Sept. 16, 2023 - Epoch Times
13:20
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| Good evening, and right before we dive into this shocking development, I'll quickly mention that if you are just sick and tired of all the censorship on this particular platform, as well as all the other platforms, well, you're in luck, because the Epoch Times has recently extended its awesome sale and subscriptions. | |
| Just 25 cents a week for the whole year, which, if you do the math, works itself out to just be a single dollar a month. | |
| And so if you're looking for an honest source of news which actually reports on the stories which typically experience a total blackout by the mainstream press, well, consider trying a subscription for yourself. | |
| I'll throw a link to the sale page. | |
| It'll be right there at the top of the description box below. | |
| Now, diving into today's main topic... | |
| Just yesterday, the US Supreme Court issued an emergency order allowing the Biden administration to once again interact with social media companies in order to censor the free speech of Americans. | |
| And one of the odd things about this is that this order came just a single day after the impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden was announced, and it also came just a few hours after Hunter Biden was hit with several felony gun charges. | |
| And because of this order, because of this order from the U.S. Supreme Court, the Biden administration is now free to not only reach out to the media to control the narrative, which they're already doing, but they're now also once again free to reach out to these social media companies regarding Joe Biden's impeachment as well as any of Hunter Biden's legal troubles. | |
| Although, there might actually be a lot more happening behind the scenes. | |
| And so, let's back up for a quick moment. | |
| Let's smash those like and subscribe buttons. | |
| And let's start at the very beginning. | |
| If you regularly watch our program, then you are likely well aware that back in May of last year, the attorney generals from Missouri and Louisiana, they jointly filed a lawsuit against the federal government, alleging that high-ranking officials within the Biden administration, they have been actively colluding with social media companies to censor the free speech of American citizens. | |
| And throughout the course of that lawsuit, during the discovery process, these two attorney generals, they have been collecting more and more evidence in the form of emails as well as other communications showing the extent of the deep and very oftentimes cozy relationship between these seemingly private companies and actual 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 also mention that those communications you're seeing were discovered prior to the release of the Twitter files. | |
| Because after Elon purchased Twitter and began to release the internal communications that the company was having with the government, well, the scope of this whole affair was revealed to be much, much, much larger than initially assumed. | |
| And so, seeing this mounting pile of evidence, the federal judge who was overseeing this case, who, just for your reference, is named Judge Terry Dowdy, he was appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump, and back in July of this year, he issued a historic preliminary injunction against the federal government, | |
| one that had never been seen before in the history of the U.S. Specifically, in this 155-page decision, which was issued, by the way, on the 4th of July, the judge blocked officials from within the Biden administration, Essentially, this order prohibited the White House and nearly all of the federal government from colluding with big tech companies to censor the free speech of Americans. | |
| Here was part of what the judge wrote again back in July. | |
| Quote, 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 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 their First Amendment free speech claim against the defendants. | |
| Therefore, a preliminary injunction should issue immediately against the defendants as set out herein. | |
| And as such, three months ago, the judge issued the preliminary injunction. | |
| This injunction, it applied to a slew of different government agencies, including the Department of Justice, the State Department, the Department of Health and Human Services. | |
| It applied to the CDC, the FBI, the U.S. Census Bureau, and so on and so forth. | |
| Also, it named over a dozen specific individuals within the federal government, including the current White House press secretary, the Surgeon General, the current director of the Department of Homeland Security, a bunch of officials within the White House, as well as the social media managers in almost every executive agency. | |
| And all these different individuals, as well as these different agencies, they were all blocked from engaging in a slew of activities, including meeting with social media companies, flagging content on social media and urging it to be deleted, contacting social media executives through emails, phone calls, letters or text in order to get them to remove certain content, phone calls, letters or text in order to get them to remove certain content, and so There was basically a comprehensive list of 10 different points of actions that these government actors were no longer allowed to engage in. | |
| Now, notably, this injunction still allowed federal officials to correspond with social media companies regarding things like criminal activities, national security threats, actual terrorism, and similar type of matters. | |
| They were just no longer allowed to engage in the type of censorious activity that they were involved in for the past four, five, or perhaps six years. | |
| But as you likely imagined, the government didn't take this lying down. | |
| Almost immediately, the federal government filed an appeal to this particular decision. | |
| That appeal, it made its way through the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and exactly one week ago today, the panel of judges on the Fifth Circuit, they once again ruled against the Biden administration. | |
| Specifically, the appeals court. | |
| They wrote that the lower court's decision, quote, Did you know that 91% of all cyberattacks begin with the victim receiving a simple email? | |
