Under a proposed settlement announced Wednesday, the State Department would be prohibited from using technology tools to suppress speech online or working with foreign governments to do so.
According to Reuters, the historic settlement would not only end the ability of the State Department from using tools to “deplatform … disfavored” news outlets under a consent decree, it would prohibit the department from working with foreign governments or non-governmental organizations to do so through 2036.
While the settlement needs to be approved by a judge, the wire service noted that if it goes through, the settlement means Foggy Bottom will not be “allowed to use, finance or promote technology that would be used to suppress, censor, demonetize or fact-check free speech of Americans or domestic media outlets.”
“The prohibitions, reporting, and training required by the consent decree will protect free speech for well more than the decade that the decree is in force,” said Zhonette Brown, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, the New Civil Liberties Alliance.
The move comes one week after President Donald Trump’s administration moved to settle a similar lawsuit that barred other agencies — in particular, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — from using influence to pressure social media companies to remove speech.
That speech had to do mostly with issues surrounding COVID-19, including disease origins and vaccine efficacy. This suit was broader, touching on issues of election integrity, so-called “foreign” disinformation, or simply disfavored viewpoints.
The suit originated in 2023 and was filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton along with conservative media companies The Daily Wire and The Federalist.
The plaintiffs alleged that the government, particularly under President Joe Biden’s administration, worked with the State Department’s Global Engagement Center to censor certain speech online.
The Global Engagement Center, which was intended to counter “propaganda and disinformation” from foreign sources, was disbanded under the second Trump administration after widespread allegations of overreach.
“Whatever name it goes by, GEC is dead. It will not return,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote in an April 2025 Op-Ed published by The Federalist.
“Over the past half-decade, bodies like GEC, crafted by our own governing ruling class, nearly destroyed America’s long free speech history. The enemies of speech had new lingo to justify their authoritarian impulse. It was ‘disinformation,’ allegedly pushed by nefarious foreign governments, that was the No. 1 threat to ‘our democracy.’ To protect ‘our democracy,’ this ‘disinformation’ had to be identified and stamped out.”
A March 2023 piece by independent journalist Matt Taibbi, as part of the so-called “Twitter Files,” chronicled just how deeply the GEC was involved in pressuring social media companies to comply with its demands. When employees of social media companies pushed back, Taibbi found, GEC often went to friendly media sources to create a scare in order to pressure compliance from outside the government.
“GEC has doubled their budget by aggressively overstating threats through unverified accusations that can’t be replicated either by external academics or by Twitter,” one Twitter employee wrote.
Taibbi noted that he found “5500 names GEC told Twitter it believed were ‘Chinese… accounts’ engaged in ‘state-backed coordinated manipulation.’ It takes about negative ten seconds to find non-Chinese figures.
“GEC’s ‘Chinese’ list included multiple Western government accounts and at least three CNN employees based abroad,” he added.
While the Biden administration had fought the lawsuit hard, calling the claims of the plaintiffs “hyperbolic,” the Trump administration’s State Department sought to come to a resolution with the plaintiffs.
The lawsuit had revealed that federal funding was used to promote at least 300 tools that the State Department claimed were used for “countering propaganda and disinformation,” but were mostly used on domestic outlets or individuals, the NCLA said.
“It is inconceivable that the State Department spent millions of taxpayer dollars to silence and censor domestic news media for expressing viewpoints with which the last administration disagreed,” said Peggy Little, senior litigation counsel with the NCLA, in a statement. “This settlement is a resounding victory for the First Amendment—and for the rule of law.”
“Today marks an important day for preserving free speech in the digital era,” said Caleb Robinson, CEO of the Daily Wire.
“The U.S. Government has acknowledged its censorship structures under the Biden Administration, and will now be subject to limitations on similar behavior in the future. We’re grateful to NCLA for representing us, and I also appreciate our co-plaintiffs’ efforts in this landmark case. We’re proud to join them in the fight for freedom.”
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