Threats Facing Conservative Speech

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise to discuss the threats facing conservative speech in this country. When members of government take it upon themselves to declare certain speech illegal or undesirable, they effectively silence opposition. This isn't the American way.

We have seen this kind of censorship in Saudi Arabia, Communist China, and Soviet Russia. We never want to see it in America.

Tonight, we are gathered to call attention to a shocking, coordinated attempt by progressives in business and government to suppress dissent, stifle debate, and threaten free speech.

Last week, one of the largest satellite TV providers, DIRECTV, chose to deplatform Newsmax from their lineup.

Newsmax is the fourth highest-rated cable news channel and is watched by more than 25 million Americans. This decision means that more than 13 million homes will lose access to Newsmax programming.

Mr. Speaker, 2 years ago, Democratic members of the Energy and Commerce Committee wrote to AT&T and DIRECTV encouraging the censorship of One America News, FOX News, and Newsmax. Two years later, two out of three of those networks are now deplatformed.

One year ago, after pressure from Democrats, AT&T and DIRECTV removed the One America News Network from its programming, and now DIRECTV has removed Newsmax.

The Energy and Commerce Committee has immediate jurisdiction over the business interests of DIRECTV. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand why AT&T and DIRECTV felt pressured to comply with committee demands.

Simply put, Democrats in that committee disagreed with the content coming out of One America News Network and Newsmax and decided they wanted them canceled.

This is a clear case of free speech infringement and viewpoint discrimination. Government colluding with telecommunications giants should chill us all.

We are facing a concerted, unabashed effort to shrink the limits of debate by corporations in an unholy alliance with political activists and their government avatars. These companies have become willing prosecutors of dissent.

Woke corporations are actively interposing themselves between Americans and the conversations they need to have. Why? Because they are afraid, afraid that the lessons they learned in progressive universities won't stand up to objective scrutiny; afraid that vigorous debate breeds societies of citizens, not sheep; above all, afraid that if they cannot anoint themselves enlightened arbiters, their ideas will just have to stand on their own merits like the rest of us.

I urge my colleagues across the aisle to rethink their desire to silence opposition. The people who want to silence opponents are people who can't win debates.

I urge American businesses to stiffen their spines and stand up in favor of free speech and open speech.

We acknowledge that we may never know the exact mindset of the decisionmakers who decided to join hand in glove with progressives' drive to silence their opposition, but what we know is more than enough.

Democrats asked, and DIRECTV delivered. Progressives spoke up, and One America News was silenced. Newsmax is now on the chopping block.

Where does that leave us? Under the lengthening shadow of censorship or at the beginning of a new era when freedom fights back.

I know what side I will be on. Which one will you join?

Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Colorado and my colleagues will show in this hour that censorship of conservative voices proliferates among social media and other tech companies, banks and other commercial service providers, and massive public companies and capital markets pursuing ESG policies.

As Mr. Buck suggested, it is worse than that because the leading and most insidious censors, whose predominant selection of conservatives to victimize, by the way, as only an aside, are the powerful and secretive agencies of Federal law enforcement and the so-called intelligence community.

In only the most recent example of this egregious wrongdoing, and solely due to the commendable voluntary disclosure by a social media company of the Twitter files, we now know that not only the FBI but also the ODNI, NSA, and CIA audaciously abused their power to coordinate Big Tech and Big Media to suppress from circulation information that was highly significant to the 2020 Presidential election; namely, the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story.

But even this jaw-dropping disclosure focusing on an isolated document brings home just how insidious, how brazen the conduct of these massive and unaccountable agencies has become.

Here is one. Twitter files Number 7, Tweet 15, by one of the reporters with integrity, Michael Shellenberger: My colleagues at the Fort had a query for you. This is from Elvis Chan at the FBI to Yoel Roth at Twitter.

My colleagues at the Fort is a reference to Fort Meade, the headquarters of the National Security Agency. He says that Twitter no longer provides their data feed, as they had in earlier years apparently, and asked if they would be willing to change it.

Their data feed; comments, postings of 77 million Americans and more than 330 million people worldwide.

My colleagues, Mr. Chan says, are currently contracting with a vendor for an analytic tool for open-source intelligence. The commercial version of this tool includes the Twitter data feed. However, the feed was disabled because the vendor said they did not want to violate their terms of service with Twitter.

My colleagues are wondering if Twitter would be open to revising its terms of service to allow this vendor to continue having access to the Twitter feed.

