On this New Year’s Eve, billions of people will gather with friends to ring in 2025 with the hope of a better year to come. For the first time in many years, free-speech advocates have a reason to celebrate.
With 2024, we will say goodbye to one of the most reviled offices in the Biden Administration: The Global Engagement Center. I discuss the Center in my recent book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage as one of the most active components in the massive censorship system funded by the Biden Administration. The demise of the GEC is a good start. However, like weight loss resolutions, it will take much more of a commitment if we are going to restore free speech in the United States. It is time to make the ultimate resolution to rip out the censorship root and stem from our government.
This month, the Biden Administration fought to keep the GEC funded, but Republicans refused to include it in the continuing resolution for the budget. However, even with the closure of this one office, Biden will leave behind the most comprehensive censorship system in the history of the United States.
Over the last three years, many of us have detailed a comprehensive system of grants to academic and third party organizations to create blacklists or to pressure advertisers to withdraw support for targeted sites. The subjects for censorship ranged from election fraud to social justice to climate change.
I testified at the first hearing by the special committee investigating the censorship system funded or coordinated by the Biden Administration. It is an unprecedented alliance of corporate, government, and academic groups against free speech in the United States. The Biden Administration established the most anti-free speech record since the Adams Administration.
House investigations showed the critical role played by government officials in “switchboarding,” or channeling demands for removal or bans in social media. Officials evaded the limits of the First Amendment by using these groups as surrogates for censorship.
The system has functioned like a multiheaded hydra where cutting off one head only allows two more to grow back. These censors will not simply walk away and become dentists or bartenders. They have a skill set for censorship and this is now a profitable industry supporting scores of people who now market themselves as “disinformation specialists.”
Shutting down the GEC will eliminate a $61 million budget and 120 employees. However, these employees will find ample opportunities not just in other agencies but in academia and state agencies. There are also pro-censorship sites like BlueSky, which are becoming safe spaces for liberals who do not want to be “triggered” by opposing views . (Notably, BlueSky hired a former Twitter employee who was fired after Musk cleaned out at what is now X).
They are not going anywhere unless the Trump Administration and the Congress makes free speech a priority in eliminating each of these funding sources.
As I wrote in the book, we need to get the United States out of the censorship business by passing a law barring any federal funds for the use of censorship, including grants to academic and NGO groups.
Rooting out this censorship system will require a comprehensive effort by the new Trump Administration. So here is a resolution that I hope many in the Trump Administration will share: let’s get the United States out of the censorship business in 2025.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
Does anyone remember the Inquisition? Getting rid of the Dominicans would have been easier than ridding ourselves of those equally indoctrinated into a cult. We finally ended the power of that institution of censorship with Guttenberg’s press and the rapid dispersal of alternate concepts. What we need here is as equal a job; I think changing the minds of Catholics in the times of Luther was easier than what we need to to cleanse the minds of those who have been indoctrinated into progressive/erroneous concepts all their lives. But this is a job for truthful reporting of the actual facts through whatever media can be used to undermine the “official” spewers if propaganda.
* Censorship is multiform. The censorship being forced is insidious. The effort is to rewrite history. ALL movies and music have been censored into oblivion. Music is slightly off key or tempo changed or too loud and jumbled until it’s no longer extant. Why? Because it’s part of Western civilization, the product of Caucasians. Literature, music, poetry, philosophy , art and artifacts destroyed but still existing in a degraded form.
That’s the true censorship and most tragic. Caucasians and western civilization is a burden for Kamala if you’ll recall and she and her inferior kind need to be unburdened. Usher in cats yowling and screaming instead.
My God what atrocities. It’s this that makes people pray and hope there is some kind of salvation somewhere if if there isn’t.
* censored history until its been turned inside out …
Genocide. Clever he is…
It’s worth noting that Johnson and McConnell negotiated the first 1500 page CR that most Republicans supported. It preserved GEC for another year. It was only due to Elon and Vivek’s intervention that this and other harmful legislation was removed.
Hello Daniel: I possess no internal information, but it looks to me like “amends” to GEC to get it back on course (since its inception in 2016) is perhaps what Johnson/McConnell were hoping for. It indisputably appears that it has “strayed [far] from its founding mission.” See, https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/5.1.23-McCaul-Mast-Issa-Letter-to-Secretary-Blinken-regarding-GEC81.pdf
Perhaps, Musk, Ramaswamy, and Prof. Turley think it best to trash and start all over…
Best to trash and NOT start over.
