The attorney general serving alongside Gov. Tim Walz in Minnesota wrote a thank-you message to Brazil on X just days after the South American country started blocking the social media platform, drawing a sharp rebuke from Elon Musk.
Keith Ellison’s “obrigado Brasil!” statement – which was posted in Portuguese on Monday – is also generating widespread criticism from conservatives on X.
“The Democratic Party – same one that used to defend the First Amendment – now wants to destroy the First Amendment,” Musk wrote in a message sharing Ellison’s post.
Brazil began banning access to X on Saturday after the company missed a deadline to appoint a legal representative to Brazil – and anyone found trying to get around the blockage by using VPNs could face daily fines of nearly $9,000, according to The Associated Press.
“Elon Musk showed his total disrespect for Brazilian sovereignty and, in particular, for the judiciary, setting himself up as a true supranational entity and immune to the laws of each country,” the news agency quoted Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes as saying Friday in his ruling.
Moraes reportedly added in his ruling that Brazilian law mandates internet service companies to have representatives in the country so they can be alerted when there are local court decisions that require their action, such as the removal of illicit content or election misinformation.
X has not had a representative in Brazil since early August, the AP reported.
The social media platform said in a statement that the judge shut down X “simply because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents.”
“When we attempted to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment. Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts,” the company said. “Unlike other social media and technology platforms, we will not comply in secret with illegal orders.
“To our users in Brazil and around the world, X remains committed to protecting your freedom of speech,” the company added.
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