Google announced Tuesday it will reinstate YouTube accounts that were permanently banned for political speech, including those tied to COVID-19 and election-related content, while admitting it faced pressure from the Biden administration to remove certain material from the platform, as reported by Fox News. Bongino, one of the most followed conservative personalities on YouTube before being banned in 2022 for what the platform deemed COVID-19 “misinformation,” shifted his broadcasts to Rumble. But it also revealed Biden administration officials pressured Google behind the scenes during the pandemic. Meta, which owns Facebook, previously admitted it had faced similar pressure from the Biden administration and later abandoned its third-party fact-checking program. While ABC briefly suspended Kimmel, the FCC’s involvement drew new attention to the practice of “jawboning,” where government officials pressure private companies to act on speech.