An outraged Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., sounded alarms about Department of Homeland Security plans to create a “Disinformation Governance Board.”
The “Show Me” state’s senator said he first assumed news of the planned board was an example of political satire. When it turned out to have a factual basis, his amusement soured.
“Surely no American administration would ever use the power of government to sit in judgement of the First Amendment speech of its own citizens,” Hawley wrote DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Thursday. The senator chastised Mayorkas for prioritizing policing political speech over protecting the country’s borders.
“This new board is almost certainly unconstitutional and should be dissolved immediately,” he argued.
Hawley included a complete copy of his two-page letter to the DHS secretary in a Thursday Twitter post.
“The Administration that activated the FBI against parents at school board meetings now has created a government Disinformation Board to monitor all Americans’ speech,” warned Hawley in the post’s caption. “It’s a disgrace.”
“Joe Biden and Secretary Mayorkas: dissolve this monstrosity immediately.”
The first-term senator claimed DHS has consistently treated policy views opposing the Biden administration as disinformation to be monitored or investigated. Hawley stressed that political debates about immigration, pandemic lockdowns and foreign policy clearly constitute “core political speech” protected by the First Amendment.
“The Supreme Court has even gone so far as to say that “Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea,” Hawley informed Mayorkas.
He further objected to the secretary’s choice of Nina Jankowicz to be the DHS chief information silencer.
Hawley noted that Jankowicz described President Trump’s 2020 use of the national guard as “a sentence I expect to hear from leaders of authoritarian countries, not the President of the United States.” He added Jankowicz quoted with praise an article that made the seemingly slanderous statement, “homegrown fascism predated President Donald Trump.”
The woman labeled an “expert” by Mayorkas falsely characterized the Hunter Biden laptop story as Russian disinformation in a 2020 Twitter post.
Democrats have controlled the public square through their Big Tech allies for years, claimed Hawley. The senator opined that Elon Musk buying Twitter demonstrated how tenuous that control is.
“It can only be assumed that the sole purpose of this new Disinformation Governance Board will be to marshal the power of the federal government to censor conservative and dissenting speech,” the senator fumed. “This is dangerous and un-American.”
“The board should be immediately dissolved.”
DHS representative, “Operator 34,” explained Thursday that unless Mayorkas is expecting a call, he only accepts communication by mail.
Scroll down to leave a comment and share your thoughts.