Former 'disinfo' czar Nina Jankowicz tells Europeans to take a stand against the US, double down on social media regulation

Nina Jankowicz, the former czar of the Biden administration's short-lived Disinformation Governance Board and briefly also an adviser to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, addressed the European Parliament this week, telling members to "stand firm against another autocracy: the United States of America."

Fresh off telling the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the "censorship industrial complex is a fiction," Jankowicz concern-mongered before foreign leaders about the Trump administration's fight against censorship efforts at home and abroad.

Jankowicz stressed that Europeans should persist in their efforts to regulate content on social media, claiming that doing so while also throwing additional support behind Ukraine would be "the clearest signal the European Union could send to Russia and other adversaries that it will not stop fighting to preserve democracy at home and around the world."

Like Democrats in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election and those European elites challenged in recent years by ascendant populist parties, Jankowicz appears to use "democracy" to denote a state of play preferable to the ever-weakening liberal establishment.

'Rubio gleefully announced he was obliterating the office.'

Jankowicz, who previously emphasized that "freedom of speech does not necessarily mean freedom of reach" and registered as a foreign agent in 2022, appeared especially concerned about the threats supposedly posed to "democracy" by the Trump administration. In particular, she is vexed by the administration's opposition to the European Union's Digital Services Act, which critics have dubbed a "censorship law," as well as by the administration's shuttering of the censorious Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub, formerly the Global Engagement Center.

"Just last week in the United States, Secretary of State Marco Rubio gleefully announced he was obliterating the office tasked with tracking and responding to foreign information, manipulation and interference," complained Jankowicz, referring to Rubio's April 16 announcement that the Hub was no more.

The Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub was a rebrand of the Global Engagement Center, a multi-agency entity housed within the U.S. State Department that was credibly accused of working with domestic and foreign organizations to silence conservative voices.

Jankowicz tried gaslighting Congress about the GEC during an April 1 hearing, claiming, "There was no censorship going on at the Global Engagement Center at the State Department."

Contrary to the foreign agent's suggestion, Rubio noted last week that the GEC "cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year and actively silenced and censored the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving."

The GEC worked with Jankowicz's fellow travelers in the censorship industry, backing, for instance, the Disinformation Index Inc. — the American component of the British think tank Global Disinformation Index — and NewsGuard Technologies.

Blaze News previously reported that these two outfits generated blacklists of supposedly misleading news outfits with the aim of getting them demonetized and directing funds to news organizations that parrot approved narratives. While liberal publications like the Washington Post and NPR were labeled as the "least risky sites," Blaze News, Reason, the Federalist, the New York Post, and other websites carrying content apparently unpalatable to the liberal establishment made the top-10 list of "riskiest sites" and were smeared as having the "greatest level of disinformation risk."

'We will never restrict our citizens' right to free speech.'

"Many other U.S. government institutions have been similarly dismantled in the months since President Trump took office under the guise of protecting free speech and allegedly 'ending censorship,'" continued Jankowicz in her address this week to the European Parliament. "Now the European Union has become the subject of the Trump administration and tech executives' ire."

During his Feb. 11 speech at the Paris Artificial Intelligence Summit, Vice President JD Vance declared that social media platforms developed and/or based in the U.S. would remain free from ideological restraints, stating, "We will never restrict our citizens' right to free speech."

One of the key European censorship initiatives at issue is the EU's Digital Services Act, which is touted as part of a regulatory strategy to "prevent illegal and harmful activities online and the spread of disinformation."

The European Commission has taken aim at Elon Musk and X for supposed content moderation violations under the DSA and has threatened monster fines. The commission slapped Meta and Apple with hundreds of millions of dollars in fines on Tuesday with parallel tech regulation, the Digital Markets Act.

'The Trump administration is undoubtedly preparing a pressure campaign to force EU institutions to roll back regulation like the DSA.'

Ten days after Vance's speech, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum "to defend American companies and innovators from overseas extortion," in which he noted "regulations that dictate how American companies interact with consumers in the European Union, like the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, will face scrutiny from the Administration."

Despite this threat, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently told Politico that Europe is going after American companies anyway.

"We apply the rules fairly, proportionally, and without bias. We don't care where a company's from and who's running it. We care about protecting people," said von der Leyen.

