No. The 1st Amendment is a restriction on the Legislative branch: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Congress passed no laws in this regard. Whether or not this was illegal activity on the part of the Executive Branch is another question entirely -- and a good one.

I don't think it's quite that simple. For instance, the establishment of religion clause has been read to deny public entities the ability to put up Christmas displays, despite no "laws" being passed to facilitate them.

The government "asking" a private entity to take some action is inherently coercive due to the power imbalance.

This is basically just wrong.

The executive branch can violate the first amendment…

I'm not a lawyer, I don't know much about the technicalities of these things.

But by this reasoning it sounds like the president could just create an executive order limiting free speech and that would be just fine? Is the president really aloud to create an executive order saying "anyone with red hair is no longer aloud to speak in public" (obviously silly example)?

It's a loophole of practicality that is often exploited by executive branch regardless of political party.

Initiate a policy or order, mitigating the immediate damage. Then, days, months or years later, a court will decide you didn't have that power and will reverse it. But the threat or problem was already dealt with and there are no repurcussions except political capital spent.

The Executive executes the law: they don't make it nor do they stand in judgement of it (there are separate branches for those tasks).

Executive orders impact how the executive branch of the government acts.

They are instructions from the head of the executive branch (be it President or a state's governor) for an agency in the executive branch to do a certain thing.

For example: Executive Order 14087 of October 14, 2022 https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/10/19/2022-22...

> HHS Actions. In furtherance of the policy set forth in section 1 of this order, the Secretary shall, consistent with the criteria set out in 42 U.S.C. 1315a(b)(2), consider whether to select for testing by the Innovation Center new health care payment and delivery models that would lower drug costs and promote access to innovative drug therapies for beneficiaries enrolled in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, including models that may lead to lower cost-sharing for commonly used drugs and support value-based payment that promotes high-quality care. The Secretary shall, not later than 90 days after the date of this order, submit a report to the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy enumerating and describing any models that the Secretary has selected. The report shall also include the Secretary's plan and timeline to test any such models. Following the submission of the report, the Secretary shall take appropriate actions to test any health care payment and delivery models discussed in the report.

This directs the Department of Health and Human Services (under the executive branch) to do certain things.

---

https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/ex...

> Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the executive branch to:

> (a) secure the southern border of the United States through the immediate construction of a physical wall on the southern border, monitored and supported by adequate personnel so as to prevent illegal immigration, drug and human trafficking, and acts of terrorism;

> ...

> (d) Except as otherwise noted, “the Secretary” shall refer to the Secretary of Homeland Security.

> Sec. 4. Physical Security of the Southern Border of the United States. The Secretary shall immediately take the following steps to obtain complete operational control, as determined by the Secretary, of the southern border:

Note again, the Department of Homeland Security is under the executive branch.

---

And so, the "could you create an executive order ordering {department} to arrest someone with red hair speaking in public?" The answer is "no" because the ability to arrest someone is under the Judicial branch - not the executive branch.

Secondly, you will note that all of the executive orders are citing the law under which the president (or governor) is given that authority from congress. To arrest a red head for speaking congress would need to have a law (First Amendment!) that allows the executive branch to silence someone.

---

I will also point out gag orders which are, well, fairly straight forward censorship. Except that the gag order is from the judicial branch - not the legislative branch.

https://law.yale.edu/mfia/case-disclosed/when-silence-isnt-g...

The 1st amendment has long been interpreted to apply to the entire federal government.

> The First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects the right to freedom of religion and freedom of expression from government interference. It prohibits any laws that establish a national religion, impede the free exercise of religion, abridge the freedom of speech, infringe upon the freedom of the press, interfere with the right to peaceably assemble, or prohibit citizens from petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances. It was adopted into the Bill of Rights in 1791. The Supreme Court interprets the extent of the protection afforded to these rights. The First Amendment has been interpreted by the Court as applying to the entire federal government even though it is only expressly applicable to Congress. Furthermore, the Court has interpreted the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as protecting the rights in the First Amendment from interference by state governments.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/first_amendment

Going down this technical path doesn’t aid your case: it destroys your case.

