Overview
- The State Department agreed Wednesday to a court-enforced consent decree that gives The Daily Wire and The Federalist oversight through 2036 to check compliance.
- The order bars the department and its agents from asking others to use electronic tools to suppress, censor, demonetize, or downgrade speech by Americans or U.S. outlets.
- Examples cited in the case include NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index, whose risk ratings steered advertisers away from targeted outlets and cut ad revenue.
- The decree requires yearly compliance reports and staff trainings in 2030 and 2035 on First Amendment limits, with enforcement available in federal court in Texas.
- The case grew from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which had promoted a catalog of “disinformation” tools known as Disinfo Cloud and later faced funding lapses in 2024 and an abolition push in 2025.