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Freedom-of-Speech-Killing ‘RESTRICT Act’ Disguised As TikTok Ban; “Like The PATRIOT Act, RESTRICT Act Plays On People’s Fears”

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Ron Paul
Then Presidential candidate Ron Paul addresses the Republican Leadership Conference on June 17, 2011 at the Hilton Riverside New Orleans in New Orleans, LA. File photo: Christopher Halloran, Shutter Stock, licensed.

WASHINGTON, D.C. –  The RESTRICT Act (S.686) is disguised as a “TikTok ban,” writes former Congressman Ron Paul (Rand Paul’s father) on his website. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Democrat Mark Warner introduced last month the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act (RESTRICT Act). The bill is being marketed as a way to protect Americans from foreign governments that use social media to spy on Americans. 

Hmmm. It’s not about TikTok – it’s a clandestine plan to further erode freedom of speech in the USA. Why would conservatives trust any legislative proposal from radical liberals in DC? 

I’m not a fan of TikTok, however I am a fan of freedom of speech and our great US Constitution and Bill of Rights. 

According to Paul, “The RESTRICT Act is the globalists’ legislative vehicle to destroy freedom and privacy on the Internet. It would destroy free speech online, by both threatening you directly and by threatening the social media networks that people use to share information.” 

Folks, in other words, the RESTRICT ACT is a scam, a hoax, a con bill by deceptive Democrats (aka the Deep State cabal).  

Like the PATRIOT Act, the RESTRICT Act plays on people’s fears to make them silent while Congress takes away more of their liberty,” proclaims Paul. 

Excerpt from Paul’s website: 

The RESTRICT Act makes no mention of TikTok or ByteDance. The Chinese government is mentioned only once in the bill, when it is designated as a “foreign adversary” along with five other governments. What the bill does do is give the Secretary of Commerce power to “identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, investigate, or otherwise mitigate … any risk arising from any covered transaction by any person, or with respect to any property” that the Secretary of Commerce determines “poses an undue or unacceptable risk” in a laundry list of areas. Among those areas are “coercive or criminal activities by a foreign adversary that are designed to undermine democratic processes and institutions or steer policy and regulatory decisions in favor of the strategic objectives of a foreign adversary to the detriment of the national security of the United States.”  

So, the U.S. could shut down an American social media company based on the Secretary of Commerce’s determination that a website, while not actually doing anything to weaken America, poses an unacceptable risk that it will? (bold emphasis mine) 

Read more at the Ron Paul Institute.

“Even those who support a TikTok ban, such as Senator JD Vance of Ohio, don’t see the RESTRICT Act as an appropriate solution,” notes The Insider.

“One group of people is very worried that it’s too weak on the TikTok issue,” Insider previously reported Vance said. “Another group of people is very worried that you’re creating, effectively, a PATRIOT Act for the digital age,” referencing a controversial law passed after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, that granted wide-reaching surveillance powers to the federal government. 

Eric Goldman, law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law and co-director of the High Tech Law Institute states the RESTRICT Act poses a major threat to Americans’ First Amendment rights, adds the article. 

What Can You Do? 

Sign the petition from Ron Paul HERE. 

Petition to my U.S. Representative and U.S. Senators 

  • Whereas: The RESTRICT Act would eviscerate the First Amendment by criminalizing any speech the government deems to be a national security risk – which it has repeatedly shown it will use against law-abiding American citizens who express dissent; and 
  • Whereas: Making free speech a 20-year federal felony will not just chill, but FREEZE free speech on the Internet; and 
  • Whereas: The RESTRICT Act is disguised as a “TikTok ban” to deceive the public into accepting the most intrusive and tyrannical assault on free speech ever conceived in America; 
  • Therefore: I DEMAND you vote NO on the RESTRICT Act. 

Marco Rubio, Florida Republican is the Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Florida citizens, please contact Rubio with your concerns and questions about The RESTRICT Act. 

Republicans can neither trust the Joe Biden administrative nor the mainstream media mockingbirds controlled by megalomaniac George Soros and his modern-day mafia. 

Amazingly, our worst enemy against freedom of the press is the mass media itself.” –Ron Paul  

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