Today, the U.S. Supreme Court kicked off deliberations on a landmark case concerning government involvement in social-media content moderation. Dubbed Murthy v. Missouri (formerly Missouri v. Biden), the case delves into whether federal entities, including the White House, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Surgeon General, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the State Department, and the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and its former director Dr. Anthony Fauci unduly influenced social-media platforms to remove certain content, potentially violating the First Amendment.
Initiated by former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, former Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, and a group including academic figures such as Drs. Jay Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, and Aaron Kheriaty, the lawsuit primarily revolves around allegations of government coercion regarding content related to Covid-19 policies and the 2020 presidential election. The case’s outcome could profoundly impact the extent of government collaboration with social-media companies to address perceived misinformation.
Before the court proceedings commenced, a gathering of censored scientists, medical professionals, journalists, and activists congregated near the Supreme Court steps to advocate for free-speech rights. Organized by the medical non-profit Children’s Health Defense, the rally echoes the sentiments of the Kennedy/CHD v. Biden lawsuit, as both the CHD and its founder, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is currently on leave and an independent presidential candidate, were subject to censorship on social media, allegedly at the behest of the Biden administration.
“Most of this country has no idea how much censorship is occurring. The information that you’re hearing is highly curated and highly selected. This information, in almost all circumstances, is not in your best interest,” said Dr. Pierre Kory, a co-founder of the Frontline Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC). Dr. Kory, who testified multiple times in Congress on the proven and well-studied “miraculous” effectiveness of early treatments for Covid, primarily ivermectin, noted the personal toll he has endured, including smear campaigns by mainstream media, which severely impacted his career. The pandemic policies and hospital protocols put in place were unscientific and “absurd” and cost people’s lives, he said.
Another FLCCC co-founder, Dr. Paul Marik, said, “My message to you is quite simple: The federal government lied to you. The agencies lied to you. They lied to you about everything that has to do with Covid,” from social distancing to masking and lockdowns. The most egregious lie concerned Covid injections, which took the lives of 500,000 people in America and, according to the CDC’s own data, severely injured 18 million, stressed the doctor.
“Censorship is about destroying what the truth is,” said Daniel O’Connor, the founder of TrialSite News and one of the plaintiffs in the Kennedy/CHD v. Biden case, warning that the censorship of medical information is “much more dangerous than people think” and that it is a hallmark of the “unfolding totalitarian tendencies” of the government, no matter which party is in charge.
“Is this America?” asked activist Rizza Islam, the youngest member of the infamous “Disinformation Dozen” list of people whose speech on social-media platforms was considered specifically nefarious by the Biden administration. Describing how people’s careers, livelihoods, and opportunities were obliterated by the government during Covid, the activist said that anyone who wants his or her voice heard in the future must stand against “this tyranny,” said Islam.
“Truth is treason in an empire of lies,” said Amy Bohn of the pro-parents’ rights advocacy group PERK, underscoring that freedom of speech is a God-given right that people are willingly giving up by being complacent. She added that it is every American’s “duty and responsibility to defend freedom at all costs.”
“The core of this case,” explained Mary Holland, the president of CHD, “is that the government cannot do by proxy anything that it can’t do on its own, [such as] suppress people’s speech,” noting that the speech suppressed by the government during the pandemic was lawful, accurate, and truthful.
The consequences of the Supreme Court siding with the government will be catastrophic, warned Jeffrey Tucker, the president of the Brownstone Institute, maintaining that “the tyrants want to control our speech” to “curate the public mind so we will be more loyal subjects.”
So far, however, the warnings seems to fall on deaf ears as the justices unanimously decided later that day to block the injunctions imposed by the lower courts (see here and here) prohibiting government agencies from asking social-media companies to censor unfavorable content while the case is being heard.
Full speeches from the rallies are available on Children’s Health Defense website.
Below are some photos taken at the rally:
