The State of Texas and two media outlets submitted a motion to a district court to halt the U.S. government’s unconstitutional “censorship scheme” while the case is being heard.
According to the motion, the litigants petitioned the court to immediately stop the Biden administration and top officials from sponsoring or encouraging “the development or use of technology that targets in whole, or in part, Americans’ speech or the American press.”
The Daily Wire, the Federalist, and the State of Texas filed a lawsuit in December 2023 alleging that the State Department violated the First Amendment by awarding funds to the Global Disinformation Index, a British think tank, and NewsGuard, a media watchdog that seeks to defund news outlets that express views contrary to state narratives.
Both organizations send advertisers ‘blacklists’ of conservative websites to silence or suppress their speech under the pretense that they are fighting “misinformation” online.
“The U.S. Department of State through its Global Engagement Center is actively intervening in the news-media market to limit the reach of, the circulation of, and render unprofitable, disfavored press outlets by funding the infrastructure, development, and marketing and promotion of censorship technology and private censorship enterprises to covertly suppress speech of a segment of the American press,” said a motion.
The plaintiffs’ efforts to combat what they described in a filing last year as “the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation” come as House Republicans continue to press the State Department to provide grant records as part of their broader “censorship” investigation.
Meanwhile, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) subpoenaed the National Science Foundation on Tuesday for documents related to the committee’s investigation into “how the federal government has pressured and colluded with Big Tech and other intermediaries to censor certain viewpoints on social media in ways that undermine First Amendment principles.”
“This interim report details the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) funding of AI powered censorship and propaganda tools, and its repeated efforts to hide its actions and avoid political and media scrutiny,” the report states.
“In the name of combatting alleged misinformation regarding COVID-19 and the 2020 election, NSF has been issuing multi-million-dollar grants to university and non-profit research teams. The purpose of these taxpayer-funded projects is to develop artificial intelligence (AI)- powered censorship and propaganda tools that can be used by governments and Big Tech to shape public opinion by restricting certain viewpoints or promoting others,” the report adds.
The report cites the Speaker’s notes from the University of Michigan’s first pitch to the National Science Foundation about its NSF-funded, AI-powered WiseDex tool.
“Our misinformation service helps policy makers at platforms who want to… push responsibility for difficult judgments to someone outside the company… by externalizing the difficult responsibility of censorship,” the statement reads.
The Congressional report reveals the censorship and propaganda tools, universities and non-profits, as well as Big Tech companies involved in the mass censorship campaign.
