September 9, 2023

"The judges wrote that the White House and the Office of the Surgeon General had 'coerced the platforms to make their moderation decisions by way of intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences'..."

"... and 'significantly encouraged the platforms’ decisions by commandeering their decision-making processes.' The appellate court also found that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had used coercion in its interactions with the companies, which took down 50 percent of the material online that the bureau’s agents flagged as troublesome...."

From "Appeals Court Rules White House Overstepped 1st Amendment on Social Media/A Fifth Circuit panel partly upheld restrictions on the Biden administration’s communications with online platforms about their content" (NYT).

Although Republicans have led the charge, the argument that the government has overstepped its constitutional authority to police content online has raised concerns across the political spectrum. It has drawn support from others who complain about the role of social media giants in moderating content on their platforms, including hate speech and misinformation and disinformation. 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.... filed a similar lawsuit, which was consolidated into the Missouri case. He argued... “Never in the history of this country have federal officials worked so blatantly in collusion with industry to silence the voices that question government agendas”... 

63 comments:

Joe Smith said...

But what is the remedy?

What is the punishment?

There is none as we are ruled, not governed...

Bob Boyd said...

So who's going to be punished and what will done to stop this stuff going forward?

Don't tell me, let me guess...No one and nothing.

RideSpaceMountain said...

Barn door open. Cows gone. There will be zero consequences. And this is a situation that screams for consequences as a way to improve trust. The deep state will not spank itself. Too late, regardless of the outcome of any election moving forward, this government is the enemy of its people.

Sebastian said...

Looks pretty good as far as it goes. But will any of the petty tyrants pay any personal price? Didn't think so.

chickelit said...

Great news that the Biden propaganda team is getting slapped down! More please!

Rich said...

The Biden administration didn’t force them to remove the postings, only encouraged them. If you're a Republican and you run even the slightest risk of being told that the addlepated thing you're doing is, in fact, addlepated, then you're being coerced,

tommyesq said...

Wasn't that the basis of Trump's suit against Facebook et al., which the left/msm routinely mocked?

MayBee said...

Good. So good.


I'm curious if there is anybody who doesn't think the government way overstepped during the pandemic. In Michigan, Whitmer went after a barber who wanted to operate his business during the pandemic. A lot of people I like supported her, saying on Facebook "IT's not about your rights!!!! '. Note that none of those kinds of statements got deleted.

I want to know if any of those people are sorry, or if they worry about the next emergency. I want to know if there are any politicians who have said they know they overstepped and they've learned their lesson.

Michael K said...

The NYT noticed ! Amazing. This probably is the early stages of getting rid of Biden.

mikee said...

TITLE 18, U.S.C., SECTION 242, allows for a $10k fine and a year in prison for each act of violation of an individual's civil rights under color of law. Would it not be HILARIOUS, or at least just and proper, to charge every FBI agent, every White House administration member, every government person involved in this with the exact number of censorship actions taken by the social media websites, and for the prosecutors to ask for consecutive sentences upon conviction?

Owen said...

This means the government has to learn to hide its tracks better. That's all.

Jamie said...

the argument that the government has overstepped its constitutional authority to police content online has raised concerns across the political spectrum.

But isn't it funny that the voices from the left side of the political spectrum who have expressed alarm have been people who were hounded out of the media mainstream?

I'll even give those mainstream outlets the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe the hounding-out was prompted by fear rather than agreement. Even so, lefties and other defenders herein of media and social media deplatforming, anything to offer about the dreaded "mis-, dis-, and malinformation"?

tim in vermont said...

Now do banning reporting of the Hunter Biden laptop, AKA election rigging.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Told ya we have a lawless government.

Jamie said...

Also - because it's the NYT I can't read it. Can anyone sort out what the subheadline means? The court upheld... restrictions... on the administration's communications... about content. Whose restrictions? Who was ever restricting the administration's communications? Or did the court partly uphold some but not all of the restrictions the administration was trying to coerce these platforms into making? I don't get it.

I get the pull quote just fine.

Dude1394 said...

What a shocker, our corrupt FBI threatening people at the point of a gun. Has there been ANY time in the last 6 years that the FBI has not been corrupt and partisan. This agency MUST be taken down to the foundation.

Right now anything the FBI says is a lie.

Brian McKim and/or Traci Skene said...

"Republicans have led the charge..."

