Posted on 09/06/2025 2:56:16 PM PDT by Jacquerie
Director of the National Institutes of Health Jay Bhattacharya yesterday claimed that the First Amendment is a “dead letter”.
Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington DC, the former Stanford professor warned that America’s constitutional protections for free expression dissolved during the Covid pandemic and remain unenforceable even today. “The First Amendment still doesn’t apply in practice,” he said. “Free speech rights exist right now only because the administration has chosen to allow them, not because the First Amendment is protecting us.”
Bhattacharya, best known for co-authoring the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, said his own experience during the pandemic showed how dissenting views on Covid-19 policy were systematically suppressed through government pressure on social media companies. “Why would I be put on a blacklist by Twitter?” he asked. “Why would a private company, whose money is made by people communicating with each other, decide to put me on a blacklist? It turns out the answer is the government forced them to do it.”
This censorship debate peaked during Covid in 2021. By then, White House officials mobilised federal agencies to pressure platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to block dissenting opinions. The coercion became the centrepiece of the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit, in which Bhattacharya and other censored commentators were plaintiffs.
Yet when the case reached the Supreme Court, justices dismissed it on standing grounds, ruling there was no evidence Bhattacharya himself had been directly targeted by government orders. That reasoning, he argued, creates a loophole: so long as officials pressure companies to suppress categories of ideas rather than named individuals, victims cannot sue. “The First Amendment, in that sense, is unenforceable,” he said.
“Right now, free speech in America depends on who is in power,” he told the audience. “That’s a perilous place to be.”
(Excerpt) Read more at unherd.com ...
The thinking that comes from this needs to be explored.
Can other Rights in the Bill of Rights be neutralized in this manner?
Truth Bomb
When Government is 40+% of GDP, politics effectively controls everything.
FTA
Director of the Ntl Institutes of Health Jay Bhattacharya speaking at the Ntl Conservatism Conference in DC, a former Stanford professor, warned that America’s constitutional protections for free expression dissolved during the Covid pandemic and remain unenforceable even today.
“The First Amendment still doesn’t apply in practice,” he said. “Free speech rights exist right now only because the administration has chosen to allow them, not because the First Amendment is protecting us.”
This is why we have the 2nd amendment. He needs to be fired.
“If the Second goes first the First goes second”. L Star
He should be fired for saying Biden's bloated and woke Fed.gov trampled all over Americans' basic rights under the pretext of Covid???
Is that your position?
The left did a full court press on freedom of speech and used it to steal an election they saw as a must win at any cost. Now it’s time to make them pay that cost... Dearly.
However, any person is free to start his own web site and say whatever he wants. You don’t need Twitter and you don’t need Facebook.
By using the term free expression he is grouping legal and illegal actions into one pot trying to claim they are equal in importance and expectation whether they are legal or not. The failure of the freedoms is not by their intent, but by the intent assigned to them by the courts.
I should be able to say anything I like and still can if you know how to say it. So it isn’t a matter of content, but application.
wy69
I see no cause to fire him over these truths.
....Eternal vigilance....
Bfl
So, he's saying that we don't need amendments anymore, and that all it takes to repeal parts of the Constitution is for someone to violate it and that makes it “dead letter” from that point forward?
-PJ
Web hosting companies also deplatform.
GoDaddy deplatforms Texas Right to Life’s pro-life whistleblower site.
You can say, well, find a host that doesn't. But you must pay for hosting. And credit card companies also deplatform.
Credit-card firms are becoming reluctant regulators of the web.
You might say, well, find a pro-free speech host that accepts crypto, perhaps on the dark web. And be satisfied with a tiny, niche audience.
Which will satisfy the oligarchs.
And most people won't even do that. They'll quit long before social media, web hosting and credit card companies deplatform them.
It seems to me he was clear - “Right now, free speech in America depends on who is in power,”
I.e., elections have consequences, see the most recent two Dem WH admins and some of the current Dem governors.
That system was effectively destroyed by the 17th Amendment, pushing a Republic into a democracy subject to communications media.
In that respect, Trump is setting a very dangerous precedent if he moves the Guard against the orders of a State Governor. Yes, in many respects things are that dire on the streets of our cities. Soros' support for woke DAs is what tipped those scales (for which and more he deserves to hang). One can only hope the people can reverse field at the ballot box sufficiently to overcome institutional fraud before it becomes necessary to deploy force. In places like Portland or LA, I just don't see that. There is a value to allowing leftism to sink a jurisdiction on a limited basis, effectively allowing Natural Law to be the enforcer.
I take it that you have not read the Great Barrington Declaration. Two authors were Indian, the third author was Swedish.
Greasy slimeballs, like "Jazz Hands" Noisome, "Shiny Face" Whitmer, "Fat JB" Prickster, "Stolen Valor" Moore - the list goes on.
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