Censorship
According to Webster's Dictionary, to "censor" means "to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable."
When a government prohibits speech that is not obscene and does not incite violence, that is censorship. The First Amendment, which protects against government restrictions on or interference with the content of speech, applies to government at the national, state, and local levels, protecting the speech of public employees there.
In his first week in office, Trump began censoring the website of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Twitter accounts of the National Park Service.
Timeline
| 2017.01.18 | Trump bans EPA employees from updating public via press or social media. bostonglobe.com (See also Environmental Protection Agency) |
| 2017.01.21 | Interior Department reactivates Twitter accounts after shutdown following inauguration tweet about crowd sizes. washingtonpost.com |
| 2017.01.24 | The Trump administration has instituted a media blackout at the Environmental Protection Agency and barred staff from awarding new contracts or grants, part of a broader communications clampdown within the executive branch. chicagotribune.com (See also Environmental Protection Agency) |
| 2017.01.24 | Trump administration officials instructed employees at multiple agencies to cease communicating with the public through news releases, official social media accounts and correspondence, raising concerns that federal employees will be able to convey only information that supports the new president’s agenda. washingtonpost.com (See also Environmental Protection Agency) |
| 2017.01.24 | Trump administration tells Environmental Protection Agency to cut climate page from website, erasing years of work on climate change. reuters.com (See also Environment, Assaults on Facts) |
| 2017.01.25 | Associated Press: Trump mandating EPA scientific studies, data undergo review by political staff before public release. twitter.com (See also Environmental Protection Agency, Assaults on Facts) |
| 2017.01.25 | The chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee is asking Americans to trust the information they get from the President over the news produced by the media. cnn.com (See also Assaults on Facts, Attempts to Discredit Media) Trump has been called out for highlighting falsehoods and conspiracy theories during his political career and has repeatedly attacked the mainstream press as pushing "fake news." |
| 2017.01.26 | Capitol Hill Democrats calling for the White House not to gag federal employees after HHS memo on Inauguration Day instructs employees not to communicate about regulatory policy with members of Congress. washingtonpost.com (See also First 100 Days, Assaults on Facts, Department of Health and Human Services) "The HHS memo, along with others sent in recent days by other agencies, “appear to violate multiple federal laws,” including one that protects federal whistleblowers." |
| 2017.02.01 | "Trump: "If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS?" twitter.com (See also Education, Fascism, Assaults on Facts) Trump threatens University of California at Berkeley for allowing anti-Breitbart demonstration. |
| 2017.05.10 | Reporter Dan Heyman arrested in West Virginia for asking Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price a question about GOP health care bill. nytimes.com (See also Free Press, Tom Price) |
| 2017.06.22 | The Trump administration, ignoring the need for a free press, has announced that Thursday's press briefing may not be recorded by anyone, and then went further to say that the press also couldn't report that this meeting could not be recorded. slate.com (See also Attempts to Discredit Media, Unpresidential Behavior) |
| 2017.08.25 | The Department of Energy funded a Boston researcher's project but asked that she remove references to "global warming" and "climate change" in her description of it. buzzfeed.com (See also Climate Change, Environment, Department of Energy) |
| 2017.10.20 | The Environmental Protection Agency has removed dozens of online resources dedicated to helping local governments address climate change, as a new analysis found that an E.P.A. website has been scrubbed of scores of links to materials to help local officials prepare for a world of rising temperatures and more severe storms. nytimes.com (See also Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt) |
| 2017.10.22 | The Environmental Protection Agency has canceled the speaking appearance of three agency scientists who were scheduled to discuss climate change at a conference in Rhode Island. nytimes.com (See also Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, Climate Change) |
| 2017.10.25 | The Federal Communications Commission is planning to eliminate a decades-old rule designed to preserve media diversity in local markets, which critics say it will lead to greater media consolidation and the loss of independent voices. washingtonpost.com (See also Assaults on Civil Liberties) The regulations, passed in 1975, prevent any single company from owning both a full-power TV station in a given market and a daily newspaper at the same time. |
| 2017.10.31 | Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, stripped a half-dozen scientists and academics of advisory positions Tuesday and issued new rules barring anyone who receives E.P.A. grant money from serving on panels that counsel the agency on scientific decisions, effectively shutting out many academic scientists who rely on federal funding, replacing them with researchers from industry. nytimes.com (See also Scott Pruitt, Environmental Protection Agency) |
| 2017.11.16 | Federal regulators rolled back decades-old rules, making it far easier for media outlets to be bought and sold — potentially leading to more newspapers, radio stations and television broadcasters being owned by just a small handful of companies. washingtonpost.com (See also Fascism, Assaults on Civil Liberties) |
| 2017.11.20 | Randall Stephenson told antitrust enforcers that AT&T Inc. would see them in court after the Justice Department sued to block the company’s $85.4 billion bid to buy Time Warner Inc. saying, the lawsuit “stretches the very idea of antitrust law beyond the breaking point.” bloomberg.com (See also Feuds, Department of Justice) He reiterated that he wouldn't sell CNN to appease Washington. |
| 2017.11.21 | For six months the New York State Attorney General has been investigating who perpetrated a massive scheme to corrupt the FCC’s notice and comment process, yet the FCC has refused multiple requests for crucial evidence in its sole possession that is vital to permit that law enforcement investigation to proceed. medium.com (See also Corruption, Legal Issues) |
| 2017.11.21 | The Federal Communications Commission announced on Tuesday that it planned to dismantle landmark regulations that ensure equal access to the internet, clearing the way for companies to charge more and block access to some websites. nytimes.com (See also Assaults on Civil Liberties, Net Neutrality) |
| 2017.11.27 | Donald Trump, through his foundation, donated to "Project Veritas," an agency with a history of trying to take down liberal organizations, an agency that is now accused of trying to dupe The Washington Post with a fake Roy Moore claim in an undercover operation. newsweek.com (See also Assaults on Civil Liberties, Belief in Conspiracy Theories, Donald J. Trump Foundation) |
| 2017.12.04 | The presidency of Donald Trump has caused Democrats to experience a surge in confidence in the press at the same time that Republicans and Trump supporters are expressing more extreme, negative views of the media. poynter.org (See also Assaults on Civil Liberties, Trump Effect) |
| 2018.01.29 | Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt was personally involved in the purging of information from the agency’s website in the early months of the Trump administration, according to documents obtained by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), as pages on the EPA’s website about climate change started disappearing or getting redirected to sites touting the president’s fossil fuel agenda. thinkprogress.org (See also Scott Pruitt, Environmental Protection Agency, Environment) |