U.S. Senator Rand Paul, R-Bowling Green, announced on Wednesday that he has introduced the Free Speech Protection Act that will prohibit federal employees and contractors from using their positions to censor and otherwise attack speech protected by the First Amendment.
The bill will impose mandatory severe penalties for those individuals that violate this rule.
“Americans are free people, and we do not take infringements upon our liberties lightly,” Paul said. “The time has come for resistance and to reclaim our God-given right to free expression. Under my Free Speech Protection Act the government will no longer be able to cloak itself in secrecy to undermine the First Amendment rights of Americans.”
In addition to protecting Americans’ First Amendment rights, the bill would also:
- Mandate frequent publicly accessible reports from the heads of executive branch agencies detailing the communications between an executive branch agency and a content provider, as well as prevent agencies from employing any FOIA exemption to prevent disclosure of prohibited communications.
- Ensure that federal grant money is not received by any entity that seeks to label media organizations as sources of misinformation or disinformation.
- Terminate several programs and authorities that threaten free speech and other constitutionally protected rights.
Paul offered some background on what prompted him to file the bill:
In 2023, a federal judge issued an injunction restricting the Biden Administration from collaborating with social media companies to censor and suppress constitutionally protected speech. For several months prior to the injunction, Dr. Paul had been working on the Free Speech Protection Act that would’ve done just that.
Paul says that in addition to countless numbers of Americans, he too was targeted by the censorship regime. In 2021, Dr. Paul posted a video on YouTube to educate the public on the potentially harmful consequences of relying on ineffective cloth masks to prevent the transmission of COVID-19. YouTube took his video down and suspended his account for a week. Paul then announced that he was quitting the platform and would solely post his content to Rumble.com.
(Photo: U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, courtesy of NPR)
By Tom Latek, Kentucky Today
