Big Tech attacks become rallying cry for GOP candidates

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Shortly after launching his campaign last year for the Republican nomination in Nevada's U.S. Senate race, Sam Brown got into a scrape with Twitter.

A Purple Heart recipient who was severely burned by an IED blast in Afghanistan, Brown posted a picture of himself saluting while in uniform along with the words “Freedom Isn't Free.” After he filed for the Senate seat three days later, he said his post was flagged with a “potentially sensitive content" warning that would require Twitter users to click or tap on the post to confirm they want to view it.

Twitter explained the restriction by pointing to Brown's account settings, which the company has said he could adjust. Regardless of what triggered the label, it gave Brown a powerful opportunity to tap into the resentment toward large technology companies that increasingly courses through the Republican Party.

“Either my face, my scars were sensitive or the fact that someone would salute in uniform our American flag or, most likely, this came just a few hours after I filed to run for Senate," Brown told Fox News at the time. “As a Republican, we’re very used to seeing censorship happen on the Big Tech platforms."

As the 2022 primary season moves forward next week with contests in several states including Nevada, that sense of persecution is animating the GOP effort to retake control of the Senate.

Brown's GOP opponent, former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt, frequently knocks “censorship of speech” as “one of the most onerous threats to our free democracy.” In Ohio, Senate Republican nominee JD Vance has warned that Big Tech companies are going to ​“destroy our nation.”

And in his controversial 11-point plan to “rescue" America, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who leads the GOP effort to regain the...