A brand new lawsuit has been filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, along with three other individuals, alleging that the State Department under President Joe Biden’s leadership worked to ensure the censorship of conservative points of view on the Internet. This kind of censorship has been going on for some time, though, thankfully, billionaire Elon Musk bought out Twitter, transformed it into X, and has been working to improve the platform that allows folks to share information, thoughts, beliefs, and ideas with others across the world.
According to the Newsmax:
Paxton’s office joined the nonprofit New Civil Liberties Alliance, as well as the publications The Daily Wire and The Federalist, in the lawsuit filed Wednesday.
The group pointed out that the State Department’s Global Engagement Center funded the Global Disinformation Index, a third-party group that organizes an “exclusion list” of “disinformation” spreaders. Records unveiled by the House Judiciary Committee also showed that the GEC worked with the Election Integrity Partnership, another third party, to regulate speech ahead of the 2020 election.
Earlier this year, Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy called out groups like GDI and EIP — notably NewsGuard — for presenting as independent while disproportionally targeting conservatives.
“All the liberal sites like CNN and New York Times get great scores no matter what they do,” Ruddy remarked during his address at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference.
“Think about what CNN did — all the problems, the scandals, the Cuomos, the Russian collusion — and they’re among the highest-rated by NewsGuard,” he continued.
The new lawsuit crafts an argument similar to that one, however, it also goes a bit beyond that by accusing the GEC of violating the First Amendment and acting outside of its authority by doing their best to silence various right-leaning outlets.
“Defendants have been granted no statutory authority to fund or promote censorship technology or censorship enterprises that target the American press,” the suit states. “There is no enumerated general power to censor speech or the press found in the United States Constitution, and the First Amendment expressly forbids it.”
The fight against censorship is critical to the survival of our republic. Americans need to have the right to speak their minds, share information, and organize action through the digital public square of the day, which consists of social media outlets such as Facebook and X/Twitter. And that’s precisely why the radical left is trying its best to slap some digital duct tape across the mouths of the their political opposition.
Elon Musk, who owns X/Twitter, put out a warning just a month ago about NewsGuard.
“NewsGuard is about to publish a ‘report’ on misinformation on X. As a for-profit company, they will only share the data that underpins their purported research if you pay,” X stated.
Musk is also leading a lawsuitagainst Media Matters for America, a social media watchdog, for allegedly distorting data in an effort to dissuade advertisers from advertising their products on X.
The First Amendment is the bedrock of our republic. Without it, we have nothing.
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