The Trump administration has a huge opportunity to undermine the growing industry of censorship both within the government and in the private sector.
President Trump promised during the campaign video Starting in December 2022, he will sign an executive order banning government agencies from collaborating with private platforms to suppress speech, with the aim of “smashing the left-wing censorship system,” and will investigate those involved in censorship. The Act includes ordering the Department of Justice (DOJ) to do so.
“If President Trump takes the steps he has indicated, I predict that one of the focuses of his anti-censorship efforts will be nonprofit groups like the Atlantic Council and the Stanford Internet Watchdog Group.” [SIO] They act as intermediaries between governments and technology companies,” Jenin Younes, a lawyer with the New Civil Liberties Union, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “As President, Trump should ensure that the White House and his administration do not work with these groups to censor ‘false’ or ‘disinformation.’ Indeed, all government efforts in MDM [misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation] This scope should end because it clearly amounts to the suppression of speech protected by the First Amendment. ”
Under the Biden administration, White House officials explicitly asked platforms to restrict speech related to the coronavirus. Other agencies have joined in the suppression of speech, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) flagging posts for deletion and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) forwarding misinformation reports from local election officials to its platform. This is what they call “.”switchboard”
CISA also supported create SIO played a key role in the 2020 Election Integrity Partnership runningto monitor and report “misinformation” to the platform during the 2020 election. federal judge I refused Last week, it dismissed a lawsuit against SIO, along with several other groups, for allegedly targeting conservative speech.
“Private entities cannot be allowed to work with the government to censor the speech of Americans,” said Nicholas R. Barry, senior legal counsel at America First. statement.
Younes told the DCNF that he wants “punishment against government officials who violate Americans' First Amendment rights.” (Related: Mark Zuckerberg admits Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook to censor content, expresses regret)
“Currently, such individuals are able to escape responsibility for their actions thanks to principles such as qualified immunity,” she said. “However, when government officials knowingly violate people's civil rights, exceptions to qualified immunity may exist, and those exceptions should be applied in the context of the First Amendment.'' .”
Trump's other proposals include firing officials involved in censorship, blocking federal funds from going to nonprofits and universities that label domestic speech as misinformation, and “freeing major online platforms from censorship.” It included asking Congress to amend Article 230 to ensure that the
The Biden administration has issued $267 million in grants to projects that include the term “misinformation,” including $127 million specifically related to COVID-19. According to Back to November's Open The Books report. DCNF will receive funding from NSF in 2023 to develop censorship tools, including a dashboard to predict “trends” in misinformation and another to study how misinformation impacts online networks. I reported on some of the projects I received funding from.
great discussion between @AfergusonFTC and @nataliegWinters On the Censorship System and How the Trump Administration Can Combat It
Two important parts of the censorship issue:
-Private companies are colluding to censor speech they don't like. Advertising cartels are one of them… pic.twitter.com/i89sWWF9nQ
— Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) November 30, 2024
“Crush this censorship cartel”
Many of President Trump's nominees have been vocal about their commitment to promoting free speech.
Andrew Ferguson was selected by President Trump to be the new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chairman. said about war room In late November, President Trump announced he could completely abolish some censorship, ordering officials to stop communicating with platforms and end government funding to groups that participate in suppressing speech. . But private censorship is likely to move into “new territory,” he said, making it important for the FTC to take “investigative steps.”
Ferguson said an “advertising cartel” could violate antitrust laws by agreeing to boycott certain shows, podcasts or platforms.
“If the government is going to step back from a situation where the government collaborates and colludes with platforms to suppress speech they don't like here, it's up to the FTC to make sure that that kind of collaboration and collusion stops.”Private Sector “We're not going to go into that,” Ferguson said.
The same goes for Brennan Carr, whom Trump nominated to head the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). said In an interview with NewsNation, he said one of his top priorities is “crushing this censorship cartel.” (Related: President Trump nominates Brendan Carr as FCC chairman, calls him a 'free speech fighter')
Other appointees took strong stances against censorship. Jay Bhattacharyya, President Trump's choice to head the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration to support lockdowns and responses to the coronavirus. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has filed his own lawsuit against the Biden administration for alleged violations of the First Amendment.
Harmeet Dhillon, who will lead the Justice Department's civil rights division, worked with her office on a lawsuit challenging Twitter's collaboration with the California Secretary of State's office to suppress speech.
The Corona era was a golden age of science denial. School closures, immunity denials, lockdowns, mask-wearing for young children, compulsory vaccinations, denial of the harms of vaccinations, and, of course, censorship to suppress opposition to the failed “expert” class. Science ™ should be replaced by science.
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) November 15, 2024
ongoing litigation
The Supreme Court ruled in June that plaintiffs challenging the Biden administration's censorship efforts could not link account restrictions to communications with government platforms, but in the case of Missouri v. Biden continues even now. In November, the District Court allowed Plaintiffs asked to pursue further discovery to establish government involvement.
“Depending on the administration's approach, cases like ours could result in the government admitting its wrongdoing and taking a variety of concrete steps to prevent future violations of Americans' First Amendment free speech rights.” “There is a possibility that the case could be resolved with a consent decree,” Younes told DCNF about the case.
Recently, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) launched The new Free Speech Center aims to target censorship groups and points to “new opportunities” for free speech advocates with Trump's inauguration.
ADF Senior Advisor Phil Sekler told the DCNF that the center's purpose is to create a “substantive backlash against censorship worldwide,” which has been tightened by both private and government forces over the past decade. He said that
Potential targets include state-level election laws, such as the California law. targeting Political satire that ADF has already filed a lawsuit against on behalf of The crimes of the Babylon Bee and the act of canceling bank accounts and other censorship by private actors.
“There is a lot of work to be done to dismantle this censorship-industrial complex that has been built over many years,” Seschler told DCNF.
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