House Republican lawmaker Mike Johnson cornered Biden’s DHS Secretary amid relentless government-led censorship against conservatives on Big Tech platforms.
The House Judiciary Committee held a July 26 hearing on the "Oversight of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security." Members of the committee grilled DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on numerous issues, including Biden’s border chaos and national security issues. House Oversight Committee Member Rep. Johnson (R-AL), however, honed in on the DHS’s attacks on Americans’ free speech online. This comes after an MRC Free Speech America FOIA investigation exposed an infamous DHS taxpayer-funded program targeting Christians, conservatives and Republicans by associating them with neo-Nazis and other hate groups.
Johnson’s smackdown reached its peak when he pressed Mayorkas’s full-fledged war against free speech online under the guise of ferreting out so-called “misinformation,” which Johnson called “Orwellian” and “dystopian.” Johnson asked Mayorkas, “What is disinformation?” In turn, Mayorkas answered, “Disinformation is inaccurate information.” An increasingly fired-up Johnson responded with the following scorching questions, “Who determines what’s inaccurate? Who determines what’s false? Do you understand the problem here?”
The Louisiana lawmaker then ripped Mayorkas, reminding him of the basic principles undergirded by the First Amendment as outlined by the Founding Fathers. “The reason the Framers of our Constitution did not create an exception for ‘false information’ from the First Amendment is because they didn’t trust the government to determine what it is,” Johnson said. “And you have whole committees of people in your agency trying to determine what they, they determined, they defined as false or misinformation.”
Mayorkas rushed to defend his agency’s assault against free speech. “That is not true,” a cornered Mayorkas claimed in reference to Johnson’s assertions. Johnson then asked, “Well then, what is true? Please enlighten us.” Mayorkas’s subsequent answer was mind-boggling and factually incorrect. “What we do — What we do is, we disclosure the tactics that adverse nation-states are utilizing to weaponize misinformation.”
Mayorkas’s remarks explicitly contradict the facts unveiled by the Attorneys General Andrew Bailey of Missouri and Jeff Landry of Louisiana on Missouri v. Biden. Johnson brought the receipts. “No, sir,” Johnson said. “ The court found specifically—it’s a finding of fact that is not disputed by the government defendants. ... They determined that you and all of your cohorts made no distinction between domestic speech and foreign speech, so don’t stand there and tell me under oath that you only focused on adverse, adversaries around the world, foreign actors, that’s not true.”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