Here! Hear!
George says: December 31, 2024 at 9:20 AM
Perhaps Turley should focus on real instances of censorship, such as book bans
Like these George: are they banned to prevent you buying them as groomer gifts for little boys and girls who still believe in Santa Clause?
Hustler’s ALL FEMALE BUSH Adult Magazine #45
https://www.amazon.com/Hustlers-ALL-BUSH-Adult-Magazine/dp/B07F3MJ93D
Gender Queer: A Memoir
https://www.amazon.com/Gender-Queer-Memoir-Maia-Kobabe/dp/1549304003
George, there are still a few hours left in 2024 for you to provide a link to where we can read your Soviet Democrat list of books you are banned from purchasing.
Or try this instead: name the banned books you CAN’T purchase as groomer gifts to give to the little boys and girls where you live?
Amazon will happily sell you both the kiddy porn book ‘Gender Queer’ where you can see illustrations of young boys giving other boys blow jobs.
And there’s the always reliable Hustler Magazine with those spraddle legged crotch shots favored by your bestie Gigi.
George, you grooming pervert, I say your alleged “book bans” are another Biden level Soviet Democrat lie. You can’t provide a link to the named banned books because that list does not exist.
Old Airborne Dog
Airblown Puppy, what were your MOS, Awards, Campaign, and Theater, or is your “valor” stolen “Tampon Tim” style?
Why are you still free instead of in the brig? And why would ANYONE answer the questions of a coward pedophile on probation, who slimes around as “Anonymous”, parroting words it heard while molesting little boys whose fathers were in the military?
Anonymous cowards know nothing about valor.
Old Airborne Dog
So no MOS, Awards, Campaign, and Theater?
Dastardly!
A true veteran would answer the question; a coward would refuse.
CISA’s mission creep since their founding in 2018 is alarming and in need of serious review IMHO.
An honest question:
Is the good Professor Turley more valuable to society and America-at-large as a distinguished and knowledgeable professor of Torts and First Amendment issues (along with a globally-followed legal blog and legal commentary in media networks/publications).–or in a position created by the Trump administration to establish and direct a new department/center aimed at identifying, exposing, eliminating (if necessary) and preventing (if necessary) governmental “influence” on speech and mass communications (as well as serving of counsel to the administration on such issues)?
(…I think that was the longest sentence I ever wrote.)
If the clown known as Mayorkas can head the DHS, certainly someone like Turley can bring back integrity and political impartiality to government, and right this ship before we crash and splinter into the Isle of Wight and the Isle of Wong.
Lin,
While I think the good professor could be an asset to the Trump admin, I think he is better in a position as an independent, free thinking professor on law and censorship.
Regardless he is a great asset to our country.
Upstate: “INDEPENDENT, FREE THINKING”? You are surely joking. Turley is just another well-paid MAGA mouthpiece employed to shovel chum to the disciples. Nothing associated with MAGA is an asset to the United States–and, you MAGAs do not speak for “our” country.
Gigi’s Proposed New Year’s Resolutions
Gigi’s comments in just the last few days:
“Turley is just trying to normalize the MAGA media lie machines and to prepare the disciples for what is to come–to try to normalize to”
Gigi says:
December 27, 2024 at 12:41 PM
“Turley: you know better. How many times do politicians pose for photos with people? You claim that Biden…–what proof is there? There isn’t any–AND YOU KNOW IT–so why shovel the chum to the disciples? How much does Murdoch pay you to write these things?”
Gigi says:
December 27, 2024 at 12:48 PM
“…So, they pay Turley to write a little slime piece like today’s offering–keep shoveling chum to the disciples.”
• Gigi says:
December 27, 2024 at 4:47 PM
“Dennis: the answer is the fat paycheck Turley receives from Rupert Murdoch. ”
Gigi says:
December 23, 2024 at 1:32 PM
“Turley, Turley, Turley, your piece is flawed from the jump:”
NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION FOR GIGI:
1. Try to learn how to CITE something that you have lifted or copycatted. Learn how to apply simple quotation marks (BEGINNING AND ENDING) around the quoted material, as well as a quotation inside a quotation. Eighth-grade material.
