Flanked by some of the Big Tech executives whose companies had suppressed the views of his supporters throughout his predecessor’s term, President Donald Trump on Jan. 20 declared the days of such speech policing over.

Hours later, the president put action behind his words, signing an executive order prohibiting the federal government from engaging in, facilitating, or funding “any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.” 

The move was celebrated by those who see it as a blow against what they decry as the censorship industrial complex. Others cast the executive order as giving dangerous license to “misinformation” and “disinformation.” 

What’s clear is that this is just the latest salvo in an ongoing war over the digital public square, pitting the Trump administration and like-minded Republican congressional allies against not only domestic opponents, but the global counter-disinformation eco-system.

The global speech-policing effort is looking like an early target. Trump himself seemed to convey that when he touted his order in a remote address last week to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The elite global conclave had recently declared “misinformation and disinformation” the leading short-term risk to the globe for the second straight year, “underlining their persistent threat to societal cohesion and governance by eroding trust and exacerbating divisions within and between nations.”

Two days after the inauguration, Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, released the “Priorities and Mission of the Second Trump Administration’s Department of State.” The short document included the charge that Foggy Bottom “must stop censorship and suppression of information.”

Rubio continued: “The State........

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