Trump Order Could End The Government-Censorship Complex

President Donald Trump ordered an end to “federal censorship” on his first day in office — potentially closing the door on the government-censorship complex.

“Under the guise of combatting ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation,’ the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens,” the order reads. “Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.”

Trump signed the order, Restoring Freedom Of Speech And Ending Federal Censorship, Monday night in front of a crowd at Capital One Arena. This was one of his first actions after returning to office.

“The previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve,” the order reads. 

The Problem

The federal government has a censorship hub — the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). CISA worked with “Zuckbucks” groups in 2020 and targeted election speech it deemed “mis-, dis-, and malinformation.” 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, blasted the agency for targeting himself and other dissenters.

“President Biden and his White House opened up a portal, and then invited the CIA, the FBI, CISA — which is a censorship agency, the center of the censorship-industrial complex — DHS, IRS, and other agencies, to censor me and other political dissidents on social media,” Kennedy said while suspending his own presidential campaign.

The State Department also backed the Global Engagement Center, which pushed to deplatform conservative publications including The Federalist. So The Federalist, the Daily Wire, and the State of Texas sued the State Department for First Amendment violations. The GEC was defunded in the latest House appropriations bill, but it may soon be resurrected under a new name.

Trump himself faced Big Tech censorship when Twitter suspended his account following the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot — even as he was sitting president. It was later found in the Twitter Files that federal agents had pressured the company to silence politically inconvenient information, including the Hunter Biden Laptop story. Former President Joe Biden’s White House worked with Facebook — now Meta — in a similar way to censor Covid information. 

A Solution?

Trump’s executive order — just one in a slough of Inauguration Day measures — seeks to enforce the First Amendment, “essential to the success of our Republic.” 

It sets forth a federal government policy to secure the right to “constitutionally protected speech,” ban “any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen,” and “take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to censorship of protected speech.”

The order also bans any “[f]ederal department, agency, entity, officer, employee, or agent” from using “any Federal resources in a manner contrary” to the above provisions.

It mandates the attorney general — “in consultation with the heads of executive departments and agencies” — to investigate federal activities from the last four years “inconsistent with the purposes and policies of this order.” The AG must then “prepare a report” for the president recommending “appropriate remedial actions.”

It is unclear what steps the Trump administration will take, pursuant to this order, to investigate or shut down agencies or partnerships that constitute the government-censorship complex.

Logan Washburn is a staff writer covering election integrity. He is a spring 2025 fellow of The College Fix. He graduated from Hillsdale College, served as Christopher Rufo’s editorial assistant, and has bylines in The Wall Street Journal, The Tennessean, and The Daily Caller. Logan is from Central Oregon but now lives in rural Michigan.