This is because the Constitution only authorizes Congress to make any laws in the first place, so only Congress could be guilty of making a law impacting speech. Taking all of the document in the narrow sense you’re taking it would mean the executive branch couldn’t limit speech either because they couldn’t do 99.9% of the things they do today in the first place.

Despite the phrasing being "Congress shall make no law," the First Amendment absolutely applies to the executive.

The mainstream test just looks for a "state actor" but even if you want to go textualist, things probably break down like this: if a law empowers the executive to do an act that violates the First Amendment, the law itself is a violation of the First Amendment. If no law empowers the executive to do the action at issue, then the action is illegal by virtue of being in excess of the executive's authority.

Thank you for this excellent explanation.

Just to further clarify, by "mainstream" I meant "the actual test courts use." The "textualist" version is more something to write a law review article about, a theory of how you might get to roughly the same place we are in reality while giving weight to the word "Congress."

Take the state actor doctrine in combination with the fact that the First Amendment is incorporated against the states, and you get the reality that it even applies to, for example, state colleges and universities disciplining students and teachers, despite them not being "Congress," a "law," or even an agent of the federal government at all.

If we take the most innocent sounding version of this, where the White House points out that a tweet is in violation of Twitter's stated policies and asks for those policies to be applied, I think it's pretty clearly not.

Of course those requests can and will be made in a biased manner, and it's naive to assume that the nature of the request isn't going to influence how Twitter responds to it, but it's definitely a murky grey area at that point.

This is a good point!

The wording probably matters too. The Biden team asked Twitter to "review" certain tweets instead of "remove" certain tweets. So technically they're not suppressing speech explicitly but implicitly we (and twitter employees) all know what they mean by "review".

You do realize this was the Trump Whitehouse? and that both Trump's campaign team and White House staff made requests that were honored? And that when Biden's team asked for the reviews it was not the executive branch?

Yep! Dont really care who's in the White House in this instance.

I referenced the Biden team's verbiage because that's the only verbiage that was posted with the implied intent on getting tweets removed (besides the DNC). I'd love to see the email's from the White House asking for tweets to be removed.

I wonder why these Twitter Files didn’t include any partial emails from Trump’s staff, only the DNC where they expedited a ToS violation review.

Oh wait, it’s because clearly this information from a “Twitter source” (aka Elon) is disseminated with a viewpoint and is hardly impartial.

All of this should be viewed with extreme skepticism, and so far none of this seems damning in any way. I haven’t seen anything that says Elon is remotely operating in good faith.

If you look at the totality of the circumstances it’s pretty obvious they were playing favorites. Everyone here is acting like there needs to be a smoking gun but that’s not how things work.

Of their employees that made political donations, >99% donated to the DNC. The people making moderation decisions at Twitter have made their political affiliations clear. On the eve of an election, they removed a story that was unfavorable to one candidate in an unprecedented way, using tools and processes they would use for sex trafficking and child pornography, to the the point where they deleted people’s DM’s referencing a story about a political candidate.

I’m not a lawyer and can’t say if it violated the law, but it’s certainly unethical. If you want to talk about reasons our country is so politically divided, this is a prime example of people in tech using every scrap of power to put their thumb on the scale that is the democratic process.

I suspect some of these slimy outcomes (parties and offices having special access to request review) are pretty hard to avoid in practice. Like, if you know for a fact that there will be illegal actors targeting both campaigns, do you not listen to direct requests from the targets? And if you offer it to one side, would you offer it to all? I bet there are more principled ways to do it but I also think this is what it would like if a reasonably well intentioned but also selfish / risk averse staff tried to react in realtime to a really new situation.

Transparency would go a long way. The fact that all of this is happening behind closed doors means that the process is just begging for abuse.

The power structures in society having arbitrary influence is what matters. A c-tier candidate would never have the same pull as not-yet elected Biden. Nor would a controversial candidate even from a popular party.

The only solution is to not provide the power in the first place instead of trying to fix it with layers of easily bypassed rules. You can’t have easy censorship if there isn’t an established censorship system already in place.

A system that is limited by law and very fundamental policies is much less prone to abuse (ie, a constitutional republic with transparent but limited policy making power vs monarchical systems with backroom dealing by elites). The minute it became about broadly policing speech via backroom dealing was the minute it became wide open to abuse.

> You can’t have easy censorship if there isn’t an established censorship system already in place.

