WSJ Special Access gives you a front row seat to some of the Wall Street Journal's most exciting content,

including exclusive live events and interviews with top executives and newsmakers,

only for subscribers and only on Spotify.

From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

A federal judge rules that the Biden administration illegally pressured social media platforms to

censor certain views it didn't like, especially on COVID-19. And the judge bars administration

officials from meeting with the social media platforms. How significant is this case for the future

of free speech and the government use of private actors to do what the first amendment bars

government from doing? Welcome. I'm Paul Gigo with the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal,

and I'm here with my colleagues, Alicia Finley and Kyle Peterson talking about this case, which is

Missouri V-Bite right now in federal district court. Alicia, tell us about the background of this

case. Who sued the government and what are they claiming? So Louisiana and Missouri the states,

they sued actually various government officials. There are over a couple dozen in various government

agencies and these include CDC, Census Bureau, FBI, the HHS and some of the officials that were named

were Anthony Fauci as well as Rob Flourty, who we can get to in a little bit, who worked at these

agencies. And what the states and also some scientists are leading plaintiffs were authors of the

Great Barrington Declaration in 2020, which was censored by many of these platforms.

Which took an alternative view of how to handle the pandemic. Right. One of the other plaintiffs

is the owner of Gateway Pundit, who's posted and had been censored by some of these platforms.

And they alleged that the platforms again in Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, being the primary ones,

were censoring or removing in some cases, de-platforming individuals at the behest of the government

and that the government and these government agencies and officials were coercing or

...