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Republicans release tech executives’ internal communications
Conservatives are arguing that the White House coerced platforms into moderating content.
A new report shared exclusively with The Verge and set to be released by a Republican-led House subcommittee brings the congressional effort to establish this narrative in line with a pending Supreme Court case, focusing on allegations that the Biden administration violated the First Amendment in its backchannel communications with platforms like Facebook. The report comes after House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) subpoenaed Google-parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft last year for their communications with the federal government, saying at the time he wished to “understand how and to what extent the Executive Branch coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech.” Jordan also chairs a subcommittee established for this purpose — the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government — and nearly hosted a vote to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress for failing to produce documents. In oral arguments, justices on both sides of the political spectrum seemed worried about placing broad limits on how tech companies could communicate with the government and questioned the cause-and-effect link the Republican states drew to the Biden administration’s pressure and platforms’ content moderation policy decisions.
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