Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) sent a letter Friday to Maryana Iskander, CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation which owns Wikipedia, requesting information about the site’s reported political bias. Cruz cited the ongoing purge of conservative media on the online encyclopedia and other bias concerns, following a viral interview commentator Tucker Carlson did with Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger last week where they discussed the site blacklisting conservative sources, including Breitbart.
Cruz’s request, first reported by the Hill, comes in the wake of an investigation into the site recently announced by the House Oversight Committee, requests for information from bi-partisan members of Congress, and an inquiry by Acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin. Unlike those requests, focused on the site’s anti-Israeli bias, Cruz’s request specifically centered on its left-wing bias.
In the letter dated October 3, 2025, Cruz cited his role as Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and the Committee’s “jurisdiction over communications, including online information platforms.” Cruz requested “information about ideological bias on the Wikipedia platform and at the Wikimedia Foundation.” Referring to the site as a “noble concept” seeking to crowdsource human knowledge and release it free to the public, he stated this made its reported systemic bias all the more concerning. He noted Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in the world appearing in 80 percent of search results and influencing the large-language models behind artificial intelligence.
Focusing on the site’s neutrality claims, Cruz cited criticism from co-founder Sanger stating Wikipedia’s neutrality policy was dead and a study by the Manhattan Institute last year that identified a left-wing bias in Wikipedia’s articles on politicial figures, one of many studies to find such a bias on the site. He proceeded to cite Wikipedia’s “perennial sources” blacklist, which Sanger criticized during his interview with Carlson in a particularly viral moment when discussing his nine theses proposing reform on the site. Cruz responded to video of the segment on X last week calling Wikipedia “brazen propaganda”:
As Breitbart has reported, the purging of conservative media began shortly after the start of Donald Trump’s first term as President with the Daily Mail and accelerated following the blacklisting of Breitbart. The vast majority of major conservative are now blacklisted on Wikipedia, including Fox News. However, as Cruz notes, left-wing media are largely still considered reliable save some fringe outlets. Under the site’s verifiability policy, only “reliable” sources can be cited for contentious claims, which contributed to Wikipedia covering up stories such as the Hunter Biden laptop scandal during the 2020 election in one of many ways the online encyclopedia aided Biden’s election.
Providing his own example of the site’s bias, Cruz pointed to the attempt last month to delete the article on the murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska and then conceal information about the black suspect Decarlos Brown Jr., which represented a double standard in its treatment of Daniel Penny and Kyle Rittenhouse, who were both white. Cruz further cited the Foundation’s contributions to left-wing “social justice” groups that contribute to Wikipedia articles. This includes feminist “edit-a-thons” to address an alleged “gender gap” in the site’s contributions, which one study suggests has biased content in favor of women.
The Wikimedia Foundation’s “Movement Strategy” they started developing in 2017 was also raised, given it advocated left-wing ideological objectives focused on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” over neutrality. Notable examples of the Foundation pushing this motive are its endorsement of the Black Lives Matter Movement in 2020 where it stated there was “no neutral stance” on racial justice and its adoption of a left-wing “code of conduct” that required, among other things, using preferred pronouns. Some site administrators have been strict regarding pronouns, banning editors temporarily for rejecting “tree” as a pronoun or referring to a user by username instead of using singular “they” due to grammatical objections.
Part of the Movement Strategy, in addition to DEI-style efforts, was promoting Wikipedia as a counter to “misinformation” online. Both efforts came following strategy recommendations in a late 2016 communications audit conducted by Minassian Media, whose head served as Head of Communications for the Clinton Foundation. Foundation leaders and site co-founder Jimmy Wales subsequently promoted Wikipedia as the answer to “fake news” and even cited the conservative media purge in support of that message. This came amid a broader push in Big Tech to suppress populist movements, often invoking the “fake news” narrative, as confirmed by Breitbart News. Many Big Tech firms subsequently incorporated Wikipedia into their information efforts.
At the time, the Foundation was headed by Katherine Maher, who previously worked at the National Democratic Institute affiliated with the Democratic Party and is currently head of left-wing media outlet National Public Radio. Cruz’s letter cites comments Maher made regarding Wikipedia’s original “free and open” nature being a capitulation to a “white, male, Westernized construct around who matters in societies.” He states that these remarks exemplify the left-wing ideological goals of the Movement Strategy being placed above the site’s supposed commitment to neutrality.
Cruz concludes his review of allegations against Wikipedia by mentioning its bias against Israel referring to a bi-partisan information request issued earlier this year citing a study by the Anti-Defamation League, which is banned on Wikipedia from use as a source on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, finding coordinated editing aimed at advancing an anti-Israeli bias. Similar reporting has come from Pirate Wires by Ashley Rindsberg, whose recent piece in Tablet Magazine on anti-Israeli bias was censored this weekend by members of the site’s Arbitration Committee, often likened to a Supreme Court. Tablet has previously been deemed a reliable source by editors on the site.
Following his outlining of bias concerns, Cruz requested a response to nine queries no later than October 17, 2025. Cruz sought information and documents regarding the editing process on Wikipedia and the Foundation’s involvement, how it addresses ideological bias along with any studies of that bias or public criticisms, Arbitration Committee cases involving ideological bias, discussions or examinations of the neutrality policy, how sources are blacklisted, policies and processes on removing editors or administrators, policies and reports on actual or potential conflicts of interest at the Foundation, contradictory comments regarding U.S. Government involvement with the site, and any communications with the federal government since January 1, 2020.
Wikipedia’s political bias has been the subject of significant controversy, including its anti-Israeli bias. Last month, editors declared Israel guilty of committing genocide in Gaza and now push the claim on its front-page “In the news” section. Editors also smeared Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk following his assassination and tried deleting articles about his widow Erika Kirk and his memorial service. Wales is currently heading a “neutrality working group” the Foundation established following bias concerns. However, the announcement of the working group avoided left-wing bias claims, instead insisting its editors “have a strong track record of successfully managing neutrality on contentious subjects” thanks to its governance process.
T. D. Adler edited Wikipedia as The Devil’s Advocate. He was banned after privately reporting conflict of interest editing by one of the site’s administrators. Due to previous witch-hunts led by mainstream Wikipedians against their critics, Adler writes under an alias.
