Check out “Restore the First” for a deep dive into the court cases and why a congressional record is not just necessary, it’s our last hope to stop COVID-style censorship when the “next pandemic” hits.
During the COVID era, government efforts to censor the Constitutionally-protected speech of Americans reached far beyond issuing public-health guidance. During the COVID era, federal officials, social-media companies, researchers, and outside organizations developed an extensive system for identifying, flagging, suppressing, or removing online speech—espeically speech challenging government policies and public-health narratives. Americans were told the suppressed speech was “misinformation” while the federal government created a broad censorship infrastructure with third-party organizations, which dictated what Americans could see, share, and debate online.
The heartbreaking truth is that while the government told us “misinformation” was killing Americans, evidence is being uncovered that the government knew or should have known information that could have kept Americans alive, or safe from injuries from the COVID shot. It is more clear than ever that the First Amendment is vital to the survival of Americans and our country.
In 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) published its now-infamous “Disinformation Dozen” report, targeting twelve people it claimed were responsible for most of the so-called anti-vaccine content online.
Six of those individuals sued in Finn v. Global Engagement Center, alleging that the CCDH report became a catalyst for a coordinated censorship campaign involving government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and social-media companies. One of those plaintiffs was Sayer Ji, co-founder of Stand for Health Freedom and founder of GreenMedInfo. The lawsuit named the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), CISA, the FBI, FCC, CCDH and others, alleging that government and private actors worked together to identify and suppress disfavored speech. Those allegations echoed issues raised in Murthy v. Missouri (where states and individuals sued for federal manipulation of social media content) and congressional investigations into government-platform communications. During one of the most consequential public-health debates of our lifetime, Americans raising questions about government COVID policy said that they were not simply being answered or fact-checked—they were being tracked, labeled and pushed out of the public conversation.
Finn illustrates why litigation can be so important when government transparency fails—and what is lost when a case ends before discovery can fully develop the record. Lawsuits can compel production of emails, records, depositions and internal communications that the public might otherwise never see. Discovery in Murthy v. Missouri, for example, gave the public an extraordinary window into communications between federal officials and social-media platforms, even though the Supreme Court ultimately disposed of that case on standing rather than deciding whether the government violated the First Amendment. Finn potentially offered another avenue to investigate the broader censorship ecosystem, including the relationships among CCDH, GEC, federal agencies and technology companies. But on July 28, 2026, the federal district court dismissed the third amended complaint without any ability to file again and closed the case. The court did not decide whether the alleged censorship scheme occurred, nor did it resolve the underlying First Amendment allegations on their merits; Judge Wendy Berger concluded that the plaintiffs had again failed to plead their claims with sufficient specificity, including by grouping government defendants together without adequately identifying which defendant was responsible for which alleged conduct. Whatever additional evidence might have emerged through discovery in Finn therefore will not emerge through this lawsuit.
Yet the story did not end when the courthouse door closed. Just weeks after Finn was dismissed, State Department Under Secretary Sarah Rogers released what she called the “GEC Files,” internal records she says show that the now-defunct Global Engagement Center participated in a government “censorship-by-proxy” operation during the 2020 election through the Election Integrity Partnership. But by shutting down the court case in Finn, these documents now can only be investigated by Congress, not litigation.
From an informed-consent perspective, the stakes are especially high as the government record surrounding COVID continues to be revisited—including what officials knew and when they knew it about myocarditis and other potential vaccine safety signals. Scientific understanding changes as evidence emerges, and questions that government officials consider privately should not become forbidden questions for Americans to ask publicly. With Finn closed, GEC dismantled, and new records still surfacing, Congress should investigate the full censorship record, subpoena the remaining documents, put witnesses under oath, hold public hearings and preserve the evidence in the Congressional Record. We cannot prevent the next censorship system unless we fully understand how the last one worked.