The Press Act Would Pair Nicely with President Trump’s Executive Order on Free Speech

Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour

“If we don’t have free speech, then we just don’t have a free country,” Donald Trump declared in a campaign speech. “When I am president, this whole rotten system of censorship and information control will be ripped out of the system at large.”
 
Now President Donald Trump has taken a strong step toward fulfilling that promise. We urge him to continue his defense of free speech by protecting another part of the First Amendment, a free press, by supporting the PRESS Act.
 
But first, let’s celebrate this welcome recognition for the central place of the First Amendment in American life. In his inaugural address, President Trump denounced “illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression.” He said “never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents.”
 
Hours later President Trump issued an executive order that begins by denouncing government trampling of “free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve.”
 
The executive order declares: “Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.” We certainly agree and look forward to such practices ending under the current and all future administrations.
 
Congress prepared the president’s way by defunding the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) that distributed blacklists of American publications to advertisers. The GEC had coordinated in secret with the FBI, CIA, and the rest of the alphabet to collect content government agents found objectionable, then issued threats to social media companies to censor those views.
 
The GEC shuttered its operation before the beginning of the year. Better to quit than wait around to be fired.
 
The president’s executive order now forbids any officer, employee, or agent to engage in or facilitate any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen. The use of the word “agent” is a shrewd choice, since it would cover groups like the UK-based NGO Global Disinformation Index, which received direct State Department grants to compile that enemies list of U.S. publications, including RealClearPolitics, Reason, and The New York Post. This prohibition should stand against any administration’s future violation of these principles.
 
The next order of business, we respectfully suggest, is for President Trump to extend and enforce the Justice Department News Media policy that prevents the government from seizing the notes and sources of journalists. For similar reasons, this is also the moment for President Trump to announce his support for the Protect Reporters from Exploitive State Spying (PRESS) Act, which was passed by a Republican House last year and essentially codifies the Department’s policy.
 
Rule-making is not enough and won’t bind the next administration. Consider: outgoing Attorney General Merrick Garland first formalized the Justice Department’s News Media Policy, forbidding compulsory legal processes to obtain the newsgathering records of journalists in 2022. But this rule did not deter the FBI from raiding the Tampa home of journalist Tim Burke the following year to seize his computer, hard drives, cellphone and all they contain.
 
Clearly, a mere departmental rule is not enough to keep the FBI and some in the Department of Justice from interfering in journalism, just as the GEC interfered with free speech in social media. Surely President Trump appreciates the courageous reporters who revealed IRS persecution of conservative non-profits, the highly politicized FBI investigation of the Trump campaign in 2016, and the truth behind the Hunter Biden laptop. Many of President Trump’s media allies – small, thinly funded independent journalists – have a lot to fear from federal agents pawing through their personal effects.
 
Such protections extend to Donald Trump’s media critics as well as his media fans. That is the essence of free speech. And supporting those measures would be a courageous example for Donald Trump to set and in keeping with his pledge to end the weaponization of the power of the state, whether against him and his supporters, or against his own political opponents.
 
We can’t think of another president who came to the defense of the First Amendment in his inaugural address and then followed up on it with an executive order just hours later. We respectfully suggest that President Trump’s support for the PRESS Act would be a great addition to this legacy.

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