Over the last few weeks, we have documented the global crackdown on freedom around the world. Members of the UK parliament want to read your text messages without a warrant. The Irish government wants to be able to enter homes and read phones and computers without a warrant. The European Union is seeking to impose sweeping censorship restrictions and unprecedented invasions of privacy.
And so it came as wonderful news yesterday when a federal judge blocked government agencies from communicating with social media companies to censor protected speech. The judge granted a partial injunction in a First Amendment lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri.
"If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” wrote Judge Terry A. Doughty in his decision.
Experts close to the decision told Public that the judge was making a statement by releasing his ruling on July 4. Federal holidays are not normally when judges issue opinions.
Public’s Michael Shellenberger spoke with Missouri’s former attorney general, now U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt, who was thrilled with this tactical victory of the lawsuit he instigated.
“The Twitter Files were critical because they were a behind-the-scenes view,” he said. “It's shocking. The level of coordination between senior government officials and senior social media executives is astounding. There were direct text messages from the surgeon general of the United States to senior Facebook officials saying, ‘Take this down.’ It's just un-American.”
Schmitt called on the Department of Homeland Security’s Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Jennifer Easterly, to resign, and agreed that the US Congress should mandate transparency by Big Tech companies.
“Jennifer Easterly ought to resign,” he said, “no doubt about that. And I think that the people getting swept up in this now, who were engaged in it, they ought to be exposed, and there ought to be consequences.”
Before Judge Doughty issued his ruling, we also spoke to Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, a plaintiff in the case. Kheriaty is the former director of medical ethics at the University of California Irvine but was fired after he challenged the university’s vaccine mandate in court. “You learn who your real friends are when you go through something like that,” he said. “The whole experience was a bit surreal.”