Jankowicz, apparently enraged by the Trump administration's refusal to allow the regulation of American content by foreign powers, stated, "Neither Washington nor the social media platforms at his capture are interested in protecting democracy. They are interested in maintaining their power and hoarding profits."

"The Trump administration is undoubtedly preparing a pressure campaign to force EU institutions to roll back regulation like the DSA, to end support for Ukraine, to stop holding Russia to account. Do not capitulate. Hold the line," said the self-described "Mary Poppins of disinformation."

According to Jankowicz, social media regulation and cooperation from platforms are needed especially because the Kremlin is supposedly taking "advantage of decreased tech platform regulation and attention to foreign influence campaigns" and "using emerging technologies, including generative artificial intelligence, to infect our public discourse."

"If Europe wishes to stand firm against Russia and defend its democracy and sovereignty, it must start by standing up against the bullies in the White House," concluded Jankowicz.

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'This travesty has gone on long enough': Trump admin annihilates rebrand of Obama's censorship agency

The Global Engagement Center, a multi-agency entity housed within the U.S. State Department that was credibly accused of working with domestic and foreign organizations to silence conservative voices, was supposedly shuttered on Dec. 23, 2024. This closure was, however, a sleight of hand.

In the final weeks of the Biden administration, the censorious practices undertaken by the agency established by Barack Obama in 2011 and the officials who executed them were migrated to a new outfit called the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) Hub.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the closure of the State Department's R/FIMI, which reportedly had 40 employees and a budget of over $51 million.

"Over the last decade, Americans have been slandered, fired, charged, and even jailed for simply voicing their opinions. That ends today," wrote Rubio. "I am announcing the closure of the [State Department's] Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference, formerly the Global Engagement Center (GEC), which cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year and actively silenced and censored the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving."

'American taxpayers through the State Department were paying groups to attack Americans.'

Rubio discussed the birth and death of the censorship outfit in a live conversation Wednesday with Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, alluding to the GEC's origins: a pair of Obama executive orders aimed at reducing radicalization by Islamic terrorists and extremist violence threatening the interest and national security of the United States.

"Who's going to be against that? That sounds normal," said Rubio. "By 2020, it had grown into this movement of ... actually going after individual American voices."

Rubio noted that money from the program was being directed to supposedly "impartial" NGOs, which were "tagging and labeling voices in American politics — Ben Shapiro, the Federalist, others — tagging them as foreign agents."

"American taxpayers through the State Department were paying groups to attack Americans and to try to silence the voice of Americans," continued Rubio. "And there were consequences. These weren't just a label they put on people. Some of these people got deplatformed; they got taken down; they couldn't communicate."

A lawsuit filed against the State Department in December 2023 by Texas, the Daily Wire, and the Federalist accused the Biden administration of actively intervening in the news media market through the GEC "to render disfavored press outlets unprofitable by funding the infrastructure, development, and marketing and promotion of censorship technology and private censorship enterprises to covertly suppress speech of a segment of the American press."

The lawsuit alleged that the GEC had, for instance, backed the Disinformation Index Inc., the American component of the British think tank Global Disinformation Index, and NewsGuard Technologies.

Blaze News previously reported that both GDI and NewsGuard Technologies generated blacklists of supposedly risky or misleading news outfits with the aim of getting them demonetized and directing funds to news organizations that parrot approved narratives.

The GDI's fall 2022 report, for instance, labeled NPR, the Washington Post, HuffPost, and a number of other liberal news outfits with troubled relationships with the truth as the "least risky sites."

Meanwhile, Blaze News, Reason, the Federalist, the Daily Wire, the New York Post, and other conservative publications made the top-10 list of "riskiest sites" and were smeared as having the "greatest level of disinformation risk."

Gabe Kaminsky then of the Washington Examiner — a publication that also appeared on the GDI blacklist — reported in 2023 that GDI would compile a "dynamic exclusion list" and provide that list to corporate entities such as the advertising company Xandr. Xandr and other recipients subsequently declined to place ads on websites flagged by the GDI.

Matt Taibbi, an investigative reporter who helped expose some of what the GEC was up to, previously told Blaze News, "The GEC was turned into a key actor in the narrative-control bureaucracy."

"It was outrageous," Rubio said Wednesday regarding the GEC's work and impact.

