Censorship Industrial Complex
Here’s How The Trump Admin Could Help Crush The Censorship Industry

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Katelynn Richardson
The Trump administration has a major opportunity to deal a blow to the sprawling censorship industry, both inside the government and in the private sector.
Trump promised in a campaign video from Dec. 2022 to “shatter the left-wing censorship regime” by, among other proposals, signing an executive order banning agencies from collaborating with private platforms to suppress speech and ordering the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate parties involved in censorship.
“If Trump takes the steps that he has indicated he will, one focus of anti-censorship efforts I anticipate is nonprofits like the Atlantic Council and Stanford Internet Observatory [SIO] that operate as middlemen between the government and the tech companies,” New Civil Liberties Alliance attorney Jenin Younes told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “As President, Trump should ensure that the White House and his executive agencies do not work with these groups to censor ‘mis’ or ‘disinformation.’ In fact, all government efforts in the MDM [misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation] sphere should end, since this clearly results in suppressing First Amendment protected speech.”
Under the Biden administration, White House staff made explicit requests for platforms to restrict COVID-19 related speech. Other agencies participated in speech suppression, with the Center for Disease Control (CDC) flagging posts for removal and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) forwarding misinformation reports from local election officials to platforms, a practice they called “switchboarding.”
CISA likewise helped create of the Election Integrity Partnership in 2020, which the SIO played a key role in running, to monitor “misinformation” and report it to platforms during the 2020 election. A federal judge declined last week to dismiss a lawsuit against the SIO, along with several other groups, over their alleged targeting of conservative speech.
“Private entities cannot be permitted to partner with the government to censor Americans’ speech,” Nicholas R. Barry, America First Legal Senior Counsel, said in a statement.
Younes told the DCNF she would like to see “punishment for government actors who have violated Americans’ First Amendment rights.”
“At this time, such individuals manage to escape accountability for their actions because of doctrines like qualified immunity,” she said. “However, there can be exceptions to qualified immunity when government officials knowingly flout people’s civil rights, and those exceptions should be applied in the First Amendment context.”
Trump’s other suggestions included firing bureaucrats who have engaged in censorship, ensuring federal dollars do not go towards nonprofits and universities labeling domestic speech as misinformation and asking Congress to revise Section 230 to “get big online platforms out of censorship.”
The Biden administration has issued $267 million in grant funding for projects including the term “misinformation,” including $127 million specifically relating to COVID-19, according to a November Open The Books report. The DCNF reported in 2023 on several projects funded by the NSF to develop censorship tools, including a dashboard to forecast misinformation “trends” and another studying how misinformation influences online networks.
Great Discussion Between @AFergusonFTC And @nataliegwinters On The Censorship Regime And How The Trump Administration Can Combat It
Two Key Parts Of The Censorship Problem:
-Private companies colluding to censor speech they don't like. Advertiser Cartels being one of their… pic.twitter.com/i89sWWF9nQ
— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) November 30, 2024
‘Smash This Censorship Cartel’
Many Trump nominees have been vocal about their commitment to promoting free speech.
Andrew Ferguson, who Trump selected as the new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair, said on War Room in late November that Trump can cut off some censorship outright, ordering officials to stop communicating with platforms and ending government funding for entities participating in speech suppression. But private censorship would likely move to “new fronts,” he noted, making it important for the FTC to take “investigative steps.”
Ferguson said “advertiser cartels” could violate antitrust laws by agreeing to boycott certain shows, podcasts and platforms.
“If the government is going to get out of the business here in the states of cooperating and colluding with the platforms to suppress the speech that they don’t like, then it’s up to the FTC to make sure that that sort of cooperation and collusion doesn’t move into the private sector,” Ferguson said.
Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Brennan Carr likewise said in a NewsNation interview that one of his top priorities would be to “smash this censorship cartel.”
