Executive Calendar
Floor Speech
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Mr. HAGERTY. Mr. President, in the last week, new details have come to light regarding Twitter's top executives' past collusion with political figures to censor speech that they did not want the American people to see. This problem is not limited to Twitter, but this news underscores the problem and the need for congressional action to protect the rights of the American people. Americans deserve to know when their government and Big Tech platforms are trying to manipulate what they can say or what they can read.
Recently published emails among Twitter executives reveal the extent to which the company worked to prevent Americans from seeing a New York Post story, and this was just weeks before the election. The extent of the suppression was breathtaking. Indeed, the Twitter executives locked the Twitter account of the White House Press Secretary who simply mentioned a story that was published in an established American newspaper with one of the largest circulations in the country. Facebook admits that it likewise limited the spread of this story based on a general warning from the FBI about ``propaganda.''
Evidence has also emerged that in 2020, Biden and Democrat campaign officials were going so far as to send lists of tweets for their corporate allies to remove--requests that Twitter granted.
This censorship activity has carried over into the Biden administration. In 2021, then-Press Secretary Jen Psaki stated that the government is ``in regular touch with social media platforms'' and ``flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread [what she called] `disinformation'.''
For example, a Facebook official emailed Surgeon General Vivek Murthy stating:
I know our teams met today to better understand the scope of what the White House expects from us on ``misinformation'' going forward.
A Facebook employee later told the HHS Department that a number of posts had been deleted.
In addition to regularly flagging posts for Twitter and Facebook to take down, the CDC proposed setting up a monthly ``misinformation meeting'' with Facebook in order to censor American speech.
Additional Freedom of Information Act requests and lawsuits have also revealed improper coordination between government Agencies and social media companies to restrict speech here in America.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, disclosed that it had communicated with more than 30 Federal officials about content moderation on its platform, including senior employees at the FDA, U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and the White House. YouTube, which is owned by Google, disclosed that it had such communications with 11 Federal officials.
The disturbing truth is that when the Biden administration officials don't like what Americans are saying, they simply reach out to their allies at unaccountable big tech companies to silence it.
Government using its power to coerce censorship of disfavored information is what the Chinese Communist Party or what the North Korean regime might do. It is not only fundamentally un-American, but often, it is unconstitutional. Government cannot use Big Tech as a tool to end-run the First Amendment.
The American people deserve to know when their government, which is supposed to work for them, is using Big Tech to censor their speech or manipulate the information they see. I introduced legislation in July of 2021 to require this transparency. Yet the Senate has failed to act on it.
The Disclose Government Censorship Act would require that government officials publicly disclose communications with Big Tech regarding their actions to restrict speech--actions that would plainly violate the First Amendment if the government did it itself. The act contains appropriate exceptions to protect legitimate law enforcement or national security activity.
It would also require a cooling-off period to address the revolving door that occurs between government and Big Tech. This Washington revolving door fuels politically driven censorship, as evidenced by the fact that the former FBI general counsel who resigned because of the Steele dossier scandal was then hired by Twitter and, unbelievably, was at the center of the decision to suppress the New York Post story in 2020.
Our Nation was founded on the ideal that protecting citizens' speech from government censorship--under the First Amendment--would protect the people's right to govern themselves by preventing the government from controlling information and ideas. Americans deserve to know when their government is covertly trying to accomplish what the First Amendment prohibits.
2527 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
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Mr. HAGERTY. Mr. President, my Democratic colleague is objecting to legislation that simply allows Americans to see when the government is trying to censor them.
My colleague states that his objection is largely on procedural grounds, and he has concerns that my bill hasn't been marked up in committee, but the committee to which this bill was referred has had over a year to review the legislation, and no progress has been made.
I would ask that my colleague commit to working with me on my legislation to address this important First Amendment issue in the next Congress. This problem is simply too significant to ignore. Our government works for the American people. To ensure this continues, the First Amendment prohibits the government from controlling what Americans say or read. But now government is using Big Tech to accomplish that censorship. Without disclosure of such communications, Americans' free speech rights become a dead letter because there is no way to address improper government efforts to ban speech.
My legislation would preserve these rights by allowing Americans to see when government is trying to silence them. This is a basic element of self-government.
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