A Republican senator is telling Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that the Biden administration's new Disinformation Governance Board may be unlawful and subject to a vote in Congress.

Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) offered a legal criticism of the board in a letter to Mayorkas on Monday as the White House worked to calm public outrage over the Big Brother-like panel and its controversial leader, who has a history of disseminating falsehoods.

Sen. Bill Hagerty Says New Disinformation Board Needs Vote of Congress

The board's formation, according to Hagerty, may violate the Antideficiency Act, which states that the executive branch cannot spend money without Congress permitting it, and it may also be susceptible to the Congressional Review Act.

The board, which has been compared to an Orwellian Ministry of Truth by Republicans and some left-wing and libertarian opponents, was unveiled last week, just after billionaire Elon Musk agreed to acquire Twitter to undertake pro-free speech and anti-censorship changes, according to the New York Post.

Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation specialist, has constantly questioned The Washington Post's reporting on papers from Hunter Biden's laptop, which the Washington Post and New York Times have just now confirmed. She's also been chastised for her own social media posts, including a TikTok in which she mocks free speech and fake news in a parody of the "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" song from "Mary Poppins."

While many consider Tesla CEO Elon Musk as the leading anti-free-speech leftist, he said that such proverbial threats to the establishment dynamic have been occurring for some time. According to Gutfeld, the creation of Fox News Channel, and subsequently journalists like Glenn Greenwald and commentators like Joe Rogan endangered that relationship as early as October 1996.

"Now it's Musk, so every reaction you see is the same. They fear speech because it competes with theirs," he explained, noting that Mayorkas specifically emphasized that the new misinformation infrastructure will strive against speech's "connection to violence," as per Fox News

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Disinformation Board Head Criticized by Republicans

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, described the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) misinformation board as a weapon for combating illegal immigration, saying that the board's first warnings were sent out in 2020 during the Trump administration.

She stated that the board's focus will be on addressing the use of disinformation by traffickers to encourage more people to travel to the border. More migrants were encountered at the southern border in March than in any other month since the early 2000s.

When the new plan for the dystopian-sounding board was disclosed last week, many were outraged, particularly over Nina Jankowicz, who has been appointed to lead the Disinformation Governance Board. Jankowicz has criticized Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter as well as reports concerning the Hunter Biden laptop.

Despite Republican criticism, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas lauded President Joe Biden's new misinformation czar as qualified and objective on Sunday. In spite of rising right-wing suspicions that the White House's new Disinformation Governance Board may be used for censorship and monitoring, he assured that it will not be used to monitor American residents.

Conservatives have slammed Jankowicz's selection, citing her past denial of reporting by the New York Post and DailyMail.com on Hunter Biden's laptop as a Trump campaign product. The contents of the laptop, some of which are tied to a federal tax fraud probe into the president's son, were rejected as Russian disinformation by Democrats and mainstream media outlets in October 2020 until being verified by the Washington Post early this year.

Jankowicz, a Wilson Center fellow who formerly assisted the Ukrainian government, has also been criticized for praising former British spy Christopher Steele. Steele is the author of the now-debunked Russia dossier, which claimed Trump had close links to Moscow.

Jankowicz also received backlash for an old tweet criticizing commercials urging masks used when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in March 2020. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however, cautioned against wearing a mask in public at the time, Daily Mail reported.

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