Summary
Press release announcing a full Senate Commerce Committee hearing titled “Shut Your App: How Uncle Sam Jawboned Big Tech Into Silencing Americans,” chaired by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), held October 8, 2025. The hearing expands on Cruz’s previously released report documenting CISA’s secret pressure campaign on social media companies to remove speech. Witnesses include law professor Eugene Volokh, journalist Alex Berenson (who was banned from Twitter), and voices from both sides of the debate.
Key Points
- Cruz characterizes CISA’s behavior as “infringed on the First Amendment by pressuring social media companies to censor Americans that held views different than the Biden administration.”
- CISA “faced little pushback from the tech industry or the DHS Inspector General, enabling the agency to avoid accountability.”
- Cruz explicitly links CISA’s speech regulation to AI as the next frontier: “CISA’s unchecked censorship serves as a cautionary tale for future policy related to artificial intelligence.”
- Witnesses selected for partisan valence: Volokh (First Amendment scholar), Berenson (banned journalist), Davis (The Federalist CEO) on one side; Kimmelman (Yale/Harvard, more establishment) on the other.
- Cruz calls for “legislative solutions to safeguard Americans from jawboning.”
Newsletter Angles
- CISA Jawboning: This hearing is the legislative-branch accountability mechanism for the same behavior documented in Murthy v. Missouri. SCOTUS punted on standing; Congress is now building the political record for legislation.
- AI as the next jawboning frontier: Cruz’s explicit framing — CISA’s model could be applied to AI outputs — is the most forward-looking element. The same pressure-without-a-law mechanism that worked on social media could work on AI model outputs.
- The witnesses as framing: Alex Berenson is a COVID contrarian whose Twitter ban was among the most high-profile jawboning cases. His presence signals the hearing is as much political theater as oversight — but the legal questions Volokh will address are real.
Entities Mentioned
- CISA — the primary subject of the hearing; Cruz’s prior report details its censorship campaign
Concepts Mentioned
- CISA Jawboning — the central subject of this hearing; provides legislative context for the Murthy v. Missouri legal record
- Regulatory Weaponization — Cruz frames CISA as weaponized government agency
- AI Sovereignty — Cruz’s CISA-to-AI extension is a preview of the next regulatory battle
Notes
This is a press release announcing the hearing, not the hearing transcript or report itself. The Cruz report on CISA is referenced but not in the raw file. The hearing represents congressional follow-through on the jawboning story after the Supreme Court’s standing dismissal in Murthy v. Missouri.