Biden’s COVID censorship machine takes a hit: Missouri wins landmark ban on federal threats to Big Tech



A landmark settlement delivered a blow to the censorship industrial complex that silenced Americans during the COVID era.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) announced Tuesday that Missouri had reached a settlement agreement with the U.S. government in its Missouri v. Biden lawsuit, which accused the Biden administration of violating Americans' First Amendment rights by directing social media companies to censor speech challenging the government's COVID messaging.

'For every working Missouri family tired of being silenced by their own government: this victory is yours.'

Schmitt filed the lawsuit against the Biden administration while serving as Missouri attorney general, before securing his Senate seat.

The agreement included a 10-year Consent Decree that enforces a narrow permanent injunction on the surgeon general, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The injunction prevents them from threatening social media companies with any form of punishment if those companies fail to remove or suppress content that contains protected speech.

However, this ban applies only to posts made on Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, and YouTube by the specific plaintiffs in the case, including Missouri and Louisiana government officials and agencies acting in their official capacity. It does not extend to other social media networks or content posted by the general public.

"The Parties also agree that government, politicians, media, academics, or anyone else applying labels such as 'misinformation,' 'disinformation,' or 'malinformation' to speech does not render it constitutionally unprotected," the agreement reads.

The court must first approve this settlement agreement.

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Eric Schmitt. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

"We just won Missouri v. Biden," Schmitt wrote in a post on X. "As Missouri's Attorney General, I sued the Biden regime for brazenly colluding with Big Tech to silence Missouri families — censoring the truth about COVID, the Hunter Biden laptop, the open border, and the 2020 election. They tried to turn Facebook, X, YouTube, and the rest into their private speech police, labeling dissent 'misinformation' while they pushed their narrative on the American people."

Schmitt called the Consent Decree the "first real, operational restraint on the federal censorship machine."

He explained that it "directly binds the Surgeon General, the CDC, and CISA: no more threats of legal, regulatory, or economic punishment. No more coercion. No more unilateral direction or veto of platform decisions to remove, suppress, deplatform, or algorithmically bury protected speech."

"For every working Missouri family tired of being silenced by their own government: this victory is yours. The heartland fought back, and the heartland delivered," Schmitt concluded.

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Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Benjamin Weingarten, a senior contributor at the Federalist, addressed the victory's narrow application.

"This decree is limited to the plaintiffs, but as precedent, and practically, its impact may prove orders of magnitude more powerful in protecting disfavored speech," Weingarten wrote, calling it "a momentous blow for the First Amendment."

National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, who had to withdraw as a plaintiff in the case after being appointed by the Trump administration, called the settlement "a huge win for all Americans."

"Huzzah! The consent decree in Missouri v. Biden is a historic victory for free speech in the US. Though I had to switch to the government side in the case after I became NIH director, I've never been more pleased by 'losing' in my life," he wrote.

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When a hoax teaches the oldest lesson: Courage first



On Thursday, August 21, at 4:30 p.m., my wife, my youngest daughter, and I stood in the soft light of an overcast day at Villanova University’s welcome Mass. She had earned the right to call herself a freshman. The class of 2029 also carries a distinction: the first freshman class to attend the alma mater of a pope.

Pride did not fully prepare us for what came next.

Everything is an education. Courage, the first of the virtues, does not mean reckless bravado. I learned something about it.

At 4:34 p.m., phones around us buzzed with a NOVA Alert:

ACTIVE SHOOTER Incident Warning
ACTIVE SHOOTER on VU campus. Move to secure location.
Lock/Barricade doors. More info to follow.

My daughter showed my wife the text. As they puzzled over it, the crowd shifted. Chairs toppled with a sound like rain. I briefly imagined a cloudburst pushing people indoors.

The murmur swelled into a surge. People dove to the ground. I had not yet seen the alert. Gunfire? I heard none. A vehicle attack? Lightning? A tornado? A wild animal?

Ancient Greeks saw their gods and the gods of their enemies amid the terror of battlefields. In that instant, the mind supplied its own agents of terror in the convulsing crowd at Villanova.

“Dad, run!” my daughter shouted. She and my wife had already bolted. I jogged after them, but the walkways churned like rapids and they disappeared in the current. I moved into the open at Connelly Plaza to search. Moments later, my daughter called from inside the Connelly Center, urging me to stop standing outside and get to cover. I geolocated my wife’s phone; it registered inside Dougherty Hall.

A heavily armed officer and several others strode past, asking for the library. I pointed as best I could. Someone inside Dougherty waved me in with insistence.

Inside, I found my wife’s purse and phone. Some thoughtful person had picked it up and brought it in. She soon called from a stranger’s phone to say she had reached the Ithan parking garage a little further off. I took up a post with four or five other dads at the glass entrance to Dougherty and waited for the all-clear. It came an hour and a half later.

Everything is an education. Courage, the first of the virtues, does not mean reckless bravado. I learned something about it that afternoon.

Panic spreads faster than any bullet. Faces around me looked as if they had witnessed a threat firsthand. The truth is that most had only read the alert and then seen fear and panic in other people’s faces. That fear became the source of multiplying bad information.

RELATED: America can’t survive on lies and make-believe morality

invincible_bulldog via iStock/Getty Images

“Tune our hearts to brave music,” St. Augustine prayed. Villanova’s staff did exactly that. They acted with calm and helped people reach safety. Even so, the hoaxer exposed vulnerabilities. If you have not witnessed immediate danger, move safely and deliberately to a secure place. Don’t fuel the stampede.

Augustine may have also said, “Hope has two beautiful daughters: anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain as they are.” The hoaxing continued that weekend — one call to the University of South Carolina, another to Villanova. The intent is obvious: inflict physical and psychological harm by weaponizing the consensus response — run and shelter in place.

The threat, paradoxically, comes from hijacking the security system by crying wolf. The remedy must make that hijacking harder, verify and communicate information faster, and reduce harm when the system gets abused. That requires careful thinking about methods and messages — and about courage.

Courage steadies the hands that send the alerts, guides parents and students to act with discipline, and keeps us from trampling one another in a fog of rumor. I watched it in real time from Dougherty Hall. It will be needed again.

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