Peter Welch: This Is How Trump Administration Is Engaged In 'Real Suppression' Of Free Speech

2 days ago

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) detailed where he sees the Trump Administration threatening free speech.

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Transcript

00:00ranking member in this committee and delighted to be your colleague in the

00:03Senate in the same class and delighted to serve with you on the Judiciary

00:08Committee and welcome Senator Durbin. I'm totally with you on the First

00:13Amendment in the central role it plays in the well-being of this nation. It was

00:18such a radical concept in 1791. I mean it's hard to imagine that at a time when

00:25kings were the law, we had a republic that protected our fundamental freedoms

00:31to religion, to speech, to assembly, the right to petition the government and to

00:35have free press that could operate without any fear of government's

00:39censorship. So we have agreement on that and we're going to have a discussion

00:44about how that's playing out this moment in our history. That First

00:50Amendment does reflect our founding father's view and I think my view and

00:55frankly yours Mr. Chairman that we can have a society where individuals freely

01:01voice their views and that First Amendment protection is a bedrock that

01:08allows folks to do that. I have some, you have some questions about the deep dark

01:13state. We're going to go through those. I have some factual disputes with you

01:18that'll come out. I have some concerns about some of the actions that the

01:22current administration is taking and how it impacts on First Amendment rights and

01:29constitutional protections. You know should in associated press report

01:35reporters be removed from parts of the White House press pool because they

01:39won't adopt the name that the president prefers for the Gulf of Mexico slash

01:45America? Should a news organization that provides negative coverage of a

01:51political person, including a president, be called illegal? Should a newspaper be

01:58sued, especially these days when the finances of newspapers are so precarious

02:03because a candidate did not like the poll results that were published in that

02:09newspaper? These are extraordinarily significant events that creates a real

02:15suppression, in my view, of free speech. Should law firms be brought to heel

02:22because they defended somebody with whom a president disagrees? These are examples

02:29that do raise questions about free expression in this country and those are

02:34things that I'd like to discuss with our witnesses today. But on this question of

02:39the censorship industrial complex, the basic allegation here, as I

02:45understand it, is that there is government-facilitated interference with

02:50free speech and we're going to hear from the witnesses on that. But the underlying

02:56premise of this, as I understand it, is the taxpayers are essentially footing

03:00the bill for this. My view is that facts don't support that allegation. Take, for

03:07instance, NewsGuard. That provides transparency and reliability ratings so

03:12that advertisers can make informed decisions about where to spend their

03:16money and we can have a big debate about whether their judgments are right or

03:20they're wrong. But I understand that the organization only received a few very

03:30small federal grants to do specific things in the main work that they did.

03:37And those grants, by the way, came from the Trump administration back in 2020 to

03:42track and warn of Russian, Chinese, and Iranian disinformation that is targeting

03:49Americans, which is, by the way, a really fundamentally important distinction. The

03:55speech of Americans is protected. Does that mean that we want to protect

03:58literally foreign actor efforts to undermine the rights of Americans to

04:06make their own decisions about who will be their leaders? Another allegation that

04:13is part of this is that the Twitter files released by Elon Musk, some claims

04:20were that the Twitter files show that the government censored 22 million

04:23tweets. I have a factual dispute with that. They argue that because the

04:28government provided funding to institutions that studied election

04:32disinformation and because the institutions flagged social media posts

04:36with disinformation for companies, these institutions were part of a

04:41government conspiracy to suppress speech. My view, those arguments are simply not

04:47based on the facts. In reality, the government funding was not to track and

04:51report social media activity. It was to help counter foreign disinformation and

04:57only 2,980 tweets were actually reported to Twitter because they did

05:03appear to violate Twitter's terms of service, Twitter's own terms of service.

05:07So the Twitter file support is overcounted by nearly 22 million tweets.

05:12And of course, last year the Supreme Court rejected the allegation that

05:17government had unconstitutionally censored conservatives by pressuring

05:23social media companies to take down posts. And that was a six to three

05:28decision by Judge Amy Coney Barrett that found no merits to the claims. Justice

05:37Barrett wrote, it's therefore difficult to say that the White House was

05:41responsible, even in part. So, Mr. Chairman, although we agree that

05:46government should not infringe on free speech, I am with you on that and with

05:52all of my colleagues here. I don't believe that's what has been happening

05:58here. Finally, just on a matter of privilege as the ranking member, I hope

06:04as our committee does its work this year, we focus on other aspects of the

06:11Constitution, including the separation of powers. You know, as members

06:16of Congress, it's up to us to decide whether we're ever going to cede our

06:20authority to the executive branch. And while this is not the focus of this

06:26hearing, I want to express to my colleagues that I am concerned about

06:29executive overreach. During the first week in office, the new administration,

06:36Office of Management and Budget, imposed a freeze on all federal grants and other

06:40financial assistance. That is reminiscent of the impoundment action that President

06:45Nixon took, which was found to be unconstitutional. Congress seems on the

06:50brink of ceding that authority to the president in the recent CR. Seventeen

06:56inspector generals were fired without notifying Congress. That's in direct

07:00contravention of the clear language of the law. Two Democratic commissioners of

07:06the Federal Trade Commission, that's an independent agency, were removed. And that

07:11is true for other agencies as well. And can a president dismantle a department

07:18like the Department of Education, whatever your views are about that

07:21department, when it was created by Congress, and can the president do that,

07:25any president, unilaterally? My view is no. It's a ceding of congressional

07:30authority where what we do is give up our legislative prerogative and therefore

07:36take away one of the checks in the checks and balances system that we have

07:40as government. So my hope is that over the next two years, we'll have a chance

07:45to look at your concerns on the First Amendment, which I share, but also other

07:51essential constitutional structures like the like the checks and balances system

07:58that has benefited us all. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Yes, the tradition of the

08:04committee, I'm the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Durbin. Thank you very much.

Peter Welch: This Is How Trump Administration Is Engaged In 'Real Suppression' Of Free Speech

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