The Media Research Center is proud to recognize President Donald Trump and several members of his administration during the 21st annual Free Speech Week for their unwavering commitment to defending the First Amendment and confronting one of the greatest threats to our constitutional Republic: the Biden administration’s whole-of-society approach to censorship.
This year’s MRC Free Speech Award was awarded exclusively to Charlie Kirk, the late founder of Turning Point USA. In addition to celebrating Kirk’s legacy, the MRC is also using Free Speech Week to recognize other leaders, including public and foreign advocates, legal officers and members of Congress. Trump is among those celebrated by MRC, who has assembled one of the most unapologetically pro-free speech administrations in modern American history, and this is not hyperbole.
On his first day in office, Trump and his administration took bold and decisive action with an executive order to begin dismantling the Biden administration’s 57 censorship initiatives exposed by MRC Free Speech America. Also during the first week, Trump issued another executive order revoking Biden-era directives, forcing the left-wing ideology in AI. He expanded this order just months later, ensuring that the government would not partner with Big Tech companies that discriminate against individuals based on viewpoint. The administration further used the weight of the U.S. government to pressure world leaders to stand up for freedom of speech.
Trump’s appointments of free speech warriors — including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Health & Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem — signaled a clear shift toward protecting, rather than policing, speech.
This approach to free speech protection has ultimately defined the Trump administration. This stood in stark contrast to Biden’s weaponization of government to target his opponents. Under Biden’s tumultuous years, Americans endured an unprecedented assault on the First Amendment. This government was characterized by a reckless pattern of government overreach, speech suppression and blatant contempt for the First Amendment.
As previously exposed by MRC, Biden's administration oversaw the establishment of one of the largest censorship operations in U.S. history, involving 57 initiatives across an astounding total of 93 federal agencies.
The MRC is proud to recognize the following executive branch officials for their actions in defense of Americans’ free speech rights:
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President Donald J. Trump
President Trump is a man of action, and he has acted forcefully and fearlessly to protect Americans’ free speech rights. Before even taking office for his second term, President Trump had assembled a cabinet of First Amendment warriors; within a week of taking his oath, he issued two executive orders outlining steps to preserve the First Amendment. President Trump then set about dismantling Biden’s censorship agencies, firing hundreds of government censors and cutting off thousands of censorship grants. To this day, he remains a great warrior for the First Amendment and continues to prioritize Americans’ right to speak freely. -
Vice President JD Vance
The vanguard of President Trump’s anti-censorship crusade, Vice President Vance has been relentless in his efforts to preserve Americans’ First Amendment rights. Perhaps the most significant moment of his already-historic vice presidency was his generation-defining speech in Munich confronting leftist European leaders and demanding that their big tech censorship not be exported to our shores. -
Secretary of State Marco Rubio
Secretary Rubio was given one of the most difficult tasks in government: Stopping the sprawling censorship enterprise that infected the State Department and USAID. Secretary Rubio has removed this cancer with surgical precision. He shut down the FIMI Hub, dismantled the multinational framework for censorship, fired hundreds of corrupt government censors, and removed hundreds of grants that were silencing speech around the world. -
Secretary of Health & Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Secretary Kennedy took command of a Department that had been perverted to silence American critics and stifle scientific inquiry, Secretary Kennedy faced near insurmountable opposition from the censorship cartels operating in our government and media. With no hesitation, Secretary Kennedy rescinded the countless NIH grants and contracts that were paying for the silencing of American researchers, and has instead created a new Department that is dedicated not to playing politics, but instead to making America healthy again. -
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem
Secretary Noem has shown temerity and grit as she dismantles the censorship operations in the Department of Homeland Security that were jeopardizing Americans’ liberty and security. Secretary Noem eliminated the censorship agency CP3, eliminated the Quiet Skies censorship program, rescinded the TVTP censorship grants, and transformed CISA from a Stasi-style censorship bureau to an agency that protects Americans’ critical infrastructure from foreign cyberattacks. -
FCC Chair Brendan Carr
FCC Chair Carr has tirelessly worked to refocus the agency on protecting, rather than impeding, Americans’ ability to communicate. He has fought to ensure that public spectrum is used responsibly, rather than by being monopolized by a few big media censorship advocates. He has also worked to ensure that merger approval is contingent on ending unlawful DEI programs. -
FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson
FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson has tackled the advertising cartels being run by deceitful censorship outfits like Ad Fontes and Media Matters. He has also continued to battle Meta and Google for monopolizing American markets so they could control American speech. -
OMB Director Russ Vought
Director Vought has been instrumental in defunding and dismantling the lawless government censorship agencies that were paying millions of taxpayer dollars to censor people both at home and abroad. -
Director of the National Institutes of Health of the United States Jay Bhattacharya
Director Bhattacharya has shown tremendous courage in dismantling the censorship operations at NIAID and the NLM, instead creating a leaner, more inquisitive NIH that works to make America healthy. -
White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks
David Sacks has been a fierce opponent of the push for AI exclusivity contracts, and has worked to ensure the Biden pandemic of debanking never occurs again. -
FCC Media Bureau Chief Erin Boone
Chief Boone worked tirelessly to reform the FCC to be an agency that protects Americans’ free speech, including by spearheading FCC Chairman Carr’s efforts to ensure public spectrum is not hijacked to become propaganda for big media. -
FCC General Counsel Adam Candeub
The nation’s premier authority on Section 230, Candeub has helped Chairman Carr reform the FCC to protect Americans’ liberties from government and Big Tech censorship. -
FCC Policy Advisor Katie McAuliffe
McCauliffe has worked tirelessly to protect free speech rights for all Americans, including through careful review of how public spectrum and public airwaves are used. -
FTC Consumer Protection Bureau Director Chris Mufarrige
Mufarige has worked tirelessly to carry out Chairman Ferguson’s mission of stamping out unlawful censorship. -
FTC Competition Bureau Director Daniel Guarnera
Guarnera has worked tirelessly to carry out Chairman Ferguson’s mission of stamping out unlawful censorship.
MRC presented 35 pro-free speech advocates with the prestigious MRC Free Speech Award last year, honoring the original vision for Free Speech Week with 2024 awards. 2024 award winners included: five U.S. senators, 10 congressmen, 10 officials ranging from attorneys general to governors and from state legislators to the FCC, as well as 10 thought leaders.
