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Ask your Representative to Vote NO
on Democrat Gimmicks
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Back in March, and after a long 22-month investigation, special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of collusion between the President and Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election. Even with this evidence, Democrats have been unwavering in their efforts to impeach and discredit the President and have argued the House “needs information from the secret grand jury used in former special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation to help in its current impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump.”
 In light of this, Democrats quickly advanced through Committee and now to the Floor, the Stopping Harmful Interference in Elections for a Lasting Democracy (SHIELD) Act, H.R. 4617. The SHIELD Act requires campaigns to report election assistance from foreign entities and regulates online advertisements. Chairwoman of the House Committee on Administration Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) correctly pointed out the threat that foreign interference poses to our nation when she referenced the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s report on Kremlin interreference in 2016 and the recommendation for Congress to legislate policy that ensures Americans have access to who is behind online political advertisements.
However, the SHIELD Act does not include any protections preventing foreign influencers from using social media posts or troll farms; the outlets Russia primarily used in 2016. The Act also gives the federal government the power to determine who and what qualifies as a “legitimate” news outlet, undermines federalism by allowing the U.S. Attorney General leeway to interfere in state elections, and applies television regulations to the internet, a vastly different form of communication. On top of this, the legislation includes measures that threaten free speech including classifying ads that are not political in nature as political, which will hurt the efforts of many advocacy organizations like Eagle Forum.
This should be a bipartisan piece of legislation, but as Ranking Member Rodney Davis (R-IL) pointed out:
“Once again, the majority has chosen to continue this pattern we’ve seen all Congress where they rush legislation, without any hearings or public discussion of the issues, and insert poison pills into a bill that they know we will not support, all in an effort to prop-up their unfounded impeachment efforts against the President.”
That’s why we’re here today, not to make real, legislative progress on preventing foreign interference in our elections, but to push partisan politics for the Democratic agenda. We have marked up 3 comprehensive election security bills in this Committee this Congress, and the partisan approach to every problem always ends with expanding the powers of the federal government. The highlight of this bill being that we are vastly expanding the powers of the Attorney General and my personal favorite – defining “legitimate” news.”
Democrats are once again choosing politics over policy at the expense of the American people. Please join us in asking your Representative to vote NO on H.R. 4617.
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