Biden admin ‘rebranding’ State Dept’s controversial Global Engagement Center under new name — with same employees: report 

The State Department reportedly notified Congress last month that it plans to shuffle staffers and money from the controversial and now-shuttered Global Engagement Center to a new office aimed at countering “foreign information manipulation and interference.” 

The Global Engagement Center (GEC), which has come under fire from several House Republicans who claim it pushed for the censorship of Americans, ostensibly ceased operations on Dec. 23 after congressional lawmakers refused to reauthorize the GEC in recent spending legislation. 

Senior Republican staffers who have reviewed the Biden administration’s plans in response to the closure of the GEC told the Washington Examiner on Thursday that it appears the agency is merely “rebranding,” and fear the new office will continue the same sort of censorship work that the GEC had previously been accused of conducting. 

“Should the authority for the GEC not be extended, the [State 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),” read a notification letter sent to congressional lawmakers on Dec. 6, according to the Washington Examiner. 

The GEC, established in 2016, had a budget of about $61 million and 120 people on staff.

The planning document indicated that $29.4 million in GEC funding would be shifted to the new office. 

The letter noted that the remaining GEC employees and funding would be sent over to the Bureaus of African Affairs, East Asian and Pacific Affairs, European and Eurasian Affairs, and other offices.

The plan to establish a new “information manipulation” hub at the State Department is expected to trigger congressional investigations, the outlet reported. 

“[President-elect] Donald Trump and [Secretary of State-designate] 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,” a senior GOP aide said of the GEC shift. 

“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,” the aide added. 

The GEC became embroiled in controversy 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.

The Washington Examiner later uncovered a $100,000 grant GEC made to the London-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI) in 2021 and 2022 — a media monitoring nonprofit that would go on to deem 10 outlets, including The Post, as purveyors of “disinformation.” 

Several Republican lawmakers have argued that the GEC went well beyond its stated mission of “proactively addressing foreign adversaries’ attempts to undermine US interests using disinformation and propaganda” by attempting to censor Americans. 

Elon Musk, who purchased Twitter in 2022 over free speech concerns, has described the GEC as the “worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation.”

The State Department did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment on how the new foreign disinformation office will be different from the GEC. 

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