Patriot,
The statists are not backing down!
Last week, they tried to ram through a bill - The RESTRICT Act -
which is a dagger to our First Amendment rights.
Once word got out, Americans turned up the pressure on the U.S.
Senate, and that has them back-pedaling and trying to explain
this awful bill. They thought The RESTRICT Act would sail
through Congress because it was labeled an "anti-TikTok" bill.
But now it is facing political headwinds! And I need your help to
keep up the pressure to kill it completely.
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As one article noted last Friday, the future of the RESTRICT Act
"released with much bipartisan fanfare and a bevy of endorsements
earlier this month - is starting to look shakier."
That's great news, but the battle is far from over, and the
RESTRICT Act is still a serious threat.
The sponsors of this tyrannical piece of legislation didn't
expect the pushback they got last week . . . but they are
regrouping and will be back for another push to RAM it through
once they are back in session.
This bill, as I point out in my most recent column (reproduced
below), is a profoundly dangerous threat to free speech.
Let's keep up the pressure - and turn it up even more. Tell
Congress RIGHT NOW to OPPOSE the speech-strangling RESTRICT Act!
And if you can, please help us reach and mobilize more patriots
with a generous contribution to Campaign for Liberty.
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Thanks for all you do,
Ron Paul
Chairman, Campaign for Liberty
The RESTRICT Act Restricts More Than TikTok
Supporters of expanding the federal police state have found a new
boogeyman to scare the people into surrendering their liberty:
TikTok. TikTok is a social media platform that allows users to
upload their own videos. It is used by tens of millions of
Americans and is one of the most popular websites in the world.
TikTok's popularity and the fact that is owned by a Beijing-based
company - ByteDance - has led to the spread of a claim that the
site is controlled by the Chinese government. Thus the claim the
Chinese government is using TikTok to collect data on US
citizens.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner introduced
last month the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that
Risk Information and Communications Technology Act (RESTRICT
Act). The bill is being marketed as a way to protect Americans
from foreign governments that use social media to spy on
Americans.
The RESTRICT Act makes no mention of TikTok or ByteDance. The
Chinese government is mentioned only once in the bill, when it is
designated as a "foreign adversary" along with five other
governments. What the bill does do is give the Secretary of
Commerce power to "identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit,
investigate, or otherwise mitigate … any risk arising from
any covered transaction by any person, or with respect to any
property" that the Secretary of Commerce determines "poses an
undue or unacceptable risk" in a laundry list of areas. Among
those areas are "coercive or criminal activities by a foreign
adversary that are designed to undermine democratic processes and
institutions or steer policy and regulatory decisions in favor of
the strategic objectives of a foreign adversary to the detriment
of the national security of the United States." So the US could
shut down an American social media company based on the Secretary
of Commerce's determination that a website, while not actually
doing anything to weaken America, poses an unacceptable risk that
it will?
The TikTok controversy has taken attention away from the
disturbing Twitter Files, a release of communication between
Twitter employees and governmental agencies. The communication
shows how much government "influenced" big tech companies'
decisions regarding suppressing stories and deplatforming users.
If the RESTRICT Act becomes the RESTRICT law, any site that
refuses to cooperate with future efforts by the US government to
suppress certain stories and individuals on social media could
find itself accused of working to advance the "strategic
objectives of a foreign adversary."
Those who doubt this should consider how people who question US
foreign policy are smeared as Russian agents. The RESTRICT Act's
potential victims are sites like Rumble. Rumble is a
censorship-free alternative to YouTube. Rumble's commitment to
free speech is so strong that it chose to block access to its
site in France instead of complying with a new French law banning
Russia Today and other Russian news sources from French social
media.
Like the PATRIOT Act, the RESTRICT Act plays on people's fears to
make them silent while Congress takes away more of their liberty.
This bill is a blatant violation of the First Amendment that the
Founders intended to protect our right to engage in political
speech and share political information and opinions with others.
We should stop Congress from violating our right to discuss and
share ideas on TikTok and elsewhere that challenge the political
class.
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The mission of Campaign for Liberty is to promote and defend the
great American principles of individual liberty, constitutional
government, sound money, free markets, and a constitutional
foreign policy, by means of education, issue advocacy, and
grassroots mobilization.
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and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
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(IRC § 170) or as business deductions (IRC §
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