The Biden administration’s efforts to intimidate media outlets into censoring information that might paint the president in a bad light (other than his own gaffes, lies, and plagiarism) are receiving new and much-needed attention this week. The House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government reconvenes Thursday to look into “the federal government’s involvement in social media censorship” and “recent attacks on independent journalism and free expression,” according to the committee’s press release.
It is a timely investigation. As Byron York noted at the Washington Examiner, “President Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign is ‘overhauling’ its strategy to fight ‘misinformation’ on social media. The new effort includes ‘recruiting hundreds of staffers and volunteers to monitor platforms.’”
The Biden team’s big current concern is the economy. Somehow, the public just isn’t getting the message that everything is hunky-dory and that Biden is the reason we’re all supposedly so much richer than we were in January 2021. Yet even voters who admit to having voted for Biden in 2020 say the economy is awful.
The new operation is reminiscent of the Biden administration’s successful efforts in 2021 to persuade media companies to suppress unpopular observations about government initiatives, especially doubts about the science behind combatting COVID-19 and concerns about interference in the 2020 election. That was, in fact, a ruthless campaign of threats and intimidation against tech companies, the legality of which the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide in its current session.
