WASHINGTON, DC—The Global Engagement Center (GEC) was established in 2016 to track foreign “disinformation.” Conservatives, however, accuse the State Department-based agency of censoring U.S. citizens. Now, Fox News Digital reports that the GEC has been shut down due to a lack of funding.
Trump adviser Elon Musk had deemed the agency the “worst offender in U.S. government censorship and media manipulation.” Last week, the agency's funding was stripped as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which funds the Pentagon annually.
“The Global Engagement Center will terminate by operation of law [by the end of the day] on December 23, 2024,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement. “The Department of State has consulted with Congress regarding next steps.”
While Congress had initially funded the agency in their continuing resolution to fund the government, conservatives complained about that form of the funding bill, and it was resubmitted without money for the GEC and other funding riders. The agency had a budget of approximately $61 million and employed 120 people.
Republicans said the agency provided little value as Russia and Iran lead the world in delivering disinformation and believe that the private sector already offers much of that information at no cost to the government.
Independent journalist Matt Taibbi alleges the GEC ‘funded a secret list of subcontractors and helped pioneer an insidious–and idiotic–form of blacklisting” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last year, during his Twitter Files expose, Taibbi wrote that the GEC “flagged accounts as ‘Russian personas and proxies’ based on criteria like ‘Describing the Coronavirus as an engineered bioweapon,’ blaming ‘research conducted at the Wuhan Institute,’ and ‘attributing the appearance of the virus to the CIA.’”
“State also flagged accounts that retweeted news that Twitter banned the popular U.S. website ZeroHedge, claiming that it ‘led to another flurry of disinformation narratives.’” That was in response to the outlet publishing reports claiming the virus originated in a Chinese lab.
While the GEC is under the State Department, it also partners with the FBI, CIA, NSA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Special Operations Command, and the Department of Homeland Security. The department also funds the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab).
DFRLab Director Graham Brookie has denied claims they use tax money to track Americans, insisting that GEC grants have “an exclusively international focus.”
Meanwhile, a 2024 report from the Republican-led House Small Business Committee slammed the GEC for awarding grants to organizations that track domestic and foreign misinformation, Fox News wrote, and rating the credibility of U.S.-based publishers, the Washington Post wrote.
A lawsuit was filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, The Daily Wire, and The Federalist against the State Department, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and other government officials earlier this month, alleging they engaged “in a conspiracy to censor, deplatform, and demonetize American media outlets disfavored by the federal government.”
The lawsuit alleges the defendants used the GEC to facilitate censorship.
“Congres authorized the creation of the Global Engagement Center expressly to counter foreign propaganda and misinformation,” Paxton’s office said in a press release. “Instead, the agency weaponized this authority to violate the First Amendment and suppress Americans’ constitutionally-protected speech.”
The lawsuit calls the GEC “one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation.”
The GEC, the lawsuit alleges, branded The Daily Wire, The Federalist, and other conservative news organizations “unreliable” or “risky,” “starving them of advertising revenue and reducing the circulation of their reporting and speech–all as a direct result of [the State Department’s] unlawful censorship scheme.”
America First Legal, meanwhile, headed by Stephen Miller, President-elect Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff for policy, says that the GEC used taxpayer dollars to develop a video game called “Cat Park,” intended to “Inoculate Youth Against Disinformation” abroad.
AFL alleges that the game “inoculates players…by showing how sensational headlines, memes, and manipulated media can be used to advance conspiracy theories and incite real-world violence,” a memo obtained by AFL reads
The Tennessee Star reported that Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, called Cat Park “anti-populist” and promoted certain political beliefs instead of protecting Americans from disinformation.
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