July 6, 2023 - Epoch Times
15:49
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| Good evening, and right before we dive into the main story, I'd like to quickly mention that in order to commemorate the 4th of July, well, the Epoch Times is having an awesome sale on subscriptions, just 25 cents a week for the whole year, which, if you do the math, works itself out to be just a dollar a month. | |
| And so, if you've been on the fence, if you've been thinking about it, not sure whether to subscribe or not, but you keep on going to the Epoch Times website and you're getting hit with a paywall again and again and again and it's just getting frustrating, well, perhaps take this July 4th sale as an opportunity to subscribe and try it out for yourself. | |
| I'll throw a link down into the description box below this video that you can click on and you can try the Epoch Times yourself for, again, just a dollar a month. | |
| Hope you check it out because I'm sure you'll love it. | |
| Now, jumping into the main topic for today's episode, just yesterday, in a major win for the freedom of speech, a federal judge slapped the White House with a historic injunction, one that has, quite frankly, never been seen before in the history of the U.S. Specifically, in this 155-page decision, | |
| which, by the way, was issued on the 4th of July, The judge blocked officials within the Biden administration, as well as a slew of different government agencies like the CIA and the FBI, from being able to either communicate with or even to meet with different social media companies. | |
| Essentially, this order prohibits the White House, and nearly the entirety of the federal government, from colluding with big tech to censor the free speech of Americans. | |
| Now, how we got to this point, where you have this major court order be issued, is quite interesting. | |
| And so let me back up for a quick moment and set the stage for you properly regarding this case. | |
| And by the way, I hope that if you do appreciate content like this, you take a quick moment to smash those like and subscribe buttons so this video can reach ever more people via the YouTube algorithm. | |
| Now, to start with, as you likely know, whenever the topic of big tech censorship is brought up, there are always people who make the counter-argument that, hey, listen, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter are all private companies, and they can do whatever they want. | |
| The First Amendment does not apply to them because they are, after all, not government entities. | |
| However, the big question has always been this. | |
| What if, behind the scenes, these giant private companies are actually colluding with the government in deciding which information to censor? | |
| Wouldn't that just be government censorship with a few extra steps? | |
| And therefore, wouldn't that be a violation of the First Amendment? | |
| Well, that is exactly the question that's being worked out right now in a massive, giant lawsuit that was levied against the federal government by the attorney generals from two different states. | |
| Specifically, in May of last year, the attorney generals from Missouri and Louisiana jointly filed a lawsuit against the federal government, alleging that high-ranking officials within the Biden administration have been actively colluding with big tech social media companies to censor the free speech of Americans. | |
| And since filing their lawsuit during this discovery process over the last year, these two attorney generals have been collecting more and more evidence in the form of emails and other communications showing the extent of the deep and you can say cozy relationship between these seemingly private companies and government officials. | |
| And as you can see from the highly redacted emails up on your screen, there were a lot of behind-the-scenes communications. | |
| And I should mention that all those communications were discovered prior to the release of the Twitter files. | |
| Because after Elon Musk bought Twitter and began to release the internal communications that the company was having behind the scenes with the government, The scope of this whole affair was revealed to be much, much, much larger than people initially assumed. | |
| In fact, we here at the Epoch Times, we created an infographic laying out how the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, the Pentagon, the NSA, the Treasury Department, different members of the U.S. Congress, the White House, officials at the CDC, among many, many, many other players within the government were involved with different levels of censorship inside of Twitter. | |
| And so, seeing this mounting pile of evidence, the judge overseeing this case, who, for your reference, is Judge Terry Doughty, who was appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump, and just yesterday, he issued this historic preliminary injunction right here. | |
| Here is part of what the judge wrote in this document. | |
| Quote, In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the federal government, and particularly the defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment's right to free speech. | |
| Plaintiffs allege that defendants, meaning the federal government, through public pressure campaigns, private meetings, and other forms of direct communication have colluded with and or coerced social media platforms to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content on social media platforms. | |
