By Jacki Thrapp
The Department of Justice (DOJ) settled a lawsuit that accused the Biden administration of censoring speech by Americans and journalists with views that didn’t align with its agenda.
The initial lawsuit was filed by two right-leaning outlets—The Daily Wire and The Federalist—and the State of Texas. They alleged that the Democratic administration’s State Department was “actively intervening in the news-media market to render disfavored press outlets unprofitable.”
In the settlement signed on April 8, the State Department agreed it would not use its official website and resources to suppress, censor, demonetize, downgrade, or fact-check constitutionally protected speech.
Topics that were allegedly censored by former Secretary Antony Blinken’s State Department included abortion, election integrity, transgender ideology, the potential origins of COVID-19, the safety of vaccines, and how masks could cause harm.
“The Biden Administration muted speech it didn’t like,” Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. wrote in a statement on April 10 while reacting to the settlement.
“These settlements are yet another example of DOJ making good on President [Donald] Trump’s promise to end weaponization against ordinary Americans, ensuring all of our Nation’s citizens may speak freely,” Woodward added.
The State Department agreed it would work to request the removal of videos that the Biden administration used to label the plaintiffs “unreliable.”
The agency also said it would make federal employees attend training to learn about the legal limitations the First Amendment imposes in the calendar years of 2030 and 2035.
Lawyers for the defendants in the case argued that they did not violate any First Amendment rights and added that there was “no ongoing conduct by Defendants threatening Plaintiffs with an imminent, irreparable injury.”
“The weaponization of the Biden Administration against the American people who they disfavored is over,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Jan. 20, 2025, which ensured that the federal government was not allowed to act in a way that would “unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.”
In the order, Trump suggested that the “previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve.”
In April 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned the State Department’s actions under the former administration.
“We had an office in the Department of State whose job it was to censor Americans,” Rubio said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House, in reference to the Global Engagement Center.
The Epoch Times contacted the Office of Joe Biden for comment.
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