The Trump-Bessent Treasury Department has sanctioned a Brazilian Supreme Court justice, raising an international scandal over his rabid censorship obsession. And a U.S. official infamous for targeting free speech just got fired.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes has not only insisted on social media companies like X censoring speech of Brazilians within his country but has also tried to force companies to censor political dissidents outside of Brazil, for instance, in the United States, where he has taken companies to court multiple times. Moraes has also weaponized the justice system to use prosecutions and arrests as tools of political persecution. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has had enough.
Meanwhile, former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) head Jen Easterly, who oversaw extensive censorship efforts under the Biden administration, was just canned from her new position at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. While other governments around the world are cracking down on free speech, the Trump administration is protecting it.
On Wednesday, Bessent announced on X, “Today, @USTreasury is sanctioning Brazilian Supreme Federal Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has used his position to authorize arbitrary pre-trial detentions and suppress freedom of expression.”
Bessent listed Moraes’s authoritarian deeds. “Alexandre de Moraes is responsible for an oppressive campaign of censorship, arbitrary detentions that violate human rights, and politicized prosecutions—including against former President Jair Bolsonaro,” the treasury secretary wrote.
Bessent warned other would-be tyrants, “Treasury will continue to hold accountable those who threaten U.S. interests and those who impose limits on our freedoms.”
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Moraes was playing with fire when he took Donald Trump‘s company, Truth Social — and Rumble — to court in Florida for a second time (he lost the first case) in an effort to force censorship of a Brazilian dissident. Apparently, the dystopian dictator poked the bear one too many times.
Moraes isn’t the only one in hot water with the Trump administration for going censorship crazy. Ex-CISA chief Easterly had just been named Robert F. McDermott Distinguished Chair in the Department of Social Sciences for West Point, but Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll put a swift end to that, as he posted on X:
I have immediately directed West Point to: 1. Rescind Jen Easterly’s offer to serve as the McDermott Chair 2. Pause outside groups from selecting Academy employees or instructors[.] I have also asked the Chair of the West Point Board of Visitors to conduct a full review of the Academy’s hiring practices.
Both the Twitter Files and the House Judiciary Committee exposed CISA’s role in the Biden censorship industrial complex.
A now-deleted post from the West Point Dean yesterday, which Federalist CEO Sean Davis captured, had announced Easterly’s appointment under the nauseating title, “A Homecoming Worth Celebrating” (she is a graduate of the academy). Instead, Easterly’s censorship chickens came home to roost.
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