Executive
Injunction gets a Twitter File
The momentous injunction in the Missouri v. Biden case got its Twitter File treatment yesterday, to uniformly positive reception.
On July 4, Judge Terry Doughty handed down a preliminary injunction against the White House and several three-letter (and one four-letter) agencies and several agents. They had been meeting regularly with Twitter and other social media staff to give censorship orders to said staff. Now Tracy Beanz, who gave similar treatment to the lawsuit involved, has dropped a thread with this injunction as subject. She in fact promised this two days ago in a three-hour Twitter Space discussion. Today she offers her thoughts about that injunction, in great detail.
The preliminary injunction and what it does
The injunction itself needs little reintroduction. It came in the case of Missouri v. Biden, a massive lawsuit accusing the government, and several specific agencies and agents, of cajoling, coercing, and otherwise inducing various social media platforms into restricting the protected speech of American citizens, in violation of the First Amendment. In short, it turned those social media platforms into State actors, as The Intercept said in the fall of 2022. But unlike The Intercept, Judge Doughty has so far found that the social media platforms were acting under duress. (The legal term for this is force majeure, but thus far Judge Doughty has not used that term.)
Various Twitter journalists have covered extensively the conduct of nearly every defendant the Missouri lawsuit names. Accordingly, Judge Doughty has enjoined the White House, those specific agencies, and named agency members, from any further such conduct. Indeed Mike Shellenberger says the State Department has lately canceled regular meetings they once held with Twitter staff.
The judge did not enjoin any such contacts with regard to criminal activity, national security threats, or “vote suppression.” That last includes deliberate attempts to mislead voters about voting procedures, polling place hours, and the like. And contrary to certain false reports, the government may still warn social media outlets about anything involving child exploitation.
Tracy Beanz promised a long thread after she’d had time to examine the 155-page memorandum ruling accompanying the injunction. She started to drop the thread at 11:01 a.m. EDT yesterday morning.
The thread
Here is the seventy-one-tweet thread, as the odd numbers:
Reaction varied from mild annoyance at having to click so many “Show more” links, to shock and astonishment that the government thought they could get away with this, to blistering criticism of the legacy media for calling this injunction “a ruling that could undermine the fight against disinformation.”
Many users suggested various penalties and sanctions, including without limit:
- Removal of some of the agents involved from their jobs or offices,
- Civil action by the social media companies against the government, or even
- Execution.
Not one user reacted negatively to this thread, in replies to the anchor tweet. Most users preferred to reply to the anchor tweet, so that Ms. Beanz would not lose sight of them. This thread is arguably the longest thread anyone has dropped since the Twitter Files series began.
Analysis
CNAV has covered much of the activities Judge Doughty outlined in his memorandum ruling before. Alex Berenson no doubt will find much evidence here relating to his own case against Twitter. But never before have we seen the common thread that explains the conduct of the social media organs.
Alex Berenson has settled with Twitter and has his account back. He is now pursuing his own case against the government. Similarly, The Gateway Pundit has a case against the various Non-governmental Organizations that helped the government. Furthermore, Children’s Health Defense, Joe Mercola, and several other plaintiffs are suing four legacy media organs. They allege that the Trusted News Initiative by those four companies constitutes an illegal trust.
But only one person is suing the social media platforms today: Laura Loomer. As CNAV said before, she ought to bring her case into Judge Doughty’s court, with the other three.
Which brings up the relationship between social media and the government. As Tracy Beanz reads Judge Doughty’s ruling, Twitter, Facebook and the rest acted under force majeure. Or did they? Why didn’t they tell the government to go pound sand, as Rumble, Bitchute, Odysee, Brighteon, and Gab did? (Truth Social founded itself as an explicit enemy of this administration.) Twitter, Meta, Alphabet, and Spotify had the emails originally – they received them from the government. They could and should have gone straight to Judge Doughty and raised Cain then. But they did not.
An injunction against one half
CNAV still maintains that someone must examine critically the attitude of the social media companies. History – even the history of academic psychological research – gives us many examples of willing participation in aid of tyranny. Stanley Milgram could teach Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal a thing or two! So could Actor William Shatner, who portrayed Milgram – sort of – in a Made for TV movie. So could the designers – and subjects – of the Stanford Prison Guard Experiment. And someone ought to sue Yale University for turning itself into the very sort of prison Judge Doughty now decries.
Tracy Beanz did an excellent job condemning this government for acting like the Ministry of Truth from George Orwell’s 1984. But CNAV would argue with her as well, that the Big Tech giants were the Ministry’s willing “prison trusties.” We cannot therefore close the book on this matter without examining their role. Accordingly we urge Laura Loomer to apply for a change of venue to get her case into Judge Doughty’s court. (CNAV has reached out to Laura Loomer with that precise suggestion.) Then the judge can hear some evidence that, frankly, no one has adequately presented – as someone should.
Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.
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