In one of his first work in his position, President Trump issued Executive order He promised to end government control and restore freedom of expression.
The matter accused the outgoing administration of Biden of harassment of social media companies and violating the rights of ordinary Americans “under the guise of” controlling information on the Internet, and said that federal resources will not be used anymore “to believe freedom of expression of citizen freedom” unconstitutionally. “
The matter repeated a repeated topic from the Trump campaign – that liberals throughout the federal government are controlling the conservative voices to advance in their agenda “wake up” – and resonated with his followers immediately.
Mark Tramil of the American Freedom Center, a conservative rights group founded by California lawyer Haret K. said. Dahilon, Trump’s candidate to lead the Civil Rights Department at the Ministry of Justice: “This matter is a decisive step to ensure that the government is unable to dictate the permitted speech or arm special entities to impose censorship.”
However, many others said that they have found a futility of Trump – whether because of his long record of attacking the words he does not like, and because of his new administration efforts simultaneously to honor the people who do not agree with him, including journalists, federal health officials, teachers, DiplomatsClimate scientists and the LGBTQ community.
“Let’s be not naive,” said Pen America’s administrative director in Washington, who called for freedom of expression in the United States for more than a century. “While some of President Trump’s orders of the executive orders pay the service of the lips to freedom of expression, they actually put a frontal attack against him, abolish the conditions of expression and permissible identities, demand political loyalty to civil service employees, and threaten revenge against the opposition in ways that can aim to express freedom of freedom.”
California comes. General Rob Punta said that Trump claims to be the hero of freedom of expression while attacking the media and restricting the duration of the period that civilian employees can before communicating with the public – including in critical areas such as public health – “paradox and hypocrisy.”
“It is the Classical Trump administration,” said Punta. “It is their speech against their actions, and you have to look at their actions.”
Reducing communication
Inside and abroad, the Trump administration has ordered federal employees and diplomats to stop communications on a set of issues, including “diversity, fairness and inclusion”, “environmental justice” and “sexual ideology”.
The Ministry of Defense officials ordered the stopping of information on official social media accounts unless it is related to the southern border, health experts and other federal experts to reduce communications even in critical public safety issues such as the spread of bird flu – which California officials declared a state of emergency.
Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, Professor of Public Health and Infectious Removal Expert at the University of Southern California, said that he was anxious on Thursday when the centers of control and prevention of diseases withdrew from discussing the planned bird flu with the American Infectious Diseases Association. Klausner said that the clouds were “a great loss of our ability to understand what is going on” at the national level.
Klausner said that previous departments have gave health leaders new orders – to reduce spending, and priorities to shift – but he has never been unparalleled to stop many critical contacts simultaneously. He called it “very related.”
Trump also ordered a comprehensive campaign on federal communications on the LGBTQ+ community – removing LGBTQ resources+ from government websites and putting new restrictions on how federal employees discuss or speak to LGBTQ+ – or even use words such as “sex” or “sex”.
He threatened similar restrictions on public school teachers and administrators, and he refused that Americans LGBTQ+ have no longer identifying sexual passports on passports and other documents.
Jenny Paser, chief legal official of the LGBTQ+ Legal Advocacy Lambda Legal, said Trump’s orders are “the opposite of freedom of expression” and a clear government attempt “to silence people, and speech” – which is illegal.
She pointed to new rules that prevent federal employees, contractors and materials from referring to sexual identity or liquidity. She said: “These concepts are monitoring, and the language in which one expresses concepts is controlled by censorship.”
Lambda Legal has fought such efforts before. When Trump issued an executive order prohibiting federal afflictions who manage diversity in the workplace from reference topics such as implicit bias or critical race theory – describing them as “exciting concepts” – Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit against them and won the cancellation of the matter.
Trump also maintained his criticism of the media, describing journalists as “the enemy of people.” He sues many media organizations – including the Politzer Awards Council and the Di Muneen and his mother company, Janet – is on the press that he claims was definition or unfair. The ports defended their work.
Catherine Jacobsen, the American program coordinator for the protection of journalists, said that journalists will welcome a sincere effort to enhance the protection of freedom of expression through the political spectrum, but Trump is not.
“What We have seen “In this post -election period – and even before the start of the elections, in his last presidency – he was not really ready to support freedom of expression when he opposes his account,” said Jacobsen.
Online discussion
At the core of Trump’s oversight is his claim that the Biden administration “tramples freedom of expression by controlling Americans’ speech, including” exerting great forced pressure “on online platforms.
It is not a new argument.
After January 6, 2021, the multiple attack and investigations into the efforts made by foreign enemies to spread misleading information and sow confidence in the American political system, and social media companies promised to communicate – including by suspending thousands of accounts. Under the Biden Administration, officials continued to pressure those platforms to land the posts that are considered wrong and dangerous, including the safety of the American elections and also the Covid-19s.
