It’s hardly a sign of civic health when a president begins his term by instructing his subordinates to abide by the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech. Yet within hours of his oath of office, President Donald Trump did just that.
In an executive action styled as “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,” Trump signaled his intent to right a wrong that the Supreme Court refused to address last June when it dismissed the case Murthy v. Missouri.
In the action, Trump charged his predecessor with “trampling free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to … suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve.”
Skeptics might read that as a rhetorical bid to score a few final points at President…
