Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the soon-to-be landmark free speech case Missouri v. Biden but blocked a lower court injunction preventing the Biden Administration and deep state officials from colluding with Big Tech companies to censor American speech. The move effectively resumes dangerous government censorship until the Supreme Court rules on the case.
The injunction, issued by U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty and expanded by the Fifth Circuit Court, stipulated that the Surgeon General, White House, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and eventually the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) cannot communicate with social media companies for the purpose of policing speech. Thanks to the courts, these entities are now apparently allowed to punish supposed wrong think for the benefit of the state.
The case is set to be heard by the Supreme Court sometime before the end of June, but until then, the lower court’s decision to block the injunction means Americans’ First Amendment rights are currently under attack, and the integrity of the 2024 election is in grave danger.
Here are five examples from Missouri v. Biden of topics the federal government heavily controlled or even banned in the digital public square, demonstrating the serious risks posed by the Supreme Court’s decision to put a stay on the injunction.
Hunter Biden Laptop Story
Missouri v. Biden revealed that the FBI played an integral role in the systemic suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, which polls indicated may have won Joe Biden the 2020 presidential election.
In the lead-up to the 2020 election, the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) met weekly with Big Tech companies, including Meta, Twitter (now X), Google, and Microsoft. During these meetings, FITF repeatedly warned the tech companies that there could be foreign “hack and dump” operations ahead of the election. Tech companies consequently labeled the Hunter Biden laptop as “Russian disinformation” and mass-censored the story.
Never did the FBI inform the companies that the laptop was verified and real, something the agency had known since December 2019. “Even after Facebook specifically asked whether the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation, [the FITF] refused to comment, resulting in the social-media companies’ suppression of the story,” Doughty stated in his 155-page memorandum.
Masks
In July 2021, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy created the “Health Advisory on Misinformation,” which put the federal government in partnership with social media companies to stop supposed health “misinformation.” The move effectively made the government’s opinions on Covid “the truth,” wrote Doughty.
Since the federal government labeled any post that challenged the efficacy of masks “misinformation,” social media companies censored any anti-masking content. For example, YouTube censored four videos from St. Louis County, Missouri, public meetings “because some citizens expressed the view that masks are ineffective.”
Covid Vaccines
The White House had “extensive” oral meetings with Twitter, Meta, and YouTube on combating vaccine hesitancy and misinformation. Not only did the Biden Administration help curate Big Tech censorship policies related to Covid, but it also targeted specific users and content.
For example, a senior White House official, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and a Pfizer executive successfully pressured Twitter to permanently deplatform writer Alex Berenson because of his “science-based objections to the vaccinations of young, healthy persons.”
The White House even demanded censorship beyond Big Tech companies’ terms of use. During a meeting with Facebook, the Biden administration “demanded a consistent point of contact with Facebook, additional data from Facebook, ‘Levers for Tackling Vaccine Hesitancy Content,’ and censorship policies for Meta’s platform WhatsApp.” In response, Facebook agreed to “censoring, removing, and reducing the virality of” anti-vaccine content “that does not contain actionable misinformation.”
The White House also manipulated social media to promote their vaccine propaganda. In April 2021, the White House asked Facebook multiple times to “amplify” pro-vaccine messaging in the wake of a “temporary halt” of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. “Re the J & J news, we’re keen to amplify any messaging you want us to project about what this means for people,” Facebook wrote back.
2020 Election Integrity
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a subsidiary of the Department of Homeland Security, directly forwarded offending social media posts to tech companies for them to censor ahead of the 2020 election.
Many of these posts called into question the integrity of the 2020 election. CISA was particularly fixated on censoring posts that were critical of mass mail-in balloting for not being secure and for being disproportionately implemented to favor Democrats — two things that are indisputably true.
Biden Parody Content
The White House demanded the censorship of parody posts and accounts making fun of the Biden family. In February 2021, the White House asked Twitter to ban a “parody account linked to Finnegan Biden, Hunter Biden’s daughter and President Biden’s granddaughter.”
“Cannot stress the degree to which this needs to be resolved immediately,” the official wrote to Twitter at the time. “Please remove this account immediately.” The account was banned within 45 minutes.
In November 2021, the White House pressured Twitter to remove an edited video of First Lady Jill Biden “profanely heckling children while reading to them.” Twitter responded by adding a warning label to the video explaining that it had been “edited for comedic effect.” This wasn’t good enough for the White House, and after several back and forths that included the first lady’s press secretary, Twitter ultimately removed the video.
Other topics controlled and suppressed by the federal government include content critical of Covid lockdowns, supportive of the highly plausible Covid lab leak theory, skeptical of climate change, and critical of the president.
Each of the censored topics either benefited Joe Biden’s campaign or his current reelection effort by protecting him, his family, and his preferred political narratives. In throwing out Doughty’s injunction, the Supreme Court has effectively allowed the government to resume its illegal censorship practices, which will undoubtedly be used to rig the presidential election — again. Already, the Biden Administration has used unprecedented lawfare to hinder President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, even going so far as to silencing him on the campaign trail via a gag order.
As Associate Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his dissent, which included Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, “[W]hat the Court has done, I fear, will be seen by some as giving the Government a green light to use heavy-handed tactics to skew the presentation of views on the medium that increasingly dominates the dissemination of news. That is most unfortunate.”
Evita Duffy-Alfonso is a staff writer to The Federalist and the co-founder of the Chicago Thinker. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, and her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evita@thefederalist.com.
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