by rendall | 2025-11-04 22:42:01+00:00
Standing was denied, not the underlying finding. The Court never ruled that coordination between the White House and social-media platforms was constitutionally fine. The district court had found likely coercion, which remains uncontested on the merits.

And whether an initiative was walked back (like the Disinformation Board) doesn’t erase the intent to institutionalize speech regulation through DHS. Retraction after exposure doesn’t mean it wasn’t attempted.

But sure, as you requested:

The FBI’s role in the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story is another example. In the months leading up to the 2020 election, the FBI held regular briefings with major tech platforms warning of possible “hack-and-leak” operations by foreign actors, specifically referencing topics that would later match the Hunter Biden reports. When The New York Post published its story, Twitter and Facebook immediately throttled or blocked it. Later, both companies acknowledged that the FBI’s warnings influenced those decisions. The Bureau didn’t issue a formal takedown order, but the effect was identical: a law-enforcement agency used its authority to shape the information environment around an election.

The Obama administration’s record under the Espionage Act also fits the pattern. Obama’s Department of Justice prosecuted more whistleblowers and leakers under that law than all previous administrations combined, often targeting disclosures that embarrassed the government but posed no clear security risk. Journalists who published the material, such as James Risen and others, were subpoenaed and threatened with jail time for refusing to reveal sources. That’s a textbook use of state power to chill investigative reporting.

There’s also the IRS targeting scandal, in which conservative nonprofit groups applying for tax-exempt status were singled out for extra scrutiny based on their political keywords (“Tea Party,” “Patriots,” etc.). The eventual Inspector General report confirmed viewpoint discrimination within a federal agency that directly affected the ability of those groups to operate and speak.

These episodes differ in scale and directness, but they share a common feature: government institutions, under Democratic leadership, exerting pressure,formal or informal, on the flow of information and the people disseminating it. Whether by pre-emptive warnings, selective enforcement, or bureaucratic choke points, each represents a form of speech control that doesn’t need a censorship law to be effective.

None of this is to suggest the problem is uniquely Democratic. Republicans have done the same and sometimes more overtly: pressuring the NFL over protests, threatening tech companies with regulation for perceived bias, using state legislatures to police campus or library speech, or floating defamation crackdowns against critics. Both parties reach for state power when it suits their narrative.

The conclusion isn’t that Democrats are worse, but that once any faction normalizes using the machinery of government to manage expression, the precedent will be used by everyone. The real lesson is that censorship, whether bureaucratic or partisan, always expands beyond its architects’ original intent.