MAGA senator Jim Jordan has been on a letter-writing spree this week, sending letters to the likes of Ursula von der Leyen and Keir Starmer, and subpoenaing eight big tech companies, including Meta, Apple and X, to stop foreign governments from censoring free speech.
Jordan spent this week meeting EU lawmakers to talk about EU tech laws. Then, he went on a letter-writing spree to stop foreign censorship “before it’s too late”.
Jordan, the Head of the House Judiciary Committee, subpoenaed Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Rumble, TikTok, and X to confront the problem of “foreign governments trying to silence American free speech – in the United States”.
The letter, addressed to each company’s CEO, said that his committee was monitoring “how and to what extent foreign laws, regulations, and judicial orders compel, coerce, or influence companies to censor speech in the United States.”
Each letter cited a ‘new threat’ to freedom of expression in America – with direct reference to the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). Each company was asked to “produce communications with the European Commission and other European governance bodies related to content moderation or suppression of speech on social media.”
On the same day, Jordan’s committee sent a letter to President von der Leyen with the same request – to protect free speech in the US from foreign governments. The letter, seen by Euractiv cites the subpoena requests to the eight companies and states that the House expects to receive communications sent or received by Commission officials regarding content moderation on an ongoing basis in the coming weeks and months.
The letter also argued that Europe’s “censorship efforts” could harm Americans’ ability to “speak freely online” – as many social media platforms maintain a single set of content moderation policies that are applied globally, and the most restrictive censorship laws could de facto set global standards. “Global censorship appeared to be the purpose of the DSA”, it also said, asking the Commission to “rededicate itself to the fundamental of free expression.”
Similar letters were sent addressing concerns about the UK’s online platforms laws to Starmer and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and citing the court orders against X that temporarily banned it from Brazil for a few months.
Jordan sent letters to Commissioner Breton in August and then to Tech Commissioner Virkkunen last month. To Virkunnen, Jim Jordan complained that the DSA “required that social media platforms have systemic processes to remove ‘misleading or deceptive content’ including so-called ‘disinformation, ‘ even when such content ‘is not illegal'”. He made the same complaint to President von der Leyen this week.
The House Judiciary Committee passed this week a bill, the “No Censors on Our Shores Act”, which would make any foreign government official who engages in censorship of American speech “inadmissible and deportable.”
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