Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2024

Floor Speech

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Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Chair, this amendment would strike Section 8149 from the bill, removing language banning the Department of Defense from classifying or facilitating the classification of any communications by a United States person as misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation, and banning the Department of Defense from partnering with nonpartisan, nonprofit, outside experts to identify these threats.

As we know, misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation are three of the most important and far-reaching weapons of America's adversaries in Beijing, Tehran, and particularly the Kremlin.

According to the State Department, Russia has operationalized the concept of perpetual adversarial competition in the information environment by encouraging the development of a disinformation and propaganda ecosystem. This ecosystem then creates and spreads false narratives to strategically advance the Kremlin's policy goals. There is no subject off limits to this firehose of falsehoods. Everything from human rights and environmental policy to assassinations and civilian-killing bombing campaigns are fair targets in Russia's malign playbook.

Only truth disarms these disinformation weapons, and the House of Representatives must support our government to ensure that foreign adversaries do not use the American people to disseminate lies with the goal of destroying our democracy without identifying them as misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation.

Here are some truths: The Federal Government of the United States of America and the Department of Defense that we are working here to fund today are unequivocally responsible for the protection of American citizens from all enemies, all threats foreign or domestic. All threats mean all threats, whether the threat is kinetic, economic, infectious, in cyberspace or on Main Street. It is our job to provide the defense of the Nation and its people.

We must continue to come together to seek and promote the truth, and I urge my colleagues to approve this amendment.

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Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Chair, we all believe in the importance of the First Amendment. We all believe in the American people's ability and their right to be able to speak out. What we also need to be aware of is the use of misinformation, disinformation by our foreign adversaries, and for the ability of our government to label that as such. It is not to stop people from saying it. It is the ability for us to tell what are lies and what is truth.

I am the ranking member on the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, and what the American people have seen thus far from that committee is the weaponization of Congress to be able to put forward conspiracy theories and lies to support power and quest for conquest over the American people.

Mr. Chair, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. McCollum).

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Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Chair, I have nothing further, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

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