President Joe Biden thinks you and I need a Far-Left Mary Poppins to tell the rest of us what we can and cannot read and hear, so he’s appointed her to run the Department of Homeland Security’s newly established Disinformation Governance Board (DGB).
If there is anything most clearly barred by the First Amendment to the federal government, it is the authority to create an obscure, unaccountable bureaucracy to decide what is “disinformation” and what isn’t. That is censorship, pure and simple.
Biden is doing this despite the fact the First Amendment says Congress “shall make no law” that gives anybody, anywhere in the federal government the power to censor speech and thought in this country.
Sadly, no amount of criticism from Republicans in Congress or the conservative media will stop Biden from going forward. The only thing that can stop him is Congress refusing to fund the DGB.
The present corrupt Congress, led by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), not only won’t refuse to fund Biden’s DBS, many of its most strident voices will begin an endless drumbeat of shrill and deceptive demands that it get more money, more censorious power, and be subject to no oversight of any significance.
But come November, there is every reason to expect voters to drum the Schumer/Pelosi crowd out to pasture and replace them with a Republican majority in the House and, quite possibly, also the Senate.
That’s why what Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) is promising to do is so critically important. Amid the uproar about the Supreme Court leak, Johnson said, “The Biden Administration’s decision to stand up a ‘Ministry of Truth,’ is dystopian in design, almost certainly unconstitutional, and clearly doomed from the start. The government has no role whatsoever in determining what constitutes truth or acceptable speech. President Biden should dissolve this board immediately and entirely. If he won’t, then Republicans will.”
Johnson made this statement to the Daily Caller, which on Tuesday exclusively reported his introduction of an as-yet-unnamed bill to “prohibit the use of federal funds to establish a Disinformation Governance Board.”
The six key words Johnson uttered are these: “If he won’t, then Republicans will.” Clear and concise — if Biden won’t dissolve his DGB, congressional Republicans will. If voters award them with sufficient majorities to do so in 2023.
If Johnson, the 50 present Republican members of the House of Representatives who are co-sponsoring his proposal, and a commanding majority of the House that is seated next January actually do what he is saying, there may yet be hope to, in Ronald Reagan’s immortal words, “save this, the last best hope for freedom on Earth” for our children and grandchildren.
But this is the Republican Party we are talking about, and there are a multitude of reasons to be highly skeptical that, regardless of how sincere Johnson is now, the coming Republican majority won’t have the cojones to defund Biden’s DGB.
If you doubt that, go back and count how many times congressional Republicans voted to repeal Obamacare, knowing those were meaningless votes because the guy in the Oval Office, after whom the program was named, would veto it.
Then when Donald Trump was President and was quite willing to sign a repeal measure, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the Republican who lost to Obama in 2008, rescued Obamacare, casting the one vote needed to prevent repeal.
The usual Republican approach, when Democrats take a huge step forward in their drive to centralize all power and authority in the federal Leviathan, has been to oppose, oppose, oppose, then compromise, compromise, compromise instead of drawing a line in the sand and defending it.
It is a fact — which Republicans had better start taking very seriously — that the Constitution gives Congress all of the “ultimate weapons” in any showdown with either the President or the Supreme Court. If Congress refuses to fund a DGB, there will be no DBG.
But Democrats have good reason to view proposals like Johnson’s as little more than window dressing. Historically, all they have to do is growl a bit and the GOP puppies scamper back to safety and agree to a compromise, one that ensures the survival of whatever government expansion it is the Democrats are defending.
There are other weapons in the arsenal the Founders gave to Congress to ensure its strength against the other two branches. Congress writes the authorizations that define the power of federal agencies. Congress can also redefine those powers.
Related: Sabato: Republicans ‘Favorites’ to Take Senate
And there’s this:
Americans for Limited Government President Richard Manning notes that Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has also introduced a defund proposal. Manning lauded Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) for putting a hold on Biden’s nomination of Kenneth Wainstein to be a DHS Undersecretary:
“The revelation that the department has set up a Disinformation Governance Board prompted Senator Paul to use his power to put a hold on the Wainstein nomination,” Manning said.
“Every Senator who is concerned about the federal government establishing a ministry of truth should join Senator Paul in his effort to stop this unconscionable abuse of power,” Manning added.
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