Is the Biden administration attempting to pull the wool over Americans’ eyes by closing a controversial federal entity involved in censorship, while secretly reviving it behind the scenes?
The Global Engagement Center (GEC)—a censorship-obsessed agency housed within the State Department that the government claimed would be closed in 2024—was shut down but not snuffed out. Federal employees from the GEC have since been realigned with other offices in the State Department, the Washington Examiner reported Thursday.
According to a congressional notification reviewed by the Examiner, the State Department plans to move at least 50 employees and funding associated with GEC to a proposed “Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub” in the event lawmakers do not reauthorize the agency’s censorship work. This proposed hub would be housed within the Office of the Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy, which oversees the Bureau of Counterterrorism.
The reshuffle is reminiscent of the infamously failed Biden-Harris administration Ministry of Truth, called the Disinformation Governance Board. Initially supposed to be led by Nina Jankowicz (the self-described “Mary Poppins of Disinformation”), the Disinformation Governance Board crumbled just months after it was announced.
Moreover, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas then resurrected the DGB’s remains to unleash a department-wide operation to target “anti-government sentiment.” Similarly, the DHS vowed to remain “focused” on battling so-called disinformation, according to a 2022 National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin.
The GEC was originally established in 2016 under the supposed premise of countering foreign disinformation. However, scrutiny of the agency’s activities has revealed that it has played a significant role in the federal government’s censorship of Americans.
Among other things, the GEC pressured Big Tech companies to censor Americans from discussing the COVID-19 laboratory leak theory, which the Department of Energy, the FBI and the National Medical Intelligence Council of the Defense Intelligence Agency admitted was plausible. Additionally, it allocated $100,000 in taxpayer dollars to the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a so-called media monitoring group that attempted to blacklist 10 major outlets that did not adhere to government-approved narratives as purveyors of “disinformation.”
House Republicans took appropriate action by defunding GEC’s work, prohibiting its activities under the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act. The State Department ultimately announced on Dec. 11, 2024, that GEC would be “closed” on Dec. 23 of that same year.
An investigation by the Examiner, confirmed by MRC Free Speech America researchers, revealed that some of the GEC workers were quietly transferred to other offices. For example, James Rubin, the special envoy and GEC coordinator, seemingly remains at the State Department as an advisor to Secretary Antony J. Blinken.
Former GEC acting coordinator Daniel Kimmage was reassigned to the Bureau of Global Public Affairs. Adela Levis, who served as a liaison between GEC and academics and think tanks, is now an advisor at the Bureau for Democracy Human Rights and Labor. According to her LinkedIn, Levis works to counter “foreign malign influence.”
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