms have a critical responsibility to take account of the effects their platforms are having on the American people but make independent choices about the information they present.”
How can any educated and patriotic citizen vote for people who would issue a statement like that? It admits to certitude that the public must be protected from opinions and facts for their own safety and welfare, those being defined as “keeping us in power.” It calls decisions made by social media platforms “under promises of legal regime changes, enforcement actions, and other unspoken threats” “independent choices“!
Jenin Younes, a lawyer with the New Civil Liberties Alliance, called the decision on Friday “a major and unprecedented victory,” saying that it “might be the most significant First Amendment case in the internet age and is a crucial outcome for flourishing of free speech in an era when social media has become the modern public square.” I think it is more significant than that.
The decision rips the mask of good intentions from the metaphorical face of the Biden Presidency.
That
Ethics Alarms 
“the people we have placed in charge of the government not only cannot be trusted, but create an existential danger to the nation itself.”
By censoring any speech they don’t approve of, using government agencies to attack political opponents, labeling as fascists anyone who disagrees with their machinations, refusing to enforce laws that interfere with their agenda, all while claiming they’re protecting democracy. The validity of this statement cannot be overstated. The fear is that they’re so entrenched at all levels and agencies of government that extricating all of them is impossible. We have become a nation ruled by criminals.
By regime changes, I assume that means putting people in charge that will do the government’s bidding.
That’s right out of the Nazi Germany playbook. Refuse to dismiss your Jewush employees or we’ll put someone in charge who will.
I don’t know why autocorrect thought Jewish should be Jewush but there we are.
AM, I think it’s maybe worse than that. By “legal regime change” I don’t think they meant a la Iraq and Saddam Hussein. I think the threat was to change the laws under which Facebook and Twitter operate. The threat is to regulate them out of business. You know, like they’re trying to do with, oh say, those inconsequential businesses like, oh say, oil and gas. Assholes.
It’s also right out of Castro’s playbook. Everyone works for us now. That said, this decision doesn’t mean much unless and until it reaches the Supreme Court and is affirmed. I’m not sure it even means anything then, because then the mainstream media will just say that the court is the problem. The problem isn’t that the court wants to hold to the Constitution. The problem is that the court won’t do the Democratic party’s bidding like it did in the days when Burger was in charge. That’s why we’ve got to add those six extra justices. The purpose of the court is not to uphold the Constitution, the purpose of the Court is to make sure that everything the Democratic party does is legal, and if it’s not legal, to make it legal. That’s it.
The elites consider themselves the smartest people in the room (looking at you, Bill Clinton) and therefore, the arbiters of truth. I was at my fiftieth college reunion in June. Chatted with the spouse of a guy in the class ahead of us. He’s an infectious disease research physician. His wife gushingly volunteered her husband worked closely with Dr. Fauci. I overheard another classmate, a physician, say to a former roommate and retired environmental lawyer at a big firm in Atlanta who, among other things, believes in science, that “Anthony Fauci is brilliant!”
My generation’s problem is arrogance and hubris. We’ve never had a major depression, never had a major war. We think we know everything, and we know better. This case is just a bump in the road, or maybe just old roadkill. These people are on the right side of history. They need to steer all media and all the little people to the truth. A few Republican judges aren’t going to get in their way. It’s depressing.
TwitteX now has a “Community Notes” feature that allows users to add context (point out lies) in a post. Strangely, posts by Biden’s camp & their leftist hangers-on seem to be the major recipients of these corrections, rather than supposed “misinformation” from the right.
Of course the administration calls them ‘independent choices’ by the social media companies.
It is the same twisting of the language that it uses in stating that Medicare is going to ‘negotiate’ drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. Right. They are making them an offer they cannot, literally cannot, refuse because if they try to the government will run them out of business.
One thing that occurred to me when I was reading about these price controls was that historically Americans have subsidized the cost of drugs for the rest of the world. For example, I gather the EU has some type of negotiations over drugs prices (and has for years), but a crucial difference is that drug companies can walk away and simply not offer their product in those countries if the price is too low.
That was all well and good as long as they could produce enough revenue here in the U.S. to not only be profitable but to fund future research. By the by, future research, and therefore new drugs, are almost certain to be a casualty of the new price controls.
But if revenue from the U.S. dries up, what effect will that have on the rest of the world? Will the drug companies then say — well, we need to raise our prices in Europe or we can’t offer this drug over there? I think that is a potential outcome.
Overall I think there will be a lot of consequences — nearly all bad for consumers — to the government’s latest venture into price controls. Price controls simply result in bad outcomes and always have.
What we need is for the officials who engaged in this censorship campaign to be prosecuted for RICO!
As a layman, it certainly seems more applicable to RICO statues than anything Trump came up with.
It’s possible, but it’s usually liberals who try to do creative things with RICO, I remember the thought of it being used against pro-life groups, but it never went anywhere, because even liberal prosecutors were sane 30 years ago.
It is time for everyone to be creative with RICO.