Twitter bans Florida Republican for encouraging the killing of federal agents

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

According to Florida Politics, a Florida Republican candidate has been banned from the platform after he encouraged the killing of federal agents.

Luis Miguel wants to represent Florida's 20th district in the House of Representatives. There was no response to the request for comment on the ban.

The GOP animosity toward the FBI and IRS stems from the federal raid on Mar-a-Lago and the recent move to increase tax enforcement. He called for armed violence against their employees.

The message said that all Floridians would be able to shoot the FBI, IRS, and all other federal troops on sight. It's time to let freedom ring.

The same statement was posted to his Facebook andInstagram pages, but they have since been taken down. A request for comment was not immediately responded to by the two social media companies.

In the wake of the attack on the FBI office in Cincinnati, platforms have been under pressure to moderate anti-government threats. The man who was killed by police after a standoff had made threats against the agency.

Members of Congress requested information from social media platforms on their work to counter the threats against law enforcement on the same day as the ban was put in place. Lawmakers wanted to know how many threats had been detected on the platforms and how many had been removed.