According to the legal filing, plaintiffs are seeking to redress “one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation,” adding that the government’s actions are “one of the most audacious, manipulative, secretive, and gravest abuses of power and infringements of First Amendment rights” in U.S. history. The State Department has been working through its Global Engagement Center (GEC) to covertly suppress speech of some news outlets to make disfavored media companies unprofitable, the suit alleges. While the lawsuit warns that “the full breadth of [the GEC’s] censorship scheme is currently unknown,” two “American censorship enterprises” are named as tools the government uses to target media companies: Global Disinformation Index (GDI) and NewsGuard Technologies. The lawsuit states:The State of Texas is joining two media companies — The Daily Wire and The Federalist — in a censorship lawsuit filed on Dec. 5 against the U.S. State Department, which the suit alleges violated the U.S. Constitution by funding technology to silence Americans who question government narratives.
These entities generate blacklists of ostensibly risky or unreliable American news outlets for the purpose of discrediting and demonetizing the disfavored press and redirecting money and audiences to news organizations that publish favored viewpoints. Media Plaintiffs are branded “unreliable” or “risky” by the government-funded and government-promoted censorship enterprises of GDI and NewsGuard, injuring Media Plaintiffs by starving them of advertising revenue and reducing the circulation of their reporting and speech —all as a direct result of Defendants’ unlawful censorship scheme. GDI’s main product is a “Dynamic Exclusion List” of media companies it says present a “high risk for disinformation,” The Daily Wire explained. That list is licensed to advertisers who use it as a means to avoid boycotts from left-wing activists. GDI keeps its primary blacklist secret, but published a list of what it considers top 10 “riskiest” news outlets, which included The Daily Wire and The Federalist. NewsGuard also compiles a list of press outlets it deems “unreliable,” recently admitting in writing that it was licensing its “white list of legitimate news sites to advertisers, which will cut off revenues” of disfavored news organizations, as detailed in the lawsuit. “These censorship-by-risk-rating technologies and entities discriminate against the press based on content and viewpoint and function to silence opposing views, including those of the Media’s Plaintiffs,” the legal filing explains. The Texas Attorney General’s Office says that Congress authorized the creation of the GEC to counter foreign propaganda, but the agency has been weaponed and used to violate the First Amendment by suppressing constitutionally protected speech. “I am proud to lead the fight to save Americans’ precious constitutional rights from Joe Biden’s tyrannical federal government,” said Attorney General Ken Paxton. “The State Department’s mission to obliterate the First Amendment is completely un-American. This agency will not get away with their illegal campaign to silence citizens and publications they disagree with.” The lawsuit comes as lawmakers consider an amendment to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would prevent the Defense Department from contracting with the GDI, NewsGuard, or any other organization that advises censorship or blacklisting of news sources based on subjective criteria or political leanings. “Today is the beginning of the end of the federal government’s ongoing efforts to destroy our free speech rights,” said Sean Davis, CEO and co-founder of The Federalist. “Every last person involved in the illegal conspiracy to use the power of government to trample our First Amendment rights better buckle up, because we are not going to stop until the entire censorship-industrial complex is on the ash heap of history.” Multiple investigations over the past year have laid bare the shocking extent to which the U.S. government was used to censor American citizens, including the Twitter Files, findings from the U.S. House Oversight Committee, and a report from the House Judiciary Committee. Congressional investigations found that federal officials specifically targeted The Federalist’s reporting for internet censorship.