The secretary of state noted that the GEC, which was deemed the "worst offender in U.S. government censorship & media manipulation" by Elon Musk in the wake of the Twitter Files and found to be internally dysfunctional in a 2022 State Department Office of Inspector General report, was technically disbanded in December but really just rebranded before President Donald Trump took office.

'Trump administration is smashing the censorship cartel.'

"Over the last few months, we've worked on it and just taken it down," said Rubio.

Rubio noted in an article Wednesday on the Federalist — a publication chosen on account of its targeting by a GEC-backed organization — that "whatever name it goes by, GEC is dead. It will not return."

Last month, Rubio and Darren Beattie, acting under secretary for public diplomacy, apparently terminated over 100 contractors who worked with the agency.

The MIT Technology Review reported that employees at R/FIMI received an email Wednesday inviting them to a meeting with Beattie, who notified them their office and jobs were no more.

Rubio noted his Federalist piece that "Obama's man in charge at GEC, Rick Stengel" once said to the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018, "I'm not against propaganda. Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population. And I don't necessarily think it's that awful."

"All too many abuses of trust that occurred at the GEC seemed to reflect Stengel’s dark founding vision," wrote Rubio.

The secretary added:

Ultimately, the problem wasn't that our government picked the wrong people and NGOs to police "disinformation." The problem is that they were picking anybody to do this at all. The entire "disinformation" industry, from its very beginnings, has existed to protect the American establishment from the voices of forgotten Americans. Everything it does is the fruit of the poisoned tree: the hoax that Russian interference, misinformation, and "meddling" is what caused President Trump's victory in 2016, rather than a winning political message that only he was offering.

"This travesty has gone on long enough," Rubio declared.

He told Benz, "The best way to counter disinformation is free speech — is to make sure that what's true has as equal or greater opportunity to communicate as what's not true. We've learned that the hard way."

Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, called Rubio's final blow to the censorship outfit a "very important action," adding that the "Trump administration is smashing the censorship cartel and restoring free speech rights to Americans."

Benz wrote, "R-FIMI is R-FINISHED."

— (@)

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The Fight Against The Censorship-Industrial Complex Is Not Over

Those who would keep the truth from U.S. citizens must be rooted out. We need a full accounting of what happened when transparency failed.

State Department docs indicate closing of Obama's Global Engagement Center may have been sleight of hand: Report

The Global Engagement Center, a multi-agency entity housed within the U.S. State Department that was credibly accused of working with organizations both at home and abroad to silence conservative voices, supposedly died last week. House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) was unable to get his one-year extension of the center into the continuing resolution that was ultimately passed on Dec. 20.

It appears, however, that the censorious practices undertaken by the agency established by Barack Obama in 2011 might ultimately live on in another form and under a new name.

Documents recently obtained by the Washington Examiner and reviewed by senior Republican staffers have reportedly exposed the State Department's intention to "realign" over 50 GEC officials and divert tens of millions of dollars in funding to what appears to effectively be the same controversial agency by another name, this time the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub.

This would not be the first time the agency — deemed the "worst offender in U.S. government censorship & media manipulation" by Elon Musk in the wake of the Twitter Files, found to be internally dysfunctional in a 2022 State Department Office of Inspector General report, and defended ardently by Sens. Christopher Murphy (D-Conn.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), and John Cornyn (R-Texas) — underwent a name change. When first established by a 2011 Obama executive order, the agency was called the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications.

Weeks ahead of the GEC's closure, the State Department reportedly noted in a Dec. 6, 2024, non-public letter to members of Congress, "Should the authority for the GEC not be extended, the department plans to realign 51 employees and associated funding from the GEC to a proposed Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) Hub reporting to the Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy (R)."

The associated funds funneled into this hub would reportedly total $29.4 million.

According to the documents obtained by the Examiner, the remaining GEC staffers and funds would be assigned to the Bureaus of African Affairs, East Asian and Pacific Affairs, European and Eurasian Affairs, and other offices at the State Department.

"The Department of State intends to realign $18.2 million in DP Public Diplomacy funding (of which $15.0 million is bureau-managed and $3.2 million is American Salaries) to eight bureaus and one office that will receive U.S. Direct Hire or third-party contract staff from GEC as part of the realignment," said the documents.

