Austin, TX – Wednesday, May 29th, Chairman Bryan Hughes and the Senate Committee on State Affairs held a hearing to identify threats to Texas’s election integrity, including those from “Big Tech” and foreign entities per the interim charge assigned by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. During the hearing, the Senate heard invited testimonials from whistleblowers from Facebook and Google, and key individuals involved in exposing the leftist bias of the national news media.

"There is strong evidence that big tech imposes their own biases to manipulate and stifle dissenting voices, undermining election integrity. Texas will not stand for that," said Sen. Hughes.

Dan Schneider of The Media Research Center began the hearing discussing his research of 7,000 cases of censorship that the "Big Tech" companies are influencing. "Google has utilized its power to help push to elections for the most liberal candidates, while targeting their opponents for censorship. All sides data shows that Google's "Google News" completely eliminated all links to right-leaning media outlets while generously linking left-wing media outlets for articles relating to Trump, Biden, or "Elections," said Mr. Schneider.

The eye-opening testimonials came from whistleblowers Zach Vorhies, a former Google Engineer and Ryan Hartwig, former Facebook Content Moderator. Mr. Vorhies testified in regard to Google's censorship AI system which had the goal to "program" the public to align with Google's corporate values. "These sound more like actions we'd expect from a Russian propaganda complex. But shockingly, it's the actions of Google," said Mr. Vorhies. Mr. Hartwig observed Facebook interference in U.S. elections. "Meta is a disaster we face online in regard to local and national elections. Facebook chooses what content users see and have policies to delete content purposedly to favor their beliefs. I have seen Mark Zuckerberg, lie under oath about deleting content," said Mr. Hartwig.

A shocking testimonial came from Dr. Robert Epstein, a Senior Research Psychologist. "Our monitoring system revealed disturbing examples of how "Big Tech" is manipulating our society. Google is sending "register-to-vote" reminders to Democrats at 2.5 times more at which they are sending to Republicans. This election manipulation is affecting billions & favoring Google," said Dr. Epstein.

"When you have 2.5 to 1 ratio of Google "register-to-vote" messages from Democrat-leaning users vs. Republican learning users, that is statistical bias by any definition I know of!" stated Senator Bettencourt. "The Committee had 75% compliance without subpoenas at the Marshall, Texas ESG hearing in Dec. 2022 and hope that’s the same from "Big Tech" this time around. This bipartisan 11-0 motion authorizes subpoenas and assures that the public will know the truth," he concluded.

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