A new federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) board is drawing the ire of many, including Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.
Called the Disinformation Governance Board, Capito said during a virtual press briefing from her Washington office Thursday she has questioned DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about the board, which was announced April 27.
“What the heck is that?” she said. “It sounds like it is governing free speech. There is a fine line there.”
Capito is Ranking Member of the DHS Appropriations Subcommittee and she asked Mayorkas to dissolve the board, which, according to DHS, was created to protect national security by combatting disinformation that impacts areas like elections and immigration.
“He didn’t back away from it,” she said, “but he has time to ditch this.”
Capito also released comments she made during her meeting with Mayorkas, where she told him the board sounds like a “sort of an Orwellian, you know, policing of speech.”
“You yourself even admitted and you just repeated it here today that the rollout of this has been vastly, you say, misunderstood,” she told the Secretary. “So, I think quite honestly, for the good of the rest of the department that now is a good time to abandon this ludicrous and much-maligned idea. When you say that we have operational control of the border is that definitionally disinformation? Because from a lot of our perspectives we don’t believe that is true. So it seems such a subjective and undefined what disinformation is. I would challenge you to punt this and rethink for the reasons that you mentioned….These are very sensitive issues to Americans who believe fundamentally in the right to freedom of speech.”
Capito said DHS has a “large office of civil rights and civil liberties. Why should we continue to fund them if you’re creating a whole other…establishing a new board or working groups? What’s wrong with what they’re doing in this area?”
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is also joining the push to dissolve the board.
Morrisey said in a statement he and 19 other attorneys general are calling for the board to end.
“Every American knows the U.S. Constitution forbids the government to abridge the freedom of speech,” Morrisey said. “The very existence of the Disinformation Governance Board will inevitably have a chilling effect on free speech. All Americans will hesitate before they voice their constitutionally protected opinions, knowing the government’s censors may be listening and watching, so some will decide it is safer to keep their opinions to themselves.”
Mayorkas has defended the board in several national interviews, saying the board would “bring together the experts throughout our department to ensure that our ongoing work in combating disinformation is done in a way that does not infringe on free speech, a fundamental constitutional right embedded in the First Amendment, nor on the right of privacy or other civil rights and civil liberties.”