As Americans scrambled to find gas, and as Israel fought to defend itself against terrorists, President Joe Biden quietly rescinded a free speech executive order from former President Donald Trump.
Biden rescinded Trump’s executive order to investigate Big Tech censorship following a push from several groups who “called on the president to abandon the order last month,” according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Several left-wing or left-leaning voting advocacy groups, including Rock the Vote, Voto Latino, and Common Cause, along with three others, wrote a letter in an attempt to convince Biden to overturn the order. “The ‘Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship’ is a drastic assault on free speech designed to punish online platforms that fact-checked President Trump. Its continued existence threatens Internet users’ ability to obtain accurate, truthful information about voting and other civic subjects,” the groups said in the letter.
Rock the Vote, Voto Latino, Common Cause, Free Press and MapLight filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in August 2020. Decode Democracy, another one of the parties that signed the letter to Biden, is “part of MapLight,” according to its website. In the lawsuit, the groups alleged that the Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship was created in response to Twitter reportedly adding a fact-checking label to one of Trump’s tweets about mail-in voting. The Center for Democracy and Technology filed a separate suit in May 2020 that argued Trump’s executive order was “retaliatory.”
In reality, the point of the executive order was actually to ensure that Big Tech companies do not moderate in an “unfair” way. “The Attorney General shall establish a working group regarding the potential enforcement of State statutes that prohibit online platforms from engaging in unfair or deceptive acts or practices,” Trump stated in the executive order.
The groups that urged Biden to overturn Trump’s executive order swing sharply to the left. Influence Watch called the Center for Democracy and Technology a “center-left nonprofit” organization. Free Press insisted that Facebook “[p]ermanently [b]an Trump.” Decode Democracy whined about the “disinformation crisis” online. Rock the Vote Action Fund, the sister organization to Rock the Vote, said that it is “dedicated to building the political power of young progressives and leveraging that power for action on issues that affect their lives.” Voto Latino endorsed then-Vice President Joe Biden for president. Common Cause urged Congress to pass the controversial bill H.R. 1.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
