In addition to his limited-edition NFTs, Donald Trump made another announcement this Thursday. The former president announced a new “free speech policy” he plans to implement if he somehow beats the odds and becomes the second president to have two non-consecutive terms.
The policy, which Trump believes will help take down what he calls the “censorship cartel,” will mostly target universities, government agencies, and tech companies. In a short video posted to Truth Social, the former president said, “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.”
Trump says he will ban any federal government agency from using the terms “misinformation” and “disinformation.” He also stated that any U.S. universities that are found to have participated in “censorship activities or election interferences in the past, such as flagging social media content for removal of blacklisting” will lose federal funding for research and federal support for student loans “for a period of five years, and maybe more.”
In addition to the above policies, Trump says he will also conduct internal research to find and fire “every federal bureaucrat who has engaged in domestic censorship.”
The new plan is certainly ambitious and would be a drastic change from how the current Biden administration runs things. The president’s administration has admitted to cracking down on social media posts spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines, a move the American Civil Liberties Union has criticized. In a statement posted Oct. 31, the ACLU said, “the First Amendment bars the government from deciding for us what is true or false, online or anywhere. Our government can’t use private pressure to get around our constitutional rights.”
Trump’s “free speech policy” follows Elon Musk’s controversial reinstatement of the former president’s Twitter account after he was banned after last year’s Jan. 6 capitol riot, when hordes of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in protest of Biden’s presidential victory. Trump has yet to use his Twitter account now that the ban has been lifted, instead opting to use Truth Social to share important announcements like this and the aforementioned limited-edition NFTs.
While the internet (us included) has been focusing on the surreal trading card images featuring Trump as a NASCAR racer, astronaut, cowboy, and superhero, the “free speech policy” has gone generally unnoticed. We’re not sure if Trump’s policy would hold up if he does manage to get re-elected as it seems like it might infringe on as many First Amendment rights as it protects, but it deserves more attention than it’s currently getting.