These efforts were increasingly celebrating the Republicans, and in the end, the states led by the Republican Party, accused of the Biden Administration of illegally coercing the platforms on the erasing of the conservative content.
Experts say that the demands of liberal bias on social platforms are generally exaggerated, and refer to the prosperous conservative societies via the Internet as evidence. However, investigative studies have shown that many conservatives believe that bias exist. Mark’s CEO of META has recently made credibility to public complaint and Congress about pressure on his company, which his company received from the Biden administration to remove or limit the spread of specific content, including satirical content about Covid-19.
Biden Administration attorneys said that there is a difference between legitimate persuasion and inappropriate coercion, and that communication channels between government companies and social media should remain open for public safety reasons. The Supreme Court in favor of the Biden administration ruled in June, and found that the states had no position to prosecute. Field on this issue is still in place.
Meanwhile, technology leaders were turning away from moderation – and towards Trump.
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, bought the X -Twitter social media platform – in October 2022 on a promise to make him more free. He described himself as a “absolute freedom of expression” and said that Twitter did not live to the level of its potential as a “platform for freedom of expression” – which he said would be suitable by reducing content restrictions.
Since then, Musk has joined the Trump inner circle, spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help re -elect Trump and the Republicans in Congress, and Trump’s appointment to lead a new agency called the Governmental Ministry of efficiency, and to ask all kinds of questions about the conflicts that have given the US contracts – the CEO of Spacex and Tesla – has the federal government.
Critics also questioned Mossk’s commitment to freedom of expression. The journalists who covered him from X have kicked him and exaggerated the talk points maintaining the platform. In September, X revealed that it had suspended approximately 5.3 million accounts in the first half of last year, compared to 1.6 million accounts suspended in the first half of 2022.
This month, Zuckerberg announced that his company-which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp-allowed “a lot of control” and will get rid of the limitations of facts, which reduces content restrictions and serve more political content.
Then Zuckerberg went to the famous PodCast Joe Rogan, where he said that Corporaate America was “neutral” and “involved” and complained bitterly from the Biden administration officials who call the members of the identification team to demand that they reduce certain content – with “threatening repercussions if we do not.”
He was a group of other technology leaders in addition to Musk and Zuckerberg – the founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos and CEO of Apple, Google and Tiktok – ready to open Trump. Many also donate events.
Tramil, from the American Freedom Center, said that the Biden administration violated the rights of ordinary Americans in such measures, and that Trump’s order “confirms America’s commitment to freedom of expression.” Representative Jim Jordan, who was Chairman of the Judicial Committee in the House of Representatives, referred to investigations into the bias of social media, to the order to fight the pure, among other things, in a publication on X, writing, “Good instinct!”
Harris said, among America, that its organization agrees that “government control over speech is unbearable in a free society,” as Trump states, and that the government must “take care” of how to address things like misinformation on social media platforms “so that it does not violate freedom of expression.”
However, the government must be “able to communicate and engage in sharing information with technology companies when it revolves around the Internet during a natural disaster, a pandemic, or foreign intervention in the elections, or another moment of increased tension and risks to the public,” said Harris.
Although the matter of defending speech is already protected under the first amendment, Trump will make such necessary communication “impossible” and “reduce the government’s ability to process misleading information at all,” Harris said – “Giving free misinformation.”
Talk to it
“There are some legitimate restrictions on freedom of expression-you can’t scream” fire! ” In a crowded theater, for example – the constitution already protects American citizens of government censorship that Trump claims to target.
She also protects them from some things that Trump’s orders will enter if they are executed.
“What he wants to do is to ensure that the speech or beliefs that he criticizes have a lesser opportunity to express them, and that the speech or beliefs that praise it have a greater ability to be there, and as much as people say, stand, belief, and read things that do not agree with, he would like to give up and take measures to do so,” said Okley.
But “our government does not tell us these things,” Okley said, and will use groups like her voice to argue this point loudly – including, if necessary, in court.
Punta, the California Prosecutor, said that Trump is a “experienced seller” when it comes to saying something and doing it, but Golden State will not be deceived and will also invite Trump measures to combat speech and those that threaten public safety.
Paiser, of Lambda Legal, said that legal intervention from groups such as its salary may not come immediately, because some orders “are still not cryptic or theory enough so that we cannot see what the effect will be.” She said they are closely watching, and they actually saw the pain.
She said, “Reality,” that the wonderful people who did not do anything to harm anyone who will suffer all the way and we are trying to close these things as quickly as possible. “
The Times Tercy Wilkenson team writer in Washington contributed to this report.