YouTube took down a video posted by the House Freedom Caucus of lawmakers discussing the constitutional limits to medically coercive vaccine mandates for the novel Wuhan coronavirus.
“Our team has reviewed your content, and, unfortunately, we think it violates our medical misinformation policy,” the company wrote without reference to the specific infraction, emphasis theirs.
The nuked video focused on a proposal from Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall to defund President Joe Biden’s federal vaccine mandate by blocking the use of resources within the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) or the Department of Labor for enforcement. The Marshall Amendment failed 50-50 along party lines, unable to capture the 60 votes it needed.
The panel discussion censored by YouTube featured Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee with House Freedom Caucus members Andy Biggs of Arizona, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Louie Gohmert of Texas, and Alex Mooney of West Virginia.
A YouTube spokesperson told The Federalist in an emailed statement the video had been reinstated after further review Wednesday evening.
“The video is now available on YouTube,” the company wrote. “When it’s brought to our attention that content has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it. We also offer uploaders the ability to appeal removals and will re-review the content.”
An identical video remained up on YouTube from another account managed by the House Freedom Caucus while it was offline on the group’s alternative page.
In the video, Lee railed against Biden’s attempts to require companies employing more than 100 workers to mandate the vaccine.
“It’s important to remember that the federal government doesn’t have the power to impose a vaccine mandate on the general population,” Lee said. “It doesn’t have the power at all. Even if we did, which we don’t, certainly the president of the United States acting unilaterally may not do this.”
The reason courts can’t act on the mandate, Lee said, “is because there’s not even a mandate in effect,” which at this point remains only in the form of a non-binding press release.
“He hasn’t had the decency to give use the documents, so we don’t know what his theory is, there’s nothing to enjoin for the courts,” Lee said. “President Biden is using corporate America to do his dirty work for him. They’re then going out under the threat of eventually being fined, they’re adopting really aggressive policies, they’re firing people, often what they do is put them on unpaid administrative leave so they can’t even get unemployment.”
