Trump’s Day One Order Targets Censorship to Protect Free Speech

Shortly after taking office, President Trump initiated a significant offensive against the Censorship-Industrial Complex — marking the first stride in his pledge to dismantle and abolish a system that conspired to suppress dissent opposing ruling-class doctrines.

This initial act was an executive order titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” Its goal is to extract the federal government from the speech-policing arena while cutting off taxpayer funding that fuels the censorship apparatus.

The decree prohibits every “Federal department, agency, entity, officer, employee, or agent” from utilizing “any Federal resources” to support, facilitate, or engage in actions that would unconstitutionally limit the free speech of any American citizen.

The necessity of such a policy highlights just how distorted and oppressive our federal government had become in recent times.

The order’s preamble reveals troubling facts: The Biden administration “trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms,” pressuring social-media companies and other entities “to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech not approved by the Federal Government.”

In reality, the anti-speech maneuvers began before Biden’s administration.

During Trump’s initial term, leading up to the 2020 election, several Deep State officials collaborated with social-media platforms to identify and suppress The New York Post’s story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, possibly influencing the election against the president they ostensibly served.

My investigations at RealClearInvestigations uncovered that these officials also colluded with third-party intermediaries to press social-media companies into censoring negative perspectives on election integrity and the electoral process itself.

These players constructed a “whole-of-society” censorship model that the Biden administration subsequently intensified to eliminate dissent regarding COVID-19 narratives.

The federal government justified these efforts by claiming a responsibility to tackle alleged hazardous “mis-, dis-, and mal-information.”

In effect, the elimination of unauthorized speech from the digital public domain cleared the way for the government to promote its “preferred narrative on critical matters of public discourse,” as highlighted in Trump’s order.

The censorship regime was deemed by a federal judge as perhaps the most extensive assault on free speech in U.S. history, as noted in Missouri v. Biden.

Regrettably for the First Amendment, the Biden administration and complicit entities continued to assert their right to silence dissenting voices.

They escalated the case to the Supreme Court — where the majority dodged the issue, ruling 6-3 that the suing parties lacked standing.

Consequently, the justices never addressed the plaintiffs’ argument that federal pressure on social-media companies to suppress protected speech converts them into de facto government regulators of free speech, thereby violating the First Amendment indirectly.

Congressional Republicans have further uncovered federal-led censorship tactics but have yet to succeed in enacting legislation to prevent them.

Thus, Trump’s executive order represents the first significant advancement toward abolishing government censorship comprehensively.

This directive is crucial. The Censorship-Industrial Complex is not merely a product of social-media companies but is also significantly sustained, organized, and financed — to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars — by the federal government.

If we cut off its federal guidance and funding, the foundation of this regime will start to disintegrate.

In addition to prohibiting future government censorship, Trump’s order directs his attorney general and other key officials to investigate censorship actions from the past four years and to “rectify” the government’s “previous misdeeds.”

This is essential: The thorough exposure of the extent, nature, and scale of federal censorship activities is necessary for accountability and deterrence.

The Trump administration must reveal every government entity engaged in online censorship, trace their funding sources, unveil the policies they enacted, disclose their personnel — and eliminate them all.

Subsequently, Trump and Congress need to enact legislation that prohibits and defunds censorship projects while imposing severe consequences on anyone involved in executing them — guaranteeing the survival of speech freedom against future censorious administrations.

Losing free speech equates to losing a free nation.

The federally imposed censorship regime justified by “for our own good” infringed upon our rights, enabling the state and like-minded elites to unconstitutionally monopolize political and social narratives, thus perpetuating their power.

Trump’s initial executive order has set us on a path toward terminating this illiberal nightmare.

Benjamin Weingarten serves as editor at large at RealClearInvestigations.