The notable thing is not that Republicans are leading the charge.

It's that Democrats and others are cheering on the efforts of the government to stifle dissent.

This is a five-alarm Constitutional fire and leftists are showing up with buckets of gasoline.

Earnest Prole said...

Imagine the huffy First Amendment outrage if Trump, not Biden, were responsible — the Republic would surely hang only by a thread.

Ice Nine said...

...and nothing will change in the collusion between government and social media in their drive to suppress Conservative speech. They will simply refine their subterfuges.

Dave Begley said...

Why was the FBI even involved with this?

This is a giant scandal.

Vivek would disband the FBI. Another reason to vote for him.

I’d tear down the Hoover building.

Dave Begley said...

The FBI employs a large number of lawyers. Why didn’t any of them tell the top people that this was plainly unconstitutional?

Dave Begley said...

MayBee

The Left never admits error or apologizes. Never.

The Left has been wrong for over 50 years about global warming and they’ve never once admitted they were wrong.

tim in vermont said...

Dave, in a meeting, Vince Foster told Hillary that something she wanted to do was unconstitutional and, per people at the meeting, she told him that he was “a hick lawyer who was never going to get it,” and a week later he is found dead at Ft Marcy Park, clothes covered in carpet fibers, and autopsy photos never released.

Mutaman said...



Judge Edith Brown Clement: Appointed by George W Bush

Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod: Appointed by George W Bush

Judge Don Willett: Appointed by Donald Trump

Nuff said. better to know the judge than to know the law.

tim in vermont said...

An awful lot of the “disinformation” turned out over time, from the laptop to the lab leak theory, to be true. So here’s to the “addlepated” which must mean exceptionally prescient, if you are going by context.

rcocean said...

Yeah, I'm just shocked that all the Trump hating FBI lawyers some of whom were indicted for lying under oath to Congress or to the FISA court or criticized in the IG report, didn't tell Biden it was unconstitutional.

Wray - a former Fed DA - is lying and stonewalling congress, and carrying out Stalinist raids against TRump and his supporters, but I'm just shocked he didn't see this was plainly unconstitutional.

Gosh, what were they thinking? If they go furter down this road another couple years, I may think they have another agenda! But I don't want to RUSH TO JUDGEMENT.

traditionalguy said...

CIA/FBI have been running color revolutions all over the place. They decapitate the weaker country’s leadership and plant propaganda and install puppets that let them loot the place. And we all thought: “Good Job “ guys. The good guys had won another Pax Americana death match.

BUT, now the Security State has done the same thing here to the USA. Turns out they were always for sale to the highest bidder and that was now foreign Globalists.

TRUMP’s only crime is exposing and opposing that mass criminal conspiracy.

Just an old country lawyer said...

FBI delenda est.

Dude1394 said...

“ Blogger Dave Begley said...
Why was the FBI even involved with this?

This is a giant scandal.

Vivek would disband the FBI. Another reason to vote for him.

I’d tear down the Hoover building.”

100% in agreement. Tear it down to the ground.

Big Mike said...

Rich regards truth and reality as something addlepated. Good to know.

jim5301 said...

If the platforms felt compelled to take down the posts why did they leave them up half the time?

Fred Drinkwater said...

Rich said: "Only encouraged them"

Say, that's a nice looking EIR Approval / FCC License / SEC S-1 / etc etc you've got posted on the wall there. Real nice.

LOL. Rich lives under a rock.

jim5301 said...

“I’d tear down the Hoover building”

What’s stopping you, other than you’re full of shit. Also I reckon a smart lawyer like you knows that such statements probably violate the code of professional responsibility. May I suggest you use a pseudonym. If you can’t think of an appropriate one I have some suggestions.

Larry J said...

When you start to see the Democrat Party as a very large organized crime ring that uses politics to further their gains, suddenly a lot of what they do makes perfect sense. They make all of the other organized crime rings look like petty criminals by comparison.

Buckwheathikes said...

Remind me again: What are the PENALTIES for Democrats eliminating the 1st (and if you check New Mexico today) 2nd Amendment rights? The Governor of New Mexico has suspended 2nd Amendment rights in all of New Mexico for some claimed "emergency."

Turns out there are no penalties. There are no fines. There is no jail time. There are no civil awards. There are literally no restrictions on Democrats erasing the United States Constitution.

