The State Department’s foreign disinformation center, accused by conservatives of censoring American citizens, shuttered its doors because of lack of funding this week.
Elon Musk had deemed the Global Engagement Center (GEC), founded in 2016, the “worst offender in U.S. government censorship & media manipulation,” and the funding was stripped as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the yearly policy bill of the Pentagon.
“The Global Engagement Center will terminate by operation of law [by the end of the day] on December 23, 2024,” said a spokesperson from the State Department in a statement. “The Department of State has consulted with Congress regarding next steps.”
Legislators had originally included funding for the GEC in their continuing resolution (CR), or legislation to fund the government past a Friday deadline. However, conservatives balked at that iteration of the funding bill, and it was rewritten without money for the GEC and additional funding riders. The agency had a budget of about $61 million and 120 employees.
At a time when adversaries like Russia and Iran sow disinformation around the world, Republicans saw little value in the work of the agency, arguing that much of its disinformation analysis is already offered in the private sector. According to reporter Matt Taibbi, the GEC “funded a secret list of subcontractors and helped pioneer an insidious — and idiotic — new form of blacklisting” during the pandemic.
Last year, Taibbi wrote 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 has made reports that speculate the virus had a lab origin.
The GEC is part of the State Department. However, it also partners with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency, the Defense Advanced Projects Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Special Operations Command. The GEC additionally funds the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab). DFRLab Director Graham Brookie denied the claim previously that they use tax money to track Americans, saying its GEC grants have “an exclusively international focus.”
According to the Washington Post, a report from 2025 by the GOP-led House Small Business Committee criticized the GEC for awarding grants to organizations whose work includes tracking domestic and foreign misinformation and rating the credibility of American-based publishers.
The lawsuit was brought by Ken Paxton, Texas Attorney General, The Daily Wire, and The Federalist, who earlier in the month sued Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the State Department, and other government officials for “engaging in a conspiracy to censor, deplatform and demonetize American media outlets disfavored by the federal government.”
Lawsuit stated that GEC was used as a tool for defendants to continue censorship
The lawsuit stated the GEC was used as a tool for the defendants to continue its censorship.
“Congress authorized the creation of the Global Engagement Center expressly to counter foreign propaganda and misinformation,” said the Texas Attorney General’s Office in a press release. “Instead, the agency weaponized this authority to violate the First Amendment and suppress Americans’ speech, which is constitutionally protected.
The complaint describes the project from the State Department as “one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation.”
The lawsuit argued The Daily Wire, The Federalist, and other conservative news organizations were branded “risk” or “unreliable” by the agency, “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.”
In the meantime, America First Legal, led by Stephen Miller, President-elect Trump’s choice for deputy chief of staff for policy, revealed the GEC had used taxpayer dollars to create a video game called “Cat Park” to “Inoculate Youth Against Disinformation” internationally.
According to a memo obtained by America First Legal, 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. “
Executive director at the Foundation for Freedom Online, Mike Benz, said the game was “anti-populist” and pushed specific political beliefs instead of protecting Americans from foreign disinformation, according to the Tennessee Star.