This creates a new kind of abuse. If Twitter has no way of removing illegal content from its platform, then your opponent can use that fact to post illegal content about you (i.e. hacked pictures of your naked body), and you have no recourse.

Also that the tweets the Biden team asked to be reviewed violated Twitter TOS for revenge porn.

Couple of things:

government used to be weary of any appearance of impropriety, lest people believe they are acting improperly -being slimy. That seems to have gone by the wayside.

two, if the requests were to suppress sensitive government information --secrets, ok, I might lend a sympathetic ear, if they could prove it was so (not because they said "take our word". But this is "don't make us look bad" --sorry, but no, it stays.

And now we are hearing the gov wants to amp up domestic surveillance. The ACLU and EFF, etc should get off their butts and perform their claimed duty. We're not China in that sense yet, but if we let them, we'll get there.

> government used to be weary of any appearance of impropriety, lest people believe they are acting improperly -being slimy. That seems to have gone by the wayside.

Voters used to punish politicians that seemed improper. They don't anymore. The Trump administration was the capstone on this, obviously, but the trend has been developing for decades.

It was clearly the common media informing the voters of improper behavior. Now voters can pick their own media and avoid unflattering stories. This then has led to terrible politicians getting away with far more than they ever could before.

Eh, the media has been corrupt and shaping and staging. They probably sunk Gary Hart's ambitions by insinuating he had an affair with Donna, so the Dems ended up with some damned Goofball against the desiccated GHW. Of course for the coup de grace they bum rushed Ross the next round.

The issue isn’t there was a time of pure media. It’s there was a time of common media.

Good to observe that 1) the white House resided then president Donald Trump 2) the tweets submitted for removal were H Biden's genitalia, which are in clear violation of Twitters PoS.

No! And if it was, the party with standing to sue would be Twitter themselves, who has not said they're doing this.

Interesting point!

The white house in this case was the Trump white house so it could have been received positively by the media that twitter is standing up to Trump by suing.

Could you elaborate on why you dont think it would be a free speech violation? Is internet communication not considered speech?

Internet communication is considered speech. But, the speech on Twitter's website belongs to Twitter. They get to decide what is on their website. They can, as far as the First Amendment goes, more or less ban or censor anything they want for any reason, because they are a private actor.

If Twitter decided to remove Hunter Biden content completely on their own, that would be legal. If Twitter decided to remove that content because someone asked nicely- regardless of who that person is, whether they are President or not- that would be legal. It's only a legal issue if the government forces Twitter to remove the content, which is not something Twitter has asserted.

In which case? The tweet says it was both White houses with obvious favoritism towardd Democrats.

The ACLU disagrees.

https://twitter.com/aclu/status/1587198479608303622

The government pressuring private companies to censor is a First Amendment violation.

Pressure would be a First Amendment violation. Twitter has not asserted they were pressured. If they feel they were, they should say so, and sue.

What if Twitter agreed with the motivation for the pressure? Shouldn’t the government not be pressuring people in pursuit of limiting free speech whether the current recipients of the pressure happen to be of the same political persuasion or not?

Otherwise what happens when the party in power changes?

"What if Twitter agreed with the motivation for the pressure?" Then it's not pressure. It's Twitter doing something they want to do. Just because the government and Twitter agree on something doesn't mean the government "forced them" to do it, which is what the 1A and prior restraint law care about.

"What happens when the party in power changes?" Twitter, like every other company, gets to decide whether or not they want to support or oppose the party in power, and if Twitter feels the government is violating their 1A rights, Twitter can sue them

> Twitter has not asserted they were pressured. If they feel they were, they should say so, and sue.'

You do understand that they can collude? It's funny we have spent countless hours hearing about Trump Russia collusion. Now suddenly people can't seem to figure out there is a thing called collusion.

Censorship of this story doesn't exist in vaccum. There is a legitimate argument why this shouldn't be investigated as election interference when we've spent countless hours based on Steele dossier, which turned out to be a political ploy.

For collusion to be noteworthy there still has to be a crime committed. The allegation in the Trump-Russia collusion case is that they conspired to have foreign operators influence the election. This would have been an illegal act that they colluded on.