Other appointees took strong stances on censorship. Jay Bhattacharya, Trump’s choice for National Institute for Health (NIH) head, co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration pushing back on COVID-19 lockdowns and responses. United States Department of Health and Human Services Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. brought his own lawsuit against the Biden administration for alleged First Amendment violations.
Harmeet Dhillon, who is set to run the DOJ’s civil rights division, worked with her firm on a case challenging the California Secretary of State’s Office coordination with Twitter to suppress speech.
Continued Litigation
While the Supreme Court found in June that plaintiffs who challenged the Biden administration’s censorship efforts failed to link their accounts’ restrictions to the government’s communications with platforms, the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit is ongoing. In November, the district court allowed the plaintiffs to pursue more discovery to establish the government’s involvement.
“Depending on the approach the Administration takes, it is conceivable that cases like ours could resolve in a consent decree, in which the government acknowledges its wrongdoing and takes various specific steps to safeguard against future violations of Americans’ First Amendment free speech rights,” Younes told the DCNF regarding the case.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) recently launched a new Center for Free Speech aimed at targeting censorship entities, pointing to the “new opportunity” free speech defenders will have as Trump takes office.
ADF Senior Counsel Phil Sechler told the DCNF the center is intended to create “substantial pushback on global censorship,” which he said has increased over the past decade by both private and government actors.
Potential targets include state level election laws, like the California laws targeting political satire that ADF already filed a lawsuit against on behalf of the Babylon Bee, along with debanking practices and other censorship by private actors.
“There is a lot of work to be done to dismantle this censorship industrial complex that’s been built up over many years,” Sechler told the DCNF.
Censorship Industrial Complex
Canada’s privacy commissioner says he was not consulted on bill to ban dissidents from internet

From LifeSiteNews
Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne that there was no consultation on Bill C-8, which is touted by Liberals as a way to stop ‘unprecedented cyber-threats.’
Canada’s Privacy Commissioner admitted that he was never consulted on a recent bill introduced by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Mark Carney that became law and would grant officials the power to ban anyone deemed a dissident from accessing the internet.
Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne said last week that in regard to Bill C-8, titled “An Act respecting cyber security, amending the Telecommunications Act and making consequential amendments to other Acts,” that there was no consultation.
“We are not consulted on specific pieces of legislation before they are tabled,” he told the House of Commons ethics committee, adding, “I don’t want privacy to be an obstacle to transparency.”
Bill C-8, which is now in its second reading in the House of Commons, was introduced in June by Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree and has a provision in which the federal government could stop “any specified person” from accessing the internet.
All that would be needed is the OK from Minister of Industry Mélanie Joly for an individual to be denied internet service.
The federal government under Carney claims that the bill is a way to stop “unprecedented cyber-threats.”
The bill, as written, claims that the government would need the power to cut someone off from the internet, as it could be “necessary to do so to secure the Canadian telecommunications system against any threat, including that of interference, manipulation, disruption, or degradation.”
While questioning Dufresne, Conservative MP Michael Barrett raised concerns that no warrant would be needed for agents to go after those officials who want to be banned from the internet or phone service.
“Without meaningful limits, bills like C-8 can hand the government secret, warrantless powers over Canadians’ communications,” he told the committee, adding the bill, as written is a “serious setback for privacy,” as well as a “setback for democracy.”
Barrett asked if the goal of the bill is for Parliament to be granted “sweeping powers of surveillance to the government without a formal review?
Dufresne said, “It’s not a legal obligation under the Privacy Act.”
Experts have warned that Bill C-8 is flawed and must be “fixed.”
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) blasted the bill as troublesome, saying it needs to “fix” the “dangerous flaws” in the bill before it becomes law.
“Experts and civil society have warned that the legislation would confer ministerial powers that could be used to deliberately or inadvertently compromise the security of encryption standards within telecommunications networks that people, governments, and businesses across Canada rely upon, every day,” the CCLA wrote in a recent press release.
Canada’s own intelligence commissioner has warned that the bill, if passed as is, would potentially not be constitutionally justified, as it would allow for warrantless seizure of a person’s sensitive information.
