The continuing resolution (CR) bill currently being hammered out among lawmakers on Capitol Hill is provoking outrage over the pork that the legislation has been packed with.
Buried in the 1,547-page, $110 billion omnibus bill masquerading as a continuing resolution is taxpayer funding for a State Department agency that was exposed for censoring and blacklisting American citizens and news outlets.
Refunding for the Global Engagement Center (GEC) has been included on page 139 of the CR bill.
Lawmakers have been given 19 hours to review all 1,547 pages of the bill before voting on it.
Although it doesn’t specify its budget allocation, a previous Inspector General report shows the agency’s FY 2020 budget totaled $74.26 million, of which $60 million was appropriated by Congress.
The provision in the CR can be found under “Foreign Affairs Section 301. Global Engagement Center Extension.”
It comes despite the State Department saying in response to a lawsuit that it intended to shut down the agency by next week.
The funding for the GEC was highlighted by Elon Musk in a post on X.
“They want to spend YOUR tax dollars on censoring YOU!!” Musk said.
They want to spend YOUR tax dollars on censorsing YOU!! https://t.co/zb4xPXMGvC
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2024
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.
While exposing the Twitter Files, Taibbi wrote last year 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 it ‘led to another flurry of disinformation narratives.'”
ZeroHedge had accurately reported that the virus may have originally leaked from a lab.
Musk previously described the GEC as being the “worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation.”
“They are a threat to our democracy,” Musk wrote in a subsequent post.
The GEC is part of the State Department but also partners with the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency (NSA), 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).
Taibbi offered various instances in which the DFRLab and the GEC sent Twitter a list of accounts they believed were engaged in “state-backed coordinated manipulation.”
However, a quick glance from Twitter employees determined that the list was suspicious.
They found that the list included the accounts of multiple American citizens with seemingly no connection to the foreign entity in question.
Those accounts had appeared to post opinions that conflicted with the Democrats’ agenda.
DFRLab Director Graham Brookie previously denied the claim that they use taxpayer money to track Americans.
Brookie said the GEC grants have “an exclusively international focus.”
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.
In response to a lawsuit, the State Department said it intended to shut down the agency on December 23.
However, the CR provision means the GEC will continue to operate if the bill is passed.
The lawsuit was brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Daily Wire, and the Federalist.
They sued the State Department, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and other government officials earlier this month for “engaging in a conspiracy to censor, deplatform, and demonetize American media outlets disfavored by the federal government.”
The lawsuit stated that the GEC was used as a tool for the defendants to censor their critics.
In a press release, the Texas Attorney General’s Office said:
“Congress authorized the creation of the Global Engagement Center expressly to counter foreign propaganda and misinformation.
“Instead, the agency weaponized this authority to violate the First Amendment and suppress Americans’ constitutionally-protected speech.”
The complaint describes the State Department’s project as “one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation.’”
The lawsuit argued that The Daily Wire, The Federalist, and other conservative news organizations, including Slay News, were branded “unreliable” or “risky” by the agency.
This blacklisting has been “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,” the lawsuit notes.
Meanwhile, America First Legal (AFL) revealed that the GEC used taxpayer dollars to create a video game called “Cat Park” to “Inoculate Youth Against Disinformation” abroad.
AFL is headed up by Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s pick for deputy chief of staff for policy.
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,” according to a memo obtained by AFL.
According to the Tennessee Star, Mike Benz, the executive director at the Foundation For Freedom Online, said the game was “anti-populist.”
The game pushed certain political beliefs instead of protecting Americans from foreign disinformation.
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