Washington, D.C. (February 12, 2025)—Today, Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, led Committee Democrats in rebuking the Trump Administration’s authoritarian attacks on the First Amendment, which include efforts to intimidate the press, chill and censor speech, and silence dissent.
“Right now, the issue is this: we face a profound First Amendment crisis in the systematic actions taken by the Administration,” said Ranking Member Raskin in his opening statement.
The hearing included testimony from: Craig Aaron, Co-CEO, Free Press; Matt Taibbi, Twitter Files journalist, author, and Founder, Racket News; Michael Shellenberger, Twitter Files journalist; CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship, and Free Speech, University of Austin, and Founder, Public News; and Rupa Subramanya, Canada-based journalist, The Free Press.
Democrats explained how the Trump Administration is attacking the First Amendment, including your free speech rights and freedom of the press.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler said: “When [Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair] Carr was before the Oversight Committee last Congress, he was asked a very simple question: ‘If the president directed the FCC to revoke ABC or NBC’s broadcast license because he felt they were being unfair to him, would you comply?’ The answer should have been simple and resounding, ‘No.’ Yet Mr. Carr repeatedly refused to answer.” Rep. Nadler asked Mr. Aaron to illuminate some of the most dangerous actions this Administration is currently taking to attack the freedom of the press and to silence its critics. Mr. Aaron responded: “So far in his short time in office, Chairman Carr has used that position to go after journalists to file these very threatening letters questioning how individual reporters are covering stories of national importance to really abuse this power in ways that we’ve never seen before.”
Ranking Member Raskin asked Mr. Aaron: “Your co-witness, Mr. Taibbi […] said one of his great concerns was, ‘There’s going to be an enormous temptation within the Trump government to do things like going after media organizations they don’t like, and they can’t do that. If they end up doing that, it’s going to be a disaster.’ Has the disaster arrived?” Mr. Aaron responded: “I think what we’re seeing is incredibly powerful government officials using their power and their pulpit to go directly after news organizations. President Trump called for 60 Minutes to be terminated. Mr. Musk has gone after individual reporters who are trying to cover what DOGE is doing. […] There’s very little public information available, and yet, reporters who dare to ask, who are these people, what are they doing, why do they have access to our most important personal information—when that happens—here comes Mr. Musk, a government employee, but also the head of a social media company, coming after individual reporters.”
Rep. Zoe Lofgren said: “Donald Trump is a litigious individual. He’s quick to sue news organizations that try and hold them to account, but he’s also the Commander in Chief who appears to be using every weapon in the federal government’s arsenal to go after those same news organizations. He is currently suing, in his private capacity, CBS for $20 billion. But at the same time, his FCC chairman Brendan Carr is investigating CBS. Well, Mr. Trump is calling on him to go even further and to revoke CBS’s license because he didn’t like the coverage that they gave. He’s doing all this while Paramount, CBS’s parent company, is in merger talks with a billionaire Trump super donor David Ellison.”
Rep. Pramila Jayapal said: “Real censorship is happening right before our eyes: Donald Trump’s assault on free speech rights through a series of executive orders that dictate terms of allowable expression and identities, demand political loyalty from all civil servants, and punish anyone who dissents.”
Rep. Becca Balint asked: “Last week, Trump’s guy in charge of the agency that’s supposed to ensure fair access to the media and internet, the FCC—his name is Brandon Carr—he opened an investigation of a radio station that reported on an ICE raid. Mr. Aaron, is the government chilling or limiting speech when it threatens to investigate journalists for literally reporting the news?” Mr. Aaron responded, “I think it’s a huge problem. The First Amendment protects the rights of reporters to cover what the government is doing. […] The idea that the FCC would respond with an investigation, with threats is very, incredibly chilling to reporters’ ability to do jobs.”
Rep. Deborah Ross said: “Facebook, also known as Meta, has gutted their content moderation and safety teams, rolled back hate speech standards, and when Trump was asked if the decision by Meta was a direct response to Trump’s threats to Mr. Zuckerberg in the past, he said, ‘Probably, yeah, probably.’ So, when we talk about the First Amendment, it has to apply across the board.”
In response to a question from Rep. Eric Swalwell, Republican witness Matt Taibbi agreed that “banning books is censorship.” Under the Trump Administration, the federal government is actively banning books from libraries, including in the Department of Defense school system.
Democrats emphasized how Donald Trump and Shadow-President Musk are operating in secret and silencing dissent to evade accountability for their deeply unpopular actions.
Rep. Hank Johnson said: “Co-presidents Musk and Trump clearly want to shroud their Administration’s actions from public scrutiny, while they illegally freeze federal funds, purge federal workers and rummage through sensitive private data that they can use to retaliate against any critics who dare to speak up.”
Rep. Swalwell said: “[trump] wants to get rid of judges who disagree with him—he said that as recently as yesterday. Speaker Johnson is backing him up by suggesting that judges should just pause interpreting his violations of the Constitution. Trump goes after his perceived political opponents.”
Rep. Lou Correa said: “Over the past two weeks, more than 8,000 web pages on over a dozen government websites were taken down, including over 3,000 pages containing healthcare information, CDC. They were taken down until yesterday when a federal judge actually ordered the public health pages put back up. Some of those pages: information and guidance on vaccinations, on autism. That’s what people care about back home.”
Rep. Chuy García asked: “What does it mean for a democracy when its richest citizen is using both a major social media platform that he owns and his official status as a ‘special government employee,’ what that title gives him, to undermine the free press? Mr. Aaron explained, “It’s one thing to be the leader of a media company. It’s another to be a leader of the government. When those two things are combined, I think that is where we get into a very troubling area.”
Democrats urged House Republicans to join them in denouncing the Administration’s assault on the First Amendment.
Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon said: “Pardon our frustration that this Committee is failing to address the very real and serious issues that are confronting our constitutional republic. Now, this hearing is supposed to address government censorship of free speech. The First Amendment, which protects free speech and a free press, is the bedrock of our democracy, and a democracy only works when its citizens are properly informed. But right now, both free speech and a free press are under attack by this Administration and Mr. Trump’s billionaire buddy, Elon Musk.”
Rep. Ross said: “So, this hearing today—unless we talk about the Trump Administration as well—is not about protecting the First Amendment. Rather, it’s a distraction from the fact that the Trump Administration is actively working to chill speech, intimidate reporters, manipulate the flow of information and manipulate the American people—all true First Amendment threats from the leader of the free world. […] Now, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, if they really cared about censorship, they’d be condemning these blatant abuses of power that leave our nation less safe. But instead, they either sit silently or they enable it.”
Rep. Dan Goldman said: “Whether you agree or not with whatever Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing, it is a breathtaking and unprecedented usurpation of government power. And instead of Congress actually using its oversight authority to provide a check and balance on this government takeover, the Republican majority is once again here talking about Hunter Biden’s laptop, the Twitter Files from many years ago, and now a new one, censorship in Europe. Now, when asked about what guardrails there may be on Elon Musk’s infiltration of our federal government this past weekend, the Chairman said, ‘The guardrails are all you all in the press who are talking about it every day.’ The press? The press? What about Congress, Mr. Chairman?”
Ranking Member Raskin concluded: “There's an attack going on [against] the media. […] Could we get together on a bipartisan basis to reject that? Do we really have to be so stuck in our partisan encampments that we can't see that […]? Let’s stand up for real, if we could in this Congress, Mr. Chairman, for the freedom of speech, for the freedom of press, for the right to petition government for a redress of grievances, for the freedom of assembly, for the free exercise of religion, and for no establishment of religion. Let’s at least converge around that.”
