Anti-censorship provisions of spending bills that were passed by the House for appropriations for the Departments of Defense, State and Homeland Security have all been stripped out of the now proposed 1,012-page omnibus spending bill. Similar provisions were stripped out of the omnibus spending bill that passed earlier this month impacting the Department of Justice.
The defunds would have prohibited the use of funds for any of the federal government’s misinformation, disinformation and malinformation (MDM) programs that were used to target conservatives, Republicans and other Americans on social media for opposing tyrannical Covid lockdown policies, vaccine mandates, mail-in ballots and supporting the Trump campaign’s legal election challenges in 2020.
Without the Senate and White House, Republicans have very little hope of moving anything like that into spending bills, and even with a trifecta of the House, Senate and White house, it would still be very difficult because entrenched forces in both parties remain largely in favor.
The House appropriations process as it began had defunds for every single one of these items on censorship and more coming out of the committees that should in the least provide an able template for future Congresses. That is an accomplishment worth noting.
The censorship has been revealed via disclosures including the Twitter Files after Elon Musk acquired the company and transforming it into X, but also a result of discovery in the Missouri v. Biden (later Murthy v. Missouri) litigation, that revealed thousands of instances of the government raising concerns with social media that resulted in account suspensions of Americans who were sharing their views political and social issues.
For now, it will take a favorable court ruling in the Murthy v. Missouri case now before the Supreme Court, with no guarantees the American people will get one. If the Supreme Court strikes down the MDM operations by the government to censor social media, then Congress’ failure to rein it in might be forgotten.
But that hasn’t happened yet. It’s still up to the Supreme Court to act.
But if not, if the Court allows the censorship, then a much more difficult road ahead emerges. Republicans are unlikely to get a much larger majority on the Supreme Court — the current majority of Republican-appointed justices is 6-3, clearly a high-water mark — and if the Court rules in favor of the censorship right now, it’s not likely to be revisited any time soon via litigation. It could be decades.
That would make Congress the only show left in town, and so all roads lead to later this year where it would take substantial legislative majorities and a president committed to reining in these excesses to be able enact laws that do away with these programs, which for the moment appear to be permanent features of law.
But it will also require a true free speech movement that is not beholden to government and military interests. We failed. If anyone tells you we are “winning” tell them to cut the happy talk. In many ways, things have never been worse as these anti-speech policies are being locked in and dissent becomes more difficult. Now, all eyes turn to the Supreme Court.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