A senior Republican aide told the Examiner, "Donald Trump and Marco Rubio are going to have to track every single office, down to every single staffer, if they want to end the weaponization of the federal government against conservatives."

"The State Department is filled with Resistance Democrats who think they got through the first Trump administration and will get through the second the same way," added the aide.

While the GEC may survive in spirit, a source familiar with the matter told the Examiner's Gabe Kaminsky that the proposed hub would not have the grant-making power the agency previously enjoyed.

After it was codified into law in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, the GEC was equipped with both grant-making authority and the ability to "build a decentralized network of private sector actors and allow the integration of capabilities and expertise available outside the U.S. government into the strategy-making process."

'The GEC — a government center antithetical to a free press.'

In the lawsuit filed December 2023 by Texas, the Daily Wire, and the Federalist in hopes of halting "one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation," the plaintiffs alleged that the GEC backed at a minimum two American censorship enterprises: the Disinformation Index Inc., the American component of the British think tank Global Disinformation Index, and NewsGuard Technologies.

Blaze News previously reported that both organizations produced blacklists of supposedly risky or misleading news outfits with the objective of getting them demonetized and directing funds to news organizations that regurgitate approved narratives.

Whereas the Washington Post, HuffPost, and other liberal news pages were categorized as the "least risky sites" in the GDI's fall 2022 report, Blaze News, Reason, the Federalist, the Daily Wire, the New York Post, and other conservative publications made the top-10 list of "riskiest sites" and were smeared as having the "greatest level of disinformation risk."

The Examiner revealed last year that the GDI had pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant money from the GEC in 2021 and 2022.

"It's an incubator for the domestic disinformation complex," a former intelligence source previously told investigative reporter Matt Taibbi. "All the s*** we pulled in other countries since the Cold War, some morons decided to bring home."

In addition to the apparent survival of the GEC in the form of the proposed hub, senior GEC officials have migrated to the wings of senior officials in the State Department. For instance, James Rubin, former special envoy and coordinator at the GEC, is now reportedly a senior adviser to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and the agency's former acting coordinator, Leah Bray, is now chief of staff to Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell.

The State Department did not provide the Examiner with comment on its congressional notification. However, a State Department spokesman made clear to Politico in October that Blinken was committed to "preserving the GEC's critical work."

"No matter what, combatting foreign information manipulation overseas will continue as a critical part of the Department's mission," said the spokesman.

"It is heartening to see Congress has refused to continue funding the GEC — a government center antithetical to a free press," Margot Cleveland, an attorney with the New Civil Liberties Alliance involved in Texas' lawsuit against the State Department and GEC, said in a statement Thursday. "NCLA remains concerned, however, that the State Department has 'realigned' GEC personnel and funds to other areas of the State Department and to date has refused to even provide a copy of the notice of the realignment the agency shared with Congress nearly a month ago."

While the suit has been stayed until Feb. 18, the NCLA indicated that it is "continuing to review and obtain discovery aimed at exposing the true depth of the government's egregious censorship regime."

The GEC was also named in a new civil lawsuit filed Monday by the Functional Government Initiative. According to the complaint obtained by Reclaim the Net, the GEC failed to comply with records requests that could have provided "increased transparency and allow[ed] the public to see if and how State Department officials were collaborating [with] or discussing EU censorship."

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Obama's Global Engagement Center — the 'worst offender in US government censorship' — is officially dead

The Global Engagement Center, a multi-agency entity housed within the U.S. State Department that has been credibly and repeatedly accused of working with domestic and foreign organizations to silence conservative voices, is officially dead.

The website for the now-closed agency — deemed the "worst offender in U.S. government censorship & media manipulation" by Elon Musk in the wake of the Twitter Files and found to be internally dysfunctional in a 2022 State Department Office of Inspector General report — states, "The Global Engagement Center closed on December 23, 2024."

Although the agency was the focus of multiple congressional investigations as well as a defendant in a pair of damning federal lawsuits — across which the censorship of conservatives was a common theme — there was a bipartisan effort in Washington until the end to keep the GEC alive with its annual $61 million budget.

Democratic Sen. Christopher Murphy (Conn.) unsuccessfully pushed an amendment, which was co-sponsored by Republican Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), to get the GEC extended through 2034.

Murphy told the Washington Post earlier this month, "I'm pursuing every avenue to ensure the GEC authorization does not expire and their critical work can continue."

