Good news: the senile occupant of the White House who occasionally moonlights as a president, will be allowed to order social media cos to censor any news about his crack-addicted son's laptop again.
That clear violation of the constitution is what a federal appeals court ruled today when it temporarily halted an order that would bar Biden admin officials from communicating with major social media companies while it considers the government’s request for a longer-term pause.
Friday’s order came from a three-judge panel assigned to handle the government’s emergency request: Judge Carl Stewart, appointed by Bill Clinton; Judge James Graves, appointed by Barack Obama; and Judge Andy Oldham, appointed by Donald Trump. It didn’t note any dissents.
The Justice Department is arguing that it should not be forced to comply with the nationwide injunction while it pursues a full appeal in the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeals court said on Friday that it will put the ban on hold, also known as an administrative stay, while the government presses its case before the New Orleans-based circuit judges.
The appeal will be placed on an expedited schedule while a panel of judges assigned to the case will decide on the government’s request to keep the nationwide injunction on hold until the case is finished, according to Friday’s order. The court didn’t specify a schedule for those next steps.
As Bloomberg notes, if the 5th Circuit ultimately denies the Biden administration’s request for a pause, the Justice Department has signaled it will likely consider immediately petitioning the US Supreme Court to intervene, at which point Biden's clear cut censorship of online content will become a critical issue.
If the ban is allowed to move forward, deep state government agencies such as the FBI as well as the Department of Health and Human Services will be barred from contacting social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”
The plaintiffs - the Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri and individual users who say they faced repercussion for their online speech - have accused Biden administration officials of unconstitutionally coercing social media companies to take down unfavorable information about Covid-19.
Recent revelations courtesy of the Twitter files demonstrated that over the past three years - a period starting around the time 53 disgraced spies lied on the record to prevent Hunter Biden's notebook from trending on twitter - saw the US government transform into regime where any inconvenient truths or online criticism prompted immediate censorship and retaliation by weaponized government agencies such as the FBI and DOJ, a response formerly reserved for banana republices and fascist dictatorships.
