The following quote may be attributed to Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel Logan Spena regarding a public records request ADF sent Wednesday to the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Freedom of Information Act request seeks communications between any USAID personnel from the previous administration and a number of nongovernmental agencies that may have been involved in the development and use of tools to censor Americans’ speech and between specific USAID personnel that may have worked on the agency’s counter-disinformation projects:
“The U.S. government should defend our First Amendment right to free speech. Federal officials should champion those rights, not threaten them, and not look for ways to get around them by inducing private groups to do their censoring for them. Officials under the previous administration have tried to do that. In the name of countering so-called ‘disinformation,’ they’ve gone after speech deemed unfavorable to the government. Americans have a right to know how their money has been used to support censorship. Our country should never police the activity of citizens simply because of their political views.”
- Pronunciation guide: Spena (SPEE’-nuh)
Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.
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