There is nothing illegal about requesting review of tweets even through special channels. If Twitter actually has evidence of an illegal act to coerce the review then they should probably rehire whoever was coerced and file suit.

Collusion with a foreign adversary regarding illegally obtained internal comms from your political opponent: NBD

Collusion with a domestically owned bird app re revenge porn of your crackhead son: Worst scandal in US history

Got it.

Collusion as you're using it would not be a 1A violation. It also would not qualify as election interference any more than any other newspaper choosing what stories to run or what candidates to endorse (legally speaking).

"Your honor, I have not proof that I was actually pressured in any way but I felt that way."

They haven't even claimed they were!

As stated in tweet #11, Twitter is overwhemingly staffed by people of one political orientation, and the company as a whole would thus have no issue with helping their political party win the election. They had no reason to sue.

And that is completely legal and allowed under the First Amendment.

> Twitter is overwhemingly staffed by people of one political orientation

Where is this information coming from?

This chart says nothing about staffing, and the comment itself is unsourced.

I'm going to assume that you are confused by the linked chart and are not being intentionally obtuse.

The chart displays a breakdown of total employee contributions to the two political parties. As you can see, the "% to democrats" column contains 95%+ for the last 4 years. It would be safe to assume that this metric is a reasonable proxy for Twitter staff's political leanings.

Just to be safe I recommend you review the suite guidelines, specifically about assuming good faith when replying to comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Fair enough that I misread the chart, but are we sure that those contributions are evenly distributed throughout the employee population and not, for example, mostly from executives? I can't tell where this data is sourced from.

>It would be safe to assume that this metric is a reasonable proxy for Twitter staff's political leanings.

No it wouldn't be because it doesn't way what percent of employees donate at all. I assume the percentage is pretty low because it's <$200,000 going to Democrats from the entire company.

Ignoring that we have no idea where the data ultimately comes from (or are private contributions public in the US?) it is highly misleading by omission. If we look at the linked page [1] we see that 2014 and 2016 much higher fractions went to the Republicans (31% in 2016 and 11% in 2014) with the total contributions varying wildly from year to year, but the chart was cut to show single-digit values only.

[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/twitter/totals?id=D00006711...

As part of the donating to a political campaign, that information is required to ensure it is a real person donating, prevent employees from prohibited companies from donating (e.g. federal contractors have a conflict of interest) and preventing or recording coercion from management to donate a particular way.

Consider https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dscc-ads-ga - go through the pay with card and stop before you actual enter in any details.

The page will look like https://imgur.com/sNJFkjS

https://www.quora.com/U-S-Presidential-Campaign-Donations-wh...

https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/keeping-r...

> For each contribution that exceeds $200, either by itself or when added to the contributor’s previous contributions made during the same calendar year, records must identify that contribution by:

Amount; Date of receipt; and Contributor’s full name and mailing address, occupation and employer. If a person has already contributed an aggregate amount of over $200 during a calendar year, each subsequent contribution, regardless of amount, must be identified in the same way.

Please note that contributions to authorized committees are aggregated on a calendar-year basis for recordkeeping purposes, but are aggregated on a per-election basis for purposes of monitoring contribution limits, and on an election-cycle basis for reporting purposes.

---

And thus open secrets is getting the aggregate data that and releasing that.

Fun fact : you can just put unemployed and you don't have to list your employer. Most tech people I know are so paranoid about personal information that they would most likely go that route.

Fun Fact: Lying on a Federally required election financial disclosure document is breaking the law and asking for trouble.

Please don't post this type of advice here or elsewhere. Don't think that if you are paying with a credit card in your name, that your employer information can't be easily determined if there is an FEC investigation of a candidate receiving a large number of contributions from "unemployed" people. You are telling people not only to break the law, but to do so in a very public way that is impossible for them to hide.

Always tell the truth in all legally required financial disclosures, especially when this is touching campaign financing.

Are you actually shocked that intelligent people are more progressive?

See Fox News…

What does fox news have to do with this?

A media company favoring a political party is not illegal. It’s indeed quite normal. That said, removing revenge porn isn’t favoring a political party.

Fox does not "favor" the GOP. It is an instrument of the GOP.

True. Same difference.

"Honest Question: If the white house contacts Twitter and asks for a tweet to be removed, is that a first amendment violation?"

