Whack-a-Mole stops Jan. 20th
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Cleaning day at the Augean Stables
(Image created with X/Grok - fun tool)
As predicted here on December 26th because, for Congress, Christmas never ends.
Here’s what we posted then:
Created in 2020 to fight COVID "disinformation", it's still going strong, $61 million budget and 120 govt. workers, who we can be sure will doubtless be reassigned and not fired
State Department's 'Global Engagement Center' accused of censoring Americans shuts its doors
The State Department’s foreign disinformation center, accused by conservatives of censoring U.S. citizens, shut its doors due to lack of funding this week.
Elon Musk had deemed the Global Engagement Center (GEC), established in 2016, the "worst offender in U.S. government censorship & media manipulation," and its funding was stripped as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the Pentagon’s yearly policy bill.
"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."
…. The agency had a budget of around $61 million and 120 people on staff.
…. The GEC, according to reporter Matt Taibbi, "funded a secret list of subcontractors and helped pioneer an insidious—and idiotic—new form of blacklisting" during the pandemic.
Taibbi wrote last year when exposing the Twitter Files 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.'" ZeroHedge had made reports speculating that the virus had a lab origin.
The GEC is part of the State Department but also partners with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Special Operations Command and the Department of Homeland Security. The GEC also funds the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab).
…. A 2024 report from the Republican-led House Small Business Committee criticized the GEC for awarding grants to organizations whose work includes tracking domestic as well as foreign misinformation and rating the credibility of U.S.-based publishers, according to the Washington Post.
And here’s what The Washington Examiner reported yesterday: State Department documents reveal secret plans to route ‘censorship’ office to new hub
Unlike the Examiner, the NY Post has no paywall, so I’ll use its summary (although personally, I do financially support the Examiner)
Biden admin ‘rebranding’ State Dept’s controversial Global Engagement Center under new name — with same employees: report
The State Department said it shut down the Global Engagement Center last month after Congress refused to reauthorize the agency.U.S. Department of State. The [State Department] plans to realign 51 employees and associated funding from the GEC to a proposed Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) Hub reporting to the Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy (R),” read a notification letter sent to congressional lawmakers on Dec. 6, according to the Washington Examiner.
The planning document indicated that $29.4 million in GEC funding would be shifted to the new office.
The letter noted that the remaining GEC employees and funding would be sent over to the Bureaus of African Affairs, East Asian and Pacific Affairs, European and Eurasian Affairs, and other offices.
The plan to establish a new “information manipulation” hub at the State Department is expected to trigger congressional investigations, the outlet reported.
“[President-elect] Donald Trump and [Secretary of State-designate] Marco Rubio are going to have to track every single office, down to every single staffer, if they want to end the weaponization of the federal government against conservatives,” a senior GOP aide said of the GEC shift.
“The State Department is filled with Resistance Democrats who think they got through the first Trump administration and will get through the second the same way,” the aide added.