Since taking power in 2015, the Liberal government has brought forth many new bills that, in effect, censor internet content as well as go after people’s ability to speak their minds.
Recently, Canadian Conservative Party MP Leslyn Lewis blasted another new Liberal “hate crime” bill, calling it a “dangerous” piece of legislation that she says will open the door for authorities to possibly prosecute Canadians’ speech deemed “hateful.”
She also criticized it for being silent regarding rising “Christian hate.”
Aristotle Foundation
Efforts to halt Harry Potter event expose the absurdity of trans activism

The Vancouver Park Board hasn’t caved to the anti-J.K. Rowling activists, but their campaign shows a need for common sense
This November, Harry Potter is coming to Vancouver’s Stanley Park. And some people aren’t happy.
The park will host Harry Potter: A Forbidden Forest Experience, an immersive exhibit that’s been staged around the world, prompting outrage from the gay and trans community. Why? Because J.K. Rowling, the creative genius behind the Harry Potter franchise, has been deemed a heretic — a “transphobe” — for her publicly stated view that men are men and women are women.
Rowling’s journey into so-called heresy began almost six years ago when she dared to publicly support Maya Forstater, a British tax expert who lost her job for asserting on social media that transgender women remain men.
“Dress however you please,” Rowling posted on Twitter in 2019. “Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill.”
It seemed to me and many others a rather benign tweet. But it was enough to generate global outrage from the trans community and its supporters. Rowling’s books have been boycotted and burned, with even the actors who portrayed Harry Potter characters on screen — most notably Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint — turning against the author who made them famous.
And yet Rowling has stuck to her guns, defending women and their right to enjoy spaces free of biological males in shelters, prisons, sports and so on. And she has stood against the “gender-affirming care” model that transitions children; in an X post last December, she said, “There are no trans kids. No child is ‘born in the wrong body.’”
It is — or should be — fair game to debate Rowling’s views. But in the hyper-polarized world of transgenderism, debate isn’t permitted. Only cancellation will suffice. Hence the angry response to the Vancouver Park Board’s greenlighting of the “Forest Experience” exhibit.
Vancouver city councillors Lucy Maloney and Sean Orr have called for the park board to reverse its decision.
“The trans and two-spirit community have made their voices heard already about how upset they are that this is happening,” Maloney said. “J.K. Rowling’s actions against the trans community are so egregious that I think we need to look at changing our minds on this.”
Orr concurred. “This is a reputational risk for the park board right now,” he said. “If there’s a way we can get out of this, we should consider this.
Thus far, thankfully, most park board commissioners have stood their ground. The exhibit is scheduled to go ahead as planned.
It’s worth emphasizing that since Rowling began her public defence of biological reality, much has changed. In 2024, the final report of the United Kingdom’s Cass Review exposed the shocking lack of evidence for the “gender-affirming” model of care; this led to a ban on puberty blockers in that country. Multiple European jurisdictions have done the same, enacting safeguards around transitioning youth. Major sports organizations have begun formally excluding biological males from female competitions. And in April 2025, the British Supreme Court decreed that “woman” and “sex” refer to biological sex assigned at birth, not gender identity.
Suffice it to say that Rowling has been vindicated.
Yet, as shown by a report published last year by the Aristotle Foundation (which I co-authored), Canada is increasingly an outlier in doubling down on transgender ideology. The Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Pediatric Society and the Canadian Psychological Association continue to endorse the “gender-affirming” model of care. Even Canada’s Gordon Guyatt, hailed as one of the “fathers” of evidence-based medicine, has been cowed into distancing himself from his own research, which laid bare the scant amount of evidence supporting “gender-affirming” care.
It’s hard to know what it will take to set Canada back on a path of common sense and scientific rationality. Some Potter-style magic, perhaps. Or failing that, a return to good old-fashioned tolerance for open discussion and an honest exchange of views.
Dr. J. Edward Les is a pediatrician in Calgary and a senior fellow at the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy. Photo: WikiCommons
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