Jon Kyl, an extreme anti-civil rights, anti-LGBTQ and anti-Muslim lobbyist who is heading Facebook’s bogus “conservative bias” review, has been tapped by Donald Trump to shepherd his Supreme Court pick, Brett Kavanaugh, through the confirmation process. Make no mistake - - Jon Kyl will play an integral role in pushing the Senate to confirm Kavanaugh and allow him to undo a century’s worth of hard fought civil, LGBTQ, immigrant, and women’s rights victories.
After Color of Change members and our partners scored a victory with Facebook announcing a civil rights audit, they immediately announced they were hiring far-right former U.S. Senator Jon Kyl and the Heritage Foundation to conduct a separate partisan investigation into baseless claims of bias against conservative social media personalities. Kyl has a long history of opposing civil and LGBTQ rights and the Heritage Foundation has spent years exploiting anti-Black narratives to create discriminatory policy, deny the existence of racial bias, and peddle Islamophobia.
By selecting individuals and organizations with long histories of bigotry and hate towards vulnerable communities, Facebook has shown that it doesn’t take the upcoming civil rights audit seriously. This decision only further demonstrates how ingrained anti-Blackness is at Facebook and further demonstrates how badly the civil rights audit is needed. The only way for the integrity of the civil rights audit to be secured is for Facebook to drop the “conservative bias review" now!