Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio blasted Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown over “frightening” comments she made during Monday’s oral arguments in a landmark censorship case.
Justices heard arguments in a case brought by Republican Attorneys General Liz Murrill of Louisiana and Andrew Bailey of Missouri alleging the Biden administration pushed for social media companies to censor certain viewpoints on the origin of COVID-19, election integrity and other issues. Jordan honed in on comments Jackson made concerning the First Amendment during the oral arguments.
“My biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways in the most important time periods,” Jackson said.
“That’s what it is supposed to do, for goodness sakes,” Jordan told “America Reports” co-host John Roberts. “It was literally the craziest things. You can have a justice on the United States Supreme Court say that in the oral argument. It made no sense to me. That is frightening because if she really believes that, that is scary where we are heading.”
WATCH:
Tucker Carlson, a co-founder of the Daily Caller and Daily Caller News Foundation, was among those targeted for censorship by the Biden administration, according to an April 14, 2021 email from White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty to an unidentified Facebook employee, demanding the company censor Carlson’s video about vaccines released in January 2023 by then-Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry of Louisiana.
“Understand what took place here: This was censorship by surrogate,” Jordan added. “This was big government telling Big Tech to take down speech they disagree with and it was the most fundamental kind of speech: It was political speech, the kind that is supposed to have heightened scrutiny before you can take that down, but that is what took place and then to have a justice on the Supreme Court say what she said, that is frightening.”
United States District Judge Terry A. Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana issued an injunction July 4 prohibiting Biden administration officials with multiple agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Health and Human Services, from contacting social media companies to push for “the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.” An appeals court narrowed the injunction in September before the Supreme Court took up the case.
“Here’s how bad it was: The third day of the Biden Administration, the White House… sends an email to Twitter saying take down this tweet ASAP and guess what the tweet was? RFK Jr. saying two sentences,” Jordan said. “Hank Aaron took the vaccine and passed away. He did so to encourage black Americans to get vaccinated. Two true statements. They went after that tweet, true statements, they wanted to take away and by the way, who was that individual? The guy running against him in the primary.”
“That is as scary as it gets but that’s what this White House was doing and this administration was doing,” Jordan continued. “Let’s hope that the court reaches the right decision.”
Harold Hutchison on March 18, 2024
