As Election 2024 Approaches, Biden Regime Resumes Attempts to Silence Social Media 'Disinformation'

Jeff Charles reporting for RedState 

Federal agencies under President Joe Biden’s administration have continued collaborating with social media companies to crack down on “disinformation” on the internet, according to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner.

The White House halted the censorship efforts in July after a court ruling in Missouri v. Biden, which placed an injunction on federal agencies pressuring or working with social media companies to suppress certain types of speech.

Now, it appears the FBI, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and others are back at it:

Key federal agencies have resumed discussions with social media companies over removing disinformation on their sites as the November presidential election nears, a stark reversal after the Biden administration for months froze communications with social platforms amid a pending First Amendment case in the Supreme Court, a top senator said Monday.

Mark Warner, D-Va., who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters in a briefing at RSA Conference that agencies restarted talks with social media companies as the Supreme Court heard arguments in Murthy v. Missouri, a case that first began in the Fifth Circuit appellate court last July. The case was fueled by allegations that federal agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were coercing platforms to remove content related to vaccine safety and 2020 presidential election results.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide whether agencies are allowed to stay in touch with social media firms about potential disinformation. Missouri’s then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed the suit on the grounds that the Biden administration violated First Amendment rights pertaining to free speech online in a bid to suppress politically conservative voices.

Warner indicated that the White House restarted communications with social media platforms when it appeared that some of the Supreme Court justices were friendly to the Biden administration’s arguments that it should be able to work with digital platforms to suppress content. “There seemed to be a lot of sympathy that the government ought to have at least voluntary communications with [the companies]” he explained.

A district judge in July 2023 issued the injunction barring the administration from colluding with social media companies to censor users expressing certain viewpoints, especially about elections and COVID-19. The judge’s ruling was later watered down by an appeals court:

September 8th marks another free speech win, albeit with a somewhat narrowed scope. On Friday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued its highly anticipated ruling in Missouri v. Biden, the case in which the states of Louisiana and Missouri, along with several individual social media users, challenged the federal government’s coercive attempts to squelch speech on social media platforms like Twitter (now “X”) and Facebook, asserting it violated their First Amendment Rights.

In a nutshell, the appellate court agreed that the government had violated the Constitution, but it pared down the scope of the injunction issued by the district court, both in terms of the defendants to whom it applied and the nature of the prohibited actions.

The court found that federal officials were “coercive” in persuading social media companies to censor content on behalf of government agencies. The documents indicate that officials “made express threats and, at the very least, leaned into the inherent authority of the President’s office” and “made inflammatory accusations, such as saying that the platforms were ‘poison[ing]’ the public, and ‘killing people.’”

The Twitter Files revealed a comprehensive initiative in which the FBI and other law enforcement agencies pressured the company’s leadership to help them silence users under the guise of combatting foreign disinformation. However, it was revealed that this resulted in the silencing of several American users.

The issue of censorship has become increasingly pressing over the past decade, with Big Tech companies doing their level best to ensure that far-left ideology maintains a level of supremacy over online discourse through politically biased censorship and government-funded organizations dedicated to tamping down right-leaning viewpoints on digital platforms.

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