A pair of conservative media outlets are accusing the State Department in a new lawsuit of funding an unconstitutional "censorship scheme" suppressing voices on the Right, according to a complaint.

The lawsuit, which counts Texas as a plaintiff, was filed Tuesday by the New Civil Liberties Alliance on behalf of the Daily Wire and the Federalist in the Lone Star State's U.S. District Court for the Eastern District. It charges the State Department and top officials with "one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation," citing two groups that received grants or contracts from the agency's Global Engagement Center: NewsGuard, which rates the "misinformation" levels of news outlets, and the Global Disinformation Index, a British think tank revealed through a Washington Examiner investigation to be covertly feeding blacklists of conservative websites to advertisers in order to shut down disfavored speech.

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"Today is the beginning of the end of the federal government’s ongoing efforts to destroy our free speech rights," Sean Davis, CEO of the Federalist, said. "Every last person involved in the illegal conspiracy to use the power of government to trample our First Amendment rights better buckle up because we are not going to stop until the entire censorship-industrial complex is on the ash heap of history."

The Daily Wire said in a statement: “The Biden administration is illegally funding organizations with the stated goal of financially crippling media outlets whose coverage does not walk in lockstep with the government’s ideological agenda. We sued the Biden administration before over its unconstitutional vaccine mandate, and we won. This time, we’re suing for our rights, all news organizations’ rights, and the constitutional guarantee of a free press that all Americans deserve."

The First Amendment lawsuit comes as Congress mulls a provision through the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act that would prohibit the Defense Department from contracting with the Global Disinformation Index, NewsGuard, and other groups that "advise the censorship or blacklisting of news sources based on subjective criteria or political biases, under the stated function of 'fact checking' or otherwise removing 'misinformation," documents show. The Daily Wire and the Federalist's lawsuit heavily focuses on Disinfo Cloud, an unclassified and defunct platform through the Global Engagement Center that the outlets say was an "alter ego" of the U.S. government to "fund censorship technology."

The Daily Wire, which was co-founded by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro and film director Jeremy Boreing, was one of the outlets identified by the Washington Examiner in February as being on the Global Disinformation Index's list of the 10 "riskiest" news outlets for alleged disinformation. So, too, was the Federalist, which was co-founded by Davis and writer Ben Domenech, now editor-at-large of the Spectator World.

In 2021, the Global Disinformation Index was granted $100,000 from the Global Engagement Center through an investment group called Park Advisors in connection to the U.S.-Paris Tech Challenge, which sought "to advance the development of promising and innovative technologies against disinformation and propaganda" overseas, according to documents. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and other GOP-led congressional committees pressed the Global Engagement Center for answers this year over the funding — though the Global Engagement Center has insisted the $100,000 was for programs in East Asia and Europe.

"What is frustrating is that Kamensky himself said on the Laura Ingram show that there is no evidence that the GEC money was used for anything other than our award," a State Department employee, whose name was redacted in emails obtained by the Washington Examiner through the Freedom of Information Act, wrote to colleagues on Feb. 16.

Still, lawmakers and First Amendment lawyers have argued money is "fungible," and they've taken aim at the federal government for supporting the Global Disinformation Index in the first place. The National Endowment for Democracy, a nonprofit group heavily funded by the State Department, also granted roughly $860,000 between 2020 and 2022 to the Global Disinformation Index, the Washington Examiner reported. In late February, the endowment announced it would no longer fund the Global Disinformation Index "to avoid the perception" it is "engaged in any work domestically, directly or indirectly," since the endowment's mission is to "work around the world and not in the United States."

Oracle, which announced a collaboration with the Global Disinformation Index in 2021, cut ties with the British think tank in April over "free speech" concerns, the Washington Examiner reported. Microsoft's Xandr, an advertising subsidiary, announced an internal investigation into its relationship with the Global Disinformation Index in February, though it later stonewalled on providing any details or updates about the review.

"GDI, which created and champions its Dynamic Exclusion List, was funded and promoted by the State Department Defendants, and this list operates to defund, deplatform, and discredit American news outlets, including, upon information and belief, Media Plaintiffs," the lawsuit stated.

"NewsGuard and GDI’s blacklists reduce Media Plaintiffs’ revenue, and upon information and belief, their visibility on social media, and ranking results from browser searches, thereby reducing their circulation, readership, and reach, and otherwise negatively impacting their operations," the lawsuit, which also names Secretary of State Antony Blinken, GEC coordinator James Rubin, and other officials in their government capacity, says.

Then there's NewsGuard, which the conservative media outlets said in the lawsuit ranks them as "unreliable" media outlets.

NewsGuard has come under heightened scrutiny this year from the GOP for allegedly targeting disfavored speech and, along with the Global Disinformation Index, was at the center of a letter in late November that the Free Speech Alliance, which includes conservative groups, sent to Congress pressing it to pass the NDAA ban provision.

In 2020, NewsGuard was awarded $25,000 from the Global Engagement Center to provide its "Misinformation Fingerprints database to a joint Global Engagement Center-Pentagon program to 'pre-bunk' Russian and Chinese disinformation campaigns targeting Americans and our allies with false claims," NewsGuard co-CEO Gordon Crovitz told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday.

"Defendant State Department, through Disinfo Cloud, promoted the censorship technology and software of, among others, GDI, NewsGuard, PeakMetrics, and Omelas: Upon information and belief, said entities are either American companies or operate through a related American entity, and they all offer technology that targets the speech of Americans, in America, published to and for Americans," the conservative outlets alleged in the lawsuit.

According to federal records, NewsGuard was also given nearly $750,000 in 2021 by the Pentagon to allow the agency to license its data. In March, Crovitz notably rejected to journalist Matt Taibbi that NewsGuard was "U.S. government funded," emails show. Margot Cleveland, a writer for the Federalist who also is of counsel for the nonprofit group representing the outlet and the Daily Wire in the new lawsuit, reported in March on NewsGuard's license agreement with the U.S. government.

In 2022, NewsGuard was also awarded $50,000 from the Global Engagement Center to lend its technology "to track how false Russian claims are picked up and promoted by propaganda operations run by the socialist government of Venezuela, including to spread these claims to other countries in Latin America," Crovitz told the Washington Examiner.

"The private actors whose censorship technology the State Department Defendants have funded, marketed, and promoted — in particular, GDI and NewsGuard, but also unknown and 47 untold others — have operated as willful participants in joint activity with the State Department Defendants to unconstitutionally censor the American press and Americans’ speech," the lawsuit stated. "Therefore, their conduct is imputed to the State Department Defendants as state action, as well."

The Washington Examiner reached out to the State Department and the Global Disinformation Index for comment. The Daily Wire and the Federalist are asking the court to declare the State Department's "censorship enterprises" to be "lacking statutory authority and exceeding constitutional authority" and in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law that lays out how agencies may propose new regulations.

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"I am proud to lead the fight to save Americans’ precious constitutional rights from Joe Biden’s tyrannical federal government," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement.

"The State Department’s mission to obliterate the First Amendment is completely un-American," Paxton, a Republican, added. "This agency will not get away with their illegal campaign to silence citizens and publications they disagree with."