COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – Many Republican lawmakers have criticized governors’ emergency restrictions since the onset of the coronavirus outbreak. Now that most legislatures are back in session, a new kind of setback is taking root: misinformation.
In their own comments or by inviting skeptics to testify at legislative hearings, some state lawmakers in the Democratic Republic of Congo use their platform to promote false information about the virus, the steps needed to limit its spread, and the vaccines that they will extract the nation from the pandemic.
In some cases, misrepresentations have experienced a rapid reaction, even censored online. This has raised difficult questions about how to aggressively combat the potentially dangerous misinformation of elected officials or during legislative hearings, while protecting people’s freedom of expression and access to government.
Last week, YouTube withdrew a video of the committee’s testimony at the Ohio House after a witness inaccurately stated that COVID-19 was not killing children. The platform said the video violated its community rules against spreading misinformation.
Ben Wizner, director of the Speech, Privacy and Technology ACLU project, said YouTube goes too far.
“When we talk about testimonies that occurred in a public hearing, the much better answer would be the countercurrent, perhaps in the form of fact-checking or labeling, rather than this attempt to throw it through the memory hole,” Wizner said.
But opposing voices are not always allowed in committee hearings.
In Michigan, for example, the House Oversight Committee did not include state health officials or other virus experts in a discussion of a prolonged pause on youth contact sports ordered by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
It featured Jayme McElvany, a skeptic of the virus who has also posted about the QAnon conspiracy and unfounded allegations of electoral fraud by former President Donald Trump. Founder of a group called Let Them Play, McElvany questioned the mask mandates and the science behind state COVID-19 data during a legislative hearing that had no witnesses on the other side.
Wizner said these imbalances need to be highlighted and not suppressed.
“People need to know that this is what happens for local government,” he said. When audiences are posted online, YouTube owner Google has a bunch of tools to mark questionable information and direct people to the facts, Wizner said.
In Tennessee, a Republican lawmaker is pushing legislation that prohibits most government agencies from requiring anyone to have COVID-19 vaccines, which is not a mandate anywhere. Representative Bud Hulsey has tried to increase support by minimizing the severity of the disease.
While declaring, he marked the selective statistics that COVID-19 has a lower mortality rate among children and falsely claimed that vaccines could cause genetic modifications.
Hulsey faced the backlash of a fellow Republican, Rep. Sabi Kumar, a surgeon who has been a rare advocate for the Democratic Republic of Congo to wear a good mask while lawmakers meet at the Tennessee Capitol.
“My concern is that (the bill) creates an attitude against the vaccine,” Kumar said.
Kumar noted that vaccines have saved countless lives over the centuries and repeatedly checked Hulsey’s facts by emphasizing that vaccines do not change a person’s DNA.
Hulsey was not convinced.
“People have seen governments all over this country do things that have never happened in the history of the United States and that scares them,” he said. “They have every right to be afraid.”
His bill has come out of a subcommittee of the House.
In Alaska, Gov. Mike Dunleavy is fighting which he called a pattern of misrepresentation by state Sen. Lora Reinbold, a fellow Republican, saying she would no longer send members of her administration to her Senate Judiciary Committee.
In a scathing Feb. 18 letter referring to his Facebook posts, Dunleavy accused Reinbold of misrepresenting the COVID-19 state response and misleading the public.
“The misinformation must end,” the governor wrote.
Reinbold has been a vocal critic of Dunleavy issuing disaster statements while the legislature was not in session. He has used his committee to amplify the voices of those questioning the effectiveness of masks and the effects of the government’s emergency response.
On social media, he characterized the Dunleavy administration as “wild” in the face of “experimental” vaccines. At a hearing in early February, Reinbold questioned the extent to which the administration had suspended regulations during the pandemic.
“It’s almost like martial law,” he said.
The governor said that while he has tried to ease corporate rules, such as suspending taxes, he has never imposed martial law or forced Alaska to get vaccinated. Reinbold has described the governor’s criticism as unfounded.
“Some call it‘ misinformation ’information that they don’t agree with or don’t want to hear,” Reinbold said in an email.
The dust sparked the intervention of the Senate president, who said he hoped his committees would provide a “balanced approach.”
In Idaho, Rep. Heather Scott opened the legislative session in January by declaring, “The pandemic is over.” He said the more than 1,600 deaths from Idaho’s COVID-19 at the time amounted to “almost a pandemic.”
The average number of daily cases of COVID-19 is declining in Idaho, but the number of deaths has increased.
During a Zoom forum held with components in mid-February, Scott criticized the National Association of Governors, which last year issued a statement with tips to combat virus misinformation. He claimed that the group is led by “globalists” at the World Economic Forum and that “they are the ones who came out with COVID”. The term “globalists” is widely regarded as an anti-Semitic insult.
Scott did not immediately respond to a message seeking clarification on what he meant.
Several of those who spread false information about viruses in the legislatures have also supported Trump’s false claims that the 2020 elections were stolen.
In Virginia, Republican Dave LaRock, who attended Trump’s rally in Washington, DC, which preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol, warned a state House Health Committee in late January that COVID-19 vaccines could not be trusted. He said they were especially risky for several communities, including the elderly and people of color.
Democrat Cia Price, who is black, called LaRock’s false claims “simply dangerous.”
“There are legitimate hesitations in vaccines in the communities the gentleman listed, but the actual and factual information is key, without fan flames that are based on historical events,” he said.
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Bohrer reported from Juneau, Alaska. Associated Press writers David Eggert in Lansing, Michigan; Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville, Tennessee; Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey; Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Virginia; and Keith Ridler in Boise, Idaho, contributed to this report.