Guess we all forgot Biden also wanted to be a king? |
Progressives took to the streets on March 28, with their signs, costumes and flags, to purportedly stand for democracy.
The “No Kings” rallies, in reality, are just about one thing: hating President Donald Trump.
(The fact that there were literal communist flags flown at some protests belies that these extreme leftists want to protect our form of government.)
However, assuming some of these protesters sincerely believe that there is a current threat to our Republic under Trump, they should also cheer a recent settlement in a lawsuit that was brought by Missouri and Louisiana and several individual plaintiffs against former President Joe Biden and his administration.
Biden tried to censor social media posts about COVID
That case alleged the Biden administration worked to coerce social media companies to censor certain messages that went against the “preferred” government narrative, from COVID-19 and vaccines to elections. After Elon Musk bought Twitter (now X) in 2022, he released a trove of internal documents known as the Twitter Files to journalists that show the level of government interference and pressure to ban specific accounts.
Much of the censored content ended up being true. Regardless, the government should not have been actively trying to limit discussion at a time when it was of the utmost importance.
In 2024, the lawsuit reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where the plaintiffs got an unfavorable ruling. However, the decision focused on overturning the injunction a lower court had placed on the Biden administration.
So the case continued. Now, the plaintiffs have prevailed in a settlement with the Trump administration.
Biden should have never tried to be the arbiter of truth
Under the agreement, the Office of the Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are prohibited for 10 years from threatening social media companies with any kind of punishment, including regulatory changes, to get them to take down protected speech or alter content moderation practices.
The settlement lays out clearly the First Amendment principles at stake:
"The Parties agree that modern technology does not alter the Government’s obligation to abide by the strictures of the First Amendment. The Parties also agree that government, politicians, media, academics, or anyone else applying labels such as 'misinformation,' 'disinformation,' or 'malinformation' to speech does not render it constitutionally unprotected."
The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), which represented several of the individual plaintiffs in this case, said in a statement: “This settlement helps safeguard that marketplace of ideas from the federal government.”
John Vecchione, senior litigation counsel at NCLA, told me that even if it seems difficult, anyone who thinks the government is preventing them from exercising their constitutional rights should speak up.
“It is so important for Americans to have a little bit of courage and bring these cases if they think it’s happening to them,” Vecchione said.
Separately, on April 1, NCLA reached another noteworthy settlement in a 2023 case it brought on behalf of conservative publications The Daily Wire and The Federalist against the State Department for its “censorship industrial complex.”
In 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio detailed in The Federalist some of the government’s actions that led in part to “fact checks” and reports discrediting these outlets for engaging in constitutionally protected free speech.
Trump started his second term standing for free speech
On the first day of his second term, Trump made a strong stand for free speech. He issued the executive order “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,” a direct counter to the practices of his predecessor.
“Over the last 4 years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve,” the order states.
Between this executive action and the settlements to these two cases, the Trump administration is setting a stark contrast with the Biden White House.
Someone does look like a king. And it isn’t Trump.
Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at ijacques@usatoday.com or on X: @Ingrid_Jacques