2. Clean up your sailor-mouth. Very unbefitting the nurse and lawyer you claim to be.
3. Remove your supercilious, condescending tone in your responsive comments. If you were smart, you would realize that people who employ these tactics are generally average-to-below-average in intelligence, and use the tactic to feign and pretend superiority. VERY obvious in your case.
4. Stop constantly upvoting Dennis and George. It’s not only meritless, but also quite funny.
5. Stop copycatting others’ catchy words, phrases, and styles. Makes you look even dumber.
6. Stop pretending you are anything more than a low-class, vengeful clown incapable of doing anything other than copying others.
Gee, Tom, I remain flattered that I continue to live rent-free in your filthy little brain. Unlike you and most of the MAGAs on this blog, I always do provide provenance for things I cite–and they are NEVER MSNBC or some other media you’ve been indoctrinated to believe tells lies. I am not the one with the sewer mouth—that would be you. I’m not the one who posts links to Hunter Biden’s laptop. I don’t ever “upvote” anyone, and it is you MAGAs who try to pretend to be smarmy, but only prove the opposite.
I don’t know about ‘torts’, but Turley is doing just fine on 1st amendment issues and, I suspect, would have some problems fitting in with ‘cognitive infrastructure’ of the Trump Apostle.
Also, never trust anyone who wears a flag pin.
*root hog or die!
Hear, hear! I think we can do it, though it won’t be easy. It’s not over yet, we have to stay vigilant and pay even closer attention than before. I fully expect the detractors to be a kind of nasty we have never openly seen in this country, and we’d best be ready for it. Protect the 1A and 2A at all cost!
James,
Well said and I agree!
Hear! Hear! Is right!
I knew of a Farmer back in the 60’s, he wasn’t a crow but was a Raven. If you’re kin to him you’ll understand, if not never mind.
He could fly yet he never landed on a fence. I learned he always flew across them. 65-66
Great “Resolution”! However, it may well be too late when the system has advanced to this degree. And why too late? Because circumstances could never have come to this point without the assent of a citizenry lodged deeply in ‘dependent mode’….like sheep that depend on the shepherd for food and safety. And that ‘safety’ would include protection against any information that would alarm the sheep. Alarmed sheep=Baaaaaaad
So now you need to add in only one more element to grasp the greater picture: A shepherd that is a con man and seeks to control/deny his sheep any ‘information/speech’ he/she does not like. Enter Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. And it will take a whole lot more than a New Year’s Resolution to remove the threat of such con men. But we can wish…..
We’re screwed.
We need to cancel, route out, close down any and all censorship depts or groups within the US Gov’t including any and all contracts, ties etc with outside parties working for us on censorship. As well as make sure we close down all foreign groups/dets. working for us to censor such as in the UK, 5 eyes etc. As well as pass a law banning censorship. Also, we must instruct and enforce the restrictions on Big tec such as Google, META and others who are censoring free speech and information. Then we must send Auditors to make sure and also monitor. Stiff fines must apply.
Professor, this column (as you like cultural references) is like Harry Potter: He Who Must Not Be Named
Almost all of these antagonists in the ongoing censorship obscenity are Democrats in politics. Your fellow Democrats, like you, working in politics.
And yet you will not write that basic fact in any of your columns.
Trump and Republicans are not the answer to all your problems, Professor Turley. But your fellow Democrats are the root cause of ALL your First Amendment violation problems.
Here’s hoping that at some point in 2025 you figure out this obvious fact staring you in the face every day. Make it your New Years Resolution to be honest and open enough to acknowledge this.
Old Airborne Dog
we need to get the United States out of the censorship business by passing a law barring any federal funds for the use of censorship.
Fair enough. OTOH, AFAICT, your blog does not receive any federal funds. Your regular commenters would welcome you censoring the trolls and the anonymouses from posting on the blog. Because you know, “the first ammendment only applies to government agencies”™ as the Left reminds us hourly.
May the new year of 2025 see the trolls banished to Dante’s 9th circle of Hades, forevermore.
