America Gets a Birthday Present

This column has to plead guilty to optimism about the greatest country in the world, but how can anyone who prizes limited constitutional governance not be cheered by recent events? After last week’s series of Supreme Court decisions affirming foundational American principles, this week a federal judge is pushing back against Washington’s serial abuses of First Amendment freedoms. Granted it’s only a preliminary injunction from one judge, but it brings new hope that the federal judiciary is not going to accept the Biden administration’s self-appointment as the arbiter of truth online.

The Journal’s Jacob Gershman reports:

A federal judge issued a broad preliminary injunction limiting the federal government from communicating with social-media companies about online content, ruling that Biden administration officials’ policing of social-media posts likely violated the First Amendment.

In a 155-page ruling issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty of Louisiana barred White House officials and multiple federal agencies from contacting social-media companies with the purpose of suppressing political views and other speech normally protected from government censorship.

The judge’s injunction came in a lawsuit led by the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana who alleged that the Biden administration fostered a sprawling “federal censorship enterprise” in its effort to stamp out what it viewed as rampant disinformation circulating on social media.

Judge Doughty writes:

This case is about the Free Speech Clause in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The explosion of social-media platforms has resulted in unique free speech issues—this is especially true in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history. In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the Federal Government, and particularly the Defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech.

Although the censorship alleged in this case almost exclusively targeted conservative speech, the issues raised herein go beyond party lines. The right to free speech is not a member of any political party and does not hold any political ideology. It is the purpose of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail, rather than to countenance monopolization of the market, whether it be by government itself or private licensee.

Issuing the injunction on Independence Day, the judge adds:

The principal function of free speech under the United States’ system of government is to invite dispute; it may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger... Freedom of speech and press is the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom.

Judge Doughty then shares a few thoughts from the Founding Fathers on this issue, starting with George Washington:

For if men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the slaughter.

The judge then quotes Benjamin Franklin:

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the free acts of speech.

There’s also this quotation from Thomas Jefferson :

Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.

Amen.

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Where the Opportunities Are
Michael Sasso and Alexandre Tanzi report for Bloomberg:

For the first time, six fast-growing states in the South — Florida, Texas, Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee — are contributing more to the national GDP than the Northeast, with its Washington-New York-Boston corridor, in government figures going back to the 1990s. The switch happened during the pandemic and shows no signs of reverting...

The Southeast accounted for more than two-thirds of all job growth across the U.S. since early 2020, almost doubling its pre-pandemic share. And it was home to 10 of the 15 fastest-growing American large cities...

In recent decades, the warmer weather, lower taxes, looser regulation and cheaper housing lured companies and retirees. But this pandemic-era Sun Belt economic upswing is wider in scope.

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Short-Termism
Illinois is not in the Northeast, but it also has been losing citizens as people flee heavy tax burdens and unreasonable governance. A report from the Land of Lincoln suggests the state’s political leadership has its own priorities. Jeremy Gorner reports for the Chicago Tribune:

A key component of Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s $1.8 billion reelection year tax relief plan will come to an end on Saturday as consumers will again start paying a state tax on groceries, while at the same time seeing a hike at the gas pump for a second time this year.

The temporary tax breaks — the gas tax reprieve ended Jan. 1 — were passed last year amid soaring inflation and record-setting gas prices, and they provided major talking points for Pritzker and his legislative allies ahead of the Nov. 8 general election.

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Gavin Newsom’s New Fans
“Newsom hits the road to campaign for Biden in Idaho, building his own base in red states,” says a headline in the Los Angeles Times. Given that the California governor has been conducting a years-long experiment in progressive policy-making, some readers may be amused at the idea that he’s building a “base” in a state with more sensible governance.

But Hannah Wiley reports in the Los Angeles Times from Boise that Mr. Newsom is getting a warm reception, at least from Democratic donors:

At a private fundraiser in the middle of Donald Trump’s America, California Gov. Gavin Newsom was on a mission to help President Biden.

Newsom, who hit the road during the Fourth of July holiday weekend, told a group of roughly 50 Democrats gathered in the backyard of a mansion overlooking the Boise foothills Saturday to make the “powerful case for why we should be passionate, enthusiastic about Biden’s reelection.”

... Many of the Democrats who flocked to hear Newsom speak in Idaho and at a separate fundraising event earlier that day in Bend, Ore., said they thought the 55-year-old liberal governor offered a glimpse into the future of their party, a bolder, more charismatic and younger potential heir of Biden’s legacy in the post-Trump years.

Yet it seems that some Idaho residents know the California governor all too well, and he’s one of the reasons they live in Idaho. Ms. Wiley notes:

...Newsom also has to contend with any side effects of his campaigning in red states like Idaho, one of the top states where Californians are fleeing, according to data analyzed by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. During Newsom’s tenure as governor, California has seen a surge in homelessness and a worsening housing shortage and affordability crisis, some of the issues cited in a recent PPIC poll showing that about 4 in 10 Californians are considering leaving the state.

On the other hand, since most Idahoans still haven’t lived in a jurisdiction governed by Mr. Newsom, perhaps they will be more open to the idea than those who have already had that pleasure.

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James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival” and also the co-author of “Borrowed Time: Two Centuries of Booms, Busts and Bailouts at Citi.”

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(Teresa Vozzo helps compile Best of the Web. Thanks to Jackie Harty, Ethel Fenig, Wil Woodrum and Monty Krieger.)

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