Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) promised to fight for Americans’ right to free speech against government censorship, even when this censorship is outsourced to private companies.
Bishop went on MRC’s UnCensored with MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider on Feb. 29 to discuss his bill, the “Censorship Accountability Act,” which Bishop said “might be the most important thing I've done in Congress.”
Bishop slammed Democrats for what Schneider described as a multi-federal agency effort to fund censorship regimes and "silence conservative voices in the name of trying to attack 'Russian disinformation.'" The lawmaker said in response: “[Democrats] don't want to give up their latest weapon of choice. Their latest weapon of choice is to use federal agencies to use faceless, nameless bureaucrats buried in the bureaucracy to go and harass the ever-living life out of conservative Americans for what they believe in.”
Related: WATCH: Rep. Bishop ‘Troubled’ by Dystopian Views of Ex-DHS Bureaucrat on Censorship
Bishop and Schneider discussed several cases where federal employees worked with private partners “to wipe the government’s hands of direct involvement” in the censoring of conservative Americans. Addressing the potential censorship outsourcing, Bishop’s bill aims to enable Americans to sue any federal employee who may subject Americans “to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the First Amendment.”
Bishop noted a pattern of bad behavior dating back to the Obama administration’s IRS targeting scandal of 2013 when the federal government was directly weaponized against conservative groups. He went on to list more recent examples, including government pressure on tech companies during the 2020 election.
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Bishop attacked federal agencies for meeting with the management of social media companies “once a week” and pressuring them to remove user content. “What possible interest does the federal government legitimately have to do that?” Bishop asked, after detailing this coercive behavior.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency and an equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