So why shouldn't Democrats just suspend the Constitution whenever they feel like it? Who is stopping them? What penalty do they pay when they do it? What militia opposes them?

None. Nobody is stopping them. And if you try, well, that's insurrection. J6 Gulag for you, comrade.

This country is Nazi, Germany, 1940. The Democrats are the SS. And Joe Biden is Adolph Hitler.

And every single one of them deserve to be hung in the next Nuremberg Trials. We're going to have to hang every single fking one of them. Again.

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

But what is the remedy?

What is the punishment?


A flogging for all involved in the civil rights violation. Number of lashes determined by the serveraty of the violation.

Government officials who wantonly violate civil rights need to be held personally responsible. Not just monetarily. A punishment that will dissuade them from repeating the violation.

BUMBLE BEE said...

Whew!
Kept both Garland AND Rich off the Supreme Court.
Cavalier with the Constitution.
That was a close call.

Maynard said...

Where are the lefty trolls on this post?

Chuck? Igna? Rich/Howard? Cookie? Gadmosquito? Vicki?

gilbar said...

What's the Problem?
New Mexico Democrat Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has stated, that:
"NO constitution rights are 'absolute'. Any and ALL can and WILL be suspended whenever government says"

Gahrie said...

Also - because it's the NYT I can't read it. Can anyone sort out what the subheadline means? The court upheld... restrictions... on the administration's communications... about content. Whose restrictions? Who was ever restricting the administration's communications?

A lower-level court that made the initial decision that is being appealed here.

Yancey Ward said...

With the DoJ firmly in the control of the Democrats, there is no actual remedies available even though the actions of many of these officials do in fact violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

For shits and giggles, I think Ms. Althouse ought to ban Rich. This is just a suggestion- no coercion involved.

Gahrie said...

So who's going to be punished and what will done to stop this stuff going forward?

Don't tell me, let me guess...No one and nothing.


Lois Lerner could not be reached for comment.

BlackjohnX said...

The ghost of J Edgar smiles

Bob Boyd said...

According to my sources, experts have discovered large pockets of what is believed to be putrescent gas in the President cranium. They concede the in-head situation is far from optimal, but the plan is to just keep an eye on it for now.

Lilly, a dog said...

Jamie--from the article:
"The court limited the scope of a preliminary injunction, which prohibited officials from numerous agencies from having practically any contact with the social media companies. Instead, the court narrowed the impact to the White House, the Surgeon General’s Office, the F.B.I., and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

William said...

I'm reading "Ten Days That Shook the World" by John Reed. A few days after they took power the Bolsheviks ended freedom of the press. Just prior to taking power, they had been fierce advocates of press freedom. Here's how Lenin explained the paradox. Freedom of the press is subordinate to ownership of the press: An important asset like a printing press does not belong to the bourgeois and still less to wealthy capitalists. Ownership of the press (and such things as ink and paper) belong to the people. The people are the proletariat and the landless peasants. Other people don't count as people. The true representatives of the people are the Bolsheviks. Thus freedom of the press is maintained by the Bolsheviks taking over the printing press. The Bolsheviks are the ones to best understand and print the truth. Lenin said he would be willing to allow limited access to the printing press to some Socialist parties, but he feared that the capitalists would suborn those parties for their own purposes. Their access had to be limited and monitored.....John Reed couldn't spot any gaps in Lenin's reasoning. Of the top 100 books of journalism in the twentieth century, the NYT listed it as number seven.

cfs said...

"Although Republicans have led the charge, the argument that the government has overstepped its constitutional authority to police content online has raised concerns across the political spectrum."

LOL! I'd have to see more evidence to believe that the censorship has "raised concerns across the political spectrum". One or two "moderates" such as Kennedy or a law professor such as Jonathan Turley speaking out against the censorship (while being vilified by the left when they do so), does not a spectrum make.

This seems more like back-pedaling by the leftist media to pretend to be unbiased in their reporting by stating "Oh yeah? So the courts are serious about this? Is that now the popular and approved opinion? Well..well...some on my side believe that too! So there!"

cfs said...

"So who's going to be punished and what will done to stop this stuff going forward?

Don't tell me, let me guess...No one and nothing."

Until there is personal criminal and civil penalties, the violations of our Constitutional rights will continue. What's the downside for them? A court ruling a few years down the road? Just think of the power they can gain meanwhile and there is always a chance a conservative judge on the applicable court will die in the meantime.

