Back in 2022, Donald Trump announced his Free Speech Policy Initiative – a long list of measures aimed, according to Trump himself, at “shatter the left-wing censorship regime, and to reclaim the right to Free Speech for all Americans”. The initiative has attracted widespread attention since his election victory, with supporters expecting the promises to be realized.
– If we don’t have free speech, then we just don’t have a free country. It’s as simple as that. If this most fundamental right is allowed to perish, then the rest of our rights and liberties will topple just like dominos one by one. They’ll go down, Trump declared when the initiative was launched.
According to Trump, a “sinister group” of government bureaucrats, “Silicon Valley tyrants”, left-wing activists and the establishment media “have been conspiring to manipulate and silence the American People”. and suppressed “vital information on everything from elections to public health”.
– The censorship cartel must be dismantled and destroyed — and it must happen immediately., Trump proclaimed.
YES!
pic.twitter.com/yrtfxAGfXi— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 9, 2024
This is how Trump himself describes how he will work to strengthen American freedom of expression:
Will fire censorious bureaucrats
First, within hours of my inauguration, I will sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with any organization, business, or person, to censor, limit, categorize, or impede the lawful speech of American citizens.
I will then ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as “mis-” or “dis-information”. And I will begin the process of identifying and firing every federal bureaucrat who has engaged in domestic censorship—directly or indirectly—whether they are the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI, the DOJ, no matter who they are.
Second, I will order the Department of Justice to investigate all parties involved in the new online censorship regime, which is absolutely destructive and terrible, and to aggressively prosecute any and all crimes identified. These include possible violations of federal civil rights law, campaign finance laws, federal election law, securities law, and anti-trust laws, the Hatch Act and a host of other potential criminal, civil, regulatory, and constitutional offenses.
To assist in these efforts, I am urging House Republicans to immediately send preservation letters — and we have to do this right now — to the Biden administration, the Biden campaign, and every Silicon Valley tech giant, ordering them not to destroy evidence of censorship.
Universities could lose funding
Third, upon my inauguration as president, I will ask Congress to send a bill to my desk revising Section 230 to get big online platforms out of censorship business. From now on, digital platforms should only qualify for immunity protection under Section 230 if they meet high standards of neutrality, transparency, fairness, and non-discrimination.
We should require these platforms to increase their efforts to take down unlawful content, such as child exploitation and promoting terrorism, while dramatically curtailing their power to arbitrarily restrict lawful speech.
Fourth, we need to break up the entire toxic censorship industry that has arisen under the false guise of tackling so-called “mis-” and “dis-information.” The federal government should immediately stop funding all non-profits and academic programs that support this authoritarian project.
If any U.S. university is discovered to have engaged in censorship activities or election interferences in the past—such as flagging social media content for removal [and] blacklisting—those universities should lose federal research dollars and federal student loan support for a period of five years, and maybe more.
We should also enact new laws laying out clear criminal penalties for federal bureaucrats who partner with private entities to do an end-run around the Constitution and deprive Americans of their First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment rights. In other words, deprive them of their vote. And once you lose those elections and once you lose your borders like we have, you no longer have a country.
Furthermore, to confront the problems of major platforms being infiltrated by legions of former Deep Staters and intelligence officials, there should be a 7-year cooling-off period before any employee of the FBI, CIA, NSA, DNI, DHS, or DOD is allowed to take a job at a company possessing vast quantities of U.S. user data.
Digital Bill of Rights
Fifth, the time has finally come for Congress to pass a digital Bill of Rights. This should include a right to digital due process—in other words, government officials should need a court order to take down online content, not send information requests such as the FBI was sending to Twitter.
Furthermore, when users of big online platforms have their content or accounts removed, throttled, shadow-banned, or otherwise restricted no matter what name they use, they should have the right to be informed that it’s happening, the right to a specific explanation of the reason why, and the right to a timely appeal. In addition, all users over the age of 18 should have the right to opt-out of content moderation and curation entirely, and receive an unmanipulated stream of information if they so choose.
The fight for Free Speech is a matter of victory or death for America—and for the survival of Western Civilization itself. When I am President, this whole rotten system of censorship and information control will be ripped out of the system at large. There won’t be anything left.
By restoring free speech, we will begin to reclaim our democracy, and save our nation. Thank you, and God Bless America.
High expectations
Trump won a near landslide victory over Kamala Harris last week, promising frequently during his campaign to take back the freedoms and rights of the American people from what he says is a corrupt, censorious and totalitarian state, mismanaged by the Democrats.
Opinion remains very divided on whether Trump will live up to his promises. Skeptics argue that he failed to deliver on his campaign promises in his first term between 2016 and 2020 and that the same can be expected in his second term, while others believe he is better placed to deliver when he returns to the White House in January.