| Plaintiffs also allege that the suppression constitutes government action and that it is a violation of plaintiffs' freedom of speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. | |
| The judge then goes on to list some concrete examples of what the censorship looked like, including suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story right before the 2020 election, Suppressing open debate about the lab leak theory of COVID-19 Suppressing speech about the efficacy of masks and COVID lockdowns Suppressing speech about the efficacy of the vaccines Suppressing speech about election integrity issues in the 2020 election Suppressing speech regarding the security of mail-in voting Suppressing content that made fun of government officials Suppressing negative posts about | |
| the economy And lastly, suppressing negative content about Joe Biden himself Then, the judge goes into fairly great detail about the actual facts surrounding this suppression of free speech. | |
| He lays out a fairly comprehensive timeline of events of how this all played out, and he exposes how it was really the heavy-handed pressure campaigns coming from the federal government Which led to these quote-unquote private companies to censor American individuals. | |
| Summing up all of his findings, here's what the judge wrote. | |
| The evidence 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 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 judge then went on to give 22 concrete examples of these secret communications, which he said are a perfect representation of how the federal government was pressuring these social media companies to censor Americans. | |
| Here are just a few examples of the communications that were, again, sent from the government to these social media companies. | |
| And... | |
| As you're listening to these examples, really keep in mind the fact that during this time, both the White House as well as Congress were both controlled by Democrats. | |
| And so, really imagine the type of pressure that these billion-dollar companies, that these billion-dollar big tech companies are experiencing when they receive messages like these from the federal government. | |
| Quote, This is exactly why I want to know what quote-unquote reduction actually looks like. | |
| If reduction means pumping our most vaccine-hesitant audience with Tucker Carlson saying it does not work, then I'm not sure it's reduction. | |
| Questioning how the Tucker Carlson video has been demoted since there were 40,000 shares. | |
| Wanting to know why Alex Berenson had not been kicked off Twitter because Berenson was the epicenter of disinformation that radiated outward to the most persuadable public. | |
| We want to make sure YouTube has a handle on vaccine hesitancy and is working toward making the problem better. | |
| Noted the vaccine hesitancy was a problem. | |
| This is shared by the highest, and I mean the highest levels of the White House. | |
| Not to sound like a broken record, but how much content is being demoted, and how effective are you at mitigating reach and how quickly? | |
| Are you guys effing serious? | |
| I want an answer on what happened here, and I want it today. | |
| Hey folks, wanted to lag the below tweet, and I'm wondering if we get moving on the process of having it removed ASAP. How many times can someone show false COVID-19 claims before being removed? | |
| We are gravely concerned that your service is one of the top drivers of vaccine hesitancy, period. | |
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| And now let's head on back to the studio. | |
| And so on and so forth. | |
| These are just a few examples of the types of communications that were coming down from the federal government to these big tech companies. | |
| And because of the amount of evidence that came to light, the judge in this case, he wrote that the attorney generals who brought the case forth will likely win. | |
| Here's specifically what he wrote. | |
| Quote, 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 court finds that they are likely to succeed on the merits of the First Amendment free speech claim against the defendants, meaning the federal government. | |
| Therefore, a preliminary injunction should issue immediately against the defendants as set out herein. | |
| And as such, the judge issued this preliminary injunction right here. | |
| Now this injunction, it applies to a slew of different government agencies, including the Department of Justice, the State Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC, the FBI, the U.S. Census Bureau, and so on and so forth. | |
| It also names about a dozen specific individuals, such as the current White House press secretary, the current surgeon general, the current director of the Department of Homeland Security, as well as a bunch of different officials in the White House, and the different social media managers in almost every executive agency. | |
| And all these different individuals, as well as all these different named agencies, they're now blocked from engaging in the following activities. | |
| Quote, Meeting with social media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing any manner of the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social media platforms. | |
| Urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social media companies to change their guidelines for removing, deleting, suppressing, or reducing content containing protected free speech. | |
| Emailing, calling, sending letters, texting, or engaging in any communication of any kind with social media companies. | |
| Urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech. | |
| Collaborating, coordinating, partnering, switchboarding, and or jointly working with the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or any like project or group for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content posted with or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content posted with social media Threatening, pressuring, or coercing social media companies in any manner to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content of postings containing protected free speech. | |
| Taking any action, such as urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content protected by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. | |
| Following up with social media companies to determine whether the social media companies removed, deleted, suppressed, or reduced previous social media postings containing protected free speech. | |
| Requesting content reports from social media companies detailing actions taken to remove posted Which is, quite frankly, an extensive list of no-nos. | |
| And if you think about it, this is truly unprecedented. | |
| Almost always. | |
| It's the government telling us, the American citizens, what we cannot do. | |
| We can't fish in that lake, we can't hunt in those woods, we can't dig a well in our own property, and so on and so forth. | |
| Usually, it's the government telling us what we cannot do and then selling us a license to be able to do it. | |
| But in this rare case, this federal judge limited the government from engaging in all these different activities. | |
| However, it is worth mentioning that this is what's known as a preliminary injunction, meaning that this is a temporary order that's been put in place while the case is still playing itself out in court. | |
| But the fact that the judge issued this injunction is a strong indication that the case will ultimately succeed on its merits. | |
| Which, as you can imagine, was received quite well by the actual attorney generals who are pushing this case forward. | |
| For instance, when this order was first revealed to the public, well, here's what Mr. | |
| Jeff Landry, who is the attorney general of Louisiana, here's what he released as a part of his statement. | |
| Quote, On the flip side, however, the quote-unquote mainstream media outlets in this country, they seem to not be so thrilled by this ruling. | |
| For instance, here was how the New York Times presented it: "Breaking news: A judge limited Biden administration officials from contacting social media sites, a ruling that could curtail efforts to fight disinformation." Likewise, you at CNN conduct an entire segment criticizing this ruling. | |
| It's a dramatic decision by this judge. | |
| If you read through it, he's citing to literature and George Washington and Ben Franklin. | |
| Here's what really is astonishing to me. | |
| This is a conservative ideology that clearly comes through in this. | |
| It's a conservative political ideology, right? | |
| We saw some of the quotes questioning vaccines, questioning masks, conservative talking points. | |
| But the ruling itself is the opposite of judicial conservatism. | |
| This is one of the most aggressive, far-reaching rulings you'll ever see. | |
| What this judge is purporting to do is to micromanage, really, the day-to-day interactions between essentially the entire executive branch, all these agencies that are listed as defendants, and the leading social media companies. | |
| And in the Any actual temporary injunction, the judge basically says, you're not allowed, administration, to talk to these social media companies about any protected free speech, except for cybersecurity threats, national security threats, criminal threats. | |
| But where's the line? | |
| Who's going to police it? | |
| It is truly a strange world to live in, wherein the biggest advocates for government-led censorship are the large media corporations themselves. | |
| Regardless, if you'd like to read this entire ruling for yourself, and I would recommend it if you're the type of person to actually read these things, because the judge goes into detail at some great length, and he lays out the facts as well as the timeline of the events in a very rational and logical way. | |
| So it is a pretty good read, even though it's a bit long. | |
| I'll throw the link to the entire PDF version. | |
| It'll be down in the description box below this video for you to check out. | |
| And lastly, as I mentioned at the very top of the episode, if you would like to try the Epoch Times and get unlimited access to everything, all of the articles, all of the infographics, as well as all the shows, movies, and documentaries over on Epoch TV and everything else that we publish, well, now is a great time because we still have our July 4th sale going on. | |
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| I hope you check it out. | |
| And until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times. | |
| Stay informed. |
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