Ranking Member Raskin’s Statement on Alphabet’s Coerced Confession and Capitulation to MAGA Demands

Washington, D.C. (September 23, 2025)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, issued the following statement after Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, informed the Committee that it would reinstate accounts previously banned for disinformation and violations of the company’s own policies, surrendering to political intimidation by House Republicans:

“Today’s letter from Alphabet has the ring of a false and coerced confession.  Like the shameful capitulations to Trump’s shakedowns of broadcast companies and law firms, this humiliating performance is the bitter fruit of Trump and MAGA’s relentless pressure campaign forcing corporate America to submit to platforming propaganda and disinformation.

“Alphabet’s lawyer’s vague attempts now to claim the Biden Administration tried to dictate content moderation is radically inconsistent with the actual testimony of Alphabet employees. Twenty witnesses from Alphabet, under penalty of lying to Congress, testified time and again that they were not subject to coercion by the Biden Administration. But Chairman Jordan has refused to release a single one of those transcripts, choosing instead to lob false and abstract claims about coercion from the Biden Administration.

“We have seen where House Republicans’ fact-free crusade against social media has led us: platforms where algorithms and bots—many controlled by our foreign adversaries—spread wild scams and frightful frauds aimed at our seniors, target kids and teenagers with content promoting self-harm, and send child pornography and incitement to political violence coursing through our online town squares. 

“If Judiciary Republicans were interested in fighting censorship, they would join Committee Democrats in fighting back against the onslaught of repression of free speech by Donald Trump. In America today, journalists are threatened, books are banned, comedians are taken off the air, newspapers are sued by the president, lawyers are targeted by Executive Order, and universities and law firms are forced into appeasement or litigation to defend their rights. Where are the GOP’s self-proclaimed First Amendment crusaders when we actually need them?”