A Trump-appointed judge has blocked Biden administration officials from meeting with social media companies. Some in the media are framing this as a potential harbinger of the horrors that could come regarding First Amendment rights. The lawsuit was filed by Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri (via WaPo):
A federal judge on Tuesday blocked key Biden administration agencies and officials from meeting and communicating with social media companies, in an extraordinary injunction in an ongoing case that could have profound effects on the First Amendment.
The injunction came in response to a lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, who allege that government officials went too far in their efforts to encourage social media companies to address posts that they worried could contribute to vaccine hesitancy during the pandemic or upend elections. The Trump-appointed judge’s move could upend years of efforts to enhance coordination between the government and social media companies.
The injunction was a victory for the state attorneys general, who have accused the Biden administration of enabling a “sprawling federal ‘Censorship Enterprise’” to encourage tech giants to remove politically unfavorable viewpoints and speakers, and for conservatives who’ve accused the government of suppressing their speech. In their filings, the attorneys general alleged the actions amount to “the most egregious violations of the First Amendment in the history of the United States of America.”
The judge, Terry A. Doughty, has yet to make a final ruling in the case, but in the injunction, he wrote that the Republican attorneys general “have produced evidence of a massive effort by Defendants, from the White House to federal agencies, to suppress speech based on its content.”
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The Twitter Files story has exposed the inner machinations of a government operation to influence public opinion. The FBI worked with Twitter to develop an Orwellian system in which speech they viewed as problematic was suppressed and its users either banned or suspended. It should shock no one that speech that endorsed or supported liberal initiatives was left untouched. It added to the narrative that the FBI had become a political tool of the Democratic Party, its enforcement arm. So, this injunction isn’t without cause. We must review some things regarding Washington’s relationship with Silicon Valley.
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