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Supreme Court unanimously rules that public officials can be sued for blocking critics on social media

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From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett Justice noted that the personal social media accounts of public officials often present an ‘ambiguous’ status because they mix official announcements with personal content.

The United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Friday that government officials who post about work-related topics on their personal social media accounts can be held liable for violating the First Amendment rights of constituents by blocking their access or deleting their critical comments.  

In a 15-page opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted that the personal social media accounts of public officials often present an “ambiguous” status because they mix official announcements with personal content.

The court ruled in two cases where people were blocked after leaving critical comments on social media accounts of public officials.   

The first case involved two elected members of a California school board — the Poway Unified School District Board of Trustees — who blocked concerned parents from their Facebook and Twitter accounts after leaving critical comments.  

The court upheld the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that said the board members had violated the parents’ free speech rights.    

The second case before the court concerned James Freed, Port Huron, Michigan’s city manager who had blocked constituent Kevin Lindke from commenting on his Facebook page after deleting his remarks about the city’s COVID-19 pandemic policies.  

Lindke believed that Freed had violated the First Amendment by doing so and sued Freed.  

Freed maintained that he launched his Facebook page long before becoming a public official, arguing that most of the content on his account concerned family-related matters.  

Justice Barrett explained: 

Like millions of Americans, James Freed maintained a Facebook account on which he posted about a wide range of  topics, including his family and his job. Like most of those Americans, Freed occasionally received unwelcome comments on his posts. In response, Freed took a step familiar to Facebook users: He deleted the comments and blocked those who made them.     

For most people with a Facebook account, that would  have been the end of it. But Kevin Lindke, one of the unwelcome commenters, sued Freed for violating his right to free speech. Because the First Amendment binds only the government, this claim is a nonstarter if Freed posted as a private citizen. Freed, however, is not only a private citizen but also the city manager of Port Huron, Michigan — and while Freed insists that his Facebook account was strictly personal, Lindke argues that Freed acted in his official capacity when he silenced Lindke’s speech.

When a government official posts about job-related topics on social media, it can be difficult to tell whether the speech is official or private. We hold that such speech is attributable to the State only if the official (1) possessed actual authority to speak on the State’s behalf, and (2) purported to exercise that authority when he spoke on social media. 

In the end, the high court sent Lindke’s case back to the Sixth Circuit Federal Appeals Court for a second look.  

Perhaps reflecting continued ambiguity following the court’s ruling, both defendant Freed and plaintiff Lindke declared victory. 

“I am very pleased with the outcome the justices came to,” Freed told ABC News in a statement. “The Court rejected the plaintiff’s appearance test and further refined a test for review by the Sixth Circuit. We are extremely confident we will prevail there once more.”  

Lindke was more effusive and told ABC News that he was “ecstatic” with the court’s decision.   

“A 9-0 decision is very decisive and is a clear indicator that public officials cannot hide behind personal social media accounts when discussing official business,” said Lindke.  

Legal experts called attention to the persistence of gray area in the law regarding social media due to the narrowness of the court’s decision. 

“This case doesn’t tell us much new about how to understand the liability of the 20 million people who work in local, state, administrative or federal government in the U.S. … just that the question is complicated,” Kate Klonick, an expert on online-platform regulation who teaches at St. John’s Law School, told The Washington Post 

Katie Fallow, senior counsel for the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University,  told the Post that the court’s ruling does not sufficiently address public officials’ widespread use of personal “shadow accounts,” which constituents often perceive as official.  

Fallow said the court was “right to hold that public officials can’t immunize themselves from First Amendment liability merely by using their personal accounts to conduct official business.”  

We are disappointed, though, that the Court did not adopt the more practical test used by the majority of the courts of appeals, which appropriately balanced the free speech interests of public officials with those of the people who want to speak to them on their social media accounts. 

According to The Hill, the Biden administration and a bipartisan group of 17 states and National Republican Senatorial Committee sided with officials, arguing in favor of their blocks, while the ACLU backed the cons 

Friday’s ruling is only the first of several this term that deal with the relationship between government and social media.

