Twitter locked Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Banks out of his official account early Saturday morning for a Tuesday tweet observing, “The title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man” — a reference to transgender federal official Rachel Levine.
Twitter’s ban notification to Banks explained that calling a man a man “violate[s] our rules against hateful conduct.” The Twitter ban statement also claimed accurate descriptions of human biology “promote violence.”
“It’s ridiculous for Twitter to say that acknowledging biological reality is somehow inciting violence,” Banks spokesman Mitchell Hailstone said in a Saturday phone call. Hailstone said Banks is disputing the ban with Twitter. The company did not respond within three hours to an emailed request for comment on the matter.
https://twitter.com/jim_banks/status/1451945414752669707?s=21
Banks is an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and has deployed to Afghanistan twice. Levine has no military experience, according to his page on Wikipedia, which refers to him as a woman.
The Biden administration selected Levine as assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services after Levine’s disastrous run as Pennsylvania health secretary. Levine’s tenure in Pennsylvania included withdrawing his own mother from a nursing home while promoting the dangerous and deadly policy of forcing nursing homes statewide to accept COVID-19 positive patients.
Levine also presided over one of the worst COVID-19 vaccine rollouts in the country, and during his Senate confirmation hearings affirmed that he supports mutilating children’s genitals in sex-change operations.
This is far from Banks’ first run-in with censorship: Democrats refused to seat Banks, along with Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, on their Jan. 6 commission investigating what happened during the Capitol riot — one of thousands of riots the United States has faced since 2020. Instead, they chose Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — two members notoriously antagonistic toward their own party.