The GOP has eliminated a critical government agency fighting disinformation just in time for Trump’s second term.
The State Department’s Global Engagement Center, responsible for leading efforts to combat foreign disinformation, was shut down this week after Republican lawmakers at the last minute removed its funding from the spending bill to avert a government shutdown.
The GEC is a spin-off of an Obama-era creation, the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications. Obama signed an executive order to make the GEC an official body in 2016. Since then, the center has tracked things like Russian and Chinese Covid-19 conspiracy theories and accused the Kremlin of trying to destabilize U.S. influence domestically and abroad.
But the GEC has been under fire since billionaire Elon Musk called it “the worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation.” Shortly after that, Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee members began to call for its closure, claiming that it was censoring conservative voices and choosing to partner with liberal NGOs.
The effort to close the GEC, which only has a $60 million budget, is deeply troubling in a time of deeply pervasive misinformation.
“[The GEC] has played an indispensable role in combating Russian and Chinese disinformation,” Senator Chris Murphy said in October while trying to save the center. “It would unnecessarily undermine U.S. national security if we eliminated this tool.”
