What federal money gets sent to universities with the earmark “promote debate and discovery?”

The vast majority of federal money is given to universities to execute research contracts.

It is simply not true that if you receive any federal money your institution cannot have biases or opinions. What would that even mean in practice? They cannot use federal money specifically for political activities, but merely receiving public funding does not relieve you of your First Amendment rights.

If anything, the reality is the opposite of what you suggest: your contracted money cannot be threatened on the basis of your institution’s (protected) biases or opinions.

Re public health: The government itself has a First Amendment right to speak with and request action from private organizations, and those organizations have a First Amendment right to accept or decline those requests. Vullo absolutely did not find the government has no ability to request action, it said it has no ability to coerce action.

As it relates to COVID, we don’t need to speculate: this is the exact question that was asked in Murthy vs Missouri. SCOTUS found lack of standing because the “censorship” in question pre-dated the “coercion” in question. Private platforms are absolutely allowed to create and enforce content policies!

You cannot infer “the platforms were coerced” from the following set of facts:

1. The platforms made and enforced policies prior to government requests

2. The government made requests

3. Some of those requests were satisfied and others were declined

4. There was no punishment or threatened punishment for decline

5. The platforms said they were not coerced

That’s what SCOTUS and IMO any reasonable person would find.