The Coming Trump Admin War on the Censorship-Industrial Complex
And the whole-of-society, global 'counter-disinformation' regime it is poised to face
How Trump Plans to Take On Censors -- and They Plan to Take On Trump
President-Elect Donald Trump has vowed to dismantle and destroy the Censorship-Industrial Complex via his ambitious Free Speech Policy Initiative.
He has tabbed like-minded personnel to help him craft and execute the associated policies, including among others Brendan Carr as Chairman of the FCC, Andrew Ferguson as Chairman of the FTC, Outgoing Rep. Dan Bishop as Deputy Director of OMB, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy at Doge, and David Sacks as AI Czar.
Two of his appointees, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, were not only prominent targets of fed-led censorship, but are plaintiffs in cases against the feds aimed at prohibiting their speech policing going forward.
Yet as Senator Eric Schmitt — who brought the Missouri v. Biden case that exposed the size, scope, and nature of the censorship regime — recently told me, "There will be a visceral reaction from the bureaucratic state in permanent Washington."
Just days later this would become evident when the State Department's "Global Engagement Center" seemingly faked its own death.
There is a battle brewing between the would-be Censorship-Industrial Complex destroyers and the global, federal, and state governments, academic institutions, think tanks, fact-checkers, news rating entities, and like-minded for-profits comprising that complex.
I’ve got the story on the coming free speech war in a new piece at RealClearInvestigations, which you can read in full here.