Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., is pushing for the House Judiciary Committee to investigate whether Elon Musk’s X improperly prevented users from following an official presidential campaign account for Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday.
Nadler, the ranking Democrat on the committee, sent a letter to chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, on Monday morning saying that “numerous users” were blocked from following the “@KamalaHQ” account after President Joe Biden stepped down and endorsed Harris for president. The letter was exclusively obtained by NBC News.
“Regardless of political ideology, Americans have a protected interest in receiving Vice President Harris’ communications regarding her candidacy,” Nadler wrote. “Vice President Harris, in turn, has a right to communicate with the American people as she runs for the highest office in the country.”
“Unlike the countless conspiracy theories of political censorship that Republicans have chased down over the last year, X’s attempt to block users from following Vice President Harris’s campaign account appears to be a real example of online censorship,” Nadler said in an emailed response to a request for comment. “If House Republicans have even a shred of credibility left they will call out this blatant attempt to limit the Vice President’s voice and investigate immediately.”
Jordan did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Nadler’s letter included screenshots of accounts on X posting that they received an error message reading “Limit reached” and “You are unable to follow more people at this time” when they attempted to follow the “Kamala HQ” account.
NBC News found 13 X accounts that posted they were unable to follow “Kamala HQ” and received the “Limit reached” error message, in addition to the three accounts that Nadler identified in his letter to Jordan.
“This suggests that X may be intentionally throttling or blocking Vice President Harris’ ability to communicate with potential voters,” Nadler wrote. “If true, such action would amount to egregious censorship based on political and viewpoint discrimination — issues that this Committee clearly has taken very seriously.”
X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Typically, X accounts that follow a large number of accounts in a short period of time will receive the “Limit reached” error message. The “Kamala HQ” account, which was previously a campaign account for Biden, received a huge influx of followers after Biden dropped out and endorsed Harris. It grew from less than half a million followers on Sunday to over 1 million followers on Tuesday.
In Nadler’s letter, he urged Jordan to join him in requesting information from X about why some accounts were unable to follow “Kamala HQ.” The questions Nadler wanted to ask X included why certain accounts were blocked from following the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee; the total number of users who requested to follow the account and couldn’t from July 21 to the present; what actions have been taken by X and the timeline of those actions; and whether Musk instructed X employees to throttle or limit any users from following the account.
Musk, who bought and took over X (renaming it from Twitter) in 2022, endorsed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on July 13 after an assassination attempt against him. Musk said he plans to give $45 million a month to a pro-Trump super PAC.
House Republicans, led by Jordan, have launched investigations in recent years aimed at dismantling the so-called Censorship Industrial Complex, what they allege is a campaign orchestrated by the government, academia and Big Tech to silence conservatives. Those investigations have included sweeping information requests and subpoenas, aimed at researchers, tech workers and executives, and government employees.
The Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, launched by Jordan in January 2023, has held three hearings in which the primary topics of discussion have revolved around conservative allegations of censorship from parties including X. During the most recent committee hearing in May, Jordan questioned whether the Biden administration had something “up their sleeves in the last six months before the election.”
Their crusade faced a notable setback last month when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a claim that the Biden administration had coerced social media companies to remove content containing misinformation.
In Monday’s letter, Nadler pressed Jordan on his prior commitment to oppose alleged suppression of political speech when it affected conservatives, asking him to do the same in the event that Democrats were being suppressed.
“It is my sincere hope that you channel the same outrage and pertinacity against platform censorship of the Democratic party as you do when conservative speech is allegedly suppressed,” Nadler wrote.
