A federal judge ruled that the Biden administration likely trampled on the First Amendment in trying to eliminate what it saw as disinformation on social media, issuing a broad preliminary injunction limiting the federal government from policing online content.
In a 155-page ruling issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty of Louisiana barred White House officials and multiple federal agencies from contacting social-media companies with the purpose of suppressing political views and other speech normally protected from government censorship.
Oh Christ. Yet another district judge has issued a sweeping national injunction on some topic that has him¹ exercised. I don't suppose I even need to tell you anything about the guy, but I will anyway:
Judge Doughty, who was appointed to the federal court by President Donald J. Trump in 2017, has made the court a sympathetic venue for conservative cases, having previously blocked the Biden
administration’s national vaccination mandate for health care workers and overturned its ban on new federal leases for oil and gas drilling.
But let's not jump to conclusions too quickly. Let's first take a look at the forceful and reasoned arguments in Doughty's 155-page tome. Mostly it's a long, familiar conspiracy-esque recitation of right-wing hobbyhorses about efforts from public health officers to highlight COVID misinformation, with a bit of Hunter Biden and election integrity thrown in. The key question, apparently, is whether the federal government "significantly encouraged" social media companies to toe the government's lefty line or else, and Doughty has no doubts on this score:
What is really telling is that virtually all of the free speech suppressed was “conservative” free speech. Using the 2016 election and the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government apparently engaged in a massive effort to suppress disfavored conservative speech.
....The White House Defendants made it very clear to social-media companies what they wanted suppressed and what they wanted amplified. Faced with unrelenting pressure from the most powerful office in the world, the social-media companies apparently complied.
....The VP, EIP, and Stanford Internet Observatory are not defendants in this proceeding. However, their actions are relevant because government agencies have chosen to associate, collaborate, and partner with these organizations....Flagged content was almost entirely from political figures, political organizations, alleged partisan media outlets, and social-media all-stars associated with right-wing or conservative political views.
....The Plaintiffs have outlined a federal regime of mass censorship, presented specific examples of how such censorship has harmed the States’ quasi-sovereign interests in protecting their residents’ freedom of expression.
....The evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth.” The Plaintiffs have presented substantial evidence in support of their claims that they were the victims of a far-reaching and widespread censorship campaign.
This is Deep State derp all the way down. I wonder if Doughty also wants to prevent the White House from talking to newspapers, TV reporters, talk show hosts, radio chatterers, podcasters, newsletter writers, labor leaders, CEOs, climate activists, and bloggers? It's going to be mighty lonely in the White House press office before long.
¹It's always a him.
Social media is a shit show and so let it continue to be so. Let it be overrun with shit so responsible people abandon it… which they should have done 10 fucking years ago!
Happy Independence Day!
https://youtu.be/EIODUFpatkQ
Black trannies…. I’m really not impressed. Mentally ill freaks. 😂
https://nypost.com/2023/07/04/kimbrady-carriker-ided-as-philadelphia-gunman-accused-of-killing-5/
Come on, man. Why do we think it’s in our interest to make excuses for them? They need psychiatric help. They don’t need to be enabled. Good grief.
And this is a propos of what?
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Conservatism is all about being wrong and if you point it out you're the bad guy.
Because conservatives are magic.
Well, I guess he owned the libs.
Depends on whether one considers the distinction between an injunction and a vacatur as being without difference:
From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/20/nationwide-injunctions-trump-biden/
It’s a distinction without a difference. The rule was struck down “nationally”.
The judiciary is all they’ve got, for fairly obvious reasons no; meaning, it’s the most in-democratic branch, so, the only one where they e got a fighting chance
This tweet says it all
https://www.mattball.org/2023/07/let-me-see-if-ive-got-this-straight-re.html
Ha, pretty much.
Can't really blame Trump for this one. He was confirmed 98-0 in the Senate.
This one's on Dick Durban and Chuck Shumer.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the vast majority of outright lies and baroque conspiracy theories free floating above reality also come from right wing or conservative viewpoints. It's rather like saying right wing or conservative viewpoints are largely held by elderly white men. Parading Tim Scott and Nikki Haley around does not alter that basic fact.
Also, why are all Federalist society judges dumb as a sack of doorknobs? They can't reason their way out of a paper bag if someone opens the top and shines a light in. Surely there must be some not dumb members. Surely?
Exactly. One old-school Republican friend has often complained how hard the news media has been on Trump. But no other president has been (outrageously!!) on the wrong side of the law, ethics, and basic human decency before. None of them, even Nixon.
And clearly, most of the social media lies are generated and spewed out by that side of the political spectrum. Yet somehow, it's wrong to hold that side accountable, because the other guy isn't doing it, too? Or even worse, going after Biden and the lefties for trivia, because they are not doing the prosecutable crimes, like the Post's "Fact Checker"?
Also, when will the Federalist Society become as popular as the Communist Party back in the 1950s? I want to live that long.
Once Repubs realized that morons vote and that Dems have no plan or tactic in place to secure dumb voters, which they figured out about 20 years ago, we were doomed to this.
No, it’s not conservative speech - it’s moronic social media shitposting which only happens to be conservative since they know the marks will fall for it.
It is a little odd that this guy is declaring no evidence conspiracy-theorizing to be "conservative"
Not odd at all, conservatives have to suspend so much disbelief to get through the day a conspiracy theory is as rational as anything else to them.
Funnily enough, the list of "GOP voters" and the list of "reliable marks and shills" are about the same. In fact, the politicos and grifters on the right wing are constantly sharing their lists. They've got the gullible staked out, and have no shame or regret in using them.
Democrats, bless their little hearts, think this is wrong.
Irrespective of his conflation of the facts, his basis for issuing an injunction -- a perverse understanding of what constitutes irreparable harm -- makes no sense. His theory of what constitutes irreparable harm here is backward. If anything, the government and its interests (meaning America's) are harmed if it cannot communicate to social media companies about an emergent threat. (If the judge can speculate on potential harm in the future, so too can we, amirite?) That alone is reason enough to reverse.
But his framing of the underlying constitutional issue of free speech was severely lacking. First, he made the bizarre conclusion that the administration's speech was coercive but without showing what leverage the administration had used in order to coerce. Then he concluded that such coercive speech was by proxy an unconstitutional limit on free speech -- that despite the actual facts in the case in which social media companies faced no consequences for making choices contrary to the administration's wishes.
To top it off, he wrote 150+ pages to issue his injunction. Seriously, who does that?
The people who wrote it for him?
Executive branch officials should just ignore this blatantly unconstitutional order. Also, this is only the latest in a long line of examples as to why Congress needs to pass a law ending national injunctions by lower courts.
It would be nice if there could be a definition of "conservative" that is not "anything and everything that serves our short-term interest at their expense."
Personally, I like the engineering definition: "Overdesign to compensate for every component being made by the lowest bidder."
"It is a well known fact that reality has liberal bias"
S. Colbert via GoodReads
Apparently you can yell FIRE! in a crowded theater ... but only if you are a conservative.
Not "conservative".
"Republican" or "MAGA" .
DSD, Deep State Derp for the win!
Pingback: Right wing paranoia takes over the judiciary – Kevin Drum
So, let me get this straight:
Ron DeSantis telling a private company that they cannot express an opinion about a law, including explicit threats: not government coercion that violates the 1st Amendment.
The Biden administration coordinating with private companies as to whether or not they should avoid spreading lies, without anyone providing any evidence of a threat: government coercion that violates the 1st Amendment.
IOKIAR