Free Speech

In the final weeks of the Biden administration, the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Science & Technology (NIST) rushed to funnel even more money into censorship. 

In addition to its work with so-called media literacy firms, the Biden administration also partnered with a variety of other tech-based censorship outfits to silence criticism of its COVID-19 policies. For example, in 2022 alone, the National…

The NIAID censorship payments from Initiative #19 followed revelations of direct actions that the Biden administration had taken to silence critics of its COVID-19 policies.

White House Senior Advisor for the COVID-19 Response Andy Slavitt aggressively pressured Amazon to ban books critical of the government’s position on vaccination and the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the New York Post. He also insisted Facebook…

The Biden administration’s demands that private businesses silence dissent on the government’s COVID-19 policies were not limited to tech firms. Even Trader Joe’s was expected to uphold the Biden speech codes. 

COVID-19 was not the only subject the Biden administration declared verboten. The administration acted aggressively to suppress concerns related to election integrity. 

In addition to ordering Big Tech to censor its critics, the Biden administration also censored the Big Tech companies themselves from speaking out about its coercion. 

The State Department’s work with a foreign engineer to create what, according to Fox News, was labeled an “Enemies List.” The list targeted those who opposed censorship, such as President Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Michael Knowles, Elon…

An MRC report detailed how, under President Joe Biden, the military was used to attack the free speech rights of Americans, chilling future dissent of his authoritarian administration.

The Biden administration manufactured a threat of violence in order to intimidate Americans from attending lawful protests — and justify surveillance of the Americans brave enough to attend. It then retaliated against the whistleblower who…

Under Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) weaponized an alarming assortment of agencies to harass and silence the Biden administration’s political opponents. Even the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) became a pawn in…

In the devastating aftermath of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, multiple Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA) administrators ordered their subordinates to deny assistance Florida disaster victims whose houses displayed signs supporting…

After the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was caught using Big Tech platforms to create social credit scores (“risk scores”) for Americans, it promised to craft new protocols to better protect Americans’ civil liberties from government…

The national intelligence agencies of the government participated in a coordinated effort to censor the Biden family laptop scandal. This necessitated a cover-up during the Biden administration. 

Separately from the weekly Big Tech “industry working groups” it participated in (see Case #31), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) held regular “bilateral meetings” with Big Tech platforms to coordinate censorship efforts. 

Under President Joe Biden, the Justice Department pursued prosecutions based on constitutionally-protected speech. 

In addition to expanding the scope of speech that courts should consider criminal (see Initiative #33), Biden’s Department of Justice also lobbied the U.S. Supreme Court to side with censorship against the First Amendment. The Biden…

When it was not possible to target a political opponent directly for his or her speech, the Biden administration would instead come up with other, pretextual grounds to launch political prosecutions. The effect of this weaponized, unequal justice…

Several of the aforementioned censorship initiatives, such as the NSBA School Board Memo (Initiative #27) and the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant Program (Initiative #16), were predicated on the existence of a domestic terror…

In flagrant defiance of election law, the Constitution’s equal protection clause and the First Amendment, President Joe Biden’s Federal Election Commission (FEC) created two different sets of censorship laws: one for Big Tech, and one for the…