No. Unless!

1) It will involves a threat. [Ignoring it could end your career, ignoring it could make you a target of a Select Committee, ]

2) It's a form of campaign contribution

Possibly, but in this story the White House was the one being censored rather than the one asking for a tweet to be removed.

This isn't true. White House requested tweets be removed.

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598828932395978752

For this specific example with the laptop, Twitter censored the the White House press secretary by suspending her account.

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598831758207696896

Yes. There is precident.

Yes. And a properly-endowed Justice Department would begin prosecution for Twitter employees that colluded with the government to defraud US citizens of their fundamental rights.

Twitter officers conspired with rogue elements of the US government to defraud US citizens of their constitutionally protected rights.

This is not a game. The people involved should be facing 30 year prison sentences.

And yet it's treated as just the latest Twitter drama. Reactions like the ones I'm seeing--"Republicans are just obsessed with Hunter's ****!"--are the reason why the "I Support the Current Thing" NPC meme exists.

You don't have a 1st amendment right to post on twitter.

If twitter bans me for spamming, do you think I can sue them?

Twitter officers conspired with hostile, rogue actors inside the US government to defraud United States Citizens of their conditional rights

They abused technology designed to prevent the spread of child pornography to censor information harmful to their preferred political candidate at the behest of government officials.

It's not that Twitter stopped people from posting. It's that Twitter did that at the behest of the government. That is a clear violation of the First Amendment.

The government can ask private companies not to publish things, it does that for "national security" all the time. The company can tell them to pound sound - that's been well established. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/16/wh... for example. But there's nothing illegal (and most certainly not 30 year prison sentence illegal) about the government saying "hey could you review these tweets please"?

Do we know what they contained? Were they threats? Spam? Copyright infringing? Disagreements about tax policy?

It's called "soft power," and the use of "review" in those messages is clearly meaning something more than that. Otherwise, the government would not have suggested anything at all.

It’s clearly illegal, it’s conspiracy to defraud the United States.

United States citizens have explicit rights, and corporate employees colluding with government officials to “voluntarily” nullify those rights are guilty of conspiracy to defraud the United States

The government represents us, a collusion to defeat our rights is conspiracy against us and subject to civil and criminal action

> The government can ask

It actually can not.

The dude behind you with a pipe in his hand asks for your car keys in the parking lot.

Is that ok? He just asked is all…

Yes they can. Well established and not even controversial in legal circles.

Wait until everyone hears about ITAR restrictions...

> It's that Twitter did that at the behest of the government.

Could you describe the government at the time this action was taken? What relationship did the people asking Twitter to do things with the government? Did the people making the requests have any authority to direct any department of the Federal Government to take any action?

Rogue elements of the FBI colluded with private corporations and elements of the Democratic Party to defraud US citizens of their fundamental rights for the benefit of their preferred political candidate.

They committed conspiracy to defraud the United States, and will in due time be charged as such by the Department of Justice.

State employees who participated are traitors.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...

Now political campaigns are the government?

Would be curious on your take of what DeSantis was trying to do to Disney in FL? 30 years in prison for threatening Disney about its speech?

Not engaging in your whataboutism

What I will say, on topic, is that everyone who was employed by the government in these emails deserves prison time.

Most of the private individuals do too, but that’s less legally sound.

In one case, you literally have a government official threatening a private business. In the other, you have the campaign of a private citizen asking for a review. In the first you have actual threats of government power. In the latter, there isn’t even an implied threat.

Campaigns ask many private businesses and people for things they don’t receive.

Officials at the FBI, operating under color of law, mislead Meta/Facebook to believe that the hunter biden content was Russian misinformation prior to an election.

In parallel we have a “political campaign that totally isn’t colluding with the government” ordering some of the most powerful tech companies in the world to “review” content tony soprano style.

The most charitable take is that you are naive, the realistic take it that you are downplaying criminal acts by major entrenched political entities in the US

Zuckerberg said the FBI told Facebook they had intelligence there was going to be a Russian misinformation campaign right before the election. The FBI didn't tell them _this_ was that campaign, that was an assumption made by Facebook.

Tony just said that it would be nice if Pauli fell down the stairs after ratting. He never directly ordered the murder your honor.

