Another few dominoes in Joe Biden’s censorship apparatus fell in recent weeks as President Donald Trump works to dismantle the left’s whole-of-society approach to censorship.
On April 23, Trump disbanded the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation, a group that MRC previously exposed for funding fact-checkers and AI censorship. This marks yet another win for free speech and a course correction to Biden’s 57 censorship initiatives, as uncovered by MRC.
The dismissal of the members of the NSB follows after several recent consent decrees ended other government-supported censorship efforts detailed in the 57 censorship initiatives report. Below are some of the recent free speech wins free speech advocates have seen in recent weeks.
National Science Board Dismissed: According to its website, the National Science Board “establishes the policies of the U.S. National Science Foundation and serves as advisor to Congress and the president.” Under the Biden presidency, this included implementing AI-powered censorship through its convergence accelerator program (Initiative 5). MRC previously reported that the NSF funded fact checkers and helped build AI “to actively target and delete speech the Biden administration viewed as ‘mis/disinformation’” (Initiatives 14 and 5). On April 23, the Trump administration dismissed the board.
NewsGuard and Global Disinformation Index Get Just Desserts: The State Department and the FTC have severely maimed the censorship efforts of anti-free speech organizations NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index (Initiative 11).
Under a new consent decree, issued on April 1, the Trump State Department corrected a wrong perpetrated by the same institution under the Biden administration. The consent decree blocks the State Department from using, requesting, recommending, funding, promoting, or assisting in the testing or development of these or similar technologies in the future.
NewsGuard and GDI style themselves as building media standards and promoting things like brand safety, but research showed their censorship tactics targeted media entities with which they disagree.
MRC repeatedly exposed NewsGuard in particular and how it targeted right-leaning outlets like The Daily Wire, The Federalist and PragerU. For three years running, MRC studies showed that the average NewsGuard score for left-leaning outlets was over 90% while the average score for right-leaning outlets hovered around 25 percentage points lower.
The FTC similarly secured consent decrees on April 15 that prevent major ad placement companies, Dentsu, Publicis and WPP Media, from using “inclusion lists,” or “exclusion lists” like those used by GDI, when providing ad placements.
The ad companies are also forbidden from “directly or indirectly” colluding with other ad companies to “prohibit, restrict, limit, or impede Media Buying Services business conducted with any Media Publisher in the Relevant Area with respect to its news and political or social commentary content.”
Missouri v. Biden Comes to a Victorious Close: The Missouri v. Biden case, which heavily relied on MRC research showing how Big Tech protected Biden, finally came to a resolution last month with another consent decree.
The case documented and detailed over 162 pages of censorship that, as District Court Judge Terry Doughty remarked, “arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”
The consent decree blocks the Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency from threatening social media companies to censor Americans or “unilaterally direct or veto” the content decisions of Big Tech.
All three consent decrees, which carry with them the force of law, last for 10 years.
The Trump administration has shown an ongoing, sustained effort to restore Americans’ free speech. These are just a handful of the steps the administration has taken toward dismantling Biden’s 57 censorship initiatives.