'One of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation.'

Sens. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), similarly keen to keep the GEC alive, introduced tweaks to Murphy's proposed amendment, including a requirement that the State Department could not knowingly fund partisan political activities carried out by the GEC domestically. These evidently failed to sweeten the deal.

The State Department filed a notice on Dec. 9 informing the court overseeing Daily Wire v. U.S. Department of State — a lawsuit brought in December 2023 by Texas, the Daily Wire, and the Federalist in hopes of kneecapping the GEC and halting "one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation" — indicating that the agency was not long for this world.

Sure enough, there was no mention of a reauthorization for the agency in an early draft 2025 National Defense Authorization Act.

The State Department told Blaze News at the time that it was "hopeful that Congress extends this important mandate through other means before the ... termination date."

Although House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) asked him in a June 3 letter to defund the GEC and other governmental outfits "engaged in speech suppression," House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) introduced a continuing appropriations measure on Dec. 17, which included a one-year extension for the agency.

"This CR funds the censorship of conservative speech for the entire first year of the Trump administration. Unacceptable!" tweeted Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.).

Matthew Peterson, editor in chief of Blaze News, which was among the publications targeted by a GEC-backed censorship outfit, stated, "Oh, hell no. Unconscionable."

Sean Davis, CEO of the Federalist — an organization that sued the GEC over alleged censorship — stated, "In their abominable omnibus, Republicans are set to fund the illegal government censorship cartel that is attempting to shut down and destroy conservative news outlets like @FDRLST and @realDailyWire. This is unforgivable insanity. What on earth is going on?"

The bloated 1,547-page funding bill containing Cole's measure died, and the GEC's hope of survival with it. A slimmer, GEC-free continuing resolution was ultimately passed on Dec. 20.

Among the many critics who celebrated the GEC's closure this week was Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt (R), who tweeted, "Big win."

The GEC, originally the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, was established by a 2011 Obama executive order and tasked with "using communication tools to reduce radicalization by terrorists and extremist violence and terrorism that threaten the interests and national security of the United States."

The agency was renamed and assigned additional objectives under a 2016 Obama executive order.

The agency would work with organizations at home and abroad to counter potentially radicalizing content and also work to advance favorable "alternative narratives and to diminish the influence of such international terrorist organizations and other violent extremists abroad."

'The GEC, which almost earned a lifeline under the first CR version, is already scattering its employees to other agencies.'

After its codification into law in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, the GEC broadened the scope of its narrative curation and suppression such that it would tackle content generated by state actors like China and Russia in addition to the usual extremist propaganda spun out by the likes of jihadists. The NDAA also provided the agency with grant-making authorities as well as the ability to "build a decentralized network of private sector actors and allow the integration of capabilities and expertise available outside the U.S. government into the strategy-making process."

According to a House Small Business Committee report, the GEC ditched its "whole-of-government" approach and embraced "whole-of-society" support, and "its methodologies changed from using social media platforms to create and spread counterpropaganda materials to directing public opinion by trying to get social media platforms to suppress content."

The agency, juiced up and emboldened in subsequent years, increasingly developed relationships with various censorship operations.

The GEC is accused of helping governmental and nongovernmental groups suppress the lawful speech of American citizens, including online discussions of the COVID-19 lab-leak theory, as well as backing efforts to neutralize information sources unfavorable to the powers that be — such as Blaze News, the Federalist, the Daily Wire, the New York Post, and other conservative publications.

Although the agency is now dead, its work and hundreds of staffers may end up haunting other federal agencies.

A State Department spokesman told Politico in October that Secretary of State Antony Blinken was committed to "preserving the GEC's critical work."

"No matter what, combatting foreign information manipulation overseas will continue as a critical part of the Department's mission," said the spokesman.

Gabe Kaminsky of the Washington Examiner, a publication that also appeared on the blacklist of the Global Disinformation Index, a group funded by the GEC, noted, "The GEC, which almost earned a lifeline under the first CR version, is already scattering its employees to other agencies after congressional subpoenas and lawsuits targeting its funding of entities aiming to thwart alleged disinformation in the U.S., despite the GEC's mandate to act internationally."

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Former 'disinfo' czar Nina Jankowicz tells Europeans to take a stand against the US, double down on social media regulation

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