“On Feb. 26, the justices heard argument[s] in a pair of challenges to controversial laws in Florida and Texas that seek to regulate large social-media companies,” explained Amy Howe on Scotusblog.com.  “And on Monday the justices will hear oral arguments in a dispute alleging that the federal government violated the First Amendment by pressuring social media companies to remove false or misleading content. Decisions in those cases are expected by summer.” 

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Crime

RCMP Bust B.C. Fentanyl Superlab Linked to Mexico and Transnational Exports

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Sam Cooper 

@samthebureau

In a remote mountainous area of British Columbia, federal police have dismantled the largest fentanyl laboratory ever discovered in Canada. This western province has become a critical front in the Five Eyes battle against the production and distribution of deadly synthetic narcotics trafficked globally by networks involving Chinese and Iranian state-sponsored mafias and Mexican cartels.

In a groundbreaking discovery, the RCMP located the superlab in Falkland—a village of 946 residents nestled in the rugged terrain between Calgary and Vancouver—using Phenyl-2-Propanone (P2P) to manufacture methamphetamine. This production method, primarily employed by Mexican cartels, stems from the precursors and scientific expertise Mexican cartels have gathered from elite Chinese criminals since the early 2000s, according to U.S. enforcement sources.

David Teboul, Commander of the RCMP Federal Policing program in the Pacific Region, underscored the significance: “Manufacturing methamphetamine using P2P had not been seen in Western Canada until now,” he said. “The P2P manufacturing method has been the primary method used by Mexican cartels to produce methamphetamine for years.”

Demonstrating the destructive power of the cartels involved, the RCMP seized a staggering cache of illicit substances and weapons. Officers confiscated 54 kilograms of fentanyl, massive amounts of precursor chemicals, 390 kilograms of methamphetamine, 35 kilograms of cocaine, 15 kilograms of MDMA, and 6 kilograms of cannabis. The superlab was described as the largest and most sophisticated of its kind, capable of producing multiple types of illicit drugs.

“To put things into context,” Teboul said, “the over 95 million potentially lethal doses of fentanyl that have been seized could have taken the lives of every Canadian at least twice over.”

A large portion of the product was destined for other countries.

During the investigation, RCMP officers learned of several large shipments of methamphetamine prepared for international export. They intercepted 310 kilograms of methamphetamine before it could leave Canada, preventing a significant quantity from reaching global markets—a critical point as Canada faces pressure from its allies over its role in the global fentanyl and methamphetamine trade.

Teboul noted that the RCMP collaborated with its Five Eyes enforcement partners—an intelligence alliance comprising Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Although Teboul did not provide specific details, this cooperation underscores the international scope of the transnational investigation.

The first suspect, Gaganpreet Singh Randhawa, was identified and arrested during raids. He is currently in custody and faces multiple charges, including possession and export of controlled substances, possession of prohibited firearms and devices, and possession of explosive devices. More arrests are expected, Teboul said.

The scale of this criminal network echoes the power and violence fueling gang wars that have rocked British Columbia, putting innocent lives at risk during high-powered shootouts in Vancouver. Investigators seized a total of 89 firearms, including 45 handguns, 21 AR-15-style rifles, and submachine guns—many of which were loaded and ready for use. The searches also uncovered small explosive devices, vast amounts of ammunition, firearm silencers, high-capacity magazines, body armor, and $500,000 in cash.

British Columbia has been grappling with an influx of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, significantly exacerbating the opioid crisis across Canada. The province has witnessed a surge in overdose deaths, prompting law enforcement to intensify efforts against drug production and trafficking networks. Experts highlight weaknesses in Canadian laws and a lack of federal oversight at the Port of Vancouver, which have been exploited by transnational crime and money laundering organizations from China, Iran, and Mexico.

