Even if we assume we are talking about the spirit of the First Amendment, I don’t see a violation, and you have to twist it pretty hard to find one.
The spirit of the First Amendment is about being able to speak/worship/assemble/complain freely. There’s really nothing in the concept that requires the government to give a shit about what you are speaking/praying/assembling/complaining about.
Well, seeing as how every one of them has printed in every newspaper, paper and online, I think that’s covered. If not, I feel certain Twitter can do a printout of inanities that the President has put forth. Or we could do a google search. Nothing is every really deleted in this day and age.
I do not see how Twitter blocking can possibly be a 1st Amendment issue. It’s not like they can’t get the information. Even people smart enough not to have twitter accounts can get those. Some twitter users are being blocked from the President, but they still have their own accounts and continue to be free to tweet whatever they like.
You are free to stand up on a soapbox, but I don’t have to let you use mine.
And have everyone else see it (Minus Trump and anyone else who has that particular person blocked).
It seems to me you really really want this to be true and an issue but can’t come to terms with it not being one.
You’ll have to wait until tomorrow (or later this afternoon… or even next hour).
I’m not sure that deliberately deleting originals and relying on copies provided by other sources not directly connected to the President is what the Act has in mind, but I am open to the idea if it can be shown to have happened in the past.
You beat me to it. If Trump could block people from reading his tweets, I think there’d be a real issue. But as you say, you can read anyone’s tweets just the way you read any other Web page, without anyone being able to block you.
The only thing Trump’s blocking is your ability to respond directly to his tweets in the way that particular medium lets you do if you have a Twitter account, and that sucks I guess, but that’s life. There’s no First Amendment issue here.
Not really, no. I don’t feel this is an issue at all.
Which only means that Mr. Trump is owed a LOT of money by the Government for seizing his Twitter account, which is the biggest in the world.
Blink. Blink. Blink.
Did you really just say that?
Don’t you know that Trump moves so fast that people can’t expect accuracy from press briefings anymore?
Please do NOT give Trump the idea that he can profit from this, too.
Yeah, there IS that little problem. Are there any statements from The White House contradicting the Press Secretary’s statement that all Presidential tweets are official statements from the Prez hisself yet?
None of the few articles have actually offered up a cogent legal theory to support what they’re suggesting might be the case.
You offered up those articles without presenting a cogent legal theory to buttress their claims.
I am not aware of any cogent legal theories that might support these claims.
So the common thread here is… a lack of cogent legal theory.
My opinion is: there is no First Amendment or statutory violation arising from the President’s decision to block people from his @RealDonaldTrump Twitter handle. It would fall to the person making the opposite claim to identify the specific theory that there IS such a violation.
Sorry. Meant that part of my post for Czarcasm (The OP), not you.
See post 56. Spicer can say that Trump has annexed Mars: it is inherently a unsupported claim with no reason to take it seriously, and “The White House” failing to contradict such a silly claim has no bearing on the truth of it.
Apparently, nothing is official White House Policy unless it is signed by the President in front of witnesses…or are there exceptions to that, too?
What on earth are you talking about? White House staff make policy decisions all the time, to the extent that they have a legal basis to do so. But just because a White House staffer says something is so, does not make it so.
I’m starting to think this thread is some kind of joke.
No, and for a guy who’s just a curious amateur seeking information from a purely neutral perspective, you seem remarkably resistant to this particular information: there is no real legal relevance to “official” in this context. Spicer did not say that Trump has donated the account to the government. He didn’t say that the the account is nor officially subject to NARA restrictions.
And even if he did say those things, that doesn’t make them true. Spicer cannot donate a Twitter account he doesn’t own.
Did you not read the Volokh post?
It offers a cogent legal theory. The replies to tweets operate as a limited public forum from which comments may not be excluded on the basis of viewpoint. EV endorses this framework but is skeptical that the account’s actions count as government actions–which is fair. There are clear arguments both ways given the way Trump uses the account for official business.
You may not agree with that theory. But saying it isn’t cogent seems plainly wrong.
I did.
Drawing from the Cacheris opinions in the Davison v. Plowman and Davison v. Loudoun County Board of Supervisors cases, there is a key difference between " is run by a government agency," and " is run by an individual officeholder." @RealDonaldTrump is the latter. “The mere fact that Defendant Randall holds public office does not subject every social media account she controls to First Amendment scrutiny.”
Eugene says: “Again, my inclination is to say that @RealDonaldTrump, an account that Trump began to use long before he became president, and one that is understood as expressing his own views — apparently in his own words and with his own typos — rather than some institutional position of the executive branch, would likely be seen as privately controlled, so that his blocking decisions wouldn’t be constrained by the First Amendment.”
He lays out the factors that might cause a private account to be considered public bit does not suggest that they apply here.
So there is a cogent legal theory for some private accounts, where “…officeholders have involved their staffers in the maintenance of the social media account,” but not one for Trump’s Twitter, which warts and all appears to be his and not his staff’s.
I read Prof Volokh as well and thought it was well laid out. I think the case for @POTUS may be stronger, but still treading relatively new ground.
Still not sure if we’re discussing the law, or the spirit of it, or something else - that seems muddied.
One might argue that the horrendous grammar, misspelling and lack of coherency proves that no staffers have been able to manage his account. 
I don’t think it’s that easy on Twitter. You can block people individually, and some people have made filters and block lists, but to block everyone globally would mean no one who is logged in can read your tweets, which would be idiotic, so I don’t think anyone has come up with a way to do that. There may be a way to mute everyone instead, so they can see your stuff but you don’t have to look at theirs, but that kind of defeats the whole purpose of Twitter in the first place. It’s a conversation after all.