by WorldTribune Staff, March 20, 2025 Real World News
The Biden-Harris regime engaged in 57 distinct censorship initiatives and ordered 90 federal agencies to carry out censorship directives, a report said.
The Biden-era censorship initiatives were carried out via direct actions, policies or rulemakings, and partnerships and grants, according the Media Research Center report titled "The Biden Administration waged war on free speech".
The report noted that Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland "refused to prosecute any of the perpetrators" for illegal censorship and his Department of Justice "refused to even launch a single investigation" after a federal judge compared the whole-of-government effort to an "Orwellian 'Ministry of Truth.' "
The Justice Department engaged in 15 of the censorship initiatives and the Department of Homeland Security 13, the report said. Those included DHS's "collusion" with the U.K.'s Counter Disinformation Unit to "target speech in each other’s countries" and DOJ's "imaginary, alternative version of antitrust law" that requires artificial intelligence developers to collude on "anticompetitive censorship."
The FCC was involved in five initiatives, including what report called "perversion" of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act by imposing antidiscrimination rules on Title II-regulated common carriers "and then making the bizarre and incongruous choice to exempt firms like Amazon, Apple and Google … de facto blessing Big Tech censorship."
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Elon Musk was targeted in five of the censorship directives, with special prosecutor Jack Smith gagging the X social media platform from telling users – including then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump – that Smith was reading their private messages and the State Department was funding a Ukrainian group that sought Musk's censorship for his anti-war views.
The National Labor Relations Board blocked companies from "even verbally discouraging" misconduct by employees who supported the Biden Administration's Covid policies, but punished Trader Joe's for firing an employee who "scream[ed] at her managers in front of customers" for removing its mask mandate, skipped shifts, and kept agitating for mask mandates.
The State Department's Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor & Combat Anti-Semitism hosted an online symposium – attended by White House official Neera Tanden and the UK Labour Party-tied Center for Countering Digital Hate – in which "domestic and foreign government officials colluded directly with Big Tech" to censor purposed harms, the report said.
The reports recommendations for the Trump Administration include removing officials involved in censorship, such as National Science Foundation Director Sethuraman Panchanathan for overseeing the "Track F" grants that target misinformation or disinformation, and defunding "censorship outfits" such as the Poynter Institute, whose fact-checker deemed the Covid lab-leak theory a lie.
The report calls on Congress to "provide justice for victims of censorship" such as through a bill by Wyoming Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman that resembles last session's Censorship Accountability Act, which created a private right of action to sue federal officials for First Amendment violations.
Building on Trump's executive orders on free speech and artificial intelligence means "learning the extent of the harm the last four years have inflicted – and understanding how easily and swiftly censorship could come roaring back if the American public does not remain more vigilant," the report said.
