On September 3rd, 2025, Daniel Donovan, counsel for Alphabet (parent company of Google and YouTube) sent a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, announcing that, “YouTube will provide an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform if the Company terminated their channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 and elections integrity policies that are no longer in effect.” The letter was sent in response to a subpoena the Judiciary Committee sent Google as part of the Committee’s investigation into the Biden Administration’s efforts to pressure social media companies to censor their users.
Mr. Donavan admitted that the Biden Administration officials pressured Alphabet to remove “certain user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate [Alphabet's] policies.” Alphabet is the latest tech company to describe the Biden Administration’s efforts to create “a political atmosphere that sought to influence the actions" of social media companies regarding posts challenging the government’s claims about, and response to, COVID-19.
Government pressure on private media companies to restrict certain news stories and opinions violates the First Amendment every bit as much as if government officials had hacked Google and YouTube to remove the “offending” content. To prevent future attempts by government to pressure private individuals to censor Americans, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has introduced the Free Speech Protection Act. This act makes it a crime for any federal employee or employee of a federal contractor to interfere in any way with an American citizen’s exercise of their First Amendment protected rights. Violations of this act are subject to punishments ranging from fines of up to $10,000, suspension, termination, and a lifetime ban from federal employment. Senator Paul’s bill should sail through the Republican-controlled House and Senate. After all, many Republicans, including President Trump, denounced the Biden Administration’s censorship.
But this is not what's happening. The bill is being ignored by the Republican Congress and the Trump Administration. This may be because the Trump Administration is using government power to “encourage” private companies to silence some Americans. The most well-known example is Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr’s comments pushing for ABC to cancel Jimmy Kimmel’s show after he made offensive comments following the assassination of conservative leader Charlie Kirk: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
According to Carr, a broadcaster’s “failure” to silence those spreading “misinformation” about President Trump, the Republican Party, and their supporters is a violation of the duty to “act in the public interest.” This means that the FCC can revoke the broadcasting license of an offending company. But the FCC’s power to ensure holders of federally-issued broadcast licenses act in the public interest does not grant the FCC power to act as a federal fact checker—much less police the options of late-night talk show hosts. To argue otherwise is to argue that holders of broadcast licenses sacrifice their First Amendment rights in exchange for the right to use the “public” airwaves.
Carr is not the only Trump official who thinks he can and should use his regulatory power to violate the First Amendment rights of private companies and their clients. The FTC, which has been chaired by Andrew Ferguson since President Trump returned to office in January, only granted its approval of advertising agency Omnicom’s purchase of fellow advertising company Juniper after the companies agreed to not “discriminate” against certain sites for political reasons. This forces the companies to place their clients' ads on sites that promote policies objectionable to the clients, or their customers.
In August, US District Federal Judge Sparkle Sooknanan ruled that the FTC’s “request for information” from liberal group Media Matters regarding any collaboration to organize boycotts of certain organizations violated the First Amendment. Boycotts are not only protected by the First Amendment—they have a long and distinguished history going back to colonial times. In recent years, boycotts have been successfully used by conservatives.
On his first day back in the oval office, President Trump signed an executive order prohibiting federal employees from violating the First Amendment rights of American citizens. Thus, FCC Chair Carr, FTC Chair Ferguson, and others in the Administration including President Trump himself are arguably violating this executive order. President Trump should begin enforcing his executive order and work with Congress to pass Senator Paul’s Free Speech Protection Act which ensures no future administration will “encourage” private companies to silence those whose views displease the government.
