JONATHAN TURLEY: Get the US out of the censorship business, once and for all, in 2025
Editor's note: This essay was first published on the author's blog: Res ipsa loquitur – The thing itself speaks.
2025 has just begun and for the first time in many years, free-speech advocates have a reason to celebrate.
With the departure of 2024, we said goodbye to one of the most reviled offices in the Biden administration: The Global Engagement Center (GEC). I discuss the Center in my recent book, "The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage" as one of the most active components in the massive censorship system funded by the Biden administration.
The demise of the GEC is a good start. However, like weight-loss resolutions, it will take much more of a commitment if we are going to restore free speech in the United States. It is time to make the ultimate resolution to rip out the censorship, root and stem, from our government.
In December, the Biden administration fought to keep the GEC funded, but Republicans refused to include it in the continuing resolution for the budget. However, even with the closure of this one office, Biden will leave behind the most comprehensive censorship system in the history of the United States.
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Over the last three years, many of us have detailed a comprehensive system of grants to academic and third-party organizations to create blacklists or to pressure advertisers to withdraw support for targeted sites. The subjects for censorship ranged from election fraud to social justice to climate change.
I testified at the first hearing by the special committee investigating the censorship system funded or coordinated by the Biden administration. It is an unprecedented alliance of corporate, government, and academic groups against free speech in the United States. The Biden administration established the most anti-free speech record since the Adams administration.
House investigations showed the critical role played by government officials in "switchboarding," or channeling demands for removal or bans in social media. Officials evaded the limits of the First Amendment by using these groups as surrogates for censorship.
Even with the elimination of the GEC, other offices remain in various agencies, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the Department of Homeland Security, which emerged as one of the critical control centers in this system.
CISA head Jen Easterly declared that her agency’s mandate over critical infrastructure would be extended to include "our cognitive infrastructure." That includes not just "disinformation" and "misinformation,"but combating "malinformation" – described as information "based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate."
These groups form a censorship consortium where the suppression of speech attracts millions in federal dollars. Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) was created in association with Stanford University "at the request of DHS/CISA."
EIP supplied a "centralized reporting system" to process what were known as "Jira tickets" targeting unacceptable views. It would include not only politicians but commentators and pundits as well as the satirical site The Babylon Bee.
Stanford’s Virality Project pushed to censor even true facts since "true stories … could fuel hesitancy" over taking the vaccine or other measures. Emails show government officials stressing that they could not be seen as "openly endors[ing]" censorship while other groups sought to minimize public scrutiny of their work.
For example, one article featured the work of Kate Starbird, director and co-founder of the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public. In one communication, Starbird cautioned against giving examples of disinformation to keep them from being used by critics, adding "since everything is politicized and disinformation inherently political, every example is bait."
Likewise, University of Michigan’s James Park is shown pitching that school’s WiseDex First Pitch program, promising that "our misinformation service helps policy makers at platforms who want to . . . push responsibility for difficult judgments to someone outside the company . . . by externalizing the difficult responsibility of censorship."
The system has layers of interconnected grants and systems. For example, the EIP worked with the Global Engagement Center, which contracted with the Atlantic Council in censorship efforts.
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The censorship system included scoring groups through a grant from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to the British-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI). The index targeted ten conservative and libertarian sites as the most dangerous sources of disinformation, including sites like Reason which publishes conservative legal analysis. Conversely, some of the most liberal sites were ranked as the most trustworthy for advertisers.
The system is still in place, but on December 23, 2024, the GEC closed its doors. That is something to celebrate but not something to take as great comfort. This is a redundant and overlapping system created precisely to allow for such attrition.
Years ago, some of us wrote about the creation of the infamous Disinformation Governance Board at Homeland Security under its so-called "Disinformation Nanny," Nina Jankowicz. When the Biden administration caved to public outcry and disbanded the Board, many celebrated. However, as I previously testified, the Biden administration never told the public about a far larger censorship effort in other agencies, including an estimated 80 FBI agents secretly targeting citizens and groups for disinformation.
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The system has functioned like a multi-headed hydra where cutting off one head only allows two more to grow back. These censors will not simply walk away and become dentists or bartenders. They have a skill set for censorship and this is now a profitable industry supporting scores of people who now market themselves as "disinformation specialists."
Shutting down the GEC will eliminate a $61 million budget and 120 employees. However, these employees will find ample opportunities not just in other agencies but in academia and state agencies. There are also pro-censorship sites like BlueSky, which are becoming safe spaces for liberals who do not want to be "triggered" by opposing views. (Notably, BlueSky hired a former Twitter employee who was fired after Elon Musk cleaned out at what is now X).
They are not going anywhere unless the Trump administration and Congress make free speech a priority in eliminating each of these funding sources.
As I wrote in my book, we need to get the United States out of the censorship business by passing a law barring any federal funds for the use of censorship, including grants to academic and NGO groups.
Rooting out this censorship system will require a comprehensive effort by the new Trump administration. So here is a resolution that I hope many in the Trump administration will share: let’s get the United States out of the censorship business in 2025.