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Federal appeals court further curbs Biden administration's ability to police and censor Americans' speech online

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The Biden administration suffered another crushing defeat Tuesday in the Missouri v. Biden saga.

A U.S. district judge issued a preliminary injunction against the Biden administration in July, barring its agencies and top officials from leaning on social media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce "content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms."

Like the White House, the Biden Department of Justice expressed its displeasure with the Trump appointee's decision and filed an appeal.

Last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit dashed the administration's hopes, upholding the lower court's ruling. However, among the apparent rogue agencies the three-judge panel left unchecked was one of the worst offenders.

On Tuesday, the Fifth Circuit remedied this oversight, expanding the injunction to include the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, noting that "for many of the same reasons as the FBI and the CDC, CISA also likely violated the First Amendment."

The White House appears ready to take this battle to the Supreme Court.

What's the background?

The plaintiffs in the suit included the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, Drs. Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff; Jill Hines, the activist behind the "Reopen Louisiana" initiative; and the states of Missouri and Louisiana.

Bhattacharya noted in a recent op-ed that that he joined the suit in August 2022 at the request of the Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general with the aim of ending the government's role in running roughshod over the First Amendment rights of critics and questioners of the Biden administration's COVID-19 policies.

President Joe Biden, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Anthony Fauci, and various other Biden administration officials and entities were named as defendants.

In his judgment filed on July 4, U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty wrote, "If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States' history. In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the Federal Government, and particularly the Defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment's right to free speech."

According to Doughty, the plaintiffs were "likely to succeed on the merits on their claim that the United States Government, through the White House and numerous federal agencies, pressured and encouraged social-media companies to suppress free speech."

On the basis of this understanding, Doughty barred Biden administration officials, including in the FBI, DOJ, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from engaging social media companies regarding "the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms."

TheBlaze previously reported that White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre similarly indicated the DOJ was "reviewing this" and that the Biden White House disagreed with Doughty's decision.

The DOJ asked Doughty for a stay of the injunction, which he denied.

On July 10, the department asked the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals for a stay, suggesting that a failure to stay might — among other things — hinder the Biden administration in fighting "misinformation circulating online [that] could impede relief and response efforts" after a natural disaster.

A partial win

A three-judge panel for the Fifth Circuit issued an opinion on Sept. 8 validating the argument that the Biden administration had been violating Americans' First Amendment Rights by unlawfully censoring them by proxy via social media companies, reported Newsweek.

The panel confirmed that the White House, surgeon general, CDC, and FBI likely had violated the First Amendment. Accordingly, the judges affirmed the district court's judgement with respect to these entities. However, the Appeals Court reversed the injunction as it pertained to all other officials.

This partial victory was bittersweet, noted RealClearInvestigations editor Ben Weingarten, not only because the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the State Department were not subjected to the injunction but because CISA got out unscathed.

Weingarten told lawmakers in May, "CISA has served as a censorship 'switchboard,' collecting purported misinformation from government and non-government actors in the form of tweets, YouTube videos, and even private Facebook messages, and relaying the flagged content to the platforms to squelch it."

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has called CISA "the 'nerve center' of the vast censorship enterprise, the very entity that worked with the FBI to silence the Hunter Biden laptop story."

Going the distance

The Republican attorneys general for Missouri and Louisiana requested a rehearing on Sept. 28. The court obliged them.

The three-judge panel withdrew its previous opinion and extended the injunction to CISA as well.

"We find that, for many of the same reasons as the FBI and the CDC, CISA also likely violated the First Amendment," says the opinion. "First, CISA was the 'primary facilitator' of the FBI's interactions with the social-media platforms and worked in close coordination with the FBI to push the platforms to change their moderation policies to cover 'hack-and-leak' content."

"Second, CISA's 'switchboarding' operations, which, in theory, involved CISA merely relaying flagged social-media posts from state and local election officials to the platforms, was, in reality, '[s]omething more,'" continues the opinion. "CISA used its frequent interactions with social-media platforms to push them to adopt more restrictive policies on censoring election-related speech. And CISA officials affirmatively told the platforms whether the content they had 'switchboarded' was true or false. Thus, when the platforms acted to censor CISA-switchboarded content, they did not do so independently."

