Pigs could be flying; the ACLU and GOP lawmakers have found themselves in agreement, on the first amendment, no less. Yesterday afternoon the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives snuck in the passage of an election security bill.
Summing up Republican sentiment nicely, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse referred to the bill as “a pile of hot garbage.” Senator Sasse said, “Today speaker [Nancy] Pelosi and House Democrats are voting to gut the First Amendment and silence free speech.” He continued, “This bill is [a] pile of hot garbage that would give federal bureaucrats the power to decide what is and isn’t political speech and then demand that records are kept on who says what.”
An unlikely bedfellow, the ACLU came out against the bill as well. In a statement, the ACLU said the bill “strikes the wrong balance, sweeping too broadly and encompassing more speech than necessary to achieve its legitimate goals” of preventing foreign interference in U.S. elections.
Zero Republicans voted for the bill which passed with a vote of 227 to 181. Although Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the bill would be “dead on arrival” in the Senate, it displays Democrats’ desire for an overreaching government. According to Fox News:
The proposed legislation would require campaigns to disclose illegal offers of campaign assistance from foreign governments and would restrict campaign-related communication between candidates and foreign governments. It would also require more transparency in political ads on social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said the Democrats’ bill “dangerously expands the federal government’s control over Americans’ free speech.” Primarily, “the vague wording of the legislation would potentially give Washington the unprecedented responsibility of determining what qualifies as ‘legitimate’ news or who can be deemed a ‘legitimate’ journalist” added McCarthy.
Senator Ben Sasse nailed it when he said the bill “is so blatantly un-American that it has managed to united constitutional conservatives and ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] liberals against it.” Can’t get any more un-American than that.
