Do you know the story of Galileo and the Inquisition? Born in 1564 in Italy, Galileo was an astronomer and mathematician. “His discoveries with the telescope revolutionized astronomy,” the Britannica encyclopedia records, “and paved the way for the acceptance of the Copernican heliocentric system, but his advocacy of that system eventually resulted in an Inquisition process against him.”

In other words, Galileo challenged the scientific consensus of the time, determined that the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around, and was sentenced to life imprisonment for heresy.

The Biden administration is in the process of turning the Department of Homeland Security into a modern-day Inquisition. The new term for “heresy” is “disinformation.”

It was creepy enough that DHS issued a “National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin” on February 7 that cited “an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives” as a factor that was keeping the United States “in a heightened threat environment.” The department characterized some Americans as “domestic threat actors” for their words alone, asserting that these individuals “seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence.”

You don’t need a telescope to see where this is going.

At the first sign that free speech was about to return to the “online environment” – the sale of Twitter to self-described “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk – Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced the creation of the new Disinformation Governance Board.

“This is messed up,” Musk tweeted.

Is it ever.

“I at first thought this announcement was satire,” wrote U.S. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri in a letter to Mayorkas on Thursday, “Surely no American Administration would ever use the power of Government to sit in judgment on the First Amendment speech of its own citizens.”

But that’s exactly what the Disinformation Governance Board will do. A federal law enforcement agency – the Department of Homeland Security isn’t a book club – will exercise some sort of oversight power over the printed, posted and spoken words of Americans.

“How will the Disinformation Board function?” Hawley demanded to know. “And who exactly will it be monitoring?”

Mayorkas is expected to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee on Wednesday to answer those and other questions, including, “Why did DHS time its announcement of this governance board directly after Mr. Musk’s acquisition of Twitter?”

Here’s a quick refresher course on your rights. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says Congress shall make no law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Early in the 20th century, a series of landmark Supreme Court decisions extended the First Amendment to cover state governments as well as the federal government.

Every federal department is a creation of Congress, so there’s no exception for the dictates of the Homeland Security secretary or any other federal official.

The reason all totalitarian governments censor information and create propaganda is that there will never be enough guns or tanks to control the entire population of a country. To hang onto power, tyrannical governments must make people feel that nothing can be done, and no one’s doing anything, and it’s best to go along with it quietly and avoid trouble. If you’ve ever felt that way, take a good look at your sources of information. Ask yourself who’s giving you that impression, and why.

The totalitarian impulse is strong in California’s government. Galileo would have felt right at home during a recent hearing in the California Assembly’s Business and Professions Committee, which was considering Assembly Bill 2098, introduced by Assembly Member Evan Low, D-Cupertino. The bill would threaten the licenses of physicians and surgeons by declaring it to be “unprofessional conduct” for the doctors to engage in “the dissemination or promotion of misinformation or disinformation” related to COVID-19. “News outlets have reported that some of the most dangerous propagators of inaccurate information regarding the COVID-19 vaccines are licensed health care professionals,” the bill declares.

While listening to public comment on the bill, the chair of the committee, Assembly Member Marc Berman, D-Menlo Park, became agitated over the commenters speaking more words than they were allowed. “Hey, check it out,” he shouted angrily, “I need everybody to follow the f ***ing rules!”

Another effort to intimidate and suppress free speech is Senate Bill 834, introduced by Sen. Scott Weiner, D-San Francisco, which would authorize the California attorney general to “make a finding” that a tax-exempt organization has “actively engaged in, or incited the active engagement in, acts or conspiracies defined as criminal under specified federal law, and likely to produce imminent violation of that federal law.” Nonprofit groups found to be inciting “treason, insurrection and seditious conspiracy, as provided,” would lose their tax-exempt status.

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What this means in practice is that nonprofit groups would self-censor to align with whatever the Department of Homeland Security says is acceptable speech, avoiding any topics that might incur the wrath of the Disinformation Governance Board.

And that’s how the Biden administration could regulate and control speech in the United States. People who don’t want to lose their professional license or the tax-exempt status of their nonprofit organization will go along or they’ll go away.

Galileo died in his home in 1642 at the age of 77, under house arrest for the heresy of being right when the government was wrong.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Write Susan at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley.