Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the United States State Department for conspiring to silence conservative media publications.
Paxton — a co-plaintiff in the lawsuit along with The Daily Wire and The Federalist — proclaimed that President Joe Biden’s administration infringed upon the First Amendment rights of Americans via the Global Engagement Center (GEC) to suppress constitutionally protected speech. Paxton described the censorship as “one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation.” He iterated his intentions to protect the free speech rights of all Americans from federal government tyranny.
According to a press release on Paxton’s website, the plaintiffs allege that the GEC abused authority given by Congress in order to limit the reach of domestic publications under the guise of “counter[ing] foreign propaganda and misinformation.” The plaintiffs argued that right-leaning publications were arbitrarily labeled as “unreliable” or “risky” by the GEC, which slashed the advertising revenue of the publications.
“I am proud to lead the fight to save Americans’ precious constitutional rights from Joe Biden’s tyrannical federal government,” said 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 New Civil Liberties Alliance (“NCLA”), serving as co-counsel, also alleged that the censorship is a violation of the First Amendment, according to the press release.
“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,” said NCLA president and general counsel Mark Chenoweth..
MRC Free Speech America has extensively monitored the blacklisting of right-leaning media sites that was reported by The Washington Times. MRC Free Speech America reported in July on House Republicans efforts to cut off taxpayer funding for the GEC.
The first bill, introduced by Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL), would prohibit the State Department from “partner[ing] with or fund[ing] nonprofit or other organizations that pressure or recommend private companies to censor, filter, or otherwise suppress lawful and constitutionally protected speech of United States persons, including recommending the censoring or removal of content on social media platforms.”
A second bill, introduced by Rep. David P. Joyce (R-OH), would prevent the Department of Homeland Security from “censor[ing] lawful and constitutionally protected speech of United States persons.”
You can read the full legal complaint by Paxton and the co-plaintiffs here.
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