Republicans Claim Google ‘Throttles’ Conservative Speech in FTC Filing

WASHINGTON, May 27, 2025 – Two Republican lawmakers say Google has been burying GOP campaign emails in users’ spam folders – and they’ve asked the Federal Trade Commission to step in.

Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., accused Google of throttling communications from the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee in a May 21 filing to the FTC. 

In their letter, Scott and Hudson called on the FTC to “take whatever enforcement action is necessary” to prevent the practice. The comments were submitted as part of the FTC’s public inquiry into content moderation, which sought to determine whether tech companies were suppressing speech unfairly.

The letter, written by Jennifer DeCasper, executive director of the NRSC, and Micah Yousefi, executive director of the NRCC, claimed that only 30 percent of NRSC emails were sent to the primary inboxes of Gmail users, with “the vast majority” of the other 70 percent of emails being sent to spam folders. 

Both stressed that these emails were sent only “to individuals who have voluntarily opted to receive Committee communications” and that “the Committee respects all opt-out requests”. They did not provide data for emails sent by the NRCC, nor for emails sent by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee or the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Republicans have long argued that large technology companies such as Meta and Google regularly censor conservative viewpoints, and have introduced legislation such as the Stop the Censorship Act to address this purported censorship. 

However, complaints of censorship are not limited to the right. Several comments submitted to the FTC’s docket argued that X and Meta were suppressing speech from the political left. 

One comment from Jill Seminaris claimed “I was shadow-banned [on X and Instagram] sometime in August 2022 after commenting that Trump should be in prison for absconding with classified documents and storing them at Mar-a-Lago”, while another comment from John M. stated that “X is blocking and deleting any minor criticism of the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, or activities of the Department of Government Efficiency which Mr. Musk is heavily involved with.”

Other complaints criticized technology platforms more broadly. A comment from Wiliam Bayer argued that “I was banned from Musk's X platform shortly after he took over Twitter. I was also banned at the Fox News comment system, where I had over 210,000 upvotes, when Fox went anti-Trump for a year or more around the time of the 2020 election, and Fox News deleted my entire comment history.” 

Alexander Coffman argued in comments that “YouTube, TikTok, and X algorithms deliberately amplify conservative content and suppress progressive content. Suggesting that conservative views are censored when the CEO of X is running the government is laughable and insulting. This farce is the real fraud and abuse.”

The filing from Scott and Hudson comes in response to a probe investigating Big Tech’s content moderation practices launched by the FTC earlier this year. That probe has been criticized for potentially chilling free speech, with some arguing that such a probe goes beyond the powers granted to the FTC. Notably, the FTC has justified its investigation “not as a free speech matter, but as a potential abuse of market power”. 

This justification can be found throughout Scott and Hudson’s letter. The letter notes that “Google is overwhelmingly dominant in the market for email services, with approximately 130.9 million active users amounting to a 75.78% American market share” and accuses Google of having “weaponized its immense market power over email delivery to arbitrarily punish conservative groups and silence their political speech.” 

The pair claimed that Google’s “discriminat[ion] against politically disfavored organizations like the Committees” violates federal law prohibiting unfair methods of competition – specifically, 15 U.S. Code § 45 – and urged the FTC to act on what they describe as political discrimination.

The FTC opened the public inquiry seeking information on “how technology platforms deny or degrade users’ access to services based on the content of their speech or affiliations” on February 20, 2025. That inquiry closed on May 21, drawing nearly 3,000 comments, many of which were submitted anonymously.