June 4, 2021

Facebook Will Extend Trump Ban Until at Least 2023

President Donald Trump gives a final wave as he boards Marine One before departing the White House for the last time on January 20. Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images

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Donald Trump will not be making a triumphant return to Facebook and Instagram anytime soon. Facebook announced Friday that Trump’s ban will last until at least January 2023. At that point, the company says, it will reassess whether to let the former president back onto its platform.

The social media giant blocked Trump from posting to Facebook and Instagram indefinitely on January 7, after he used the platform to incite the January 6 US Capitol insurrection. It then referred that decision to its new Oversight Board, a panel of independent human rights experts, to decide Trump’s fate on the platform. But last month, the Oversight Board tossed the decision back to Facebook. 

“At the end of this period, we will look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded,” Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president for global affairs, wrote in announcing the company’s decision. “We will evaluate external factors, including instances of violence, restrictions on peaceful assembly and other markers of civil unrest. If we determine that there is still a serious risk to public safety, we will extend the restriction for a set period of time and continue to re-evaluate until that risk has receded.”

Pushing Trump’s possible return to January 2023 means that the former president will not be able to post to Facebook or Instagram during the 2022 midterm election cycle, likely blunting his ability to influence those elections.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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