Dennis Prager to Testify at Senate About Free Speech Online

The author and radio host was invited to a July 16 hearing of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, which is chaired by Sen. Ted Cruz.

Dennis Prager, who is making a movie about free speech with Adam Carolla, has accepted an invitation to speak about that topic at a U.S. Senate committee hearing hosted by Sen. Ted Cruz, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

Prager, an author and radio host whose PragerUniversity YouTube channel is suing Google because it restricts several of its five-minute educational videos, will testify July 16 at a hearing of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, which is chaired by Cruz.

Prager and Carolla are set to release their documentary film, No Safe Spaces, in a few months and the movie, mostly about political correctness at college campuses, already earned Carolla a trip to Washington two years ago to testify at a Congressional hearing. Carolla was joined that day by Ben Shapiro, a conservative media star who has had more than his share of trouble speaking at college campuses amid angry protesters, and some of those encounters are also in the film.

No Safe Spaces, though, also delves into online media's alleged suppression of conservative thought, and that's where Prager comes in. A crew from the movie will be there to film the proceedings.

"At PragerU, 80 of our videos are on YouTube's 'restricted' list, so if you have filters against pornography and violence, you can't see them," Prager told THR. "But not a one has anything approaching violence or porn. Among those on the list — it boggles the mind — is an introduction to the Ten Commandments. You can't think of something more innocent than that. But they're all innocent. Alan Dershowitz, a lifelong liberal Democrat, has a PragerU video on the founding of Israel. Why would that be lumped into pornography? Because the left hates Israel, that's why. It's as simple as that."

On June 25, Prager, along with Shapiro, were the topics of Google insider documents uncovered by conservative rabble-rouser James O'Keefe, where executives described the two as "Nazis" using far-right "dog whistles."

O'Keefe also released audio of a Google executive hoping to prevent "the next Trump situation" because "the people got screwed over, the news media got screwed over, like, everybody got screwed over." The Google executive, head of responsible innovation Jen Gennai, responded by saying she was "having a casual chat with someone at a restaurant and used some imprecise language."

Prager had O'Keefe on his nationally syndicated radio show after his stories broke and says he'd be glad to speak about the situation if senators ask him to do so at the scheduled hearing.

YouTube and its parent, Google, likely won't be the only targets of Cruz and his invited guests, a list of which is so far unavailable, as Twitter and Facebook are also accused of censoring conservatives.

"They utterly suppressed James Woods' Twitter account because he's a witty conservative. But there are so many examples," Prager said.

"It wasn't long ago that liberals and conservatives agreed on a few things, and free speech was one of them," said Prager. "But unlike liberals, the left has never been an advocate of free speech, and now liberals have caved in to the left, with exceptions like Dave Rubin and Alan Dershowitz. But this is the biggest threat in the history of the republic because there's only one conduit of any significance to free speech, and that's Google. This is a very big deal."