During consideration of the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 3838), Representative Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) offered an amendment to prohibit the Defense Department (aka War Department) from, in its military recruitment advertising, entering into contracts with entities that "rate or rank news or information sources for the factual accuracy of their content."
The House adopted McCormick's amendment on September 10, 2025 by a vote of 219 to 211 (Roll Call 258). We have assigned pluses to the yeas because freedom of speech is a right enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution, and the government trespasses on this right when it contracts with entities that (as Congress.gov puts it in its description of the amendment) "perform fact-checking and information-grading services for purposes of censoring their political opponents." McCormick noted on the House floor that his amendment is necessary because "the DOD, or now the Department of War, has contracted with organizations such as NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index," whose ratings display a decidedly left-wing bias. He also said, "We should not be excluding large swaths of Americans [from military recruiting efforts] simply because they watch or read conservative news."