Bruce Hayden said...

“But what is the remedy?”

“What is the punishment?”

One thing - government officials typically have qualified immunity - typically until there is a definitive court case that te actions isolated the Constitution. Stupid precedent, but, for now, we are stuck with it. Next time around, the government actors are going to have a harder time claiming that they didn’t know better.

cfs said...

"The FBI employs a large number of lawyers. Why didn’t any of them tell the top people that this was plainly unconstitutional?"

LOL. Begley you know better than that. The FBI are a part of the jack-booted thugs who are implementing the other agencies' orders.

Brian McKim and/or Traci Skene said...

"The Biden administration didn’t force them to remove the postings, only encouraged them."

Oh, that's... rich.

Stoogitational!

The idiotic companion to, "No one was forced to take the vax."

Let's spin the stupidity Or Evil Wheel and see where it lands!

n.n said...

Democracy dies with Democrat gerrymandering.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Rich this is the second Federal Court to rule that the Biden administration’s violating the First Amendment. It has nothing to do with republicans pouncing or “being told they’re addlepated.” Your side is silencing political speech and you appear to be for it. I’m not surprised.

Free Manure While You Wait! said...

"Rich said...
The Biden administration didn’t force them to remove the postings, only encouraged them."

Rich to English Translation:

Slurp, slurp, slurp, slurp, slurp. Please Sir, I want some more.

Free Manure While You Wait! said...

Mark Zuckerberg should be in a federal prison. He willfully suborned abrogating our civil rights.

Jamie said...

I'm curious if there is anybody who doesn't think the government way overstepped during the pandemic.

I'm going to juxtapose this with something from Rich:

The Biden administration didn’t force them to remove the postings, only encouraged them. If you're a Republican and you run even the slightest risk of being told that the addlepated thing you're doing is, in fact, addlepated, then you're being coerced,

Aaaand there's my answer. Despite the court's finding that the administration was in fact coercive.

"The addlepated thing you're doing" - questioning school closings. Questioning the education of masks. Questioning the origin of the virus.

Rich. Come on.

Drago said...

Dave Begley: "The FBI employs a large number of lawyers. Why didn’t any of them tell the top people that this was plainly unconstitutional?"

LOL

They knew it was unconstitutional. Every single one of them.

Internalize this: They. Don't. Care.

They work for the New Soviet Democraticals and there are no remaining democracy/republic guard rails.

None.

Drago said...

Dave Begley: "Why was the FBI even involved with this?"

Because the New Soviet Democraticals needed it done to advance their power and control.

No other reason or rationale is required.

Drago said...

Mike (MJB Wolf): "Rich this is the second Federal Court to rule that the Biden administration’s violating the First Amendment. It has nothing to do with republicans pouncing or “being told they’re addlepated.” Your side is silencing political speech and you appear to be for it. I’m not surprised."

Nor should anyone be.

Leftists ALWAYS institute totalitarian controls whenever they gain authority and power critical mass.

But only every single time.

Without exception.

walter said...

Free Manure While You Wait! said...
"Rich said...
The Biden administration didn’t force them to remove the postings, only encouraged them."
--
Did Rich/Chuck/lonejustice delete this comment?

Jamie said...

"Did Rich/Chuck/lonejustice delete this comment?"

It's way up there at 1:58pm.

So, we've got Rich (who has been given his lumps) and Mutaman (who points out that the judges were Bush and Trump appointed, pretends a sardonic grin, and says "it's better to know the judge than to know the law"). Time to address Mutaman:

So, if the only judges who will call out government agencies for coercing media outlets into practicing censorship are Republican appointees... that tells you a little something about what Republicans look for in a judge, doesn't it?

And that you think this is a situation not covered by "the law" tells us a little something about your understanding of the role of censorship in public life, doesn't it?

Dude1394 said...

Thank you Elon Musk.

Brian said...

Yancey said: For shits and giggles, I think Ms. Althouse ought to ban Rich. This is just a suggestion- no coercion involved.

I like what you did here. It illustrates the point, but not as far as the actual facts in the case of Missouri v. Biden.

The government secretly communicated with the platforms to censor. I think it's one thing for the government to post their take on a particular instance of public importance, but it should be public. If the government wants to say Rich is wrong because of x, y or z, they should be allowed to do that.

But when the government goes to Ann in a secret email to ban Rich, that's very problematic.