The Fifth Circuit judges further bolstered the district court's view that the Biden White House, the FBI, the surgeon general, the CDC, and CISA "likely coerced or significantly encouraged social-media platforms to moderate content, rendering those decisions state actions. In doing so, the officials likely violated the First Amendment."

The defendants are barred from coercing or significantly encouraging a social media platform's content moderation decisions. They have less than a week to update their request to the Supreme Court.

In its third supplemental memo to the U.S. Supreme Court regarding an emergency stay application on behalf of the defendants, the DOJ accused the Fifth Circuit on Oct. 5 of having reached its decision on the basis of a "flawed conception of the state-action doctrine," stressing that it will impose "grave harms" on thousands of government employees.

USA Today indicated that the DOJ declined to comment. Brandon Wales, executive director of CISA, has suggested his agency does not censor speech.

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Doctor Whose Censorship Case Is At The Supreme Court: ‘We Had To Speak Up’

Missouri v. Biden uncovered a 'vast censorship enterprise' throttling Americans' ideas online at the behest of government officials.

Stanford University professor of medicine who challenged COVID lockdowns: 'Academic freedom is dead'

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A tenured Stanford professor who called into question the efficacy of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, lockdowns, masking for infants, and Dr. Anthony Fauci's recommendations throughout the pandemic gave a damning evaluation of the state of critical thought and academic freedom earlier this month, suggesting that they are not dying on campus but dead.

Thought crimes

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is a tenured professor of medicine at Stanford University, where he directs the Stanford Center on the Demography of Health and Aging. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

Earlier this month, Bhattacharya raised the matter of a censorious and dialogue-averse university community at the Academic Freedom Conference at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the conference was met with fierce opposition in the days and weeks leading up to the event.

The aim of the conference was "to identify ways to restore academic freedom, open inquiry and freedom of speech and expression on campus and in the larger culture."

A host of Stanford academics signed an open letter accusing the observers of trolling Stanford with their talk of academic freedom, claiming that the event would not leave the university "unscathed."

The letter called on Stanford to "emphatically dissociate itself" from the event, going so far as to accuse gay Pay-Pal cofounder Peter Thiel, who made remarks at the event, of homophobia and other speakers of racism.

Those opposed to the event were altogether unable to prevent Bhattacharya from joining a panel titled, "Academic Freedom Applications: Climate Science and Biomedical Sciences," and stating, "We live in an era where ... you have a scientific bureaucrat who ironically tells the world that if you question him, you're not simply questioning the man, you're questioning science itself."

Bhattacharya was referencing Fauci's suggestion that by criticizing him — the scientist who ran the agency that funded dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab — "you're really attacking not only Dr. Anthony Fauci, you're attacking science."

"We have a high clerisy that declares from on high what is true and what is not true," Bhattacharya suggested, adding that the collapse of academic freedom has accelerated significantly in the last two of the 36 years he has spent at Stanford.

"When you take a position that is at odds with the scientific clerisy, your life becomes a living hell," Bhattacharya told the conference. "You face a deeply hostile work environment."

He emphasized that while the university prides itself on having academic freedom, nothing could be further from the truth, especially when "academic freedom only matters when you take controversial positions."

Academic Freedom Applications Climate Science and Biomedical Sciences youtu.be

Bhattacharya expounded on his thinking in a recent interview with Fox News Digital, saying, "The basic premise is that if you don't have protection and academic freedom in the hard cases, when a faculty member has an idea that's unpopular among some of the other faculty – powerful faculty, or even the administration ... if they don't protect it in that case, then you don't have academic freedom at all."

"Power replaced the idea of truth as the guiding light," he added, noting how many scientific communities were cowed into uniformity and uncritical thinking during the pandemic.

Nothing against or outside the state's official narrative

Bhattacharya was one of three authors of the Oct. 4, 2020, "Great Barrington Declaration," a document expressing "grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies" and recommending instead a "focused protection" approach.

According to the declaration, public resources should be focused on those most vulnerable to succumbing to COVID-19. Everyone else who is at minimal risk should build up natural immunity and "resume life as normal."

Anticipating the fallout of lockdowns and school closures, Bhattacharya and his co-authors recommended that schools and universities remain open for in-person teaching; extracurricular activities resume; and low-risk adults work normally, rather from home.

