Senator Reinbold's Facebook page goes missing. She thinks it's funny.
If there's one thing you can count on from the far-right, it's that they can dish it out but sure don't seem to be able to take it.
Covid and vaccine conspiracy theorist Alaska State Senator Lora Reinbold appears to have either deleted or unpublished her government/non-government Facebook page. Midnight Sun Editor Matt Buxton, who has been unceremoniously released from his wrongful Twitter jailing earlier this month, noted the disappearance of Reinbold's Facebook page this morning.
The mysterious unexplained disappearance of Reinbold's page comes days after the legislative ethics committee found that Reinbold must stop blocking people and deleting comments on her official Facebook page because she violated state law.
Apparently, Reinbold is amused by the ethics committee's findings, writing on Facebook to her own personal account after she deleted/hid the official Senator Reinbold Facebook page, that Facebook was "NOT a government forum." Reinbold's post ended with a crying while laughing emoji because, as one knows, it's immensely hysterical when you've been sued by a constituent after an ethics committee says you violated state law.
Yes, that's right, the part-time cake maker and see-through mask connoisseur was sued by constituent Bobbie McDow, who says the Alaska State Senator is suppressing free speech by banning her from the “Senator Lora Reinbold” Facebook page. The lawsuit claims that Reinbold banned the constituent because she posted “critiques of State Senator Reinbold’s position against wearing masks during a pandemic.”
There's nothing humorous about that.
In fact, after the lawsuit against Reinbold was filed, Reinbold quietly updated her government Facebook page's description to reflect that it was “not an official government page” and only served to keep her constituents informed. Reinbold's characterization of the Facebook page was likely to telegraph to others that she could potentially block and silence opinions she disagreed with.
"It is not intended for other purposes. It is not an open park where anyone can say anything they want," Reinbold wrote. She encouraged others to share information and have open comments on their own pages.
Reinbold also wrote in the page's description that she was recommending people do this to reduce tension and intense controversy that might lead to hate speech and harassment and noted that if her Facebook page were to "heat up," she would then be justified in hiding and/or deleting comments and banning/blocking individuals for threatening behavior.
The inescapable irony, of course, is that Reinbold herself is a master of generating those tensions and controversies when she promotes debunked conspiracy theories about covid, vaccines, and mask-wearing on her Facebook page. Those posts certainly drew attention to her, wanted or otherwise.
President Donald Trump was sued by Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute in 2017 for barring seven users from the Real Donald Trump Twitter account because they were critical of his administration. They claimed that, even though the account was technically personal, Trump primarily used it for official communication, such as announcing policy decisions and detailing meetings with foreign leaders.
The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that Trump’s act of blocking individuals was unconstitutional. In 2019, the Second Circuit determined that Trump used his personal Twitter account to conduct official government business, and therefore, he could not block Americans from the account based on their political views.
For the time being, Reinbold's personal Facebook account is still alive and kicking, continuing to spew covid and vaccine-related misinformation. Still, Reinbold is posting documents related to her role as a legislator on her personal account, which could have the unintended side effect of turning it into an official one, as in the case of Trump.
