Lamenting the Death of Comedy

Floor Speech

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Mr. KILEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to lament the death of comedy in California, the death of satire in California or, more seriously, to lament a serious blow that has been struck against freedom of speech and a healthy democratic process in California.

That is because the California legislature has passed, and Governor Gavin Newsom has signed, a law explicitly designed to outlaw political parodies. We don't need to speculate about this being the purpose of this law because the Governor said so directly.

Several weeks ago, a parody video of Kamala Harris began circulating on social media. Governor Newsom reposted it, and he said this should be illegal. ``I will be signing a bill in a matter of weeks to make sure it is.'' This week he made good on that promise. The Governor again reposted the parody and said: ``I just signed a bill to make this illegal in the State of California.''

Sort of on its face, it is a classic authoritarian move, a person in power sees speech he doesn't like, sees speech that threatens his power, and so he uses that power, uses whatever tools he has at his disposal to silence those who would dare speak against him to make them go away. That is by his own admission, in his own words what he has done.

Now, I will say, there are legitimate issues when it comes to AI, deep fakes, voice cloning, generative video, and other tools that may be maliciously wielded to confuse voters and corrupt the political process. There is room, and perhaps even a need, for regulation designed to assure that these tools are not abused.

However, that is not what Newsom is doing. By his own acknowledgment, what he is doing is banning parody. Parody and satire have been central to American political discourse throughout our history, from the founding era, with satirists lampooning King George, through the works of Mark Twain, through the advent of television, ``Saturday Night Live,'' through the present day with The Onion, The Babylon Bee, and all manner of parody and satire on social media.

It has thrived as a way for artists, comedians, and the public at large to humble those who have become too powerful, and to convey truths in a particularly compelling way.

Not only that, but satire and parody are clearly protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. The Supreme Court has long held that parodies of public figures are protected even if they are ``outrageous,'' and the Court has long held that any satirical statement is protected so long as it cannot reasonably be interpreted as stating actual facts.

In short, if a reasonable person could discern that something is a parody, then it is protected by the First Amendment; so the question, when evaluating this new law, would be, is it stepping over that line? We have a very clear test case in the Kamala Harris video that in the Governor's own acknowledgment was the inspiration for the law. It is exactly the sort of thing that the law was designed to stamp out.

Let's just look at a few lines from this Kamala Harris video and see whether a reasonable person would actually believe that it is Kamala Harris.

The first line of the video is this: ``I, Kamala Harris, am your Democrat candidate for President because Joe Biden finally exposed his senility at the debate.''

Now, would a reasonable person think that Kamala Harris said that when they see this video, that she actually made that statement?

The video goes on. It says: ``If you criticize anything I say, you are both sexist and racist.'' Would a reasonable person believe that was actually Kamala Harris saying that in that video?

There are other examples. It goes on: ``I may not know the first thing about running the country, but remember, that is a good thing if you are a deep state puppet.'' Would a reasonable person believe that Kamala Harris actually said that?

It goes on: ``Joe Biden taught me, rule number one, carefully hide your total incompetence.'' Would a reasonable person believe that this is actually Kamala Harris saying ``rule number one, carefully hide your total incompetence''?

The video goes on. It says: ``My work on the border was `catastrophic.''' Would a reasonable person think she said that?

One of the keys to effective satire, and you can judge for yourself whether this is effective or not, is that it actually does illuminate a deeper underlying truth. Therefore, one might argue, I would argue, that Kamala Harris' performance as border czar was, in fact, catastrophic, but a reasonable person will not actually believe that she is saying that herself in this video.

Gavin Newsom, in order to maintain that consistent with the First Amendment he can eliminate this video from our public discourse would have to somehow argue that he thinks a reasonable member of the public would actually think that Kamala Harris would say those things. It makes you wonder about the regard that Mr. Newsom has for the public in California and across the country.

The better explanation for his behavior is just that he doesn't have any regard for the First Amendment at all. The courts have time after time struck down measures that he has signed on First Amendment grounds. It just happened again a couple weeks ago.

It happened not that long ago with respect to a law that he signed that sought to punish people for supposedly spreading COVID misinformation. The legislature and Newsom had to repeal their own law after the court weighed in on First Amendment grounds.

This highlights a broader, very concerning tendency, not just in California but across the country, where we have this brewing crisis of freedom of speech, which in many ways started at colleges and universities and then expanded to certain social media platforms, and then became intertwined with the government.

