GOP accuses DHS of using taxpayer-funded ‘censorship laundering’ to stifle opposition.

House Republicans Accuse DHS of Using Tax Dollars to Censor Americans

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been accused of using taxpayer money to censor Americans who spread “mis-, dis-, and malformation,” according to House Republicans on the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability. The DHS launched a Disinformation Governance Board in April 2022 to pressure Big Tech companies to curb dissent. However, the board was disbanded after facing pushback from free speech advocates who were concerned about the government’s First Amendment overreach. Despite this, the Biden administration’s commitment to policing thought and speech continued.

The Tip of the Iceberg

Chairman Dan Bishop opened the hearing on Thursday by stating that the DHS board was only “the tip of the iceberg of their censorship laundering schemes.” Republicans on the subcommittee and most witnesses agreed that underground government-led censorship efforts, especially by the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), pose a major threat to American citizens that, if left unchecked, will worsen.

A Censorship System of Breathtaking Size

Legal scholar Jonathan Turley said in his opening statement, “What we are seeing thus far, and we’ve only seen a fraction of the complex of censorship in the U.S. government, is a censorship system of breathtaking size.”

CISA’s Mission Shift

CISA’s primary responsibility, according to its website, is to help “the American people understand the risks from foreign influence operations and disinformation and how citizens can play a role in reducing the impact of it on their organizations and communities.” However, in recent years, CISA’s mission to identify bad actors appears to have shifted inward to focus on American citizens the government believes are engaged in wrongthink.

The First Amendment Violation

The Constitution does not permit CISA to censor citizens because it is a government agency. Nevertheless, CISA used several shared interns as an excuse to collaborate with non-government organizations like the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) at Stanford University to monitor and take action against the dissemination of certain kinds of online information. In 2021 alone, the EIP flagged thousands of Americans’ social media posts related to the 2020 presidential election. Approximately 35 percent of those posts were censored, blocked, or removed altogether based on the recommendation of the EIP. As a result, CISA was called by one witness the “architect of the broader public-private censorship regime.”

Cover-Up Attempts

Legislators say CISA has repeatedly denied having a hand in the regime’s massive censorship efforts and stonewalled Congress’s attempts to learn more. Witnesses confirmed that CISA has since attempted to cover up its domestic censorship footprint.

Partisan Definition of Disinformation

Republicans noted that Democrats’ definition of “disinformation” is selective and partisan, as evidenced by the lack of accountability for DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s lies about the border crisis.

The Issue of Censorship is Far from Resolved

The one thing that Democrats and Republicans did agree on is that the issue of censorship is far from getting resolved in just one short afternoon hearing.

Author: Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.