At the Academic Freedom Conference, he noted that the purpose of the document was to "tell people that there was an alternative and that the scientific community had not coalesced around a single lockdown-focused policy ... that there was not a scientific consensus in favor of lockdown, that in fact many epidemiologists, many doctors, many other people – prominent people – disagreed with the consensus."

For publicly doubting claims advanced by the Biden administration and the media about the good of lockdowns, he was roundly castigated.

Last year, CNN called him "crazy" and accused him of spreading "dangerous COVID disinformation."

Fox News Digital reported that extra to the media, he was also denounced by so-called health leaders, including National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci, who deemed his declaration "nonsense and very dangerous."

In his talk, Bhattacharya referenced former National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Dr. Francis Collins' letter to fellow health bureaucrats imploring them to issue a "quick and devastating published take down" of the declaration's premises.

\u201cNew email dump showing Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins coordinating a propaganda campaign to attack the Great Barrington declaration last October. More coming soon so here's a teaser...\u201d
— Phil Magness (@Phil Magness) 1639776786

Bhattacharya previously told UnHerd that early in the pandemic, "there was a debate going on inside the scientific community, and Tony Fauci and the federal government of the United States could not abide that […] because they implemented an extraordinary policy that required absolute consensus."

While the government "suppressed and censored and smeared" independent thinkers and critical scientists, there was no support to be found on campus, only "a chill."

Bhattacharya said that one student who had sought to have the Stanford professor publicly discuss his declaration was reportedly met with "reprisals," given the prevailing noting that "platforming [Bhattacharya] was a dangerous thing."

Bhattacharya suggested that what is actually dangerous is refusing to platform opposing or alternate views: "If you have a legitimate scientific view, a legitimate policy view, to not speak of it ... sends a message that we do not care about the truth."

He indicted the university, particularly its leaders, suggesting that their refusal to support those on campus with differing viewpoints made it abundantly clear that "academic freedom is dead ... and if university leaders do not stand up for it, they do not deserve the positions they have."

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Rand Paul likens Anthony Fauci to 'mafia don,' shares old video of Fauci praising natural flu immunity as 'most potent vaccination'



The number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 has fallen more than 90% in a little over two months as coronavirus hospitalizations plummet to the lowest levels since the early days of the pandemic. However, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) isn't ready to let Dr. Anthony Fauci forget about his behavior during the pandemic, which he believes is similar to actions taken by a mafia boss.

On Friday night, Paul made an appearance on "The Ingraham Angle" to give his reaction to the explosive Vanity Fair report that claims Fauci and former National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins strongly pushed back against anyone who went against the narrative that COVID-19 originated from a wet market in Wuhan, China. Vanity Fair reports that evolutionary biologist Jesse Bloom was suppressed for thinking that COVID-19 originated in a lab and leaked out.

"This is more like what you'd see from a mafia don than from a government bureaucrat or scientist," Paul said of Fauci's behavior. "If you disagree with him, they come down on you hard, and they try to suppress anybody with a different opinion."

"It's really alarming, they will do anything," Paul told host Laura Ingraham.

Paul hypothesized that the top medical bureaucrats thought, "Let's do everything we can to try to suppress his opinion."

The Republican senator from Kentucky mentioned damning emails that surfaced in December that show Collins instructing Fauci to carry out a "quick and devastating" takedown of an open letter published in 2020 that argued that COVID-19 lockdowns were counterproductive. The letter known as the Great Barrington Declaration was authored by three epidemiologists: Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at Harvard University, Sunetra Gupta, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at Oxford University, and Jay Bhattacharya, MD, Ph.D., a professor and public health policy expert at Stanford University. Collins disparaged the three accomplished epidemiologists as "fringe" in an email.

Paul noted that the "three famous epidemiologists" had been suppressed.

"But one of the interesting things about this exposé is it also shows the harm of what government contractors do," Paul continued. "We knew they did this in other areas, but we didn't know it was happening in science."

Paul also shared a video on Twitter of Fauci touting immunity as superior to a vaccine when it comes to the flu.

In 2004, Fauci was on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" program, when a 67-year-old caller from Minnesota asked the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases if she should get a flu shot if she already had the flu.

Fauci responded, "Well it's very difficult to figure out just on that base of information, what's gone on with the caller. There are some people who have bad reactions to, in vaccination, even if it's a killed vaccination. It is possible since the flu vaccine virus is grown in eggs, then you may have an allergy to one of those components, and what you were feeling was actually an allergic reaction."

