The New War on Speech | Aryeh Neier
Partway through his second inaugural address on January 20, Donald Trump started listing the executive orders he planned to sign that day. Among others, he said he would “declare a national emergency at our southern border,” designate “cartels as foreign terrorist organizations,” put an end to the Green New Deal, start a full “overhaul of our trade system,” set up a “brand-new Department of Government Efficiency,” and reverse “years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression” by signing an order “to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.” Listening to that last statement, I was mystified. There have certainly been periods in American history when the federal government made substantial efforts to limit freedom of expression. But nothing of the sort had taken place in the years preceding Trump’s election. What could he have been talking about? The executive order, which Trump signed that afternoon, offered a clue. “Over the last 4 years,” it asserted, “the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech …

