Donald J. Trump entered his second nonconsecutive presidential term determined to make an immediate impact. To this end, he signed numerous executive orders on his first day of office, the same day he pardoned those who had been charged and or convicted for their involvement in the attacks of Jan. 6, 2021, on the U.S. Capitol Building.
Content of the Order
One of Trump’s more puzzling executive orders on Jan. 20, 2025, was an order entitled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.”
The order was divided into four sections, the first of which began by observing that “The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, an amendment essential to the success of our Republic, enshrines the right of the American people to speak freely in the public square without Government interference.”
This positive affirmation was followed by the assertion that “Over the last 4 years, the previous administration trampled 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.”
It further explained that “Under the guise of combatting ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation,’ the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate. Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.”
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Section 2 announced that U.S. policy was designed to secure free speech rights. To this end, the order prohibited federal officers and taxpayer resources from being used to abridge such rights.
Section 3 further announced that the Attorney General would investigate possible abridgements over the past four years, while Section 4 indicated that the order was not intended to “create any right or benefit” against the U.S. or its agencies.
Meaning and critique of the order
Trump has long charged that the government used its power during the Covid-19 epidemic to strongarm social media platforms to take down posts that the government thought to be inaccurate or politically incorrect.
In Murthy v. Missouri (2025), a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court ruled in a decision authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett that individuals who had alleged and challenged such pressures did not have appropriate standing. In that decision, however, Justice Samuel Alito, wrote a dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, arguing that the government had exerted undue pressure on social media platforms that resulted in “a covert scheme of censorship.”
Trump’s executive order is voicing a similar complaint.
The provision in Section 3 of Trump’s order appears to be an attempt, like current Republican support for a further investigation of the events of Jan. 6, 2021, to shift attention away from possible Republican misdeeds to those of the Democrat Party. Trump’s order comes at a time when many social media platforms have eliminated their use of fact checkers and expanding the types of speech that they will allow.
John R. Vile is a political science professor and dean of the Honors College at Middle Tennessee State University.