State Department's 'Global Engagement Center' accused of censoring Americans shuts its doors

"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 in a statement. "The Department of State has consulted with Congress regarding next steps."

The agency had a budget of around $61 million and 120 people on staff. 

The GEC, according to reporter Matt Taibbi, "funded a secret list of subcontractors and helped pioneer an insidious - and idiotic - new form of blacklisting" during the pandemic. 

"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 had made reports speculating that the virus had a lab origin.

DFRLab Director Graham Brookie previously denied the claim that they use tax money to track Americans, saying its 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. 

The lawsuit stated that the GEC was used as a tool for the defendants to carry out its censorship. 

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 were branded "unreliable" or "risky" 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."

Meanwhile, America First Legal, headed up by Stephen Miller, President-elect Trump's pick for deputy chief of staff for policy, revealed that the GEC had used taxpayer dollars to create a video game called "Cat Park" to "Inoculate Youth Against Disinformation" abroad. 

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 America First Legal. 

Mike Benz, executive director at the Foundation for Freedom Online, said the game was "anti-populist" and pushed certain political beliefs instead of protecting Americans from foreign disinformation, according to the Tennessee Star.