Ranking Member Nadler Opening Statement for the House Judiciary Committee Markup of H.R. 9605, the “No Censors on Our Shores Act”

Today, Ranking Member Jerrold Nadler delivered the following opening statement, as prepared, for the House Judiciary Committee Markup of H.R. 9605, the "No Censors on Our Shores Act":

"Mr. Chairman, let's take stock of where we are.

In 12 days, government funding will expire.

· Members of the military, federal law enforcement officers, and more than 4 million federal employees will stop receiving their paychecks.

· The Small Business Administration will stop approving the loans that small businesses rely on to keep their doors open.

· The Environmental Protection Agency will stop conducting drinking water inspections.

· Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will stop verifying benefits and issuing new cards, and if the shutdown goes on long enough, they may be forced to stop granting benefits at all.

· The National Park Service will likely shut down completely, and the National Institutes of Health will stop accepting new patients.

This is just a small snapshot of the impacts ordinary Americans will face if Congress cannot come together to fund the government in the next week and a half.

Unfortunately, my Majority counterparts seem utterly disinterested in making this happen.

Last night, Speaker Johnson moved forward with a vote on a continuing resolution that he knew could not pass. And, as predicted, it failed by nearly 20 votes.

He still has not put forward any proposal that might actually garner a majority.

And today, here in this Committee, are we doing any work that might help resolve this pending crisis, or that might address the myriad other issues that Americans are facing, such as the continued threat of weapons in our schools?

No, instead the Majority has chosen to take up legislation designed to protect and help one man, and one man only: Elon Musk.

Protecting billionaires has been a theme for the Majority this Congress.

This Committee has held multiple hearings on the investigations into now-convicted felon Donald Trump, all in an apparent effort to interfere in ongoing prosecutions.

It advanced legislation to move the cases against Trump-and only the cases against Trump-from state court to federal court.

And under the Chairman's signature, it has sent repeated letters asking questions about baseless conspiracy theories.

Now, the Committee is doing the same to protect Elon Musk and his pet project, "X," the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

In January 2023, Musk met with Republican leadership and Chairman Jordan without any representatives from the minority present.

After this meeting, the Majority launched multiple investigations designed to impose burdensome document production and interview demands on Twitter's rivals and on any entity who dared to criticize Twitter or Musk's management of the company.

· Chairman Jordan has launched burdensome and expensive investigations into every major social media company except Twitter.

· He has attacked the Federal Trade Commission for having the audacity to investigate whether Twitter is misleading consumers.

· He sent a demand letter to Meta demanding information on its decision to launch Threads, which the Chairman derided as a, quote, "rival of Elon Musk's Twitter."

· After Senator Warren wrote to the SEC asking the agency to investigate whether Mr. Musk had a conflict of interest as CEO of both Tesla and Twitter, the Chairman sent a letter to the FTC demanding communications between FTC employees and Senator Warren's former staffers.

· When Elon Musk sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate for reporting on the rise of hate speech on Twitter, Chairman Jordan promptly wrote to CCDH and demanded broad swaths of documents-demands clearly designed to obtain material that would take Twitter months if not years to obtain through the civil discovery process.

· And, just recently, the Chairman decided to attack the Supreme Court of Brazil and the European Commission for having the audacity to try to stop the spread of disinformation on Twitter-disinformation that is leading to rampant violence and threats of violence in the case of Brazil, and which violates European law in the case of the EC.

I am sure it is just a coincidence that this year, the Musk-backed "America PAC" plans to spend $160 million to help Republican candidates, that Musk has promised to turn out 800,000 people to vote for Trump in battleground states, and that just this week, Musk pledged to spend $10 million for "voter turnout" in House races across the country.

And I am sure it is just a coincidence that we are here today to consider legislation designed to help exactly one man-Elon Musk-even though just this week, following the assassination attempt against Donald Trump, Musk tweeted and then deleted, quote, "And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala," punctuating his sentence with a thinking face emoji.

While this legislation is designed solely to help Elon Musk, it is drafted so broadly and so carelessly that it would have what I must assume are a wide range of unintended consequences.

The legislation purports to make inadmissible or deportable any foreign official who carries out an act against a United States citizen that might constitute a violation of the First Amendment.

This is obviously directed towards the Supreme Court of Brazil and the European Commission. The Majority has accused both entities of trying to, quote, "censor" Elon Musk.

In practice, however, this legislation is unworkable. I presume, given the tile of the bill and their advocacy for Musk so far, that the Majority means this bill to apply to a narrow category of cases related to speech online.

But that is not what the bill says. The bill says, quote, "First Amendment." And, as the Majority must know, there is far more to the First Amendment than Twitter and Elon Musk.

· This bill would apply, for example, to the Pope-a government official in his capacity as the ruler of Vatican City and the Holy See-who regularly directs American Bishops in their exercise of religion and who also has authority to punish American clergy who speak out against him.

· It would apply to Saudi consular officials who deny tourist visas to non-Muslim U.S. citizens seeking to access either Mecca or Medina.

· And it would apply to any foreign officials whose government hires American employees to work in their embassy and then limits what those employees can say about their jobs.

The legislation is also unworkable because there is a significant, complex, and voluminous body of case law interpreting and applying the various clauses of the First Amendment.

I cannot fathom how a State Department official charged with reviewing a visa application, without benefit of an extensive record present in an American court case or any extensive familiarity with First Amendment doctrines and case law, would have the ability to determine whether acts committed by a foreign official in another country "would violate the First Amendment."

Even if the authority granted to Executive Branch officials under H.R. 9605 is discretionary-and Republicans have argued in other contexts that Federal immigration officials' discretion in prioritizing the deportation of foreign nationals is limited-it would not solve the problems highlighted by these examples.

Indeed, it might prove more problematic, because Executive Branch officials would have the discretion to pick and choose which U.S. citizens' rights should be vindicated by deporting or denying a foreign official entry into the U.S.

This legislation is simply absurd and unworkable. I urge my colleagues to vote against it, to stop using this committee as a vehicle to advance Elon Musk's personal interests, and to move on to issues that are actually important to ordinary Americans."

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