Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a memorandum in support of a preliminary injunction against the Biden Administration’s censorship apparatus used to silence and disparage American media companies it disagrees with.
In December 2023, Attorney General Paxton, alongside The Daily Wire and The Federalist, sued the U.S. Department of State, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and other government officials for conspiring to censor, deplatform, and demonetize American media outlets the federal government disfavored. This censorship scheme misappropriated tax dollars and violated Texas law requiring social media companies to act as common carriers.
The filing explains the federal government “converted State Department resources and tools of warfare—information warfare—which were developed in the context of national security, foreign relations, and to combat American adversaries abroad, to use at home against domestic political opponents and members of the American press with viewpoints conflicting with federal officials holding the reins of this unlawful administrative power.”
“I am proud to lead the fight to save American’s 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.”
The New Civil Liberties Alliance (“NCLA”) is serving as co-counsel. Mark Chenoweth, NCLA president and general counsel, said: “The State Department supposedly developed these speech-suppressing technologies to combat foreign propaganda overseas. That the federal government now sees fit to wield these weapons—or put them in others’ hands to wield—against American citizens and stateside media outlets is as frightening as it is forbidden.”
This motion asks the court, while it considers the case, to stop the Biden Administration from continuing to research, assess, fund, test, market, promote, host on its government platform, or otherwise assist with the development and use of technology that targets free speech and the American press.
Original source can be found here.