House Speaker Ben Toma announced Thursday afternoon that the Arizona House of Representatives has formed a new legislative committee to examine “emerging legal and constitutional issues surrounding censorship by government officials.”
The announcement came after Arizona Capitol Oversight released an 8-page research report Thursday morning revealing that then-Secretary Katie Hobbs and her government office engaged in an extensive campaign to censor her critics before and during her campaign for governor.
Brian Anderson, the president of Arizona Capitol Oversight, responded to the news during a Friday morning appearance on James T. Harris’ radio show on News Talk 550 KFYI.
“I was thrilled to see the new committee,” Anderson said on The Conservative Circus. “House Speaker Ben Toma and Senate President Warren Petersen, they’ve both done so much — they and the members — to hold Hobbs accountable and stop some of her worst proposals from going through in the past eight months. On the topic of free speech and government censorship, it’s one of those few issues Republicans and Democrats can both rally around, and Hobbs is just — she’s on the wrong side of this here.”
The Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight, Accountability, and Big Tech, chaired by State Representative Alexander Kolodin, plans to hold its first public meeting on September 5, 2023.
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