Hello, this is the Reason interview with Nick Gillespie. Thanks for listening.

Today's episode is sponsored by BetterHelp online therapy. That's Better Help, H-E-L-P, online therapy.

And we're going to talk more about them later in the show.

Today's episode is also an audio version of

the Reason live stream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern Time on Reason's YouTube

channel. Zach Weissmiller talked with Jay Batacharya, a professor of medicine, economics, and

health research policy at Stanford University, and John Vecione of the New Civil Liberties Alliance.

They are among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Missouri v. Biden, which names the president,

the Justice Department, the FBI, and nearly the entire federal public health apparatus as

defendants. Attorneys general for the states of Missouri and Louisiana brought

the case against the federal government in May of 2022 for what they described as open collusion

with social media companies to suppress disfavored speakers' viewpoints and content. We know this is

true. Bata Chari, Vecione, and the others charged that the government

illegally squelched their speech throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 presidential race by pushing

social media platforms to remove or minimize the reach of heterodox views on COVID-19.

This is what the reporting about the Twitter files,

as well as reasons reporting about the Facebook files, really has shown. In July, U.S. District

Court Judge Terry A. Dowdy issued a preliminary injunction ordering federal agencies to cease

from meeting with social media companies for the purpose of inducing

in any manner the removal of content containing protected free speech posted on social media platforms.

Last week, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments and a challenge to that injunction.

Badacharya and Vecioni talked with Zach about the state of the lawsuit,

...