US Senator’s Statement Comes After Brazil’s X Takedown; He Claims Biden Administration Has ‘Disregarded’ Freedom of Speech
US Senator Ted Cruz (Republican) said on X (formerly Twitter) that the president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) supports the decision of the Minister of STF (Federal Supreme Court) Alexandre de Moraes to take down the social network in Brazil. According to him, the PT member wants “ban freedom of speech”.
Moraes ordered the suspension of X in Brazil. However, Brazilians abroad continue to have normal access to the platform. This is how this digital newspaper read the messages posted by Cruz and is responding to this text, as they are of public interest and have journalistic relevance.
The senator, supporter of the former US president Donald Trump (Republican), also criticized the country’s current Chief Executive, Joe Biden. According to Cruz, the Democrat celebrated Lula’s election in 2022 and that his government did not demonstrate “nothing but contempt” for freedom of expression.
Here is the translation of the publication:
“Brazil is banning X for one reason: to suppress free speech. Unsurprisingly, Lula supports this decision because he seeks to ban free speech. Biden courted Lula, celebrated his election, and called him a personal friend. This is also no surprise. The Biden-Harris administration has shown nothing but contempt for free speech here in the United States.”
Overthrow of X
In addition to determining the suspension of the platform in the national territory, Moraes also decided that a daily fine of R$50,000 be applied to anyone who uses the social network through “technological subterfuge”such as VPN (Virtual Private Network). Here is the full of the decision (PDF – 374 kB).
The minister also sent a notification to Anatel (National Telecommunications Agency), responsible for giving orders to internet operators to remove users’ access to X. Understand here how the blocking process will work.
Shortly after the notification was issued, Anatel announced that it had already received it and began the process of suspending the network that same afternoon. By the early hours of Saturday (August 31), X was already offline for some users.
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