A new report from Open the Books details how the Biden administration spent more than a quarter of a billion taxpayer dollars on “misinformation” efforts.
Since 2021, the Biden-Harris administration has put forward $267 million on research grants involving so-called “misinformation.”
At least $127 million was dedicated specifically to study “misinformation’s” spread and persuade the American public to “go along with Covid-related public health recommendations and mandates,” the report said.
One grant of $200,000 was spent targeting President-elect Donald Trump. “The grant resulted in a paper suggesting populist leaders and movements in various countries kept people from coming together in ‘solidarity’ and public officials need to have the ‘main say’ on health guidance next time,” Open the Books wrote.
The expenditures on “misinformation” included grants supporting AI tools censoring speech.
Open the Books explained that a report from the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government condemned the National Science Foundation (NSF) for funding grants supporting censorship. The Committee’s report claimed the grants were designed to aid governments and Big Tech in shaping “public opinion by restricting certain viewpoints or promoting others.
Misinformation-related funding dates back to at least FY2017, the organization noted, although the majority of the grants began in 2021 or later. Misinformation grants hovered between $1 million to $3 million between 2018-2020, jumping to $126.1 million in 2021.
In comparison, the Trump administration only granted about $7 million for misinformation-related efforts.
The report also looked at misinformation studies conducted by universities such as the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Texas at Houston, and Michigan State University. Contracts for combatting misinformation were also had with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security.
“Learning to think critically and discern truth from lies is an important life skill, but the federal government has proven it is not capable of addressing that need responsibly,” Open the Books wrote. “It’s the worst possible arbiter of truth, as it were, because it makes the state a gatekeeper of speech.”
Open the Books concluded its report by declaring that the incoming Trump administration must “end the government’s involvement in managing so-called misinformation, and Congress must keep the purse strings closed on this spending.”
