Former President Donald Trump’s full access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts will be restored after they were severely restricted following January 6, social media company Meta said on Friday.

Meta said that it would be rolling back restrictions in the coming weeks, mentioning the upcoming Republican National Convention in Milwaukee where Trump will be officially designated the GOP’s 2024 nominee. Multiple social media outlets targeted Trump after a riot broke out at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 as Congress voted to certify the 2020 election results. 

After the riot, Trump lost all access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts, before they were eventually restored with severe restrictions. The accounts were hit with advertising limits and faced stricter penalties if they violated Meta’s policies. Meta Global Affairs President Nick Clegg said that these stipulations would be removed due the upcoming presidential election. 

“With the party conventions taking place shortly, including the Republican convention next week, the candidates for President of the United States will soon be formally nominated. In assessing our responsibility to allow political expression, we believe that the American people should be able to hear from the nominees for President on the same basis,” Clegg said in a statement. 

“As a result, former President Trump, as the nominee of the Republican Party, will no longer be subject to the heightened suspension penalties. In reaching this conclusion, we also considered that these penalties were a response to extreme and extraordinary circumstances, and have not had to be deployed,” Clegg added. “All US Presidential candidates remain subject to the same Community Standards as all Facebook and Instagram users, including those policies designed to prevent hate speech and incitement to violence.”

Meta said that it would continue to evaluate whether political expression acted against its responsibility to “to avoid serious risks to other human rights.” 

Trump was also banned on Twitter, now X, before Elon Musk restored his account after he took over the company. 

In response to the social media restrictions placed on him, Trump launched Truth Social, his own social media platform where he primarily posts now. Truth Social went public earlier this year and is traded under the “DJT” moniker.

On Friday’s episode of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro stumped CNN commentator and former state Rep. Bakari Sellers (D-SC) in a debate on “systematic racism.”

First, Sellers took the stance that “systemic racism” in 2024 has made life worse for black Americans than it was during the time of Jim Crow laws, citing black home ownership statistics. “I can make the case for that being the welfare state,” Shapiro interjected.

Sellers then quickly argued that “systems of injustice and oppression” in the U.S., citing “food deserts,” poor infrastructure, and the lack of “clean water” in black areas.

“Bakari,” Shapiro again interjected, “is your life as a black man worse or better than it would have been had you been born in 1920?”

The CNN commentator suggested they are worse, saying his father “feels like things in this country are at 1954.”

“If I were to say to you, as a Jew, that the experience of Jews in the United States today is worse than the experience of Jews in Europe in 1939, I would not be stating accurately — it is not true,” Shapiro responded. “And it’s also not true to say that the experience of black people in America in 2024 is worse, on a general level, than the experience of black men in 1954 in Alabama.”

Sellers stayed adamant in his position, moving on to talk about the high rate of African American female mortality in childbirth.

Shapiro told the former rep that “black people in the United States have a lower household income, median household income.”

“I would call bulls***, because it actually crosses [over] socioeconomic lines,” Sellers responded.

“Then white doctors are racist?” Shapiro answered, to which Sellers argued that “implicit bias in our healthcare delivery system” is to blame.

“[And it] would have nothing to do with the rates of, say, pregnant obesity by various communities?” Shapiro said. “There are many, many confounds when it comes to these particular issues. And unless you remove the statistical confounds, you end up with trying to blame vague, shadowy figures like ‘implicit bias,’ which are insanely difficult, if not impossible to measure.”

“I don’t know what he just said,” Sellers said.

WATCH:

NEW: Ben Shapiro and Bill Maher hammer former SC state Rep. Bakari Sellers who claimed ‘systemic racism’ is getting worse for black Americans.

Sellers: “One of my major political issues is African American female mortality…”

Shapiro: “That’s also true in Europe, by the way.”… pic.twitter.com/NjSqN22C1S

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 13, 2024

The moment went viral online, as some folks brought up Sellers recently stating on ABC’s “The View” that Shapiro lacks the “intellect” to have “honest discussion.”

WATCH:

How it started: How it’s going: pic.twitter.com/C8MigJzoLq

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) July 13, 2024

Related: Ben Shapiro Blasts CNN’s Bakari Sellers, Busts Media Narrative That No One Knew About Biden’s Deteriorating Health