Opinion

Examining The CDC’s COVID Response Actions: “Coercion. Deception. Censorship.”
In June of 2022, the NIH published a study bemoaning Americans' depleted trust in public health: "Public trust in federal government agencies has never been as important as it has been during the Covid-19 pandemic, yet public suspicions of scientific experts and...

Biden’s Social-Media Censorship Harms Us All
The Supreme Court will decide as early as Wednesday whether to stay the lower courts’ injunction against the administration’s social-media censorship in Missouri v. Biden. One of the solicitor general’s arguments in the government’s defense is that the well-documented...

The SEC Puts Itself on Moot—Answering Justice Robert Jackson’s Eight-Decade-Old Query—Has the SEC Become a Law Unto Itself?
The Supreme Court’s opinion in Axon Enterprise Inc. v. FTC (Axon/ Cochran) is full of surprises, from its inception—launched despite a seemingly impenetrable barrier of five adverse circuit precedents (hereinafter the SEC ALJ Cases)—to conclusion in a unanimous...

Just Say No
A recent uptick in COVID-19 cases, accompanied by the predictable hysterical media coverage, has spurred nationwide chatter about a possible return to pandemic restrictions, from school closures to mask mandates. This is not baseless supposition, as schools,...

Partners in Crime
In July of 2021, Meta’s head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, emailed a Facebook vice president in charge of content policy, asking why the company had removed from Facebook, rather than demoted or flagged, claims that COVID-19 was “man-made.” Rice responded, “Because...

In Landmark Free Speech Case, Fifth Circuit Judge Likens Government Coercion Of Big Tech To ‘Mob’ Boss
Whether or not the federal government and its myriad agencies will be able to coerce, cajole, encourage, threaten, and browbeat social media companies into removing views it does not like from their platforms was the question before the Fifth Circuit Court of...

Judges Attack Judicial Independence
A disturbing constitutional drama is unfolding in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Chief Judge Kimberly Moore has effectively deprived one of her colleagues, Judge Pauline Newman, of her judicial office. Although not as noisy as recent attacks on the...

The Biden Administration’s Assault on Free Speech
Among the revelations in the so-called Twitter files was that government officials pressured social-media companies to censor posts unfavorable to the Biden administration. The White House has denied this, insisting that companies like Meta and Twitter adopted...

Missouri v. Biden: The Crossroads Between Misinformation and Free Speech
Judge Terry Doughty’s Fourth of July issuance of a preliminary injunction in the case Missouri v. Biden has drawn powerful reactions, earning the federal judge a slew of both fans and critics. I recommend my colleague John Vecchione’s discussion of the case and Judge...

Free Speech on the Fourth of July
On the Fourth of July, a preliminary injunction issued against the government protecting the rights of all Americans to enter and be heard in the modern public square that is social media without government interference. Judge Terry A. Doughty, in Missouri v. Biden,...