Samuel Case, FISM News
House Republicans are pushing new legislation that would punish federal employees who censor speech or pressure companies to do so.
Introduced by Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), James Comer (R-Ky.), and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act, aims to prohibit “Biden administration officials and federal bureaucrats from using their authority or influence to promote censorship of speech or pressure social media companies to censor speech.”
“The proposed bill would expand the Hatch Act, a law that keeps federal employees from engaging in political activities while working in their official capacities,” Fox News reports.
Under the new Republican House legislation, federal employees will be barred from using their authority and resources including “contracting, grantmaking, rulemaking, licensing, permitting, investigatory, or enforcement actions,” to promote censorship or pressure a private entity into suppressing legal speech.
If passed, federal employees who violate the law will be subject to penalties including “disciplinary actions such as removal, reduction in pay grade, debarment from federal employment, or monetary civil penalties.”
In a statement, Rodger accused the Biden administration of working “to institutionalize censorship and coordinate with Big Tech to silence Americans.”
The bill comes on the heels of a report that more than 50 Biden administration officials across a dozen federal agencies have engaged in efforts to pressure Big Tech companies to censor alleged misinformation, according to documents released on Aug. 31 as part of a joint lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri.
The Republicans also cited as an example former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki in 2021 calling for “Facebook to ban specific accounts from its platform” and then in 2022 calling on “Spotify and other major tech platforms to limit what the administration views as ‘mis- and dis-information.’”
The lawmakers also cited the recent admission by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg that Facebook suppressed the New York Post Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election after being approached by the FBI with a warning of “Russian disinformation.”
“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,” Comer said.