Cheney, who currently serves as chair of the House Republican Conference, made clear in her Tuesday night floor speech that she isn t backing down against the former president, despite the expected cost to her political ambitions in the House.
“Every one of us who has sworn the oath must act to prevent the unraveling of our democracy. This is not about policy. This is not about partisanship. This is about our duty as Americans, Cheney said.
ADVERTISEMENT Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar, Cheney continued. I will not participate in that. I will not sit back and watch in silence while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law, and joins the former president s crusade to undermine our democracy.
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In a letter outlining the pledge, the Republicans cite accusations of the tech companies “unprecedented actions to silence” conservative speech.
They noted Twitter and Facebook’s decisions to ban and suspend former President Trumps’ accounts, as well as Google, Apple and Amazon’s action taken against the fringe social network Parler after the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“These monopolies have shown that personal liberty can be threatened by corporate tyranny just as much as by government tyranny. They have demonstrated that they are willing to relegate those who do not agree with their worldview to the status of a second-class citizen by cutting dissenters’ access to the infrastructures of business and public discourse,” the Republicans wrote.
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The hatefulness of this statement is only surpassed by its ignorance of American history and values. https://t.co/1KWAqWc7Pm Congressman Ken Buck (@RepKenBuck) April 17, 2021
Buck is the latest Republican to come out swinging against the new group’s platform, which has been panned as nativist and racist.
The America First Caucus s platform maintains that a certain intellectual boldness is needed in order to follow in President Trump
ADVERTISEMENT America is a nation with a border, and a culture, strengthened by a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions. History has shown that societal trust and political unity are threatened when foreign citizens are imported en-masse into a country, particularly without institutional support for assimilation and an expansive welfare state to bail them out should they fail to contribute positively to the country, the caucus’s platform states.
The bill was also reintroduced in the House by Rep. Ken Buck
“Chinese-owned apps are required to report user data to the Chinese Communist Party, that is why we cannot trust TikTok with the sensitive data that exists on U.S. government devices,” Buck said. It is well past time to acknowledge the serious cybersecurity threat that TikTok poses and enact a federal government-wide ban on the Chinese app.”
While the federal government as a whole has not taken the step to ban TikTok, agencies including the Defense and Homeland Security departments, along with the Transportation Security Agency, have already banned employees from using the app on their federal devices.