GOP’s Hunter Biden Laptop Obsession Accidentally Reveals How Twitter Helped Right-Wing Speech Flourish

Republicans’ fateful “Twitter Files” hearing on Wednesday was supposed to reveal how the social media company and the left colluded to suppress a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Instead, witness testimony revealed more ways the social media company accommodated right-wing speech and was even supplicated directly by Republican elected officials—including the White House.

Oversight Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin introduced a line of questioning to former Twitter employee Anika Collier Navaroli, who explained that the company actually allowed “a loud roar” of violence-inciting hate speech from thousands of posts. Navaroli said management did not allow employees to remove the posts that were violating incitement to violence policies.

And in a farcical hearing where Republicans were supposedly concerned with government officials attempting to influence the social media company’s content moderation policies, Representative Gerry Connolly pointed out that former President Trump tried on numerous occasions to directly influence Twitter’s content moderation policies, including publicly in a rant on Twitter.

In answering a question from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Navaroli revealed that Twitter had in fact changed its own content moderation policy after Trump violated it, in order to accommodate his tweet.

“So much for bias against [the] right-wing on Twitter,” said Ocasio-Cortez.

Members including Representative Jim Jordan attempted to propagate a notion that the FBI “played” the employees in order to suppress the Hunter Biden story. For this, as for many of the allegations being hurled at individual Twitter employees, Trump was president at this time, and the FBI director was Trump’s own pick, Christopher Wray.

Meanwhile, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert spent much of their time complaining about their own accounts being held accountable for content moderation violations, and still attempting to peddle an anti-Trump conspiracy between Twitter and the government—a plot supposedly happening while Trump was still the leader of the government.

While firebrand Republicans sought to carry out a hearing that exposed a nefarious connection between Democrats and Twitter, instead they revealed the tenuousness of some of their claims.

“I believe that what’s happening here is my Republican colleagues know that the premise of this whole hearing is misleading. There is no evidence that the Biden campaign had anything to do with the Hunter Biden New York Post story,” Representative Becca Balint said. “And the evidence we do have simply shows what the Trump campaign and millions of Twitter users do routinely: flag content and ask Twitter to conduct its own review to determine whether it violates Twitter’s own rules and policies.”

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez helped reveal Wednesday that Twitter changed its rules to allow Donald Trump to tweet essentially whatever he wanted.

Anika Collier Navaroli worked on Twitter’s content moderation policy. She was also the whistleblower who told the House January 6 investigative committee that the social network let Trump bend rules and tweet disinformation for years because executives enjoyed how powerful it made them.

Navaroli testified Wednesday in front of the House alongside three other former Twitter executives. Republicans had called the hearing to ask about Hunter Biden’s laptop, but Ocasio-Cortez decided it was time to “talk about something real.”

Ocasio-Cortez highlighted a Trump tweet from 2019 demanding why she and several of her colleagues (members of the Squad and, at the time, all women of color) don’t “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

In response to a series of questions, Navaroli explained that she and her team had recommended finding Trump in violation of Twitter policy for that tweet, particularly because phrases such as “go back to where you come from” were specifically forbidden in Twitter’s content moderation guidelines.

When she made the recommendation to one of her superiors, Navaroli’s decision was overridden. A few days later, Twitter changed its content moderation policy to remove that phrase as an example of abusive language.

“So Twitter changed their own policy after the president violated it in order to potentially accommodate his tweet?” Ocasio-Cortez asked.

When Navaroli said yes, the congresswoman replied, “So much for bias against [the] right-wing on Twitter.”

Republicans and Trump in particular have long claimed that social media is biased against them. But Navaroli’s testimony reveals that Twitter, at least, was willing to bend the rules to give world leaders much more wiggle room.

In 2019, Twitter created its public interest exemptions, which stated that even if a politician’s tweets violated content policy, the posts could be left up if they were found to be in the public interest.

Trump was only penalized when he tweeted something really egregious, such as election misinformation or comments that helped spark the January 6 riot. But by then, it was too late.

Thanks to Representative Maxwell Frost, “pussy ass bitch” is now in the congressional record.

As he questioned former Twitter safety employee Anika Collier Navaroli in a House hearing on Wednesday, Frost asked Navaroli to read out loud the expletive quote from a Chrissy Teigen tweet about Donald Trump. Navaroli then testified that the Trump administration reached out directly to Twitter, jockeying for the company to remove the post.

“Free speech,” Frost remarked about Teigen’s tweet.

The exchange was part of a House hearing, inspired by the so-called “Twitter Files,” on whether Democrats worked with Twitter to suppress the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Frost’s line of questioning complicated Republicans’ narrative that Twitter colluded with the government to baselessly silence right-wing views.

Frost, the 25-year-old congressional freshman from Florida, further challenged the hearing’s supposed concern for free speech, asking whether his colleagues would host hearings on government officials suppressing free speech, rather than only private businesses making editorial decisions. Frost cited how his state’s own Governor Ron DeSantis is attacking free speech by targeting businesses that support drag shows and teachers who are teaching curriculum that DeSantis has sought to ban.

Much of the right-wing outrage driving the hearing revolved around trumped-up claims of cancel culture and of social media companies suppressing “free speech” (whether that be slurs, calls for violence, or even incitements of riots). Frost addressed this quite acutely, noting that “there’s a difference between a culture war, and how culture naturally changes,” as he suggested some of his colleagues are resistant to natural culture change. “Just yesterday, we heard a member equate immigration negatively to ‘changing our culture.’”

