WATCH: Lawmakers spar over Biden administration's censorship campaign

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(The Center Square) – In a heated congressional hearing, U.S. lawmakers debated whether the Biden administration or current Trump administration is more guilty of infringing on Americans’ First Amendment rights by utilizing third-party censorship.

Two witnesses who say they were victims of unconstitutional censorship under the Biden administration also testified at the Wednesday hearing, held by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. 

“The First Amendment is a powerful weapon against the government’s ability to publicly censor its own citizens. But in recent years, we have seen the government censor in secret through third parties, ‘jawboning’ Big Tech into suppressing user content, often under the guise of ‘safety’ or ‘national security',” Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said. 

Cruz specifically highlighted how federal agencies under the Biden administration – including the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security – used taxpayer money to coordinate censorship campaigns with online platforms like Facebook and Twitter, now X. 

“Tweeting about COVID-19 vaccine mandates or the efficacy of wearing a mask? Sorry, that’s a ‘safety’ issue. Questioning mail-in voting?  That’s a threat to critical election infrastructure,” Cruz quipped. “And so, our government becomes the speech police – the arbiter of truth – silencing those that disagree.”

Alphabet, Inc., the company that owns Google, YouTube and other platforms, recently admitted that the Biden administration repeatedly “pressed” the company to remove “user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies.”

Under former President Joe Biden, the DHS even attempted to create a "Disinformation Governance Board" in 2022, only halting the plan after receiving blowback.

Sean Davis, CEO of the conservative news organization The Federalist, testified that he and other authors were victims of this campaign, repeatedly getting censored and demonetized for content about election security, 2020 Black Lives Matter riots, and the COVID-19 vaccine.

Davis told lawmakers how the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) directed and funded online censorship efforts against The Federalist because of its  reporting on new election laws in 2020. 

The Department of State and its Global Engagement Center (GEC) even illegally targeted The Federalist for bankruptcy, he said, “by funding, developing, and distributing technologies and tools to reduce our reach, by bullying advertisers into blacklisting us and many other conservative outlets, and by coercing Big Tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google to throttle access to our content.”

“To this day, we are still dealing with the effects of their blatantly illegal and unconstitutional censorship efforts,” Davis added in his written statement. “Although we sued in federal court nearly two years ago, we are still awaiting relief.”

Democratic lawmakers, however, argued that the hearing was merely a distraction from what they view as illegal censorship efforts from President Donald Trump.

They referenced his social media posts praising ABC for dropping the Jimmy Kimmel show (a decision it later reversed) after the host made untrue comments about recently-assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk. In the same post, Trump encouraged ABC to drop other hosts he views as unfriendly to the administration

Trump also publicly asked the Federal Communications Commission to “look into the license of NBC, which shows almost exclusively positive Democrat content.”

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., called the hearing “a farce” trying to “distract” Americans “with old emails from the Biden administration while Chairman [Brendan] Carr turns the FCC into the ‘Federal Censorship Commission.’”

“Law firms, universities, protestors, news media: all have faced this administration’s wrath for their political speech,” Markey said. “The president is threatening the free speech of the broadcasters in our country every time they dare to run some news story that questions their judgement as an administration.”

A Republican lawmaker then rhetorically asked Markey whether he had signed on to a letter to the FCC in 2018, which asked the agency to revoke the license of right-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group.

“Um, I’ll have to go in and review that, but uh, from my perspective, what Trump is doing right now at a presidential level, ordering the FCC to act, is absolutely an imminent threat to our democracy,” Markey replied.

Democrats also brought up the president’s lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, which he filed after it published a birthday letter Trump allegedly sent to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Republicans countered that the lawsuit could not be considered government censorship since Trump, not the White House, filed it.

Davis said if Democratic lawmakers are concerned about the First Amendment now, they should also “condemn the nakedly illegal and unconstitutional censorship efforts of the last 5 years.”

“If you woke up two weeks ago and suddenly decided you care about free speech, I invite you to prove it,” he said.