Democrats Have Been Making Open War On Free Speech Since The Obama Era

Democrats are at war with free speech, and they are using every tool in their political box to silence their political opponents.

Want proof? President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security just announced a new “Disinformation Governance Board” designed to fight misinformation.

The administration selected Nina Jankowicz, who peddled the lie that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation, to lead the board.

Or just take a look at all of the Democrats like White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki and Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dick Durbin, who are losing their minds after realizing that Elon Musk’s bid to take over Twitter hurts their control regime.

Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren even went so far as to claim Musk owning Twitter is “dangerous for our democracy.” The Washington Post also admitted that “Democrats, Biden have limited power as Elon Musk buys Twitter.”

Throwing a fit about the ability to censor and suppress speech is a growing trend in Democrat politics. Leftist politicians past and present have been heavily involved in efforts to smear their political enemies as “threats to democracy” and label anything counter to their narrative as disinformation.

It’s clear that censorship and control are now a fundamental part of Democrats’ political platform, which is why they’ve been openly at war with the First Amendment since Barack Obama was in office.

Senate Democrats Tried To Kill the First Amendment

During his 2010 State of the Union address, Obama issued a “rare” rebuke of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling to the SCOTUS justices’ faces. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court clarified that nonprofits and super-PACs could spend what they wanted on political speech so long as they were not directly coordinating with political campaigns.

“With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections,” Obama said.

While Justice Samuel Alito appeared to mutter that Obama’s characterization of the decision was “not true,” the president begged for legislators to counter the high court’s ruling with legislation “that helps to correct some of these problems.”

Four years later in 2014, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid led a charge to repeal free speech protections by altering the First Amendment. New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall formally proposed the amendment but 45 other Senate Democrats gladly signed up to co-sponsor the legislation that would grant Congress unlimited regulatory powers over “the raising and spending of money and in-kind equivalents with respect to federal elections.”

Democrats hyped the amendment as a means to “restore democracy to the American people” by limiting the control money had over American politics. Reid even admitted the legislation was designed to target his political enemies like the Koch brothers.

The leftist party was quick to carve out an exception for the corporate press. There was not, however, a caveat in the amendment stating that legislators would only target corporations, billionaires, and other “big money” groups.

Under Udall’s amendment, every American’s right to free speech was threatened. As Texas Sen. Ted Cruz noted in his 2014 analysis of the amendment, Democrats’ coordinated assault on free speech would grant Congress unchecked “power to silence citizens.” He listed some examples of what Congress could do “if this amendment were adopted”:

Congress could prohibit the National Rifle Association from distributing voter guides letting citizens know politicians’ records on the Second Amendment.

Congress could prohibit the Sierra Club from running political ads criticizing politicians for their environmental policies.

Congress could penalize pro-life (or pro-choice) groups for spending money to urge their views of abortion.

Congress could prohibit labor unions from organizing workers (an in-kind expenditure) to go door to door urging voters to turn out.

Congress could criminalize pastors making efforts to get their parishioners to vote.

Congress could punish bloggers expending any resources to criticize the president.

Congress could ban books, movies (watch out Michael Moore) and radio programs—anything not deemed ‘the press’—that might influence upcoming elections.

The amendment eventually failed but every single Senate Democrat present that day, 54 total, voted for it. As a whole, the Democrat Party saw no problems with trying to cancel the Constitution to better serve their power.

They Did It Before, They’ll Do It Again

Sound familiar? Just last year, Democrats tried to pass their federal election takeover bill HR 1, which contained provisions that “would also control what Americans and politicians say.” HR1 also failed but Democrats are still doing everything in their power to control the narrative.

They disqualify and subdue politically inconvenient information such as Hunter Biden’s laptop while amplifying fake information to push hoaxes, such as that Trump colluded with Russia to rig the 2016 election. They host “disinformation” forums and talk about Republicans being a threat to our democracy all while calling for more censorship campaigns to silence Americans.

Simply put, Democrats don’t need Congress to alter the First Amendment for them to limit speech. As long as the left has Big Tech censors and the propaganda press on their side, they can still suppress speech they don’t like and prop up narratives that they do.

That’s why so many of them threw fits this week when news broke that billionaire Elon Musk won his bid to take over Twitter. Musk’s plan to weed out Twitter’s reckless political censorship is a threat to their regime.

Musk’s disgust that a credentialed news organization was silenced by Twitter for reporting on what should have been the biggest story of the 2020 election cycle angers the left because they don’t regret throttling the Hunter Biden laptop story at all. It worked, didn’t it?

Don’t be surprised at Democrats calling for Americans to be muzzled. Censorship is a fundamental part of their party platform. And with President Joe Biden’s approval ratings at dangerous lows heading into midterms, suppressing speech also seems to be the only way that Democrats believe they can win elections.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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