State Department Agrees to Landmark Settlement with Daily Wire, Ending Government-Backed Censorship Effort
The settlement requires the department to dismantle its remaining censorship infrastructure and submit to 10 years of independent oversight, with The Daily Wire and The Federalist serving as compliance monitors.
Tommy Flynn
WASHINGTON – The U.S. State Department has reached a binding consent decree with The Daily Wire and co-plaintiff The Federalist, ending a 2023 lawsuit alleging the department funded and promoted censorship tools that targeted conservative media outlets for demonetization and suppression.
A federal judge in Texas entered the decree on April 1, 2026. Under the agreement, the State Department is permanently barred from using, funding, or promoting technologies or programs that knowingly suppress, censor, demonetize, or downgrade constitutionally protected speech by Americans or domestic news organizations. It may no longer label U.S. media outlets as “disinformation” or support third-party blacklists that harm their advertising revenue.
The settlement requires the department to dismantle its remaining censorship infrastructure and submit to 10 years of independent oversight, with The Daily Wire and The Federalist serving as compliance monitors. The State Department must provide annual reports on its activities, conduct mandatory First Amendment training for employees in 2030 and 2035, and face direct enforcement by the Texas federal judge if it violates any term. The decree binds future administrations and cannot be dissolved unilaterally.
The original lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of Texas, accused the State Department’s Global Engagement Center of funding and marketing tools such as NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index. Those organizations created blacklists that rated conservative outlets—including The Daily Wire and The Federalist—as high-risk for “misinformation,” leading to lost advertising dollars and reduced visibility. The suit argued this indirect censorship violated the First Amendment by using taxpayer funds and third parties to punish disfavored viewpoints on topics including COVID-19, elections, and gender issues.
The Daily Wire’s CEO Caleb Robinson called the settlement “an important day for preserving free speech in the digital era,” noting the government has now formally acknowledged it cannot target American media for viewpoint-based suppression. Co-founder Ben Shapiro highlighted how the blacklists deprived outlets of millions in revenue. Andrew Klavan described it as “a major step in preserving the most precious right we have.”
The victory follows the Trump administration’s earlier decision to shutter the Global Engagement Center and lay off its staff. The consent decree formalizes those reforms and extends protections against similar efforts in the future.
Legal experts view the outcome as one of the most significant restraints ever placed on federal involvement in domestic speech, creating enforceable limits that apply across administrations and reinforcing that the government cannot outsource censorship to private companies.