WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans called for government censorship of online speech at a public hearing Thursday, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifying despite calls from outside groups to disinvite the Democratic presidential nominee after his recent anti-Semitic comments.
The federal government’s Republican-led Select Subcommittee on Armaments is expanding GOP claims that conservatives and others are being unfairly targeted by tech companies that routinely work with the government to try to curb the spread of disinformation online.
In opening remarks, the panel’s chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, cited what he described as examples of censorship, including a request by the White House for Twitter to remove a Kennedy post about vaccines against COVID-19.
“There was nothing that was really inaccurate,” Jordan said of Kennedy’s tweet, which made unproven suggestions about the vaccine’s effect on certain demographics. “Just the facts.”
Jordan said, “That’s why Mr. Kennedy is running for president, to help us expose and stop what’s going on.”
The top Democrat on the panel, Del. Stacey Plaskett of the Virgin Islands, said the Republican majority is giving Kennedy and others a platform to promote conspiracy theories and a rallying cry for “bigotry and hate.”
“This is not the kind of free speech I know,” Plaskett said.
Plaskett implored her colleagues to rethink their approach: “Abusive rhetoric does not need to be promoted in the corridors of the People’s House.”
Big Tech companies have strongly denied the GOP’s claims and say they apply their rules impartially to everyone, regardless of ideology or political affiliation. And researchers have found no widespread evidence that social media companies are biased against conservative news, publications or materials.
The hearing comes after a federal judge recently tried to block the Biden administration from working with social media companies to monitor disinformation and other online postings. An appeals court temporarily stayed the order.
Republicans are eager to elevate Kennedy, heir to America’s famous political family, who in April announced his 2024 presidential campaign. The son of Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of John F. Kennedy is mounting a long-shot Democratic primary challenge to President Joe Biden.
A watchdog group called on the panel’s chairman, Jordan, to drop the invitation to Kennedy after the Democratic presidential nominee falsely suggested that COVID-19 may have been “ethnically targeted” to save Ashkenazi Jews and the Chinese people.
In filmed remarks first published by The New York Post, Kennedy said “there is an argument” that COVID-19 “is an ethnic target” and that it “disproportionally attacks certain races.”
After the video was made public, Kennedy tweeted that his words were distorted and denied ever suggesting that COVID-19 was deliberately engineered to save Jews. He asked that the Post article be retracted.
But Kennedy has a history of comparing vaccines, widely credited with saving millions of lives, to the genocide of the Holocaust during Nazi Germany, comments for which he has sometimes apologized.
An organization that Kennedy founded, Children’s Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against several news organizations, including The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking steps to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19. vaccines
Jordan said that while he disagreed with Kennedy’s statements, he wasn’t about to drop him from the panel. Speaker Kevin McCarthy took a similar view, saying he did not want to censure Kennedy.
Before the hearing, Democratic Representative Gerry Connolly of Virginia said Kennedy has “vile” beliefs. “By promoting Mr. Kennedy, Republicans are deliberately providing a platform to amplify hate speech,” he said.
The panel wants to investigate how the federal government works with tech companies to flag posts that contain false information or outright lies. The debate over the debate is part of the federal communications law, Section 230, which protects tech companies like Twitter and Facebook from liability for what is said on their platforms.
Lawmakers on the panel are also expected to hear testimony from Breitbart News reporter Emma-Jo Morris, who has reported extensively on Biden’s son, Hunter Biden; and D. John Sauer, a former Missouri attorney general who is now a special assistant attorney general for the Louisiana Department of Justice involved in the lawsuit against the Biden administration.
Before the hearing, Morris tweeted part of her opening statements in which she described an “elaborate censorship conspiracy” that she said was intended to stop her reporting on Hunter Biden.
The United States has been hesitant to regulate the social media giants, even as outside groups warn of the rise of hate speech and misinformation that could be erosive to civil society.
___ The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to improve its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about the AP democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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