| And also, did you know that these big tech companies, as well as the governments of many different nations, are spying on your online activity? | |
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| And as such, the appeals court upheld the earlier ruling. | |
| Although, just to be technically accurate, they partially upheld it, because in the appeals court, they said that the lower court's ruling was too broad, and so they wound up allowing some government agencies to contact social media companies. | |
| But in general, overall, the appeals court ruled against the Biden administration. | |
| However, as you likely guessed, the government didn't take this second loss lying down either. | |
| Almost immediately, the Department of Justice filed an emergency appeal all the way up with the U.S. Supreme Court asking them to overturn the injunction because, at least according to their logic, not allowing officials from the White House, officials from the FBI, from the CDC, as well as several different other agencies, not allowing them to respond to online social media posts poses a danger to public health. | |
| Here's specifically what the government wrote in their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. | |
| Under the injunction, the Surgeon General, the White House Press Secretary, and many other senior presidential aides risk contempt if their public statements on matters of policy cross the ill-defined lines drawn by the Fifth Circuit. | |
| CDC officials run the same risk if they accurately answer platforms' questions about public health, and FBI agents risk being hauled into court if they flag content posted by terrorists or disinformation disseminated by covert maligned foreign actors. | |
| The July injunction is vastly overbroad, and it covers thousands of federal officers and employees, and it applies to communications with and about all social media platforms. | |
| If allowed to take effect, the injunction would impose grave and irreparable harms on the government and the public. | |
| Now, to be frank with you, this is a bit of a strange argument because, as we mentioned earlier, in the actual injunction that was ordered in July, there was a caveat which allowed the government to contact social media companies regarding things like criminal activity, national security threats, actual terrorism, and other similar topics. | |
| And so it's not like they were prevented from doing that. | |
| What they were prevented from doing was, for instance, badgering different social media companies about why Tucker Carlson's videos haven't been demoted by the algorithm sufficiently enough. | |
| Regardless, that was the argument that the government was making. | |
| The Department of Justice argued that if they were not able to contact social media companies, our country would be in danger. | |
| And so their appeal was sent all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. | |
| Now, in terms of appeals like these, the U.S. Supreme Court actually divided up the country such that each one of the justices on the bench is responsible for a different geographic location. | |
| And since this particular case came out of Louisiana, it fell into the purview of Justice Sam Alito, who, for your reference, was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President George W. Bush. | |
| And wouldn't you know it, just hours after the Biden administration as the court, Sam Alito acquiesced. | |
| He placed a temporary hold on the lower court's ruling while the justices consider how to handle the case moving forward. | |
| So the injunction is blocked for exactly one week, until September 22nd, which is next Friday, while the U.S. Supreme Court is deciding exactly what to do. | |
| meaning in practical terms that while the Department of Justice is working on their official appeal, over the course of the next week, the U.S. government is once again allowed to call, email, text, meet with all these different social media executives in order to discuss, well, whatever it is that they discuss. | |
| And as I mentioned at the top of the episode, this decision by Justice Sam Alito is essentially a lifeline to the Biden administration in terms of controlling the narrative regarding both the impeachment inquiry, which was just announced against Joe Biden by the House of Representatives, as well as the felony gun charges that Hunter Biden was indicted as well as the felony gun charges that Hunter Biden was | |
| Now, as a fun aside, when the impeachment inquiry was first announced, the White House sent out this fascinating letter to news organizations urging them to ramp up their scrutiny of the impeachment inquiry against Biden, claiming that it was based on lies. | |
| That was the letter they were sending out to these different news organizations. | |
| And now, at least for the next week, they can go ahead and reach out to social media companies as well, urging them to censor any Americans who dare to pose the wrong thing about the Biden family's alleged financial global empire. | |
| Very cool. | |
| Now, in terms of the next steps, Justice Sam Alito gave a deadline of 4 p.m. | |
| on September 20th, which is next Wednesday, for all responses in this case to be filed. | |
| Meaning that the deadline for filing is Wednesday for everything to be filed, and the Supreme Court order lasts until Friday, after which, well, they will have to decide whether to extend the order or to just let it expire. | |
| We'll have to wait and see how it actually plays out. | |
| Until then, though, if you suddenly notice an uptick in the number of your social media posts that get censored and flagged by the system, well, perhaps this is why. | |
| If you'd like to go through the details of this case in greater depth, I'll throw the links to everything that we discussed. | |
| It'll be down there in the description box below this video for you to peruse at your own leisure. | |
| And then lastly, if you are indeed sick and tired of all the censorship on this platform, with or without the federal government's involvement, well you're in luck. | |
| Because as I alluded to at the top of the episode, the Epoch Times has recently extended its awesome sale on subscriptions. | |
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| And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times. | |
| Stay informed. |
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