Should any powerful elected official in America use his influence to have an opposition newspaper canceled? Is it allowable for a president or governor to have such a paper literally taken out of print?
Well, it happened. In Illinois. At least temporarily.
This sad episode in the heartland speaks to a larger dangerous trend in America. Increasingly, the permanent political class and corporate elites cooperate to suppress our rights of free speech and a free press.
For example, the Biden White House directly intervened with Big Tech to censor voices like Alex Berenson. What was the online “crime” of this former New York Times reporter? Well, Berenson dared to document reasons for skepticism regarding the experimental vaccines produced by Big Pharma that were forced upon millions of Americans via government, employment, and educational mandates.
Thankfully Berenson is back online, but only because of hardnosed litigation. Now, this new recent act of suppression and reprisal by Gov. JB Pritzker in Illinois forms the next opportunity to defend free expression.
Pritzker faces a tough reelection campaign in a likely wave election year that puts even formerly Democrat states like Illinois in play. So, rather than try to defend his miserable record of failure as governor, Pritzker recently intervened directly to have privately-funded newspapers canceled and opposition TV ads removed from the airwaves in Illinois.
In recent weeks, a group named Local Government Information Services has mailed out millions of physical newspapers using investigative journalism as well as opinion pieces (including some of my own) to expose Pritzker’s ruinous record. The papers highlight, for example, how much worse inflation is in Illinois compared to neighboring states. They also provide tragic details of the crime sweeping Illinois during Pritzker’s tenure.
Perhaps most irritating to Pritzker, the free-speech newspapers provide tangible, real-world evidence of the looming dangers of Pritzker’s misnamed SAFE-T Act, which will free thousands of extremely violent felons without cash bail, including perpetrators charged with second-degree murder, kidnapping, and arson. The LGIS papers smartly dared to showcase the mugshots of some of the criminals who will soon roam Illinois streets, courtesy of the soft-on-crime radicalism of Gov. Pritzker.
By Steve Cortes
