President Donald Trump on Monday ordered that no federal officer, employee or agent may unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen, an early step toward his campaign promise to dismantle what he called government “censorship” of U.S. citizens.
The president’s executive order, issued just hours after he was sworn in to a second term, comes after Trump and his supporters have accused the federal government of pressuring social media companies to take down lawful posts over concerns around misinformation.
The order also instructs the attorney general, in consultation with other executive agency heads, to investigate how federal government actions over the four years of the Biden administration could have infringed on free speech and propose “remedial actions” based on the findings.
Trump’s order, which he signed onstage at Capital One Arena along with a slate of other executive actions, shows how motivated he is to crack down on what he calls the “censorship cartel” on his first day in office.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has recently echoed that accusation, saying senior Biden administration officials pressured his employees to inappropriately “censor” content during the COVID-19 pandemic. Elon Musk, the owner of the social platform X, has accused the FBI of illegally coercing Twitter before his tenure to suppress a story about Hunter Biden.
While former Twitter executives conceded they made a mistake by blocking that story just before the 2020 presidential election, they have adamantly denied that they acted in response to government pressure.
The Supreme Court last year sided with former President Joe Biden’s administration in a dispute with Republican-led states over how far the federal government can go to combat controversial social media posts on topics including COVID-19 and election security.
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