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The Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got here to Capitol Hill on Thursday and pointedly declared that he’s neither an antisemite nor a racist, whereas giving a fiery protection of free speech and accusing the Biden administration and his political opponents of attempting to silence him.
Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who turned to anti-vaccine activism and has trafficked in conspiracy theories, was referring to the storm that erupted after The New York Submit printed a video by which he instructed a non-public viewers that Covid-19 “assaults sure races disproportionately” and will have been “ethnically focused” to do extra hurt to white and Black individuals than to Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese language individuals.
Mr. Kennedy appeared earlier than the Home Choose Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Authorities — a panel created by Republicans to conduct a wide-ranging investigation of federal regulation enforcement and nationwide safety companies. He mentioned he had “by no means been anti-vax” and had taken all beneficial vaccines besides the coronavirus vaccine.
Thursday’s listening to was dedicated to allegations by Mr. Kennedy and Republicans that the Biden administration is attempting to censor individuals with differing views. It was rooted in a lawsuit, filed final 12 months by the attorneys common of Missouri and Louisiana and often known as Missouri v. Biden, that accused the administration of colluding with social media corporations to suppress free speech on Covid-19, elections and different issues.
The subcommittee’s chairman, Consultant Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and an acolyte of former President Donald J. Trump, opened the listening to by citing an email that emerged in that case, by which a White Home official requested Twitter to take down a tweet by which Mr. Kennedy urged — with out proof — that the baseball legend Hank Aaron might have died from the coronavirus vaccine.
The tweet, which was not taken down, mentioned Mr. Aaron’s demise was “a part of a wave of suspicious deaths amongst aged” following vaccination. There was no such wave of suspicious deaths. As Mr. Kennedy usually does, he phrased his language fastidiously; he didn’t explicitly hyperlink the vaccine to the deaths, however relatively mentioned the deaths occurred “intently following administration of #COVID #vaccines.”
Thursday’s session had all of the makings of a Washington spectacle. A protracted line had fashioned outdoors the listening to room within the Rayburn Home Workplace Constructing by the point Mr. Kennedy arrived. Kennedy supporters stood outdoors the constructing holding a Kennedy 2024 banner.
Regardless of the theater, the listening to raised thorny questions on free speech in a democratic society: Is misinformation protected by the First Modification? When is it applicable for the federal authorities to hunt to tamp down the unfold of falsehoods?
Democrats accused Republicans of giving Mr. Kennedy a discussion board for bigotry and pseudoscience. “Free speech isn’t an absolute,” mentioned Delegate Stacey Plaskett of the Virgin Islands, the highest Democrat on the subcommittee. “The Supreme Court docket has said that. And others’ free speech that’s allowed — hateful, abusive rhetoric — doesn’t must be promoted within the halls of the Individuals’s Home.”
Even by Mr. Kennedy’s requirements for stoking controversy, his current feedback about Covid-19 had been stunning. Consultant Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida, who’s Jewish, tried unsuccessfully on Thursday to pressure the panel into government session; she insisted that Mr. Kennedy had violated Home guidelines by making “despicable antisemitic and anti-Asian feedback.” She additionally helped arrange Democrats to signal a letter calling on Republican leaders to disinvite him from the listening to.
Mr. Kennedy waved the letter about throughout his opening remarks. “I do know most of the individuals who wrote this letter,” he mentioned. “I don’t imagine there’s a single one that signed this letter who believes I’m antisemitic.”
Mr. Kennedy has been steeped in Democratic politics for his total life, however his marketing campaign has drawn supporters from the fringes of each political events. He has made widespread trigger with Republicans and Trump supporters who accuse the federal authorities of conspiring with social media corporations to suppress conservative content material.
Thursday’s listening to was billed as a session to “look at the federal authorities’s function in censoring People, the Missouri v. Biden case and Massive Tech’s collusion with out-of-control authorities companies to silence speech.” One of many attorneys concerned in that case, D. John Sauer, additionally testified, as did Emma-Jo Morris, a journalist at Breitbart Information, and Maya Wiley, the president and chief government of the Management Convention on Civil and Human Rights.
Mr. Kennedy confirmed a flash of the previous Kennedy type, invoking his uncle, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a Democrat and legislative big who often labored throughout the aisle. He referred to as for kindness and respect, recalling how his uncle introduced Senator Orrin G. Hatch, the Utah Republican with whom he partnered on main laws, to the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Mass.
And Mr. Kennedy was joined by a former member of Congress: Dennis J. Kucinich, who served within the Home as a Democrat from Ohio and is Mr. Kennedy’s marketing campaign supervisor.
“We have to elevate the Structure of the US, which was written for laborious instances,” Mr. Kennedy declared at one level, “and that needs to be the premier compass for all of our actions.”
Amid the vitriol, members of each events did come collectively round a lament from Consultant Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia.
“I’ve been on this Congress 15 years, and I by no means thought we’d descend to this stage of Orwellian dystopia,” Mr. Connolly mentioned.
Representatives Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, and Harriet M. Hageman, Republican of Wyoming, nodded their heads and smiled. “I agree with that,” they mentioned in unison.
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