At the New York Post, political reporter Victor Nava reports that the US State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) has shut down, after Congress refused to continue funding it.

If you go to the page, it says, “The Global Engagement Center closed on December 23, 2024.”

Nava reports,

The GEC came under fire from House Republicans after journalist Matt Taibbi uncovered evidence that it pressured US social media platforms early in the COVID-19 pandemic to censor Americans online, purportedly to counter “disinformation,” such as theories that the virus leaked out of a laboratory in China.

“We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation ‘requests’ from every corner of government: the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CIA,” Taibbi testified to Congress in March 2023, shortly after his “Twitter Files” expose on the GEC.

“State Department’s Global Engagement Center — accused of pushing censorship to combat online ‘disinformation’ — shuts down,” December 26, 2024

The Post itself, long in the crosshairs of government due to reporting inconvenient but substantiated stories, was identified by the government-funded GEC as “too ‘risky’ for ads.” That is a way of starving inconvenient media that are constitutionally protected.

From last year, when the story first hit the fan:

“No program or office like this should be receiving any federal funding; I can tell you that much,” said Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC), who serves on the House Judiciary Committee’s select subcommittee on the “weaponization” of government.

“My office is currently looking at all possible avenues to defund these rogue agencies violating Americans’ rights and working to investigate them,” Bishop said.

Steven Nelson and Caitlin Doornbos, “Republicans eye ‘disinformation’ group that said NY Post too ‘risky’ for ads, New York Post, March 7, 2023

Changes in administrations are often a means of getting rid of such rogue agencies.

You may also wish to read: So who are today’s Disinformation Police? Social scientists are striving to develop ways to blunt the force of information that governments would rather the public did not know or heed. The disinformation experts claim to be defending democracy — and yet their principal weapon is indoctrination.