| On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for an end to federal government censorship of Americans’ online speech, calling it “intolerable in a free society.” That might sound uncontroversial, even redundant. After all, the First Amendment already bars the government from censoring protected speech, and courts have consistently interpreted that to include speech posted on social media. Legally speaking, there’s no need for an executive order just to tell government employees to obey the Constitution. But the order isn’t just about the law. It’s a signal of Trump’s intention to continue the fight against online content moderation coming from the Oval Office. “This order is basically saying to the government, ‘Don’t interfere with social media,’” said David Kaye, a law professor at the University of California at Irvine and a former U.N. rapporteur on freedom of expression. “It’s not a law-changing order, but it is a kind of warning to civil servants” who work on combating online disinformation. The brief order begins by accusing the outgoing Biden administration of trampling Americans’ online speech rights by pressuring social media companies to suppress posts it deemed misinformation. It ends by calling on the attorney general to investigate “the activities of the Federal Government over the last 4 years” that are “inconsistent” with upholding free speech, and to prepare a report with recommendations for “appropriate remedial actions.” In other words, the order isn’t just about what the Trump administration will do. It’s also about relitigating the Biden administration’s relationships with social media companies, which famously suspended Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and took down posts that spread conspiracy theories about coronavirus vaccines. Last year, the Supreme Court heard a case on exactly that. In Murthy v. Missouri, the court found that a group of mostly conservative plaintiffs had yet to show they were directly harmed by the Biden administration’s contacts with tech firms, sending the case back to a lower court. But now that Trump is president, his administration will take over the role of defendants in that case, and his executive order suggests it won’t mount much of a defense on the Biden administration’s behalf. There remain legitimate questions as to whether the Biden administration’s actions — which included flagging potential falsehoods to social media companies and pressing them to rein in anti-vaccine narratives — ever crossed the line from legal persuasion to illegal coercion. But an executive order that simply assumes that they censored seems like “an attempt to rewrite history,” said Alex Abdo, litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. It could also color the attorney general’s investigation. “It’s like starting a criminal trial by saying, ‘the defense is guilty, now let’s look at the evidence,’” Abdo said. Free-speech advocates say a White House commitment not to unduly pressure tech companies on their speech policies could be a good thing — provided it applies equally across the political spectrum. While the order may be a “nothingburger” from a legal standpoint, “it absolutely could hold some promise for a new executive regime that engages less with companies to persuade or pressure them to silence or moderate speech they don’t like,” said Lee Rowland, executive director of the nonprofit National Coalition Against Censorship. To deliver on that promise, the Trump administration will need to ensure it does not unduly pressure social media companies either — e.g., to allow posts the companies would rather take down, or to drop their fact-checking programs. As the Supreme Court ruled in another 2024 case, online content moderation is also a form of protected speech. The order doesn’t mention Trump’s own record of browbeating and threatening both social media and traditional media companies. In 2020, before Biden took office, Trump issued an executive order accusing social media companies of censoring conservative views and calling on his administration to narrow their liability shield and review government spending on their platforms. More recently, he has sued media companies and pledged to “straighten out the press” once in office. “If this were sincere, then Trump’s administration would also investigate Jim Jordan’s committee for heavy-handedly trying to stifle research” on misinformation, Abdo said of Trump’s latest order. “It would investigate the congressional committees that pressured university presidents to punish students and faculty, some of whom were engaged in constitutionally protected speech.” Social media companies are already pulling back on the policies that drew Trump’s ire. As Trump takes office for a second time, he may find the fight against online content moderation to be much easier. Research groups studying misinformation have disbanded. Government projects focused on foreign propaganda have been discontinued. Twitter, previously X, is now owned by a top Trump ally. And Meta announced earlier this month that it will stop fact-checking in the United States while rolling back its rules on hate speech. Trump administration figures have already identified potential next targets, including NewsGuard, a company that rates the credibility of online publishers for tech platforms and advertisers. In November, incoming Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr wrote a letter to tech giants warning them that working with NewsGuard could have legal consequences now that Trump is president. | 
