Robert Garcia
Role at the time: U.S. Representative for California and ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, posting on his official X and Bluesky accounts
Statement summary
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, posted on X and Bluesky about half an hour after Trump's Truth Social announcement, sharing an Associated Press report on it. He called the attacks on free speech insane, said the action was censorship at North Korea levels rather than freedom of the press, and said the First Amendment must be defended at all costs.
“This isn’t freedom of the press; it’s North Korea levels of censorship.”
First-party post on his official X account (@RepRobertGarcia, government-verified). Posted September 18, 2026, 19:31:14 UTC from Twitter for iPhone; it is not a reply and quotes no other post. The post ends with a link card for an Associated Press article on Trump's announcement.
Why we used this label
Garcia, posting about half an hour after the announcement and sharing an AP report on it, calls the attacks on free speech insane and says the action is censorship rather than freedom of the press, which rejects excluding the outlets. The closest competing label is “Challenged the characterization”, because he contrasts the act with freedom of the press and relabels it censorship. That loses because he goes on to condemn the act outright and calls for defending the First Amendment at all costs.