Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) pressed Wikipedia on Monday for information about how it maintains the online encyclopedia and addresses ideological bias amid growing conservative criticism of the site.
In a letter to Wikimedia Foundation CEO Maryana Iskander, Cruz voiced concerns about potential left-wing bias within the widely used platform.
“Wikipedia began with a noble concept: crowdsource human knowledge using verifiable sources and make it free to the public. That’s what makes reports of Wikipedia’s systemic bias especially troubling,” the senator wrote.
“Its influence extends even further in the age of artificial intelligence, as every major large language model has been trained on the platform,” he added. “Wikipedia shapes what Americans read today and what technology will produce tomorrow.”
Cruz pointed to Wikipedia’s reliable sources list as a key example, noting that CNN, MSNBC and the Southern Poverty Law Center are considered “generally reliable,” while Fox News is considered “generally unreliable” on politics and science and the Heritage Foundation is “deprecated” and sits on the site’s “spam blacklist.”
“Deprecated” sites are deemed unreliable and are mostly prohibited from being used as sources on Wikipedia. Sites on the “spam blacklist” are automatically blocked from being listed as a source. The page suggests the Heritage Foundation was placed on the “blacklist” for attempting to dox editors.
Cruz also took aim at how the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates the online encyclopedia, distributes grant funding. He argued the group “financially supports left-wing organizations that contribute to Wikipedia content,” citing grants focused on “dismantling supremacist systems” and efforts to “decolonize the internet.”
The Texas Republican pressed Iskander for information about how content is created and edited on Wikipedia, how ideological bias is addressed, how it determines categorization on its reliable sources list and how editors are removed or banned, among other requests.
Wikipedia has found itself at the center of conservative backlash in recent days, after the site’s co-founder Larry Sanger sat for an interview with conservative pundit Tucker Carlson. Sanger, a longtime critic who left the project in 2002, highlighted the reliable sources list.
As clips of Sanger’s interview circulated on social media, tech mogul Elon Musk slammed the online encyclopedia as “Wokepedia” and announced that his AI firm, xAI, was building an alternative called “Grokipedia.”
White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks suggested the site is “hopelessly biased,” alleging that an “army of left-wing activists maintain the bios and fight reasonable corrections.”
Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, a key figure in the Silicon Valley right who hosts the “All-In” podcast with Sacks, also accused Wikipedia of “one sided censorship.”
In response to these allegations, the Wikimedia Foundation said in a statement last week that its values “reflect our unwavering commitment to reliable knowledge, neutrality, and constant improvement.”
“Wikipedia informs; it does not persuade,” the nonprofit said. “Some recent commentary overlooks the constant, high-quality volunteer oversight and strong safeguards already in place on Wikipedia. These protections allow volunteer editors to exercise their right to free expression, while upholding knowledge integrity.”
