Business meeting to consider S.1070, to establish a National STEM Week to promote American innovation and enhance STEM education pathways for all students, including those in rural, urban, and underserved communities, S.2126, to reauthorize the Integrated Coastal and Ocean Observation System Act of 2009, S.2245, to amend the Digital Coast Act to improve the acquisition, integration, and accessibility of data of the Digital Coast program and to extend the program, S.2357, to reauthorize the Young Fishermen's Development Act, S.2563, to direct the Secretary of Commerce, in coordination with the heads of other relevant Federal departments and agencies, to conduct an interagency review of and report to Congress on ways to increase the global competitiveness of the United States in attracting foreign direct investment, S.2666, to direct the Federal Communications Commission to establish a taskforce on unlawful robocalls, an original bill entitled, "PIPELINE Safety Act of 2025", and the nominations of Joyce Meyer, of Virginia, to be Under Secretary for Economic Affairs, and Harry Kumar, of New York, to be an Assistant Secretary, both of the Department of Commerce, and Seval Oz, of California, to be an Assistant Secretary of Transportation; to be immediately followed by hearings to examine big tech and silencing Americans.

Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee

2025-10-08

Source: Congress.gov

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Transcript

Thank you.
Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee meeting to order.  The author of the great book Dune, Frank Herbert, set the table for what techno-totalitarianism looked like.  Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free, but that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.  In the West, we're headed down this path towards thought crime enslavement.   In the United Kingdom, 30 Brits are arrested per day for speech-related offenses.  In the EU, the Digital Services Act is creating a censorship regime that would make communist China blush.  In the United States, before President Trump's return to power, the American vast censorship enterprise sought to control speech, to control how we think, and to influence national discourse and elections.   In 2022, as the Attorney General of Missouri, I filed the landmark lawsuit Missouri v. Biden, which Justice Alito called one of the most important First Amendment cases in American history.   Though my loss through the lawsuit uncovered a vast censorship regime perpetrated by the Biden administration.
I saw all the emails.
I saw all the text messages.  I deposed senior government officials, including Anthony Fauci.  Missouri versus Biden uncovered for the American people how the Biden administration built one of the largest censorship operations in American history by working in secret through third parties, pressuring, bullying, threatening, jawboning big tech into suppressing viewpoints that they disagreed with.
Jen Psaki boasted about flagging disinformation with Facebook.
The Biden White House was revealed to have been backchanneling with YouTube about suppressing disfavored speech, suppressing things like the lab leak theory.  White House Digital Director Rob Flaherty pressured platforms like Facebook and YouTube to censor all kinds of COVID-related speech.  Joe Biden said Facebook was killing people.  Last week, Chairman Cruz and the Senate Commerce Committee released a report
that revealed more details about how the Biden administration, as part of this larger censorship operation, weaponized the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, or CISA, into an agent of censorship pressuring big tech to police speech.  The Biden administration's collusion with big tech and non-governmental organizations to censor speech infringed on the individual freedoms of millions of Americans,
to limit what they could say, what they could hear, and what they could read.  Fortunately, President Trump won a historic victory, and on January 20th, 2025, the first day of his second presidential term, President Trump signed an executive order titled Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.
But the story of censorship does not begin and end with the federal government.
Big Tech was censoring long before presidential jawboning and I imagine will continue to censor long after.  Here are some instances of pre-Biden censorship.  All of Big Tech censored the Hunter Biden laptop story.  Google banned COVID skepticism.  Twitter shadow banned and suspended conservatives.   Facebook throttled posts from pages like The Federalist and The New York Post.  Facebook flagged and removed posts questioning voter ID laws and ballot harvesting.
Two of today's witnesses, Alex Berenson and Sean Davis,
Were direct targets of this censorship operation and were de platformed shadow banned and silenced for their viewpoints.
Congress should address this problem with decisive legislative action like my collude act or my censorship Accountability Act, both of which hold big tech and government sensors accountable.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about what Congress and this committee can do to make sure that no American, regardless of their political leanings, ever learns that the federal government, trusted with protecting their First Amendment rights, is actually working to undermine them behind closed doors.
Our founding fathers recognized that freedom of speech is vital.  Protecting it is first and foremost in the Bill of Rights.
While some argued that free speech was already protected because the Constitution did not give the government power to censor, the framers went further, affirmatively restricting government intrusion.  The First Amendment is the beating heart of our Constitution.
Free speech is not just instrumental.
but an end to itself.  In the digital age with all the peril and possibility that accompanies it, the struggle for free speech is the struggle for civilization itself.
I want to thank the witnesses for being here today and look forward to their testimony.
And I will, before I turn it over to the ranking member for her opening remarks, request that Chairman Cruz's opening statement be entered into the record.
Without objection.   Ranking Member Campbell.  Thank you.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and welcome to our witnesses.  Thank you for joining us this morning.  These issues of the media and consumers and free speech, very important issues for us to discuss.

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