The Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton announced that he has filed a lawsuit against the State Department, its head, Antony Blinken, and other senior agency officials for "engaging in a conspiracy to censor, deplatform, and demonetize American media outlets disfavored by the federal government." In the complaint, the Texas Attorney General's Office, The Daily Wire and The Federalist, indicate that Blinken and his team instrumentalized the Global Engagement Center "to limit the reach and business viability of domestic news organizations by funding censorship technology and private censorship enterprises."
🚨 BREAKING: Today, I’m suing the US State Dept. I am proud to lead the fight to save Americans’ constitutional rights from Joe Biden’s tyrannical government. The State Department’s mission to obliterate the 1st amendment is completely un-American. This agency will not get away… https://t.co/6u323hjaEg
— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) December 6, 2023
"One of the most atrocious government press censorship operations"
In a press release, Paxton stressed that this agency, whose creation was approved by Congress "expressly for counter foreign propaganda and disinformation," has done exactly the opposite under Biden. Instead, "the agency weaponized this authority to violate the First Amendment and suppress Americans’ constitutionally-protected speech. The complaint describes the State Department’s project as 'one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation.'"
I am proud to lead the fight to save Americans’ precious constitutional rights from Joe Biden’s tyrannical federal government,” said Attorney General 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.
"Unreliable" or "risky" labels for critical media
The lawsuit sets out how "The Daily Wire, The Federalist and others conservative news organizations were "branded ‘unreliable’ or ‘risky’ by the government-funded and government-promoted censorship enterprises starving them of advertising revenue and reducing the circulation of their reporting and speech—all as a direct result of [the State Department’s] unlawful censorship scheme."
Together with the Texas Prosecutor's Office, the New Civil Liberties Alliance organization will be in charge of the legal part. The president of this entity, Mark Chenoweth, noted that "The federal government cannot do indirectly what the First Amendment forbids it from doing directly. The chilling censorship machinations alleged in this complaint will frighten all liberty-loving Americans to the core."
