Following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in a case over claims the Biden administration unlawfully coerced social media companies to remove controversial content, Representative Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, was scolded on Saturday by President Joe Biden's former "Truth Minister" Nina Jankowicz.
On Wednesday, in a 6-3 ruling on Murthy v. Missouri in which Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion, the Court sided with the Biden administration and threw out claims that it unlawfully coerced social media companies to remove controversial content from their sites. The Court said that the Republican-led states, Louisiana and Missouri, along with individual plaintiffs did not have standing to sue administration officials over social media platforms' content moderation decisions regarding COVID-19 misinformation.
"The plaintiffs, without any concrete link between their injuries and the defendants' conduct, ask us to conduct a review of the yearslong communications between dozens of federal officials, across different agencies, with different social-media platforms, about different topics," Barrett wrote. "This court's standing doctrine prevents us from exercising such general legal oversight of the other branches of government."
Meanwhile, Jordan, the chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, set up in January 2023, previously launched an investigation on how the federal government working with social media companies have allegedly been "weaponized" to silence conservative and right-wing voices.
In a opinion piece published Saturday by MSNBC titled, "What it was like being 36 weeks pregnant and getting death threats from the right," Jankowicz, former executive director of Biden's now-defunct Disinformation Governance Board, discussed the case in which she was originally named in the lawsuit. However after her resignation, she was subsequently dropped from the case.
"I was 36 weeks pregnant, extremely out of breath and in the midst of one of the worst weeks of my life. For days, the right-wing media and members of Congress had been incessantly lying about me and my new job as executive director of the Disinformation Governance Board. They falsely claimed that the board—set up to coordinate policy related to disinformation within the Department of Homeland Security—was actually set up to police Americans' views and that I would be the country's chief censor. The allegations resulted in relentless, vitriolic harassment, doxxing and credible death threats to me and my family," Jankowicz wrote.
According to Jankowicz, the case not only disrupted her career, but her life as she pointed towards the efforts of Republicans in the investigation, specifically naming Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, as she called his investigation "absurd."
"But the damage this case and others like it have caused cannot be undone with a pronouncement from the Supreme Court. Twenty-five months after I resigned from government—the entirety of my son's short life—my family still contends with regular threats. I've been forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees in various challenges that have stemmed from the lie that I wanted to censor my fellow Americans: to get a protective order against a cyberstalker, to defend myself in a frivolous civil suit, to secure representation in Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio's absurd investigation of disinformation researchers," she wrote.
Newsweek has reached out to Jordan's office via email for comment.
Jankowicz's appointment to the federal advisory board that was aimed at countering falsehoods threatening homeland security drew heavy backlash from conservatives, who labelled the board an Orwellian "Ministry of Truth." As a result of the public criticism, the board was "paused" less than a month after its formation and Jankowicz resigned from her position.
Last year, Jordan signed and sent letters to at least three universities and a think tank that study the spread of disinformation, accusing them of conspiring with the government to suppress conservative speech online. The House subcommittee also held multiple hearings on allegations that the Biden administration conspired with social media companies to censor conservative speech.
However, the Biden administration argued in the case that it should have the freedom to talk openly to social media companies about hate speech, public health, election integrity and other areas where the promotion of false news must be combatted.
In addition, the White House has continued to deny the allegations stating last year, "We're not going to apologize for promoting responsible actions to protect public health, safety and security when confronted by challenges like a deadly pandemic or foreign attacks on our elections," Sharon Yang, a White House spokeswoman said. "We're also not going to apologize for believing that social media platforms have a responsibility—a critical responsibility—to take account of the effects their platforms have on the American people."
In a statement responding to the Court's Wednesday decision, Jordan said: "The First Amendment is first for a reason, and the freedom of expression should be protected from any infringement by the government. Our country benefits when ideas can be tested and debated fairly on their merits, whether online or in the halls of Congress. The Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government have uncovered how and the extent to which the Biden Administration engaged in a censorship campaign in violation of the First Amendment."
He added: "While we respectfully disagree with the Court's decision, our investigation has shown the need for legislative reforms, such as the Censorship Accountability Act, to better protect Americans harmed by the unconstitutional censorship-industrial complex. Our important work will continue."
Jankowicz is not the first to criticize Jordan as Representative Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat and member of the House Judiciary Committee, took aim at the GOP congressman in a statement posted to X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday.
"As expected, the Supreme Court has issued a stinging rebuke to Jim Jordan and his multimillion-dollar conspiracy theory filed witch hunt. The Court has concluded that the social media platforms ' exercised their own judgment' with regards to content moderation-which is precisely what we have heard from the dozens of witnesses that Jim Jordan has dragged before this committee," Nadler wrote.
He added: "I hope that after this humiliating defeat Chairman Jordan and his colleagues will end their failed investigation into the companies, universities, and individuals who have been trying to stop the spread of harmful misinformation and disinformation on social media."
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Natalie Venegas is a Weekend Reporter at Newsweek based in New York. Her focus is reporting on education, social justice ... Read more
