Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was permanently suspended from Twitter on Sunday, Jan. 2 after multiple violations of the company’s COVID-19 misinformation policy. According to Twitter, Greene violated the policy five times. Her most recent violation came from a tweet suggesting that thousands of people died after taking the COVID-19 vaccine according to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a self-reported database that specifically warns that some data could be “incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable.” Her account was previously suspended for ranges from 12 hours to one week, for spreading false claims such as “the coronavirus is not dangerous for non-obese people and those under 65,” and that the COVID-19 vaccines were “failing.” Greene’s professional account is still active but there have been no posts since Dec. 24. 

Greene has used this suspension to further her claim that first amendment rights are under attack. What she fails to understand is that the first amendment does not apply to private companies such as Twitter. The first amendment prohibits Congress from passing laws that prohibit the exercise of speech. For example, they can’t pass a law that makes it illegal to criticize a government official. Twitter is a private company with their own community guidelines and has every right to de-platform anyone who violates those guidelines.

A core belief of the Republican Party is “less government, more freedom.” They have always believed that private businesses should not be obligated to serve someone if they don’t want to. Now, Greene and other members of her wing of the Republican Party are threatening to take action against Twitter, a private business. On Jan. 2, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-CO) tweeted “Twitter permanently suspended a sitting US President. They’ve now permanently suspended a sitting member of US Congress. Of course, both from the same party. They forget that in 2022 we are taking back the House and we WILL be holding them accountable!” 

If a Democratic member of Congress made it public that they would take action against a private company because they didn’t like what the company did, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert would be the first in line to call that member of Congress a communist. Those who are angry about Greene’s suspension preach Capitalism, but at the same time are criticizing Twitter for practicing it. If the Republican Party was against communism, they would not be threatening to punish a private company such as Twitter for enforcing their terms of service. 

There has been so much evidence provided by independent, peer-reviewed research that has shown that vaccines have drastically lowered the chance of being hospitalized and dying from COVID-19. Marjorie Taylor Greene and her wing of the Republican Party have completely disregarded this data and have called to vote out any Republican who simply acknowledges the successes of the vaccines. They have refused to support President Biden’s vaccine mandate — which would save thousands of lives and keep ICU beds open for non-COVID patients — and then have the gall to say that the President failed to end the pandemic. If the Republicans want the pandemic to end, they should encourage every American to get vaccinated. President Biden has given the country the hose to put out the fire and Republicans are refusing it and criticizing it. The misinformation on COVID-19 vaccines need to stop, and if it requires Twitter to suspend people from the platform for the continuous spread of misinformation, including elected officials, then so be it.