The Trump administration dealt a massive blow to the censorship “nerve center” of the federal government.
The New York Post announced in a Feb. 14 article that “The Department of Homeland Security is moving to fire 12 employees of a federal cybersecurity agency that policed ‘misinformation’ while pausing ‘all elections security activities’ pending further review of free-speech implications.” The agency implicated, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), has already reportedly been shrunk down to size, with the Trump administration cutting 130 total employees so far.
CISA is notorious for having frequently placed pressure on major social media companies to censor content the agency did not approve of. CISA created the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a portal used to communicate with Big Tech and label so-called misinformation and disinformation to be censored by social media companies.
During a congressional hearing, Twitter Files journalist Michael Shellenberger denounced CISA for pushing censorship, stating that “CISA and the [Biden] White House violated the First Amendment and undermined America’s response to the COVID[-19] pandemic by demanding that Facebook and Twitter censor content.”
In response to the Post story, MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider denounced CISA. “DHS to fire 12 CISA employees who used their official positions to violate Americans' constitutional rights,” Schneider wrote in a Feb. 15 post on X. “I don’t like the phrase, ‘live by the sword, die by the sword.’ But CISA betrayed America. Their illegal conduct cannot be ignored.”
A DHS official quoted by the Post pointed to Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order against federal government censorship titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,” explaining that the election work at CISA had been reviewed “[w]ith a particular focus on work related to mis-, dis-, and malinformation.”
The Post also recalled that Trump had committed as a candidate in December 2022 to identifying and firing every CISA employee involved in censorship. Trump vowed at the time, “The censorship cartel must be dismantled and destroyed — and it must happen immediately,” before making firm commitments to take action against the bureaucrats of agencies like CISA.
Trump added:
“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. I will then ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as ‘mis-’ or ‘dis-information.’ And I will begin the process of identifying and firing every federal bureaucrat who has engaged in domestic censorship—directly or indirectly—whether they are the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI, the DOJ, no matter who they are.” [Emphasis added.]
Beyond creating the infamous EIP, CISA officials have also spread fear of disinformation to push censorship. Former CISA Director Jen Easterly helped The New York Times fearmonger about allowing free speech on social media ahead of the 2024 election.
Conservatives are under attack! Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
