Amy Klobuchar's Health Misinformation Act Has Aged Poorly
A proposed bill in 2021 would have put the HHS secretary in charge of censoring COVID-19 contrarianism on social media.
By the summer of 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic had entered a new phase. Vaccines were widely available for those who wanted them, and coronavirus cases had declined as the initial wave was beaten back. Even so, mass vaccination did end the pandemic; the vaccines offered considerable protection against severe disease and death—particularly for the elderly and at-risk population—but they did not prevent infection.
You are reading Free Media from Robby Soave and Reason. Get more of Robby's on-the-media, disinformation, and free speech coverage.
The frustration from the public health establishment was palpable, and top policymakers within the Biden administration blamed vaccine hesitant individuals for exacerbating the pandemic. In July, President Joe Biden said, "the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated." Among government health advisors, a consensus quickly formed that the main culprit was medical misinformation on social media.
Biden asserted that Facebook had blood on its hands and implied that regulation would follow if moderation did not improve; as a consequence, the social media company effectively put the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in charge of determining what kind of speech would be permitted on the platform. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy published a report on "Combatting Health Misinformation" that encouraged social media platforms to "prioritize early detection of misinformation 'super spreaders'" and limit their reach wherever possible. The Center for Countering Digital Hate, an activist non-profit organization, coined the term "disinformation dozen" to refer to the 12 social media accounts most responsible for the spread of anti-vax narratives, and urged social media companies to take action.
The anti-misinformation efforts were not just talk: They had a legislative component as well. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.) was particularly animated on this issue. On July 22, 2021, she introduced the Health Misinformation Act, which would have granted broad new powers to the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). These powers would have included the ability of the secretary to reduce online platforms' protection from liability under Section 230, the federal law that immunizes websites from liability for users' speech. In effect, Klobuchar's bill would have established that the federal government could use a public health emergency as a pretext to erode vital free speech protections at the whims of HHS.
It is clear whose speech Klobuchar was interested in censoring: The press release accompanying her bill explicitly mentions the so-called disinformation dozen. Klobuchar and her fellow Democrats sought to empower the HHS secretary to censor COVID-19-related speech with which they disagreed.
Healthy Debate
Needless to say, the Health Misinformation Act never became law, which might be a relief to Klobuchar at present. That's because the secretary of HHS is now Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the very social media users accused of being a misinformation super-spreader. If her bill had been enacted, it would have eventually empowered Kennedy—someone who has been accused by Democrats and the mainstream media of encouraging vaccine hesitancy by promoting the idea that vaccines are dangerous—to make determinations about what counts as misinformation online.
Kennedy has regularly condemned government-directed censorship of health topics online, so maybe he would have never used this ability. But it's not completely impossible to imagine an alternate reality where, say, the Health Misinformation Act is law and RFK's HHS is pushing social media companies to add warning labels about potential adverse effects to posts about vaccination.
"Lawmakers often fail to think about what happens if someone they disagree with is in charge when they create new power," says Shoshana Weissmann, digital director at R Street Institute. "And I see bills with this exact problem constantly."
Indeed, this is precisely why the First Amendment vastly constrains the government's ability to make determinations about what kinds of speech are valid. Politicians would be tempted to propose new restrictions on speech that targets their opponents, and even well-intentioned efforts to promote public well-being are bound to be abused by whomever is swept into power next. Then there's the small matter of the would-be censors subsequently being proven wrong time and time again. So-called experts blithely asserted that anyone casting aspersions on social distancing, mask mandates, lockdowns, and school closures was succumbing to misinformation. Yet the criticisms of these policies have fared better than the policies themselves.
That's without even mentioning the widespread suppression and demonization of the lab leak theory of COVID-19's origins, which was initially branded a racist conspiracy theory and vigorously censored on Facebook. Four years later, both the Energy Department and the FBI have concluded that the lab leak is the more plausible explanation.
There's little reason to think that giving the federal government even more power to police coronavirus misinformation on social media via Klobuchar's proposed law would have benefitted the public. On the contrary, it would have resulted in the censorship of worthwhile dissenting viewpoints—viewpoints that are protected by the First Amendment, regardless of the status of Section 230.
But it's doubly ironic that passing such a law would have massively backfired: The very people that Democrats, the mainstream media, and Biden's health advisors wanted to silence are now in charge of the health department!
I reached out to Klobuchar's office to see if she still supported the bill. She did not respond to a request for comment.
New Sheriff in Town
Jay Bhattacharya, President Donald Trump's pick to lead the NIH, appeared for his confirmation hearing on Wednesday. An esteemed professor of public health at Stanford University, Bhattacharya became known for making thoughtful criticisms of the government's handling of COVID-19. For speaking up against compulsory lockdowns, masking, and vaccination, Bhattacharya was muzzled by social media companies; he argues that this was done at the behest of the Biden administration.
During his remarks on Wednesday, Bhattacharya emphasized that public health had gone astray, and under his tenure, NIH would no longer promote censorship and groupthink.
Jay Bhattacharya pledges to vigorously regulate research that risks causing a pandemic. pic.twitter.com/wTXxtHUirv
— Emily Kopp (@emilyakopp) March 5, 2025
This Week on Free Media
I'm joined by Amber Duke to discuss the Democrats' reaction to Trump's Congressional address, the presidents' assertion that free speech is back, and more.
Worth Watching
People who know me are aware that I'm not really a music guy. I like music just fine, but my tastes are not well-defined. Whatever is popular on the radio is OK by me, although I mostly prefer the rock music from my childhood and teenage years, i.e. the early 1990s through the aughts. (The only concert I've attended in the last five years was Green Day and the Smashing Pumpkins.) Additionally, I listen to soundtracks from video games, movies, and television. If you listen to a playlist of my most frequently played songs, what you're most likely to hear is music from The Legend of Zelda, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Final Fantasy. I am, at this very moment, listening to the soundtrack for HBO's Westworld.
So with all that in mind, it's very rare for me to recommend music, let alone music from such a random era and genre as this, but here goes: For whatever reason, I have suddenly become extremely into the Zombies—yes, the rock band from the 1960s. I have absolutely no idea why or how they suddenly appeared on my radar. I was familiar with their two main hits, "Time of the Season" and "She's Not There," though I couldn't have told you the name of the band until last week. Well, it turns out I really like all their songs! Kids these days have probably never heard them: Check out the Zombies, Gen Z.
