PEN America White Paper Outlines 3 Key Threats and Dangers for Free Speech and Free Expression
(NEW YORK)— Despite its explicit claim to champion free speech, the conservative policy blueprint Project 2025 instead would do the opposite with proposals that are “unabashedly hostile” to free expression and the free flow of information, PEN America warned today in a new analysis.
The free expression group said the Heritage Foundation blueprint for the next conservative White House seeks to impose a range of new controls over how government agencies, government-funded media outlets, and even the general population, communicate, share and receive information.
Project 2025 goes so far as to propose banning words and phrases like “diversity,” “gender,” “reproductive health,” and “sexual orientation” from government documents; would turn long-standing government-funded global media—Voice of America among them— into propaganda outlets or shut them down; would defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides support to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System, among other things; and advocates for a national ban of TikTok, a platform now used by one-third of all Americans.
In its white paper Project 2025 Poses Threats to Freedom of Expression at Home and Abroad PEN America outlined three key threats to free expression at home and abroad in Project 2025. The organization’s previous analysis of Project 2025’s public education framework, issued last month, raised alarm over threats to public K-12 schools and colleges. This included a warning that millions more students would be subjected to the book bans and erasure of lessons and classroom topics that PEN America has tracked since 2021.
“In sum, Project 2025’s proposals could create a world in which government censors dominate and government propaganda reigns,” the latest white paper states.
PEN America called Project 2025’s explicit censorship of words allowed in U.S. government materials “one of the more shocking proposals” it has ever seen, noting its intent to meet an ideological litmus test.
“There is no act of censorship that is more explicit than literally banning words. But that is precisely what Project 2025 proposes: prohibiting the use of terms and concepts that its authors find ideologically objectionable and deleting them from every government document where they are already used,” PEN America’s analysis stated. “This is what the forced imposition of ideological conformity over all Americans would look like.”
Hadar Harris, PEN America’s Washington managing director, said: “Project 2025’s dystopian implications are made clear by these proposals, which would enact ideological conformity across government; seek to corrupt or shut down U.S. funded media serving people in authoritarian states; and even ban an entire social media platform used by one-third of all Americans to receive information and engage in self expression. These proposals reflect a desire to control information and impose a particular government ideology, and to punish those that don’t adhere to it. The implications of these actions would be grave for the free expression of Americans, as well as for people around the globe.”
The extreme idea to censor government language reminds us of nothing more dystopian than Orwell’s fictional world in 1984,” Harris said. “This is flatly dangerous and could lead to unimaginable harm and chaos at home and abroad. It’s troubling to imagine what it would mean for U.S. programs that aid efforts to reduce infant mortality or gender-based violence abroad, or for federal funding for educational institutions in the U.S., if the words “gender,” “sexual orientation,” or “diversity” were erased from government documents.”
PEN America outlined these three key threats to free expression in its analysis of Project 2025:
Explicit censorship of federal documents, removing key words and concepts to meet an ideological litmus test.
In its foreword, Project 2025 provides a hit list of terms it believes should be struck from all government documents–even the word “gender” is not safe. And this list is not final: The foreword makes clear they intend to expand censored terms by adding that, “and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights” would come under scrutiny. The sweeping scope and specificity outline a clear plan to censor not only government documents but chill the way in which regulations and policy are made. This censorship would dramatically and negatively impact the work of government by imposing an ideological framework on policy and programs at home and abroad.
Transforming U.S.-funded media agencies into propaganda arms–or simply shutting them down–and defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Project 2025 proposes either a complete gutting of the editorial independence of federally supported media outlets, via the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM)–or the elimination of the agency altogether. This would directly affect pillars of American broadcasts abroad such as Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Voice of America, founded in 1942. In addition, Project 2025 would gut the independent Open Technology Fund, which fights digital surveillance and internet censorship, if they are not “reformed” to represent an approved ideological slant; past reporting by these outlets that cast a negative light on US government policies or political figures is offered as justification for these needed “reforms.” The call to defund The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would, among other things, do away with the funding that CPB provides to NPR and PBS.
Banning TikTok, the Social Platform Used by One-Third of All Americans
Project 2025 calls on the next Presidential administration to ban TikTok, a social media app that is used by an estimated 120 million Americans–or over one-third of the US population, on national security grounds. Notably, this policy prescription may be more likely to happen under a Democratic administration. President Biden already signed the law to force the sale or ban of TikTok by 2025 and former President Trump recently recanted his previous opposition to the app. PEN America has previously noted that “banning TikTok establishes an alarming precedent” for government control over social media platforms and “is a vast overreach.” PEN America has joined two dozen civil rights organizations in a letter declaring a TikTok ban “censorship–plain and simple.”
The Heritage Foundation’s 922-page set of policy proposals in Project 2025 covers all aspects of federal governance with the goal of quick implementation by “the next conservative administration to govern.” In public comments Donald Trump has sought to distance himself from the document, while news organizations have reported that many former Trump White House staff were involved in the project, though it was developed primarily by Heritage Foundation staff. According to the Heritage Foundation, more than 100 other conservative think tanks have endorsed Project 2025.
About PEN America
PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. Learn more at pen.org.
Contact: Suzanne Trimel, [email protected], 201-247-5057