Playing the devil’s advocate here but… strictly speaking the 1st amendment does not actually put restrictions on a unitary executive action… The plain text of the first amendment says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech…” One would like to think that if the constitution protects us from congressional over-reach that it should protect us from executive branch overreach as well… but, that is not what it says. I did a brief google search trying to find any case law that says it applies to the executive branch acting without cover of explicit law but didn’t turn anything up.
But… the DOJ did not go down this road when the case was before the lower courts. I don’t know if they can introduce a new argument at this level or not.
To me it’s unjust that we are subjected to the racist in chief’s tweets daily. Therefore, he can put up with not being able to block anyone.
Just take away his phone, many problems solved.
That’s a valid argument as far as it goes. I do believe the first amendment applies to the president but it probably hasn’t been adjudicated inasmuch as the president hasn’t tried to directly shut down speech before like this.
“The republican must win.” Seriously, you can expect that partisan vote every single time. The occasional “liberal” decision on social issues is just a figleaf for the naked exercise of power in the maintenance of minority rule. Since orange one’s tweets don’t matter for that, there’s a decent chance the SC will rule the right way on this.
That was addressed in the oral arguments… The plaintiffs named Trump as a defendant both in his person and in his official capacity as the President. The DOJ’s policy and past practice is to defend duly elected officials if they are sued in their official capacity.
Yeah, because this is something our government should be focusing on, the acting president’s ability to block criticism of him, and this is the sort of person we should want as our president, a thin-skinned infantile narcissist who thinks it’s all about him and sees nothing wrong with it.
We are living in the surreal era of malignant narcissists running entire major countries, e.g. Trump, Putin, Bibi, Ergogan, Xi, Jun, Johnson, Bolsonaro, Duterte, Assad, etc. Needless to say, this is not healthy for the planet and all life on it. It can’t go on much longer without some massive explosion.
Maybe we’re about to find out which principle is fundamentaler, Don’t Restrict Speech or Count All the Votes.