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Two Drinks with . . . Alex Berenson
The journalist just won a huge victory for free speech. Why hasn’t the mainstream media noticed?
By Joe Nocera
05.13.26 — Two Drinks
Alex Berenson was banned from Twitter after the Biden administration pressured the company to do so. He just got his day in court—and a big win for free speech. (Image courtesy of Alex Berenson)
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“When I went to bed last Thursday night,” Alex Berenson told me, “I was sure we didn’t have a deal. The government offered money, but they weren’t willing to admit what they had done. And I wasn’t going to agree to a settlement without that acknowledgment. But the next morning,” he added, “my lawyer texted me with the news that they had agreed to the language. So we made the deal.”

If you don’t know what Berenson is talking about, well, you can hardly be blamed. The mainstream media has studiously ignored Berenson v. Biden, even though it has enormous implications for the First Amendment. That “language” that Berenson insisted upon—and that the government finally agreed to include in the settlement? Let me quote some of it:

The United States Government. . . has acknowledged and conceded that the Government did in fact violate the First Amendment by exerting substantive coercive pressure on social media companies such as Twitter to suppress disfavored speech like Plaintiff’s.

Oh, yes, Berenson’s victory last Friday is a victory for anyone who cares about free speech.

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Joe Nocera
Joe Nocera is a senior editor and writer at The Free Press. During his long career in journalism, he has been a columnist at The New York Times, Bloomberg, Esquire, and GQ, the editorial director of Fortune, and a writer at Newsweek, Texas Monthly and The Washington Monthly. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2007.
Tags:
Covid
censorship
Law
Joe Biden
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