We got an acknowledgment of this recently from Mark Zuckerberg, CEO at Facebook, Meta, who said that he was, indeed, pressured by the Biden administration to censor content on his platform, and he acknowledged that Facebook was wrong to give in to that pressure.

We are also seeing elsewhere in the world some alarming regression when it comes to protections for freedom of speech. This has been, throughout U.S. history, one of the things that has set our country apart. We have always had ironclad or at least striven to have ironclad protections for freedom of speech. It is one of the things that has propelled progress of all kinds in the history of our country.

I would argue that there is perhaps no greater threat to democracy than the suppression of freedom of speech, so the assault on free speech led by Gavin Newsom and the Biden administration is cause for great alarm by all Americans.

Fortunately, I think there are some reasons to believe that the tide is starting to turn. Of course, the social media platform X has become a leader in protecting freedom of speech after we have learned about prior efforts at that platform and others working at times with the government.

We have seen, of course, the Zuckerberg letter that I just mentioned where Facebook is committing to be more mindful and respectful of free speech principles in the future.

Just yesterday, this House passed my Free Speech on Campus Act, which is designed to restore the importance of freedom of speech on our college campuses as a foundational campus value. I would urge the Senate now to pass that same measure, and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join in whatever efforts we can to end the assaults on free speech we have seen in this country and return to the founding principles that have been so central to our country's prosperity and progress. Proposition 36

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Mr. KILEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise to pass on some incredible news about Proposition 36 in California. This is an initiative that is designed to make crime illegal again in California, to restore appropriate consequences for theft and drug crimes.

Prop 36, which will be on the ballot in just a few weeks here, was recently polled by the Public Policy Institute of California, and the results are overwhelming--71 percent of California voters are in support compared to 26 opposed. You have 85 percent of Republicans in support with just 11 percent opposed. You have 73 percent of Independents in support with just 24 percent opposed. There are 63 percent of Democratic voters in support with only 33 percent opposed, about two-thirds of even Democratic voters in support of this initiative to make crime illegal again in California.

Seeing those numbers, you understand why the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, fought tooth and nail to keep this from this even being on the ballot. He concocted a number of truly outrageous schemes that were specifically designed to cancel the vote, to stop Californians from even having an opportunity to vote on this important proposition. Fortunately, those efforts failed, and a vote will be held very soon.

When the Governor was told about these numbers at a press conference yesterday, he said: ``I was wondering what State I am living in.'' ``I was wondering what State I am living in,'' Newsom said, when informed that Californians overwhelmingly favor restoring consequences for criminal activity.

Maybe I will enlighten him about the State he is living in. The State he is living in is one where crime has simply spun out of control and where people are seeing the consequences of that in their daily lives.

Proposition 47 is the primary culprit. It was passed about a decade ago, and it effectively eliminated consequences for retail theft, no matter how many times you stole, and it eliminated consequences for possession of even hard drugs, which basically ended the ability to get addicts into treatment.

The consequences of these two things are that in many parts of California, on your way to the grocery store or walking around a downtown, you will have to go through open-air drug markets. You will have to dodge needles. You will see people suffering, withering on our streets, tragically dying all too often from overdoses on our streets.

Then if you want to go in and shop at a grocery store or even a convenience store, a CVS, you will see almost everything under lock and key. You have to go get a clerk to open up the lock for you if you want to buy frozen goods or if you want to buy shampoo and conditioner. It is really the sort of thing you really would have never expected to see in America, and yet it is what Prop 47 and its progeny in California have spawned, the reality they have created where Californians overwhelmingly say that crime has continued to get worse.

Indeed, that is borne out in the numbers. Property crimes have gotten much worse since Prop 47, all types of crime. Violent crime has gotten significantly worse in just the last few years.

The results of this poll, the overwhelming support for Prop 36, are a recognition of that. I will read you, by the way, the title of the initiative. It says: ``Allows Felony Charges and Increases Sentences for Certain Drug and Theft Crimes.'' That is all it says. That is the information people have.

The overwhelming majority of California voters, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, liberals and moderates, conservatives, folks of all economic and racial backgrounds from all parts of the State, across every group, people say overwhelmingly: Yes, that is something we need. Yet, somehow, the Governor still lectured Californians yesterday about how they are wrong.