Meanwhile we have direct evidence the FBI was aware of this content, had possession of it for over a year, and when they could no longer suppress the evidence conveniently “educated” (criminal conspiracy) their “partners”.

Also in context, Zuckerberg provided this explanation when directly questioned about HB. They only acted this way because the FBI instructed them to.

Criminal. Conspiracy. To defraud. The United States.

Now do J6. Will no one rid me of this meddlesome Pence?

I see. So now a demand for review by a campaign is actually the FBI.

And the FBI should not engage in countering foreign influence campaigns like the hacked emails in 2016. Foreign adversaries should have free reign to hack and release private data and the media should encourage and distribute it all without any caution.

Your reasoning skills are next level.

It’s worse than that, rogue members of FBI illegally acted under its law enforcement authority to collude with a presidential campaign to threaten a private entity to censor constitutionally protected speech.

As I previously stated, (lengthy) prison time is the best possible outcome for all involved.

Wow, you've really gotten yourself twisted up here haven't you. Good luck with your nothingburger.

DeSantis should be sentenced to Gitmo for the war crimes he committed there.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ron-desantiss-military...

>>The people involved should be facing 30 year prison sentences.

For what crime, specifically?

Conspiracy to defraud the United States.

That's...not a crime? The Justice Department can't just declare things as illegal and throw people in jails for 30 years.

It is absolutely a crime

> The general conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. § 371, creates an offense "[i]f two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...

You are misreading that very severely. Even if it was a first amendment violation to ask twitter to review certain tweets.

"The intent required for a conspiracy to defraud the government is that the defendant possessed the intent (a) to defraud, (b) to make false statements or representations to the government or its agencies in order to obtain property of the government, or that the defendant performed acts or made statements that he/she knew to be false, fraudulent or deceitful to a government agency, which disrupted the functions of the agency or of the government."

What false statements/representations were made, by anyone?

In addition, they had to in some way "defraud the United States" which is: "They cheat the government out of money or property; They interfere or obstruct legitimate Government activity; or They make wrongful use of a governmental instrumentality." - None of which apply.

As an employee of the government there is the presumption that you are knowledgeable of your role, and that said role is charged with upholding the founding document of your organization.

For example, a teacher hired at a school cannot argue that they could not be expected to teach.

Much in the same way, a government employee cannot in good faith argue that they cannot be expected to uphold the constitution.

By secretly colluding with private companies (that the government has failed to regulate, I might add) to suppress otherwise constitutionally protected activity government employees are criminally liable

There's a really big (and important!) difference between doing something that's wrong and doing something that's criminal.

> All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes

Bigly constitutional

I think it should also mean that if Twitter was able to successfully do this, they no longer require any protections from Section 230. They're in full editorial control of the property, they shouldn't enjoy any further legal shields while simultaneously enjoying this apparent total oversight.

This is not how Section 230 works at all. The CDA got rid of the neutral platfom requirement. You are spreading misinformation. https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/22/20700099/section-230-comm...

You are intentionally being uncharitable, and in your rush, you ignored the first two words of my statement. I'm glad large tech monopolies got yet another giveaway from our congress, and if that's a flag you want to wave, be my guest; but, I still stand by my assertion.

Clearly it's not about the first amendment if it's a request. The constitution is clear that congress (and by extension the executive branch as it's been interpreted for two centuries) "shall make no law" (or regulation or rulemaking or enforcement action, ditto). A request is just a request. In fact a request is pretty clearly just speech and can't be restricted because of the very same amendment. Twitter doesn't have to listen to id, but Joe or whoever has every right to ask.

Now, if there's lawmaking/regulation/rulemaking/enforcement aimed at Twitter by the executive branch, that's a very different thing.

But in this particualr case it's also sorta nonsensical. The stuff released today is about the Biden campaign, which was a private entity. Biden himself held no government position at all, so the point gets pretty strained.

Not exactly. Technically the first amendment says "Congress shall not.." and of course over the years this has come to mean government.

But I think it is wrong for the white house to do anything that gifts the impropriety of restricting speech.

This is not the detail that matters. Anyone in government, including Congress, can ask someone to do anything. They cannot coerce or appear to coerce regulation of speech. This is extremely well established.