Exclusive | Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt unveils bill demanding fed watchdogs keep Congress in the loop on censorship by agencies

Sen. Eric Schmitt introduced new legislation Thursday that would force the watchdogs of federal agencies to scour for any indications of collusion between federal agencies and social media companies and inform Congress of such activities.

The Transparency in Bureaucratic Communications Act specifically demands Congress get “a detailed description” of correspondence between agencies and online platforms as well as the context behind those communications.

“Let me make it clear, the incoming Republican Congress cannot allow deep-state bureaucrats to continue censoring the free speech of our constituents any longer,” Schmitt said in a statement.

“We must continue to expose the full extent of the Biden administration’s censorship schemes against the American people,” he added. “We will find the bureaucratic rot and we will rip it out.”

The policy specifically applies to companies that receive protections under Section 230, which clarifies that social media companies aren’t publishers and therefore, shields them from key liabilities such as defamation for posts by users.

There are 74 statutory inspector generals — government watchdogs — who audit federal departments and independent agencies.

Those inspector generals already send reports to Congress on more than 20 different topics dealing with various deficiencies across the federal government.

Schmitt had served as Missouri’s Attorney General from 2019 until 2023 before getting elected to the US Senate. During that time as AG, he spearheaded the Missouri v. Biden case, done in tandem with similar litigation out of Louisiana, that accused the Biden administration of colluding with Big Tech on censorship.

Back in June, the Supreme Court rejected that challenge, concluding that the plaintiffs lacked standing in the matter.

Schmitt and later his successor Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey argued that the administration conspired to “coerce” social media platforms to strike down certain posts pertaining to the COVID-19 vaccines and other subjects.

The Missouri senator alleged that there had been a “vast censorship enterprise” at play between the administration and social media.

Earlier this year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has seemingly strived to mend fences with President-elect Donald Trump, told Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), “I believe the government pressure was wrong.”

“I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” he added at the time. “I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”

Following tech mogul Elon Musk’s takeover of X, formerly Twitter, in 2022, the platform released the so-called “Twitter Files” which shed light on the company’s correspondence with the administration on content moderation.

Schmitt believes that such transparency triggered public outcry that helped push some of the government agencies in question to modify their behavior.

The Show-Me State senator is hoping that similar transparency across the government could snuff out any potential lingering collusion between federal agencies and Big Tech.