One of the first executive orders that President Trump signed after his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025, was titled Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship. The order accused the previous administration of having “trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms.”
What Trump was referring to as censorship was the government’s attempt to work with social media and broadcasting platforms to regulate misinformation, disinformation and misleading information by removing content, limiting its dissemination or labeling it, sometimes with fact-checking included. Similar accusations had been brought before the Supreme Court in 2024, where the justices sided with the federal government, preserving its ability to interact and coordinate with social media platforms.
