Teach Mis- and Dis- Information? You May Lose Your Right to Vote.

Following an election tied to rampant disinformation, new leadership will punish those teaching the concepts.

It should come as no surprise that one of the first legislative agendas for the incoming administration puts a target on the backs of any and all government workers who dare engage in “censorship” of mis- and dis- information. In a policy agenda posted to Trump’s website in December 2022, he shared the following:

FIRST, within hours of my inauguration, I will sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with any organization, business, or person, to censor, limit, categorize, or impede the lawful speech of American citizens. I will then ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as “mis-” or “dis-information”. And I will begin the process of identifying and firing every federal bureaucrat who has engaged in domestic censorship—directly or indirectly—whether they are the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI, the DOJ, no matter who they are.

There’s several more bullet points that explicitly protect businesses like X from having to moderate speech following, as well as this:

FOURTH, we need to break up the entire toxic censorship industry that has arisen under the false guise of tackling so-called “mis-” and “dis-information.” The federal government should immediately stop funding all non-profits and academic programs that support this authoritarian project. If any U.S. university is discovered to have engaged in censorship activities or election interferences in the past—such as flagging social media content for removal [and] blacklisting—those universities should lose federal research dollars and federal student loan support for a period of five years, and maybe more. We should also enact new laws laying out clear criminal penalties for federal bureaucrats who partner with private entities to do an end-run around the Constitution and deprive Americans of their First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment rights. In other words, deprive them of their vote.

Make no mistake about any of this. The plan is to ban the concepts of mis- and dis- information from the government, as well as to make it illegal–to the point of individuals losing their democratic right to vote–for as much as engaging with private entities who help educate (and advance tools against) rampant mis- and dis- information. Those connected with discussion or engagement on the topics of mis- and dis- information will lose funding if they’re at a university and lose the ability to take out student loans for further education.*

For those unclear about the terms, misinformation is bad information that does not necessarily have ill intent behind it but still creates confusion or distrust. Disinformation is bad information with ill intent. There is a third and somewhat controversial type of bad information as well, malinformation, which is information based on fact but pulled from context with the intent to harm. An example would be revenge pornography.

The policies above place a direct target on the backs of all education professionals, as well as all professionals across any and all industries. Mis- and dis- information are not nebulous nor debatable concepts. They are real, and similar to how foreign interference played a significant role in the outcome of the 2016 election, it was mis- and dis- information at the forefront of the 2024 election. Mis- and dis- information plague every political persuasion, as we’re seeing with the rise of election denial and conspiracy theories from the left bubble up in this past week.

What the new “anti-censorship” policies proposed would do is precisely what has happened across nine states in the US related to diversity, inclusion, and equity (DEI). Texas is one such state which banned DEI initiatives from any and all public institutions, meaning that in some universities, entire departments meant to be resources to marginalized students were dismantled. My alma mater, the University of Texas, was forced to fire staff, leaving students without access to tools they need to be successful in school. Texas governor Greg Abbott passed this anti-DEI law because he felt conservative viewpoints were being censored on campuses state wide but also because people need to “advance based on talent and merit at public colleges and universities in Texas.”

Those with privilege and access are the only ones allowed to succeed and advance.

That is precisely what will happen with the banning of any initiatives around mis- and dis- information in places of education, including public schools, public colleges and universities, and public libraries. First Amendment “auditors” already patrolling these places to capture video and get their five minutes of fame on right-wing social media will up their games and report to the government anything they deem an infraction of the law. This could look like claiming that a board member telling a public commenter that they do not have a copy of Gender Queer in the children’s section of the library was denying the information provided by the public commenter in a way that suppressed their First Amendment right to speech and petition (in this case, that public commenter engaged in intentional disinformation and yes, it’d be the board member in trouble for denying that right to spread falsehoods). It could look like a school librarian getting in trouble for teaching media literacy to a classroom of students because teaching literacy is no longer allowed.

If you cannot teach what is fact and what is fiction, what are truths and what are creations, then you’re not able to teach literacy.

Let’s be clear: the actual work of talking and teaching about mis- and dis- information won’t go away. It’s going to be repackaged in a way that the right can profit from it. Private classes, private seminars, and private enterprises meant to “help” with the impending “literacy crisis” created by them will pop up. This is precisely what’s happening with book bans right now. We’ve got “solutions” like SkyTree book fairs as an alternative to Scholastic and we’ve got BookmarkED/OnShelf claiming to “help” library workers navigate the world of inappropriate books–books deemed inappropriate by the very people who’ve created both of these solutions. Your local school librarian cannot teach their own lessons on mis- and dis- information nor on censorship, but they are permitted to purchase the lesson from PragerU to do so.

None of this is about advancing people based on talent and merit. It’s about allowing the least informed and most willing to drink the tainted koolaid to keep coming back for more. To keep being dependent on a source they believe is the be all, end all. The fascists call themselves the talent, but their merit is earned through nonstop falsehoods, lies, and the mis- and dis- information they spoon feed the starving. Fascists use every tool of suppression at their disposal to do so. People fall for it because they’re uneducated and unwilling or completely unable to be educated (see: no funding, no initiatives to help the most marginalized, and so forth). It is a lot easier in a world full of hurt and hardships to take what’s given, rather than examine it for what it is.

Those of us invested in making the world a better place now and for the future will be the enemies in the eyes of the government. Don’t comply in advance, and even when the money is stolen because it is your responsibility to teach and respect the truth about the rise of White Christian supremacy, do it anyway.

But rightful fear about what’s to come for schools, libraries, and the populace at large doesn’t start or stop at Project 2025, which you’ve already been living through. It’s also through policies like these which have been out in the open for nearly two years.

Notes

*This last point brings up some questions in and of itself, given that the Department of Education is apparently also going to be shuttered.

If you haven’t yet, I cannot recommend highly enough that you read What The Fact: Finding the Truth in All The Noise by Seema Yasmin (and audiobook listeners, it’s great in that format).

Unrelated, Multiple posts in a week is not the norm for me nor will it be. But this was so vital to get out ASAP, I needed to address it.