The State Department announced that it closed its Global Engagement Center, which has been accused of censorship.
“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. “The Department of State has consulted with Congress regarding next steps.”
The GEC had an annual budget of $61 million and has been under scrutiny from Republican members of Congress for its actions promoting censorship.
Last week, Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) demanded that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) end funding for the GEC. He wrote while the FEC was “originally established to combat foreign propaganda, the GEC has since mutated into a massive censorship machine designed to suppress narratives that question establishment thinking.”
The First Amendment is the bedrock of our society, and the federal government should never be funding institutions like the GEC, which seek to undermine such a core constitutional principle,” Schmitt added. “Under no circumstances should taxpayer dollars be funding the GEC, we owe that to the American people.”
In June, the House Small Business Committee served a subpoena to the State Department, ordering the agency to provide information on payments by its Global Engagement Center (GEC). The GEC reportedly granted $100,000 to the Global Disinformation Index.
According to the report, the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) has urged organizations to boycott right-leaning media groups. GDI deemed certain outlets unreliable due to so-called “disinformation.” The GDI is not designed to operate on American media sources, yet it censored, by proxy, outlets holding to a particular ideology.
