If you're a private citizen, yes. If you're a government employee, speaking in the course of your duties, then it's not your speech, it's government speech. The First Amendment doesn't protect the right of the government to speech, because the government doesn't have rights. What does that even mean, for the US Government to have a right to speak without fear of action being taken against it by the US Government?
If you prefer, it'd make a whole bunch of press conferences unconstitutional.
It's quite common for elected officials to criticize private citizens and businesses. To be concrete: Ted Cruz (and a bunch of others) publicly pressured the NFL over players kneeling at games, in a clear attempt to suppress First Amendment expression by said players, without any hint of consequences.
> What they can't do is order the political speech of citizens be censored.
Agreed. That doesn't appear to have happened. Even the worst examples the Twitter Files sort of reporting could dig up is some loud huffing and puffing followed by a :rolleyes: emoji and inaction from various social networks.
> That appears to be exactly what has been happening.
None of the Twitter Files involve a government order to censor speech.
There's begging, cajoling, suggesting, implying, etc., but they don't have the power to order in most of these cases, and that's evidenced by the fact that quite a bit of the time the social networks said no.
Do feel free to cite an actual order to suppress speech that we can specifically discuss.
> None of the Twitter Files involve a government order to censor speech.
Several of the Twitter Files have given concrete examples of Government officials providing lists of specific examples of speech and/or speakers that they want censored.
Again, here's an example that has already been provided in this sub-thread:
> We released a list of 354 names Maine Senate Angus King wanted taken down for reasons like “Rand Paul visit excitement,” “followed by [former Republican opponent Eric] Brakey,” and my personal favorite, “mentions immigration.” For balance we also released a letter from a Republican official at the State Department, Mark Lenzi, who tells Twitter about 14 real Americans “you may want to look into and delete.”
All of which were backed up by threats from both parties that if the platforms do not do more to censor speech the politicians will get rid of the legal immunity platforms have traditionally had (going back to the postal service, telegraph systems, and the phone company) that those platforms are not legally liable for the contents of the speech of others sent through their system.
Elected officials are not government employees. It is not, in fact, turtles all the way down. They may be paid by the government, but the government does not dictate when they get hired and fired. It's possible that someone may be both an elected official and a government employee, but that's fairly rare (something like: Congressman and member of the military reserve, in which case they're only a government employee while activated).
Elected officials set policies. Government employees implement those broad policies into action. You can change the policies your representative is pushing by changing the representative. I'm a little unclear on where exactly the FBI director falls (because he's appointed to his job with the advice and consent of the Senate, which makes a difference for these things, maybe). A FBI field office head chanting "locker up" in a press conference would be violation though, yes.
The IRS disagrees, but obviously different legal contexts have different definitions, but I am aware of none supporting the distinction you are trying to make.
Example: Hatch Act provides that persons below the policy-making level in the executive branch of the federal government must not only refrain from political practices that would be illegal for any citizen, but must abstain from "any active part" in political campaigns.
In Garcetti v. Ceballos, the Supreme Court held “that when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline.”
Obviously, speech and debate clause controls for Federal Congress members.
