Ted Cruz laid the case last year for how online service providers were the new secret weapon to systemically censor conservatives. Now, armed with new powers in the U.S. Senate majority, the Texas Republican is out to prove it for good.
On Monday, Ted Cruz’s Senate Commerce Committee informed a massive online service provider called Bonterra that it intends to subpoena it for documents related to its actions that deplatformed a prominent conservative group. The company, which is used by nonprofits across the country to help fundraise and manage operations, was investigated by Cruz last year for cutting off service to the Independent Women’s Forum over claims that it violated the company’s terms of service.
Cruz told The Daily Wire on Monday that its work laying out how Bonterra mistreated Independent Women’s Forum was just the beginning. He wants to see whether other conservative groups were victims of discrimination, and also understand how it was carried out.
“I believe it is important that the Committee subpoena additional information to learn whether Bonterra blacklisted other conservative groups and to understand exactly how Big Tech crafts seemingly benign contract terms that exist solely to justify discrimination on the basis of politics,” Cruz said.
The subpoena will target documents and communications between Bonterra and any third parties that advised Bonterra on its “business ethics” provision or its anti-hate speech policy, a senior aide for the committee told The Daily Wire. The committee will also demand communications with third parties who flagged users for alleged violations, and documents that will help it identify accounts removed by Bonterra for hate speech.
Bonterra never disclosed to Independent Women’s Forum why it terminated service, but it disclosed to Cruz’s committee during last year’s investigation that it was over claims that the group “works to restrict the rights of the LGBTQ community.” It also claimed to the committee, bizarrely, that it does not focus on “positions of the organization” when making decisions about terms of service violations.
The Independent Women’s Forum is a conservative nonprofit that aims to “engage and inform women about how policy issues impact them and their loved ones.” It has emerged as one of the most prominent voices defending women’s sports from the invasion of transgender-identifying men.
“Big Tech companies like Bonterra weaponized their terms of service to systematically deplatform conservatives,” Cruz said on Monday. “Bonterra decided that it no longer wanted to allow the Independent Women’s Forum to use its product, so, citing a preposterous ‘business ethics’ policy that would allow for terminating a contract, Bonterra falsely accused IWF of advocating for hate and discrimination.”
Cruz’s investigation last year spotlighted the fact that while Bonterra was sparring with Independent Women’s Forum, it continued to provide services to actual hate groups like Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Institute for Palestine Studies, which openly celebrated the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.
Bonterra is the first company to find itself in the committee’s crosshairs since Republicans took the majority, but it is unlikely that it will be the last. Cruz’s investigation last year also revealed that companies such as Eventbrite were weaponizing terms of service claims to deplatform conservatives. That company, one of the most common online event organization tools in the country, declared that events featuring The Daily Wire’s movie “What Is A Woman?” violated its “hateful events policy.”
When Cruz initially set out to investigate companies like Bonterra and Eventbrite, he was not chairman of the Commerce Committee and therefore didn’t have access to its full investigative toolset. Now that he does, he’s determined to “put a stop” to the practice of weaponizing terms of service, which last year he characterized as the latest frontier in the Left’s censorship campaign.
“Unless we put a stop to Big Tech’s growing weaponization of standard terms of service, more conservatives may find themselves unable to carry out essential administrative work, harming the entire movement and depriving President Trump and his administration of critical allies and supporters,” Cruz said.
Bonterra, which the committee says was notified of the subpoena on Monday, did not respond to a request for comment.