During the Biden administration, public relations writer Michael Shellenberger testified before that House that “American taxpayers are unwittingly financing the growth and power of a censorship-industrial complex run by America’s scientific and technological elite.” This “global censorship-industrial complex” was defined as a network of collaboration between government agencies, technology companies, academic institutions, and certain NGOs to control or suppress online speech. Its activities were documented in the Twitter files and in the records of the Murthy v Missouri trial.

Conservatives made a big deal about this during the 2024 election. After the election, Trump issued Executive Order 14149, “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.”

Yet the Trump administration is not eliminating the “censorship-industrial complex,” it is just putting MAGA Republicans in charge of it.  The object of administration policy is not to protect freedom of speech, but to shift the target of repression. It’s no longer vaccine deniers, election deniers, and other speakers on the American Right; it’s now student visa seekers, immigrants, critics of Israel, “the liberal media,” and progressive professors at ivy league universities. The MAGA commitment to free speech was never sincere or principled.

The hypocrisy is clear by juxtaposing two recent announcements made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.  

Principle asserted 

On May 28, 2025, the U.S. State Department announced a visa restriction policy that would target foreign nationals accused of censoring Americans.  Citing Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which authorizes the Secretary of State to deny admission to any alien whose entry “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States,” Rubio stated,  

It is unacceptable for foreign officials to issue or threaten arrest warrants on U.S. citizens or U.S. residents for social media posts on American platforms while physically present on U.S. soil.  It is similarly unacceptable for foreign officials to demand that American tech platforms adopt global content moderation policies or engage in censorship activity that reaches beyond their authority and into the United States. 

So watch out, Brazilian judges and European regulators, America is standing up for free speech!  

Or is it?  

Contradiction of Principle 

One day before Rubio’s announcement praising the American values of free expression, the State Department suspended interviews with foreign citizens applying for student and exchange visas. It did this so that it could scrutinize the applicants’ social media posts, clearly indicating their intent to condition visa approvals on applicant’s political viewpoints. Two days before the suspension, Secretary Rubio issued a cable to embassies and consulates around the world that told officers to surveil the social media content of applicants for visas to see if they expressed unacceptable political views. That directive, according to the New York Times, said that student and exchange visitor visa applicants needed to go through a “mandatory social media check.” 

In recent months, Rubio has threatened to cancel student visas, revoke permanent residency status and scrutinize the social media history of foreign visitors. Much of this is targeting expressions of outrage about Israel’s war in Gaza. ICE has literally abducted students who are already here based on their expressive activity: Rumeysa Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Mahmoud Khalil, etc. None of these targets were violent lawbreakers. The only thing they have in common is that they were critical of Israel’s war on Gaza.  

So, speech is being targeted, with a clear intent to punish or deter certain ideas; it’s just speech that MAGA Republicans don’t like.  And (no surprise) Michael Shellenberger hasn’t uttered a single word against this activity. The champion of free speech is really just … a MAGA champion. 

Jawbone social media, or intimidate broadcasters? 

Conservatives complained with justification about the Biden administration’s jawboning of social media platforms to suppress posts and accounts that challenged Democrat Party orthodoxies. The record of that activity in the Murthy v Missouri case, coupled with revelations of funding from government agencies to support the identification and targeting of certain speakers, gave credence to claims of a censorship-industrial complex.  

But once people hold the reins of power, their standards seem to change. FCC Chairman Brenden Carr was one of the loudest critics of Biden’s “too much regulation” policies – but look at him now. He is wholeheartedly leveraging the FCC’s authority over licensing and media mergers to punish broadcasters for their political speech. He is backing Trump’s attempt to threaten CBS because it edited an interview with Kamala Harris in a way that offended Trump. A more direct use of state power to punish political expression could not be imagined. A Brookings Institution report documents the details of this systematic intervention into media freedom.  

Freedom of expression means no state intervention, full stop. Shellenberger, Rubio, Carr and other Republicans have no business invoking the First Amendment. What’s worse, the compromises and exceptions they make will certainly come back to bite them later.

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