Sen. Schmitt: The First Amendment is the Beating Heart of Our Constitution

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) presided over the Senate Commerce Committee hearing titled "Shut Your App: How Uncle Sam Jawboned Big Tech Into Silencing Americans." In his opening statement, he urged Congress to act to protect free speech from threats from government censorship.

Here are Sen. Schmitt's remarks as prepared for delivery:

"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 are 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 Service 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.

"Through my lawsuit, I uncovered a vast censorship regime perpetrated by the Biden administration. I saw all of the emails. I saw all of the text messages. I deposed senior government officials, including Anthony Fauci.

"Missouri v. 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 with which they disagreed.

"Jen Psaki boasted about 'flagging disinformation' for Facebook

"The Biden White House was revealed to have been back-channeling 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 (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 not be limited in what to say or what to read.

"Fortunately, President Trump won a historic victory, and on January 20, 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 shadowbanned 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 legislation action, like my COLLUDE Act or my Censorship Accountability Act, both of which hold Big Tech and Government censors accountable.

"I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about what Congress and this Committee can do to make sure that no American ever learns that the federal government entrusted with protecting their First Amendment rights is actually working to undermine them behind closed doors.

"Our Founding Fathers recognized freedom of speech as vital, protecting it 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 in 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 I look forward to your testimony."

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