🔥
Professor, the root cause of this continuing problem is that our Constitution, laudable and durable as it is, has no teeth. Our “unalienable rights” are repeatedly and continuously violated, sometimes for years, while a case “works its way through the courts”, until it finally makes its way to the SCOTUS, who may provide relief, after a long period in which those rights were unconstitutionally denied. If relief is granted, the infractor snaps his/her fingers in disappointment, and walks away to seek new ways that might be more successful to violate those same rights of others. There is no penalty. Often there is literally applause for their efforts. Until the day comes that Congress codifies penalties for such things as ‘conspiracy to suppress lawful speech’, this will continue. You will assert that relief can be found in the ballot box, I presume; but not against an entrenched and malicious bureaucracy; and I point out that there are politicians who get elected promising to violate the Constitutional rights of disfavored cohorts of citizen. Until specific penalties are enshrined in laws, laws from which neither the Administrative State nor Government Officials including the President are immune, our Constitutional rights will remain as they are: feeble, toothless, and honored only in the breach.
You’re fighting the last war, Jonathan, and it could put you on the wrong side of the next one.
Do you remember how smoking was nearly universal among adults in the 1950s? The tobacco companies were allowed to throw $millions behind ad campaigns claiming smoking improved your health. Then, a courageous guy named Joe Califano, appointed by Jimmy Carter as HHS Secretary, began speaking truth to power in 1977 – after these corporations had been getting away with knowingly engaging in a massive public fraud campaign for 30 years. It finally took no-smiking mandates in public and private places to break the national addiction.
The coming infowar is over the U.S. food supply, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and preventable chronic disease — and the wave of deceitful messaging we can count on from the big ag, pharma and food/beverage corporations. You see, the clampdown on deceptive tobacco marketing drove a migration of ad agency talent into other business sectors already lusting for the spoils of addictive behavior — food, pharma, ag, gaming, porn and social media.
The problem for food, pharma and ag is the FDA law of 1938. “Free speech” meets its legal limit in the right of the American people to protect ourselves against harmful inhalants, drugs, foods, cosmetics and beverages. The legal challenges to FDA came and went in the last century, its deathbed gasps during the fight over tobacco and vaping laws. The Supreme Court is going to side with The People and our powers under Article I to keep ourselves healthy against the onslaught of well-funded, professionally-crafted, fraud-enhancing medical infowarfare.
This is the next battle over free speech. Are you going to stand with the 1938 law and its diligent application?…..or fight ignobly for the right of the powerful-elites in society to intentionally deceive the less powerful masses? This is no time for oversimplified, all-inclusive theories of free speech. It’s time to focus like a laser of the public’s interest in trustworthy information — and how to balance that essential need with giving wide berth to out-of-the-box voices self-moderated by civility, authenticity, dependability and public goodwill.
If hedonists, radicalized zealots, misanthropes, and self-interested-unethical corporations get run over in this battle for the quality of our infospace, so be it. Article I gives plenary power to The People, and 1938 FDA law is one of the most important dimensions of it. Knowingly fraudulent medical claims lie outside the protection of the 1st Amendment.
Cigarettes were called coffin nails in the nineties- 1890’s. I knew that tobacco was bad for people when I was a kid in the fifties and finally convinced my dad to quit smoking. I don’t need my betters in Washington to tell me what to think.
JT writes: “These censors will not simply walk away and become dentists or bartenders. They have a skill set for censorship and this is now a profitable industry supporting scores of people who now market themselves as ‘disinformation specialists.’”
This is a profound point. recognizing that censorship and other forms of dictatorship have an economic engine. Our colleges produce tons of graduates with little practical knowledge and less sense. But they must pay for their student loans and also attain social recognition. If you are socially useless, creating a new kind of expertise is a matter of life and death. Thus, the birth of the new science: Truth Experts, who “check facts” and punish miscreants at every level of American life. Unless stopped, they will establish a police service overseeing every home, business and other organization in the country.
It used to be said that Socialism is the “will to power” of the “new class” produced by liberal studies at colleges. But setting prices and the like is boring and has a bad record. Better to control people’s minds.
Hear Hear! Excellent post professor.
One of your best, if not THE best you have written.
From your lips to Trump’s ears, or something like that.
