For the first time, the legislative branch is moving to convert President Trump’s executive ban on federal censorship into appropriations law. Introduced by Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL-26), appropriations bill H.R. 8595 would lock key provisions of Executive Order 14149 (Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship) into binding statutory funding restrictions, a move that…
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The Minerva Research Initiative was a U.S. Department of War grant program that funded unclassified, university-based social science research on topics relevant to national security. Billed by the Pentagon as “Social science for a safer world,” it awarded 3- to 5-year grants for unclassified research by university researchers “to help DOD better understand and prepare…
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SUMMARY Elon Musks’ xAI filed a lawsuit challenging Colorado’s first-in-the-nation AI bill, which is set to take effect this summer The law is set to become the nation’s first state-level move to impose protections against supposed “algorithmic discrimination” on AI platforms Musk’s AI lab has said that it would force xAI to promote the state’s…
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The censorship industry, the global network of “counter-disinformation” nonprofits and activists that work tirelessly to exert control over social media platforms, is banking on a new strategy to circumvent the First Amendment: frame tech companies as producers of harmful and addictive products, rather than platforms for speech. This was evident at the latest Cambridge Disinformation…
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The Governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, recently spoke at the Cambridge Disinformation Summit, a major gathering of the global censorship industry held annually at the University of Cambridge in the UK. In his remarks, the Republican governor praised foreign governments for clamping down on American social media platforms while blaming tech companies for creating “discord”…
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A new strategy has emerged for the censorship industry, spearheaded by the Knight-Georgetown Institute. What emerges from Institute’s own materials is not a call for blunt censorship, but something more methodical—and, in some ways, more ambitious. The project it is advancing, in partnership with the Tech Justice Law Project and others, is to use litigation as…
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SUMMARY Established in 2024, the Knight-Georgetown Institute is laser-focused on pushing design changes to social media platforms to limit “toxicity,” “polarization,” and “disinformation.” Its steering council includes James Baker, the FBI’s Russiagate lawyer and formerly chief counsel for Twitter, as well as Alondra Nelson, who oversaw the Biden Administration’s whole-of-government initiative to suppress disfavored online…
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SUMMARY The Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) is a “counter-extremism” research institute housed at American University, founded by Professors Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Brian Hughes In its own words, PERIL was conceived as a political indoctrination project; to “develop an empirically-tested, nationally-scalable intervention to prevent youth from radicalizing to white supremacist extremism” According…
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SUMMARY The Parliament of Wales in the UK passed a law that would make it illegal for political candidates to lie during elections An “independent judicial process” would determine if the Welsh candidate is guilty of lying and therefore should be banned from holding office The law would empower officials to pursue criminal offenses for…
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SUMMARY The Department of Justice has announced the settlement of Missouri v. Biden and Children’s Health Defense v. Biden, two landmark cases that alleged the Biden administration pressured social media companies to suppress disfavored speech by American citizens The settlement continues the Trump administration’s efforts to unwind federal support for online censorship The United States…
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