I believe that once this measure passes--and there can be no doubt that it is going to pass--it is going to be a new day for California. We are going to restore commonsense policies when it comes to public safety. We are going to provide law enforcement with new tools to keep our communities safe. We are going to go a long way toward reversing the homelessness crisis in California. Maybe most importantly, the people of California will demonstrate the agency that we all have to set our State on a different course, even when our out-of-touch political class attempts to stand in the way. Congratulating SpaceX

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Mr. KILEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate SpaceX on the Polaris Dawn mission, which is the first of three planned missions in the program and took astronauts in an elliptical orbit 870 miles from Earth.

The four astronauts pictured here are Jared Isaacman, Scott Poteet, Sarah Gillis, and Anna Menon.

Now, this mission sat a number of records, a number of firsts. For example, it climbed higher over Earth than any human spaceflight since the last Apollo mission in 1972. It contributed to having the most humans in Earth orbit at the same time ever. It was the first commercial space walk and the first time four people were exposed to the vacuum of space at the same time. They even downlinked the first violin performance from space using Starlink, and it was the first time that Doritos were eaten from space, with a special safe-for-space chip that was designed. As part of this, they collected data for future missions to the Moon and beyond.

SpaceX, of course, is a company that started in California. I had the opportunity to tour their facility a few years back. It truly is a marvel.

The company is also vital to U.S. leadership around the world when it comes to space, and is vital to our national security. This was recently underscored as NASA is now having to rely on SpaceX to bring home two astronauts that are stranded at the International Space Station.

It is also underscored by the statistics. When it comes to delivering payloads into orbit, in Q1 of this year, 87 percent of the world's tonnage to orbit was delivered by SpaceX. Eighty-seven percent of the total tonnage delivered to orbit around the world was delivered by SpaceX. This includes commercial customers. It includes SpaceX's own Starlink system, which is providing internet to remote areas of the world, in fact, to some of my constituents in Death Valley as well as to cruise ships and airlines. It also includes launches that are absolutely vital to U.S. national security and space exploration.

Given what a tremendous asset this company is, it makes it all the more stunning that the company is being targeted in multiple ways and for frivolous reasons. Recently, the FAA fined the company $633,000 for trivial, nonsafety-related reasons. More concerningly, the agency has delayed flight 5 of Starship for 2 months, again for nonsafety-related reasons.

Now, Starship is the largest and most powerful space transportation system ever developed. It is fully and rapidly reusable in its design. They have already had four very successful missions where they have done better each time, and the idea is they iterate their design, and they learn from each flight. This fifth flight, which is ready to go, would attempt to return the super heavy booster to the launch site and catch it midair using what they call their giant chopsticks.

Now, this rapid reusability is completely--and already is--changing the economics of space exploration and making it orders of magnitude more affordable. It is truly a Herculean feat of technology and ingenuity in order to make this happen. Yet, we have these roadblocks that are being thrown in its way.

SpaceX itself put it this way: ``We continue to be stuck in a reality where it takes longer to do the government paperwork to license a rocket launch than it does to design and build the actual hardware.''

When it comes to launching a rocket, obviously there are important regulatory concerns when it comes to safety. The company has been steadfast in prioritizing safety, and it is important that that collaboration exist.

In this case, the reasons they are being held back are completely unrelated to safety or any other legitimate public interest. In fact, the company has bent over backward to comply with environmental regulations. There simply should not be delays related to paperwork or bureaucracy. The FAA and related agencies need to prioritize enabling launches, not standing in their way.

Some have suggested that there might be political motivations here. I think that perhaps the broader issue might be one of cultural incompatibility, in the sense that when you think back to the lunar program, when you think back to President Kennedy saying that we will put a man on the Moon within this decade, not because it is easy, but because it is hard, and when you think about the way that the entire country was captivated when that vision ultimately came to fruition and what it meant for U.S. leadership in the world, for our national security during the Cold War, it was a way in which the country was able to come together around a truly awe-inspiring vision.

That is the sort of vision that SpaceX is pursuing, the sort of truly big and forward-looking thinking that captivates people's imaginations, that allows us to push beyond the limits of our current knowledge and to explore new frontiers.

There is just something perhaps about the nature of modern bureaucracies in this country that is incompatible with that way of thinking. When they encounter it, their impulse is not to facilitate it but to throw roadblocks, to find trivial reasons to hold it back.

I do think it is a moment to think about how we got to this point and the sort of reforms that we might make to our bureaucracy here and really across the board that will allow our government to be on the side of innovators, to facilitate innovation rather than constantly trying to hold it back.

Notwithstanding, I know that SpaceX as well as others in this industry are going to push forward. I congratulate them on this latest history-making success, and I look forward to many more history-making successes in the years ahead.

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