WASHINGTON — Which party controls Congress next year could have big implications for Twitter — and its new “Chief Twit,” Elon Musk.

Democrats, fighting to keep their House and Senate majorities in next week's midterms, are calling for investigations into Twitter and say they don't trust Musk to police offensive language and election disinformation on the social media platform.

Republicans have cheered on Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter as he fired the company’s top executives, brought in his own team, and froze some employee access to internal tools used for content moderation, which the GOP has argued have been used to target and silence conservative voices.

But influential Republicans said they also want to get to the bottom of whether there was political bias and censorship at Twitter and other tech companies prior to Musk's takeover. Sen. Ted. Cruz, R-Texas, who is poised to become the top Republican on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said he’d like to see Musk “institute transparency” and disclose what he unearths as the billionaire digs into how content decisions were made under the previous leadership team.

Klobuchar after Musk takeover: Twitter is 'making money off of this violence'

Oct. 30, 202201:25

On his podcast “Verdict with Ted Cruz” Friday, the Texas senator said that he’s asked Twitter, Facebook, Google and other tech companies hundreds of questions about whether they suppressed certain news stories or posts from certain politicians before recent elections.    

“Elon should answer those questions. And that will have an impact not just on Twitter, but it will have an impact on Facebook, an impact on Google, an impact on YouTube,” Cruz said. “This is a big deal for the whole world of Big Tech — not just Twitter. Because the more Elon provides transparency, the more pressure there will be on the other players to do the same.”

House Republicans, who are favored to retake the majority in next week's elections, instructed Twitter executives this spring to preserve all records and communication related to the potential Musk sale, foreshadowing congressional probes into the company in 2023. The letter was led by conservative Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a Donald Trump loyalist who is set to become chairman of the powerful Judiciary Committee if the GOP wins the House. A Jordan spokesman had no comment about Musk and Twitter, but Republicans expect the company will be more cooperative with any future GOP investigations with Musk at the helm.

After Musk’s acquisition last week, the House Judiciary’s GOP Twitter account tweeted the word “Soon ...” with a video of former President Donald Trump walking out on stage to Queen’s “We are the Champions.” It was a nod to Musk’s vow that Trump — banned from Twitter for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — would soon be reinstated on the social media site.

Meanwhile, critics on the left — wary of Musk from the start of his hostile takeover bid — are horrified by the changes they’ve seen so far. The Network Contagion Research Institute, which monitors online activity to predict emerging threats, said it saw a 500% spike in the use of the N-word on Twitter in the 12 hours after Musk seized control of the company.

And this week, in a response to Hillary Clinton, Musk tweeted, then deleted an unfounded anti-LGBT conspiracy theory about the violent attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, from a website that has a history of publishing false and misleading information. The attack took place at the Pelosi home in San Francisco, the same city where Twitter is based.

“I had every reason to believe that this would be problematic: Elon taking over one of the world’s most influential global communications platforms,” said Jesse Lehrich, a co-founder of left-leaning watchdog Accountable Tech and a former Clinton foreign policy aide. “But I didn’t expect him to be tweeting insane conspiracy theories at Hillary Clinton about Paul Pelosi as the speaker survives an assassination attempt, within the first 72 hours.”

He added: “It’s exceeded the kind of threats that we were warning about.”

One week before the midterm election, Democrats are focused on the campaign trail rather than the corporate drama unfolding inside Twitter headquarters. But Musk’s controversial antics on the social media platform have caught the attention of some Senate Democrats, who will be heavily scrutinizing the company and Musk if they can keep control of the upper chamber in the new Congress.

“Headlines today say a lot,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., a member of the Judiciary Committee and former state attorney general, tweeted on Halloween. “Pelosi, Vilified by Republicans for Years, Is a Top Target of Threats. Elon Musk, right-wing figures push misinformation about Pelosi attack.”

Earlier this year, when Musk made his initial offer for Twitter, Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., contemplated holding hearings exploring Musk’s plans for the company and how he would address the spread of disinformation on the site. Democrats were particularly alarmed by Musk’s flirtation with reinstating Trump on the platform. 

Weeks later, Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” confirmed he would reverse Trump’s ban. But upon taking control of Twitter, Musk said he would first form a “content moderation council,” and Yoel Roth, head of Safety and Integrity at Twitter, insisted that the company’s policies on hate speech have not changed.

"Hateful conduct has no place here,” Roth tweeted. “This includes targeting people with dehumanizing content and slurs.”

Through a spokesperson, Cantwell declined to comment on her committee’s plans next year, but her Commerce committee colleague, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., wasn’t satisfied with Musk’s planned content moderation council during an appearance Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press," saying she does not trust Musk.

“If Elon Musk has said now that he’s going to start a content moderation board, that was one good sign, but I continue to be concerned about that,” Klobuchar said. “I just don’t think people should be making money off of passing on this stuff that’s a bunch of lies.”

On the show Democracy Now!, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who represents parts of Silicon Valley, said, "I’m concerned what rules he’s going to have to safeguard democracy."

Other Democrats are raising national security concerns about how Musk financed the $44 billion Twitter deal. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to look into financing from foreign entities, including the Saudi royal family and the kingdom of Qatar.

“Setting aside the vast stores of data that Twitter has collected on American citizens, any potential that Twitter’s foreign ownership will result in increased censorship, misinformation, or political violence is a grave national security concern,” Murphy wrote in a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who heads CFIUS.

Musk also has drawn intense criticism in recent weeks for proposing to end the war in Ukraine by allowing Russian President Vladimir Putin to keep some territory in eastern Ukraine, and suggesting that Taiwan should be governed by China just like Hong Kong. Some critics said that those comments may be driven by the billionaire’s other business interests: One of Musk’s other companies, electric carmaker Tesla, had record sales of China-made vehicles in September.