Uphold the First Amendment! Several House lawmakers apparently seek to do just that by introducing a bill to make government-sponsored censorship illegal.
House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jim Jordan (R-OH), House Oversight Committee ranking member James Comer (R-KY) and House Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) introduced the "Protecting Free Speech from Government Interference Act," according to a press release Wednesday by House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans.
The bill would prohibit “Biden administration officials and federal bureaucrats” from authorizing censorship either by promoting it themselves or pressuring social media companies to censor users.
The legislation is an apparent attempt to make the federal government fulfill its obligation and protect the constitutional right to free speech.
“The Biden Administration is using the heavy hand of government to pressure social media companies into censoring Americans’ free speech and news shared on their platforms,” Comer said in a statement. “From COVID-19 to Hunter Biden, Biden Administration officials are quick to label facts that don’t fit their narrative as disinformation and then pressure social media companies to suppress content on their platforms. This threatens Americans’ First Amendment rights.”
McMorris Rodgers added that "any effort to erase people from these digital spaces simply for not adhering to the woke liberal agenda is unconstitutional."
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted last week that his platform censored the Hunter Biden laptop scandal at the FBI’s bidding before the 2020 election, censorship that the Media Reserach Center found helped steal the election in favor of Joe Biden. The FBI said after Zuckerberg’s statement that the bureau “routinely” works with social media companies to censor. The press release cited the FBI-Facebook censorship as justification for introducing the bill.
The bill’s co-authors cited several other instances of the Biden administration pressuring Big Tech companies like Facebook, Twitter and Spotify to censor users.
During a July 2021 press conference, then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the Biden administration was “flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.”
The Biden administration last week officially terminated its Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board, but the federal government’s censorship work continues behind the scenes.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment and provide transparency and an equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.