President Joe Biden is pitching himself as the savior of democracy. “I will always defend, protect, and fight for our democracy,” he said at a campaign event last week in New York City. He’s been saying it for four years. It’s a blatant lie. He’s the king of censorship, silencing his critics like a despot and even trying to defend his censorship regime before the Supreme Court.
But democracy depends on a free marketplace of ideas. Biden is busy destroying that marketplace. He and his staff have masterminded a vast censorship scheme, coercing media platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Facebook and YouTube to take down views that challenge the administration on everything from vaccine safety and gas prices to Biden family mischief.
On Sept. 11, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals found the Biden White House guilty of threatening and coercing social media executives to do what the federal government is constitutionally barred from doing on its own — censoring the public. The judges ruled that bullying these companies into doing the administration’s dirty work violates the First Amendment just as much as if government muzzles the public directly.
The Fifth Circuit issued an injunction, barring the Biden White House, surgeon general, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and FBI from trying to “coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to remove … content containing protected free speech.”
Undeterred, Team Biden has gone to the Supreme Court to fight this limit on censorship. It’s easier to win reelection if you can silence your critics.