- The Washington Times - Thursday, November 5, 2020

Twitter faced more calls Thursday to suspend President Trump instead of merely censoring his posts on the social media service over serious concerns about his reaction to his race for reelection.

Leaders of two nonpartisan organizations sent Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey a letter urging him to take further action to stop Mr. Trump from posting more on his platform about the presidential race.

The plea from the presidents of Common Cause and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law followed Democratic congressmen similarly calling a day earlier for Twitter to suspend Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly violated Twitter’s policies recently, they noted, evidenced by the company acting on several of his posts on the social media service after Election Day ended Tuesday.

They argued that simply applying warning labels or limiting the spread of Mr. Trump’s recent posts has proven to be “insufficient,” however, and encouraged Twitter to intervene further.

“We fear that, in the absence of action by Twitter, the President may be successful in his goal of delegitimizing the integrity of our democratic processes for many, and not just Twitter users but other voters and members of the public, sowing uncertainty about the voting and elections process and potentially inciting violence against civil servants or others,” they warned in the letter.

Twitter has acted several times since voting ending Tuesday to stop the spread of Mr. Trump’s tweets containing bogus or contested information about the electoral process or the contest itself.

Between early Wednesday morning and early Thursday evening, Twitter labeled and limited seven tweets from Mr. Trump that it determined “might be misleading” about the presidential election.

Reps. David Cicilline of Rhode Island and Gerry Connolly of Virginia, both Democrats, separately called earlier during that stream of posts for Twitter to intervene and suspend Mr. Trump.

“It is a threat to our democracy and should be suspended until all the votes are counted,” Mr. Cicilline, chairman of the House Antitrust Subcommittee, said Wednesday.

Common Cause and the Lawyers’ Committee are watchdog and civil rights groups, respectively, each based in D.C.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the growing calls to suspend Mr. Trump.

Election results in the race between Mr. Trump and Democratic nominee Joseph R. Biden remained uncertain earlier Thursday evening.

• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.

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