CV NEWS FEED // In a key Senate hearing Tuesday, Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., took aim at what he called “the Left’s war on the First Amendment,” accusing the Biden administration of weaponizing federal agencies and taxpayer-funded NGOs to suppress free speech.
“We’ve uncovered an even larger and more formidable censorship industrial complex that spans from our nation and across the Western world,” Schmitt warned in his opening remarks as chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution.
The hearing, titled “The Censorship Industrial Complex: How Federal Officials, Universities, and NGOs Colluded to Censor Americans’ Political Speech,” focused on how federal bureaucrats, universities, and left-leaning organizations allegedly colluded with social media companies to silence dissent and control the online narrative.
“Over the past decade, an alliance of activists, academics, journalists, big tech companies, and federal bureaucrats designed a system to suppress and silence their critics,” Schmitt warned. “They did so in unprecedented ways: using new novel tools and technologies of the twenty-first century.”
“What they built was, in effect, a second state. A faceless system of power not bound by the limits and liberties of our Constitution,” he added.
Schmitt singled out the Department of Justice under former President Joe Biden, calling it a “vehicle for lawfare” against conservative Americans. He cited concerned parents, pro-life activists, traditional Catholics, and even President Trump himself as “innocent victims.”
As Missouri Attorney General from 2019 to 2023, Schmitt helped expose the operation in the Missouri v. Biden case, which the Supreme Court later took up the case as Murthy v. Missouri. In a controversial 6-3 decision, the Court allowed the Biden administration to keep engaging with platforms to moderate content.
However, after taking office for his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that vows to protect free speech and bars federal agencies from interfering with constitutionally protected expression.
Tuesday’s hearing also featured prominent conservative voices, including Federalist Editor Mollie Hemingway, who condemned Biden’s government for funding censorship efforts disguised as “disinformation” research.
“Federal and state governments fund and promote censorship and black-listing technology,” Hemingway testified. “Academic institutions, such as Stanford and the University of Texas, are given large grants not to defend free speech but to conduct research on so-called ‘disinformation’ for use by the censorship regime.”
She urged Americans to stand up for their First Amendment rights, saying, “For freedom of speech to mean anything beyond the theoretical, we must actively practice it.”
“President John F. Kennedy said, ‘People should be entrusted to confront unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.’ He said, ‘A nation afraid to let its people judge truth and falsehood in an open market, is a nation afraid of its people,’” Hemingway continued.
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