More crap / citizen policing from Dems / Biden administration and it has no place in our government. I imagine Trump administration will agree but great idea to push them to act. …. get the message out to prioritize this matter.
Is Censorship like a dragon – needing St George (aka Trump) to slay it, or is Censorship more like Hydra, which simply grows two more heads each time one is lopped off – needing Hercules to destroy it?
P.S. The Dems love censorship even more than the MSM.
If Turley is genuinely committed to free speech, I would expect him to oppose the ban on TikTok. It’s surprising that he hasn’t spoken much about TikTok, especially since the Supreme Court will hear the case regarding its ban on January 10.
Trump has called on the Supreme Court to delay any decisions related to the case. Could it be that his Chinese donors are influencing him?
The justification for the ban is supposedly based on national security concerns regarding data collection. However, every social media company and numerous apps have been doing this for years.
It seems that free market advocates are relatively quiet about this issue, even though TikTok is extremely popular and provides a platform for people to express their talents and opinions. While Facebook and Instagram are competitors, they do not possess the same level of influence that TikTok has achieved.
So, why hasn’t Turley criticized Biden for his ban on TikTok? Could it be that Republicans also support it? For instance, Texas has prohibited state employees from using the app, and they even attempted to prevent social media platforms from removing politicians who violate their terms of service until the Supreme Court declared it an unconstitutional infringement on the free speech rights of those platforms.
The organizations that Turley opposes are primarily indexes and sources that help individuals determine whether to associate with certain websites. This is not censorship. Turley seems to get upset when rating sites claim that specific conservative websites are unreliable or dishonest, which, ironically, is their own right to free speech. Yet, he has called for the defunding or blocking of these companies for ‘blacklisting’ conservative sites. This is odd because it suggests he is advocating for censorship of their speech simply because he disagrees with their assessments of those conservative sites. Perhaps Turley should focus on real instances of censorship, such as book bans and the silencing of speakers through “civility rules.”
OK, let’s make it nondenominational – ban foreign ownership of US media. And real estate. F China.
Oh, and to hop back on topic, let’s make US gov’t funding or participation in censorship a capital crime.
Time to go back to Moscow George. Nobody here listens to you.
Apparently you and several others do.
Apparently you and several others do.
Mocking and ridiculing you as one of the three legs of the smelly stool that is The Three Democrat Marxist Stooges doesn’t mean anyone is actually paying attention to your scribbling.
No, we dont. We see your inane comment, just scroll past and then if we do reply, it is just to remind you, you are worthless world class jerk that serves no purpose in life and your mother should of aborted you. We all wished she would of. Just a fact.
Maybe back to Berkeley instead of Moscow???
In reading the article he is advocating that the federal government get out of the censorship business.
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
If Turley is genuinely committed to free speech, I would expect him to oppose the ban on TikTok.
Dear Lyin Like A Proud Biden George: An order to divest is no more a “ban” than parents saying they don’t want Hustler Magazine and Gender Queer in the kiddies library is a “book ban”.
US court upholds TikTok divestment of Communist Chinese ownership or ban law
https://libertyjusticecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/Court-of-Appeals-Decision_TikTok.pdf
George is now shilling for Biden White House Crime LLC’s best customers: the Communist Chinese Government. The ones Biden sold a ticket to fly a spy balloon across the USA for days.
George hates TruthSocial – but loves him the ChiCom intelligence spying operation called TikTok.
George the sophomorically trolling, self-identifying constitutional scholar forgot while pimping for the Soviet Democrats that the Constitution is not a suicide pact.
Old Airborne Dog.
“The justification for the ban is supposedly based on national security concerns regarding data collection. However, every social media company and numerous apps have been doing this for years.”
The practices of America’s greatest enemy, a communist dictatorship, are the same as those of American companies.
Nice moral equivalence.
Lets cut Federal Government 50%…and STOP rewarding Democrats for Failure
The WORSE they make it…the MORE money will Lavish on them!
My very first thought, too, Guy. Cutting out the GEC is fine, but let’s not get distracted by a hornets’ nest when the house is burning down. The Department of Education has presided over the radicalization of academia and the depressing performance of urban, public schools. What are they there for? Defund the communists. There are other agencies that are nothing but parasites which have turned D.C. into a hostile occupation of America. Take a razor to them all.