Meta’s social media platform is infested with pedophile rings and dripping with sexual advances toward minor girls, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley warns parents after hearing from a company whistleblower this week.

Meanwhile, Hawley calls the Department of Health and Human Services’ dictate that employees use each other’s preferred pronouns – at apparent risk of being fired – “the most unbelievably stupid thing I’ve heard.”

Former Meta engineer Arturo Bejar confirmed, in Senate Judiciary subcommittee testimony Tuesday, longstanding allegations of company inaction in the face of what the Wall Street Journal reports is a “vast pedophile network” on Instagram. Meta owns it and Facebook.

In his questioning of Bejar, Hawley reiterated the whistleblower’s inside account that one in eight minor girls using Instagram report being sexually propositioned in the past week; over longer periods of time the number is one in three.

“We’re talking about children, now,” Hawley reminded the subcommittee. “These are not adults.”

“Instagram knows about it, and they’re not doing anything about it — nothing meaningful,” Hawley expounded in an interview Thursday with The Heartlander. “But they have all the time and money in the world to go after people who want to talk about COVID-19 vaccines, who want to ask how effective those vaccines are, who want to ask about what their kids are being taught in schools. If that’s you, oh, then they’re going to come after you. But if your kids are on there getting exposed to porn, sorry, you’re just going to live with that.  

“It is unbelievable. It shows you the priorities of that company. And frankly, it shows you how morally bankrupt they are. As a father, it horrifies me. I don’t want my kids anywhere near this. No parent wants their kids near this.

“Facebook, Meta, whatever they are this week, they need to be held accountable here. The people who own Instagram, they need to be held accountable for what they’re doing to our kids.”

How can that happen, when few ordinary citizens ever have any interaction with employees at social media companies?

“Well, I think part of the way you do it is you give parents the right to sue them. That’s what needs to happen,” Hawley told The Heartlander. “Right now, if your kid gets exposed to child porn you can’t do anything about it on Instagram because they’re immune from suit. They’re supposed to make sure that there isn’t sexually exploitative material on their platform. If they violate that term of service you can’t do anything about it.

“We need to change the law so that parents can protect their kids and sue this company for doing all of this terrible stuff and exposing our kids to this kind of garbage.”

As for Health and Human Services, “All employees should be addressed [by] the names and pronouns they use to describe themselves,” reads an HHS email as reported on by Fox News.

“HHS and the federal government is requiring its employees to speak falsehoods,” Roger Severino, former Trump administration head of civil rights at HHS, told Fox News Digital.

The First Amendment protects the employees from compelled speech that is false or that violates their religious faith, Severino adds.

The HHS order is most likely unconstitutional, agrees Hawley.

“Number two, I think it’s the stupidest thing I have heard of yet this week from the Biden administration, and that’s saying something. I mean, really? This is the priority? People in the United States of America can’t afford to buy drugs in this country because Big Pharma is charging us four and five times as much as they’re charging people in Mexico and Canada. But yet Health and Human Services wants to talk about pronouns? We can’t get our medical supply chains in this country. We can’t get good jobs in this country making our own drugs. And they want to talk about pronouns?”

Also Thursday, with the Nov. 17 government funding deadline looming, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries alleges “extreme MAGA Republicans” are seeking to “extract extreme ransom demands” in a continuing resolution to keep the government open.

“I have no idea what that guy’s talking about,” Hawley said, noting that it’s Senate Democrats who are insisting on more money for Ukraine, with little accountability for it, while providing nothing so far for Israel in its existential fight against the terror group Hamas.

“For my money, supporting our ally Israel, that’s a pretty good thing to do, and I think it’s pretty shameful that the Senate hasn’t done a thing yet – a thing – to help Israel, who’s just asking for a little bit of assistance defending themselves. I also think this whole idea that now, Democrats are going to try to shut down the government if they don’t get more money for Ukraine, I mean, give me a break. Keep the government open. Don’t punish the American people because you’re not getting money for your pet project. 

“And as to Ukraine, I’m not in favor of any additional funding, and I want to know how every dollar has been spent. I want an accounting of every dime of taxpayer money and where it’s going. Because right now we have no idea.”