Last month, my rights were violated up close and personal.
I was driving home from New York City. 2 a.m. Sunday morning. Four-lane divided highway. Empty. I was exhausted, alone, and sober.
Ahead I saw a police sedan’s flashing lights. A drunk driving checkpoint. State troopers, not local cops.
I slowed, pulled up, lowered my window. Can I see your license?
I know sobriety checkpoints have been found constitutionally okay. In my opinion – which predates this interaction – they aren’t. Want to pull me over because I’m speeding, or failing to signal, or weaving? Have at it. Sure, no one drives the limit at 2 a.m. (or ever) on Route 9, but at the least I have committed a legal infraction.
But stopping me when I have broken no law – not even, in the famous words of Jay-Z,
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You blew zero-point-zero, the trooper said a few seconds later. (Told you I was sober. And that I could guarantee you I didn’t smell of alcohol.)
He sounded disappointed. (A cop would later tell me that he probably was, he’d been looking forward to getting me in the back of his cruiser.)
He gave me back my keys and I drove off.
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I was furious when I got home. Furious when I woke up the next morning. My stomach is churning just writing this.
Furious at the cops for violating my Fourth Amendment rights against warrantless searches. And at myself for not standing up to them.
But the government’s coercive power is very, very real. And it metastasizes. It has to be checked constantly. Because the people in charge will always tell themselves they have good reasons to do what they’re doing. They all have good reasons your rights don’t matter.
You see where this is going.
I can’t do anything about that checkpoint. It’s over.
But I can do something about the fact that Andy Slavitt “asked” Twitter to ban me when he was a senior official at the White House in 2021 and kept “asking” until he and the Biden Administration and Pfizer’s board members got what they all wanted, my First Amendment rights be dammed.
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(And I am doing something. With your help.)
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The thing is, Berenson v Biden – my federal lawsuit over that 2021 conspiracy to silence me – isn’t just for me.
It’s for everyone who followed me on Twitter – and everyone I wrote about.
Including Simone Scott. A 19-year-old college student who died of myocarditis only weeks after receiving her second mRNA Covid shot.
That tweet was viewed two million times – far more than the average cable news show.
By July and August 2021 my tweets were being viewed close to 10 million times a day. And my reach was only growing.
Until Slavitt and the gang forced Twitter to censor me. I still had Substack, and Substack was nice, Substack was great, but nothing I’ve written on here has ever been viewed two million times. Twitter gave me a worldwide audience.
Which is why they had to take it from me.
Missouri v Biden is gone (basically). But I have the standing – the proof of particular injury caused by particular conduct – those plaintiffs lacked.
And, with your help, I intend to show the Biden Administration – and the world – that the First Amendment still matters.