“The reality is that culture changes and adopts and welcomes more people. It becomes more understanding, and it also decides to reassess what’s acceptable behavior and rhetoric,” Frost said. “In this supposed culture war, they often conflate the right to free speech with the nonexistent right to not be criticized or held accountable for what you say on the internet or even real life.”

Questions surrounding free speech, online and offline, are indeed important, as are inquiries into policies on platforms where millions of people communicate. Frost’s lines of questioning, however, helped provide a reality check on how many of the concerns from the hearings’ most vocal proponents were about free speech versus about the right to say a slur, spread election or Covid conspiracies, or incite more riots on the Capitol.

It is said that the State of the Union response slot is cursed, that whoever gets the “lucky” draw to deliver the response may thereafter come into some bad political luck. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s speech may push the idea further; her unfocused and culture war–inspired remarks on Tuesday, ringing impressively discordant compared to President Biden’s largely positive speech, may not only leave a mark on her own career but actually further hamper her already-flailing party.

Biden spent over an hour sticking to a message about policy accomplishments (highlighting bipartisan efforts, perhaps too generously, wherever he could) and the “possibility” of what more Congress can do: everything from taking on junk fees and revitalizing ever-popular child tax credits to paying teachers better and capping insulin prices for all.

Afterward, Sanders filled much of her nearly 15-minute slot talking about “critical race theory,” left-wing “rituals” and “woke fantasies,” and herself.

After the former Trump press secretary opened by calling Biden a liar, she discussed her and her mother’s past cancer diagnosis and how thankful she was to doctors and the grace of God that neither disease stopped her family from charging “boldly ahead.”

She spent precious minutes on this story, all to not even mention how important it might be for everyone to have access to health care that could cure their ailments too. Instead, she transitioned into contrasting herself with Biden. “I’m the first woman to lead my state. He’s the first man to surrender his presidency to a woke mob that can’t even tell you what a woman is,” Sanders said, opening up her remarks toward the Republicans’ latest crutch: hating transgender people.

“His administration has been completely hijacked by the radical left,” Sanders opined, after Biden had spent an hour talking about policies most Americans agree with and another hour shaking the hands of practically every member of Congress and guest at the State of the Union address.

“The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left. The choice is between normal or crazy,” Sanders continued. She then boasted about signing executive orders to ban critical race theory and “indoctrination” in schools and repealing Covid safety standards.

“The Biden administration seems more interested in woke fantasies than the hard reality Americans face every day,” Sanders warned. “Most Americans simply want to live their lives in freedom and peace, but we are under attack in a left-wing culture war we didn’t start and never wanted to fight,” she continued, as if conservatives are not the ones ratcheting up the culture war with their ever-oscillating sights on gas stoves, or M&Ms, or weirdly encouraging people to smoke tobacco. Sanders was right to suggest that “most Americans simply want to live their lives in freedom.” Unfortunately, book bans and the criminalization of abortions, notable infringements on people’s “freedom,” are hallmarks of the Republican agenda.

“Make no mistake: Republicans will not surrender this fight,” Sanders assured. “We will lead with courage and do what’s right, not what’s politically correct or convenient.” Sanders’s speech resembled the same sort of hollow and out-of-touch messaging that helped Republicans lose in 2020 and fall drastically short of expectations in 2022. It was visionless, with seldom any actual talk of policies that would uplift people in this country.

So, in a sense, Sanders is correct in saying that if Republicans do indeed continue this fight, they will absolutely find the strategy to be politically inconvenient and strategically incorrect.

Democrats secured the majority in Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives for the first time in more than a decade, giving them the power to block Republican legislation on abortion rights.

The Democrats won three special elections Tuesday, giving them a one-seat majority in the chamber. This is the first time they have held the majority since 2010, although Republicans still control the state Senate.

The slim but powerful majority now gives Democrats the power to block major Republican legislation, including a constitutional amendment stripping away protections for abortion rights.

Republicans passed a bill in July, just two weeks after Roe v. Wade was overturned, that would have amended the state constitution to declare there is no right to abortion in Pennsylvania. It would also have said there is no guarantee that taxpayer funds can be used for abortions.

The GOP controlled both the House and Senate at the time, and the bill passed easily. Then-Governor Tom Wolf had vowed to veto any abortion restriction laws, and current Governor Josh Shapiro similarly supports reproductive rights. But the bill was passed as part of a larger omnibus package that bypassed the governor and would create a new constitutional amendment that would be voted on by Pennsylvania residents.

Currently, anyone seeking an abortion in Pennsylvania must undergo state-mandated counseling designed to discourage them from getting the procedure and then wait 24 hours before proceeding. Abortion is not covered by insurance plans offered under the Affordable Care Act except in cases of rape, incest, or if the pregnant person’s life is in danger. The procedure is banned after 24 weeks except to save the pregnant person’s life.

The new bill needs to pass two legislative sessions, but the governor would be unable to stop the measure from going to a public vote if it does.

But with Democrats now in control of one of the chambers, the anti-abortion legislation is unlikely to pass.

There’s no guarantee it would have succeeded if it were put to a vote, though: Abortion rights helped deliver historic wins to Democrats during the midterm elections, including for Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman.

Five states had abortion rights–related measures on the ballot, and all five voted to protect access to the procedure.

Unfortunately, Republicans have proved they have no chill when things don’t go their way. In Kansas, after residents overwhelmingly voted in August to keep abortion rights in the state constitution, the state legislature is still trying to pass laws that would restrict abortion access.