Vice President JD Vance’s wise words to Europe about U.S. commitments to free speech are on a collision course with some of what’s happening stateside. The Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are headed in the opposite direction of Vance’s prudent remarks.

On Feb. 11, Vance valiantly informed an artificial intelligence summit in Paris that “American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship.” A few days later he told an audience in Munich, “In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.”

His scolding is well-deserved. The U.K. recently fined a man for praying silently, while not obstructing anyone, near an abortion clinic. Last month a CBS News “60 Minutes” segment highlighted Germany’s speech policing by interviewing prosecutors involved in predawn raids of homes and electronics sparked by people’s online comments critical of politicians. FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, has collected other egregious examples from around the continent.

Thankfully, the First Amendment protects Americans from such violations of their free speech rights. That’s why recent actions by the trade commission and the communications commission are so odd.

On Feb. 20, the FTC launched a public inquiry “to better understand how technology platforms deny or degrade users’ access to services based on the content of their speech or affiliations, and how this conduct may have violated the law.” But because those tech platforms, including Facebook, YouTube and X, are all private companies, the First Amendment, which protects citizens from government censorship, as observed in Europe, is not implicated. Just the opposite: The FTC’s implied crackdown on speech decisions of private tech companies is itself the threat to free speech.

And government infringement of constitutionally protected speech is being ignored at the FCC. The FCC’s foray into newsrooms defies the First Amendment. The agency is investigating KCBS All News radio in San Francisco for its coverage of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement activities, which is protected by the First Amendment. It also restarted a previously closed investigation of CBS News’ editing of a preelection interview with Kamala Harris. That action was followed by President Donald Trump calling for CBS to “lose its license.” The agency also opened an investigation into NBCUniversal and its parent company, Comcast, private corporations, over DEI practices.

Even before the 2024 presidential election, Carr announced on cable news the agency would look into whether a cameo appearance by Harris on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” had violated the “equal time rule,” indicating license revocation was an option. As it turns out, the Trump campaign was given equal time by the network, but the most important question is why the anachronistic rule still exists at all.

This political moment provides an opportunity to get rid of outdated legacy regulations.

If an equal-time rule for broadcasters ever made sense, it was on the basis of scarcity of news outlets. But today’s information and entertainment landscape is filled with cable news, social media, websites, satellite radio and many other media beyond licensed broadcasters. Why not get the FCC out of the speech policing business?

The United States should take its own advice and reduce executive agencies’ meddling in speech issues.

Jessica Melugin is the director of the Center for Technology and Innovation at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.