This significant bust comes at a time when Canada is under increased scrutiny from international allies over its role as a hub for the export of fentanyl and methamphetamine. The superlab takedown appears to align with serious concerns raised by lawmakers in Washington about how Canada and Mexico are being used by transnational crime organizations to distribute fentanyl worldwide.

A recent U.S. congressional report argues that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) strategy relies less on overt military actions and more on covert tactics, including trafficking of fentanyl and leveraging money laundering, aimed at exploiting vulnerabilities across social, economic, and health domains.

“Fentanyl precursors are manufactured in China and shipped to Mexico and Canada. For precursors that arrive in Mexico, Chinese transnational mafias work with Mexican cartels to smuggle and distribute fentanyl in the United States on behalf of the CCP,” the report states. “The DEA confirmed Chinese transnational crime leaders hold government positions in the CCP and indicated that Chinese transnational crime organizations are dedicated to the CCP.”

“The public deserves to know about the CCP’s role in fentanyl production and how the Party is using fentanyl as a chemical weapon to kill Americans,” the report adds. It recommends that Washington publicly “blame the CCP as much as the DEA and its partners currently blame the Sinaloa Cartel” for fentanyl trafficking and urges the government to “educate international allies about CCP chemical warfare” and encourage them to condemn Chinese transnational crime.

According to congressional investigations, Beijing is actively incentivizing the export of fentanyl and methamphetamine worldwide. The report alleges that Chinese criminal organizations, including Triads led by individuals with official positions in the CCP, are working alongside Mexican cartels to generate profit to fund interference operations in America.

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International

RFK Jr: Trump has ‘asked me to clean up the corruption’ in federal health agencies

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From LifeSiteNews

By Emily Mangiaracina

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he has been tasked by Donald Trump with ending the conflicts of interest that now compromise the integrity of U.S. health agencies, with devastating ripple effects on the well-being of Americans.

Former Democrat-turned-independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Wednesday that former President Donald Trump has asked him to reorganize and “clean up” federal health agencies like the CDC and FDA if Trump is re-elected in November.

Kennedy, who joined Trump’s presidential transition team in late August after dropping out of the race himself and then endorsing the former president, shared in an appearance on NewsNation that Trump wants him to “reorganize the federal health agencies” affecting human health, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as well as some of the agencies within the USDA.”

“He’s asked me to clean up the corruption, number one,” Kennedy said. “Number two, end the conflicts of interest.”

In recent years, Kennedy has spoken much publicly about the pattern of corruption and conflicts of interest that he witnessed firsthand during his many years as an environmental attorney. During Kennedy’s presidential run, he discussed how the “corporate capture” of regulatory agencies is the “biggest threat to American democracy.”

As Kennedy explained during his Wednesday NewsNation appearance, “When you litigate these agencies, you get a Ph.D. in corporate capture and how to unravel it.”

According to Kennedy, the problem is pronounced in health agencies, where for example, the FDA “gets 50 percent of its budget from Big Pharma” and the NIH “collects royalties when (a) pharma company sells (its) product,” as he explained in an interview last year.

Kennedy went on to share Wednesday that he has been tasked by Trump with “return(ing)” those U.S. health agencies “to their rich tradition of gold-standard, empirically based, evidence-based medicine.”

He shared that Trump has also tasked him with ending “the chronic disease epidemic in this country,” adding, “And he’s asked me specifically to measurably reduce chronic disease in our children within two years.”

On Wednesday, he cited statistics showing unprecedented, drastically poor patterns of health in Americans, especially in children.

According to Kennedy, a staggering “77% of American boys cannot qualify for the military because of a chronic disease, and that while when he was a child, “the average pediatrician saw one case of diabetes in his lifetime,” now one out of every three kids is diabetic or pre-diabetic.

He further shared that in his generation, only “one in 10,000” has full-blown autism, whereas now the rate is one in 34 children.

“This is an existential threat to the country,” said Kennedy, adding that Trump wants his “legacy to the American people” to be “the end of the chronic disease epidemic.”

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