This representative of the FBI is asking for Twitter to reverse its policy to allow government agencies to conduct analytics on the discourse of the American people; mass surveillance of the public conversation; collection and preservation, so it can be searched at will by government bureaucrats for whatever purposes.

And note, he makes reference to the provision of this, not to the FBI, but ``to members of the IC,'' the intelligence community.

Bad enough if this were the FBI, but he is talking about the agencies who are supposed to direct their attention abroad for the sake of American security and, instead, they are seeking mass surveillance on Americans' utterances and those of unsuspecting people the world over.

A good Democrat, William Proxmire said, power always has to be kept in check. Power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous.

Mr. Speaker, in the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, we will plumb the depths of powerful agencies gone rogue; and then this Congress must act to keep in check power exercised in secret.
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Mr. BUCK. Mr. Speaker, it is now my honor to yield to the gentleman from South Carolina, the Palmetto State, one of Biden's many vacation spots (Mr. Norman).

Mr. VAN DREW. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Buck for doing this and putting this together.

Blatant attacks on conservative speech are truly nothing new. First, the left and Big Tech removed a sitting President from social media platforms. Imagine that: a sitting President removed.

Then Big Tech companies deemed conservative views on COVID ``misinformation'' and removed sitting Members of Congress from Twitter. Then these same Big Tech companies deemed the Hunter Biden story ``misinformation'' and wiped any mention of it from their platforms.

Yet, Democrats can freely post that former President Trump was involved in Russian collusion, despite that being proven a lie. Democrats in Congress can tweet anti-Semitic rhetoric with no repercussions from Big Tech or even their own party. It is unbelievable.

When an outsider of politics came in and took over Twitter, thank God, Democrats knew they were in a little bit of trouble. They did everything possible to stop the overhaul of the platform, which desperately needed to be done. It is because they knew our government was involved in censoring Americans, censoring American free speech.

Our First Amendment is unequivocally the most important right afforded to us, the most important right given to us, from our forefathers. It is a blessing from God.

We teach our children to have a voice. We teach them to stand up for what they believe in. Yet, this trend being perpetuated by the left that differing viewpoints should be censored cannot stand.

With DIRECTV making the decision to remove Newsmax, it is essentially depriving millions of Americans from hearing directly from their Representatives. It is definitely censorship, and it is departing from our Nation's, from America's, core principles.

That is why I am standing here. I am standing here, and I am fighting here for Newsmax on DIRECTV.

It is not just about Newsmax. It is about Americans' right to freedom of speech. We cannot lose the America, the America that we know and the America that we love, but we are so painfully close to losing it in so many ways, and this being the most important way.

We cannot allow the silencing of views. We must foster and encourage debate in this great country. Everybody should be at the table. All the issues should be discussed and hammered out.

Whether you are a Democrat, a Republican, or an independent, everyone deserves a voice. Everyone deserves to be heard. This is America. Everyone deserves to exercise their First Amendment right without any interference, without interference from big companies, without interference from Big Tech, without interference from government. That is what our Founders intended. That is what America is about. We have the responsibility to stand up and fight for and love that America.

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Mr. BUCK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman who has been described as New Jersey's best dentist.

Now, we are going to Arizona's best dentist.
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Mr. BUCK. Tenney), a marine mom.

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Mr. BUCK. Mr. Speaker, I recognize the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Ms. Hageman), my neighbor to the north from the Yellowstone State.

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Mr. BUCK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her comments. I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Gaetz), the best Florida podcaster from the Sunshine State.

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Mr. BUCK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman).

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Mr. BUCK. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's passion. I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Burchett), the gentleman from the Butternut State. That is a new one for me.

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Mr. BUCK. Mr. Speaker, if the stenographer needs help with dadgummit, we will try to get a spelling for her on that.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Mrs. Boebert). She is from my home State, and she is a young person who has set this place on fire since she has been here.

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Mr. BUCK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman and wish her safe travels back to our great State.

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Mr. BUCK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his remarks, and I thank all 18 of our speakers. All 18 felt so strongly that they came here during their evening and dedicated themselves to making sure that a message was heard in America, a message that we will not tolerate censorship in this country and that we will not tolerate the left. Whether it owns a corporation or whether it is colluding with the government, we will not tolerate the unacceptable behavior of taking news shows off just because they reflect a conservative viewpoint.

Mr. Speaker, I must say that many of the speakers today, many of the Members of Congress who spoke, made it absolutely clear that they are going to dedicate time, energy, and staff resources to make sure that we look into this further.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your patience and the patience of the staff here. I very much appreciate being able to speak directly to the American people.

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