Host Peter Slen asked if the woman should get a vaccination against the flu, to which Fauci replied, "Well no."

"If she got the flu for fourteen days, she's as protected as anybody can be, because the best vaccination is to get infected yourself," Fauci stressed. "If she really has the flu, if she really has the flu, she definitely doesn’t need a flu vaccine."

Fauci declared that the woman "doesn't need" the vaccination since "the most potent vaccination is getting infected yourself."

Of the resurfaced footage, Paul wrote: "Hmmm…Once upon a time Anthony Fauci could tell the truth…What happened?"

Hmmm\u2026Once upon a time Anthony Fauci could tell the truth\u2026What happened?https://twitter.com/claytravis/status/1509607256714878981\u00a0\u2026
— Rand Paul (@Rand Paul) 1648760110

Last month, Paul declared that he believes that over 95% of Americans have either "antibodies to the virus or antibodies to the vaccine," which he credits for why COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths are down.

"That’s why we are doing better with this," Paul said. "We have developed immunity either from having the disease or being vaccinated, and that’s why we are doing better, in addition to the fact that the virus has mutated to a less virulent or less deadly form."

Paul then called Fauci a "menace."

"But he won't admit it because he’s so caught up in putting stickers on your floor, putting masks on your face, putting goggles on you," Paul exclaimed. "The guy is a menace, and he has not been right really about anything since the start of this."

Damning Emails Prove Fauci And Collins Colluded To Nuke Herd Immunity Strategies

Emails between Collins and Fauci show that the bureaucrats teamed up to discredit COVID info that contradicted their lockdown push.

NIH Director Francis Collins told Anthony Fauci there needs to be a 'quick and devastating' takedown of anti-lockdown declaration by 'fringe' Harvard, Stanford, Oxford epidemiologists: Emails



Newly exposed emails show outgoing National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins commanding Dr. Anthony Fauci to carry out a "quick and devastating" takedown of a statement by public health experts calling for "focused protection" of the most vulnerable populations. Emails show that Fauci would indeed attack the declaration.

What is the Great Barrington Declaration?

Infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists authored the Great Barrington Declaration, a document that argues against COVID-19 lockdowns that was released on Oct. 4, 2020.

"Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health," the declaration stated. "Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed."

"As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls," the epidemiologists wrote. "We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity."

More than 15,000 medical and public health scientists have allegedly signed the Great Barrington Declaration and over 45,000 medical practitioners have endorsed the document. The health advice in the Great Barrington Declaration was the complete opposite of what top U.S. public officials espoused.

A 'quick and devastating' takedown is ordered

Four days after the Great Barrington Declaration was released, Collins instructed Fauci and Clifford Lane — the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Deputy Director for Clinical Research and Special Projects — to engage in a "takedown" of the anti-lockdown declaration, according to emails.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis obtained and released emails between the public health officials.

"This proposal from three fringe epidemiologists who met with the Secretary seems to be getting a lot of attention — and even a co-signature from Nobel Prize winner Mike Leavitt at Stanford," Collins wrote in an email sent on Oct. 8, 2020.

"There needs to be a quick and devastating takedown of its premises,” Collins wrote in reference to the Great Barrington Declaration.

In new FOIA email dump, NIH Director Collins emailed Fauci to urge a \u201cquick and devastating\u201d propaganda takedown of the Great Barrington Declaration, in which @MartinKulldorff @DrJBhattacharya and @SunetraGupta urged an end to COVID lockdowns and mandates.\nhttps://coronavirus.house.gov/sites/democrats.coronavirus.house.gov/files/2020.10.13%20FOIA-00001024.pdf\u00a0\u2026pic.twitter.com/jxIMPetjue
— Michael P Senger (@Michael P Senger) 1639780840

How did Dr. Anthony Fauci respond?

Fauci responded to Collins' direction by promoting a Wired U.K. article with the headline: "There is no 'scientific divide' over herd immunity."

Phil Magness — senior research faculty and interim research and education director at the American Institute for Economic Research – noted that the Wired U.K. article from October 2020 stated that the Great Barrington Declaration is irrelevant because lockdowns are in the "past."

