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 spending funds 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