A Republican-led congressional committee called out an office within the Biden-Harris State Department over its brazen anti-free speech activities.
The House Small Business Committee, chaired by Rep. Roger Williams (R-TX), specifically scolded the Department of State’s interagency Global Engagement Center (GEC) for circumventing “its strict international mandate by funding, developing, then promoting … entities with domestic censorship capabilities.” In an interim report titled “Instruments and Casualties of the Censorship-Industrial Complex,” the congressional body found that this anti-free speech funding stemmed from a “censorship ecosystem” fueled by the federal government.
Besides GEC’s violative actions, the Small Business Committee called out the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). NED is a “private non-profit funded almost entirely by Congressional appropriations, [which] violated its international restrictions by collaborating with fact-checking entities” in assessing domestic U.S. press and their admissions to an organization rating supposed “credibility.”
The report alleged that small businesses cannot freely compete online thanks to federal government involvement in attacking constitutional rights. “The Federal government has funded, developed, and promoted entities that aim to demonetize news and information outlets because of their lawful speech, impacting domestic businesses’ operations, reputation, customer reach, and revenue,” read the report.
The Committee added that it had subpoenaed documents after the State Department tried to stonewall the investigation and called out the “impermissible” government “abridgement of viewpoint-based speech” through GEC and NED in violation of the First Amendment.
MRC vice president for free speech Dan Schneider said, “I think there is a lot of evidence that the State Department has been withholding information from Congress about the extent of its role in censoring speech. What is publicly known is bad enough, but what will soon be made public should cause all good-government advocates, on the left and on the right, to call for Antony Blinken to shape up or ship out.”
One group GEC funded was the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), which blacklisted right-leaning websites from ad revenue, including The Federalist and The Daily Wire.
The lengthy congressional report, spanning 66 pages, dived into extensive details on what the lawmakers dubbed the “Censorship-Industrial Complex” attacking independent news outlets through funding domestic censorship organizations.
The violation of GEC’s mandate began with a 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed by then-President Barack Obama, according to the report. It was followed by funding in 2018 and 2019 for GEC to counter alleged “disinformation,” and finally culminated in GEC’s overreaching “whole-of-society” and “whole-of-government” approach.
The damning report is the product of an investigation launched by House Republicans after the Washington Examiner exposed funding records showing GEC’s cash flow to domestic censorship groups.
Tellingly, MRC Free Speech America reported in February that the State Department had threatened to obstruct the congressional probe into GEC and its anti-free speech activities.
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