Jenin Younes

Episode 218: “The Ugly Truth About the White House, the FBI and the Social Media Companies” with Jenin Younes and Todd Zywicki

Newly released documents show that the White House has played a major role in censoring Americans on social media.  Email exchanges between Rob Flaherty, the White House’s director of digital media, and social-media executives prove the companies put Covid censorship policies in place in response to relentless, coercive pressure from the White House—not voluntarily as the government has claimed.  The emails emerged last month in the discovery phase of Missouri v. Biden, a free-speech case brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana and four private plaintiffs, including leading epidemiologists Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya and Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff.  Government’s role in social media censorship has been just as bad as we feared and worse.  So what are the details, and what’s at stake? To explain, Jenin Younes, litigation counsel at the New Civil Liberties Alliance which is representing the private plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden, joins me on this episode with  Todd Zywicki, Professor at George Mason’s Scalia Law School and who was last on the show exploring with me whether “Chinese-Style Social Credit Will Be Coming to America” The […]

Episode 187: “The Federal Government Is Using Twitter to Censor Speech” with Jenin Younes and John Vecchione

Is this right and lawful? Well, we now have a test case to find out. In a first-of-its-kind First Amendment lawsuit against the federal government, attorneys Jenin Younes and John Vecchione of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, argue that the government acted wrongfully when it “directed social media platforms, including Twitter, to censor alleged “misinformation” about COVID-19.” Both Jenin and John join me on this episode to explain the suit and what’s at stake for free speech. To recollect, in May 2021, the White House began a coordinated and escalating public campaign to stop what it called the flow of purported “health misinformation” related to Covid-19. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki went so far to say that the President believed social media platforms have a responsibility to censor health “misinformation” related to Covid-19 vaccinations. She then added ominously that by not doing so social media companies were responsible for American deaths. Next, the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) directed social media platforms including Twitter to censor alleged “misinformation” about Covid-19. […]

Episode 175: “The West’s New Totalitarianism” with Dr. Naomi Wolf and Jenin Younes

In the past two years, measures taken to deal with Covid have resulted in extraordinary losses of freedom in the West – in fact, all over the world – driven by government mandates and lockdowns. Now that it’s clear that we’re no longer in the throes of a pandemic, what next? For how long are citizens prepared to accept these extraordinary extensions of state power and loss of their civil liberties? Have we slid into permanent tyranny in the name of “protecting us?” Joining me on this episode are two people who refuse to accept this tyranny. Dr. Naomi Wolf,  author of seven best-selling books, who writes on Substack as the extraordinary and fierce “Outspoken with Dr. Naomi Wolf” (see below) and Jenin Younes, litigation council for the New Civil Liberties Alliance, NCLA, a former public defender, and a warrior against the massive encroachment of the Administrative State. Both Naomi and Jenin have made an intellectually and emotionally difficult break with the Left over governments’ totalitarian response to Covid, and in this episode they explain why. It’s not so much that they’ve changed their views, rather the ideological tectonic plates have […]

Episode 163: “Challenging Leviathan” with Mark Chenoweth and Jenin Younes

In this episode, we’re talking again about the coercive power of the Administrative State and its serious threat to our constitutional freedoms. No other development in contemporary American law denies more rights to more Americans. Joining me to discuss is Mark Chenoweth, Executive Director, and Jenin Younes, Litigation Counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) a public interest litigation and pro bono advocacy law firm. NCLA represents both plaintiffs and defendants engaged with administrative state actions to make sure that their civil liberties are not being violated. Although Americans still enjoy the shell of their Republic, the administrative state has brought about exactly the sort of government that the Constitution was designed to prevent. “The kinds of protections that you would expect to have, if say a prosecutor from the Department of Justice were going after you in a federal district court, those same protections don’t exist if it’s a federal agency going after you in an administrative adjudication.” “We’re looking for cases where we can change the law,” explains Mark. For example: Challenging Covid-19 regulations and orders imposed by executive decree. The […]

Episode 152: “The Administrative State vs Our Civil Liberties” with Philip Hamburger and Jenin Younes

Joe Biden has mandated that businesses with more than 100 employees require every worker to be vaccinated or face weekly testing. It’s estimated this will impact over 80 million people or almost two thirds of the country’s workforce.  Setting aside his dictatorial and offensive tone, does Joe Biden really have the power to do this or is it that under the guise of “keeping us safe,” federal state and local governments have trampled our constitutional rights with draconian regulations and emergency orders with arbitrary executive decrees? This points towards even a bigger threat to our freedoms: an enormous and growing Administrative State and its threat to every American’s constitutional rights.  With me on this episode is Phillip Hamburger, the founder of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a scholar of constitutional law whose contributions are unrivaled by any US legal scholar in driving the national debate on the first amendment, government administrative power, and the separation of church and state.  Also joining me is one of our favorite returning guests, Jenin Younes, litigation counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance, and […]