The Fauci-endorsed Wired article is noteworthy for having one of the single worst hot-takes of the entire pandemic. It declared in October 2020 that the GBD should be ignored, because lockdowns were a thing of the past and would not be returning! \n\nhttps://www.wired.co.uk/article/great-barrington-declaration-herd-immunity-scientific-divide\u00a0\u2026pic.twitter.com/U3LtPK97zc
— Phil Magness (@Phil Magness) 1639844416

Fauci then shared an article from progressive The Nation titled: "Focused Protection, Herd Immunity, and Other Deadly Delusions."

"But Kulldorff, Bhattacharya, and Gupta’s plan, enshrined as the Great Barrington Declaration unveiled at the American Institute for Economic Research this week, is not the way forward," the article read. "If we’re going to build toward a new politics of care, it will be by relying on progressive principles of justice and equality—not some notion of the survival of the young and the fittest."

Far from a scientific study refuting the GBD, Gonsalves's article is a political op-ed attacking @Jacobin magazine for breaking "solidarity" with other far-left media outlets on lockdowns. Why? Because Jacobin ran an interview with @MartinKulldorff on how lockdowns hurt the poor.pic.twitter.com/0j85WlKiwY
— Phil Magness (@Phil Magness) 1639844418

Gregg Gonsalves — the author of The Nation article — reportedly emailed Collins to "thank" him for speaking out against the Great Barrington Declaration and for "doing it 'undiplomatically.'" Gonsalves also agreed in calling the GBD epidemiologists "fringe."

In the meantime, Gonsalves also gets in contact with Collins to volunteer his services (along with future @CDCDirector Rochelle Walensky) to attack the GBD in the media.\n\nCollins approves, and forwards it to Fauci and a bunch of NIH underlings.pic.twitter.com/UJ2t7C18AA
— Phil Magness (@Phil Magness) 1639844421

Fauci attacked the Great Barrington Declaration during an ABC News appearance on Oct. 15, 2020.

"That declaration has a couple things in it that I think are fooling people, because it says things that are like apple pie and motherhood," Fauci told ABC News. "A, we don't want to shut down the country. I say that all the time. B, we do certainly want to protect the vulnerable."

Fauci sent an email to White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Deborah Birx on Oct. 16, 2020.

"Over the past week I have come out very strongly publicly against the "Great Barrington Declaration,'" Fauci wrote, adding that he will "connect" with her "later today or over the weekend."

On the morning of the Covid task force meeting, Fauci sends Deborah Birx this email alerting her about the need to oppose the GBD at the meeting. The unredacted part suggests they are preparing to attack @ScottWAtlas, who was perceived as the task force's champion of the GBD.pic.twitter.com/iqYbiTiZxo
— Phil Magness (@Phil Magness) 1639844423

Who are the 'fringe' epidemiologists?

Collins described the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration as "fringe."

The three "fringe" epidemiologists are Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at Harvard University, Sunetra Gupta, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at Oxford University, and Jay Bhattacharya, MD, Ph.D., a professor and public health policy expert at Stanford University.

Bhattacharya reacted to Collins' email by writing on Twitter, "So now I know what it feels like to be the subject of a propaganda attack by my own government. Discussion and engagement would have been a better path."

Kulldorff responded by saying, "A year ago, @NIHDirector Francis Collins asked Fauci to do a 'devastating published take down' of the Great Barrington Declaration. A public debate would have been better. Invitation still open."

Gupta has yet to issue a statement, but she retweeted the above statements made by colleagues.

Dr. Francis Collins attempts to defend his 'takedown'

The House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis said Collins "expressed deep concerns about the herd immunity strategy being advocated by these 'fringe epidemiologists.'"

Collins was asked about the "takedown" during a Fox News interview on Friday, to which he replied, "Well, OK, if it’s that specific. There were people [like] Scott Atlas that said don’t worry about this business of putting on masks or asking people to isolate themselves or stay distanced. Let it rip. Let this virus run through the country until everybody has had it, and we’ll have herd immunity.'"

Atlas — who was an advisor on former President Donald Trump's White House Coronavirus Task Force — does not show up as one of the prominent signatories on the Great Barrington Declaration website.

Top Medical News Site Lies About Doctors Who Noticed Lockdowns Didn’t Work

To publish a claim that falsely alleges the anti-vaccine movement has the support of professors at Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford universities is damaging for vaccine confidence.