'Counterintuitive – and dangerous': Agency that fights foreign disinformation may shutter

A State Department agency that fights to disrupt disinformation abroad could shut down just as Donald Trump is set to return to the White House.

The Global Engagement Center learned over the weekend that the latest National Defense Authorization Act did not include a multi-year extension for the unit, the Guardian reported Tuesday. The threat to its funding can only be addressed through an act of Congress, which could develop another route for an extension by Dec. 24, the report said.

The snub provoked a terse response from a State Department spokesperson.

“As our adversaries continue to ramp up their efforts globally, it’s counterintuitive – and dangerous – to weaken or worse yet dismantle, the US’s leadership in this critical mission,” the spokesperson told the Guardian.

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The funding decision comes as Republicans in Congress have vowed to dismantle governmental agencies they have grown leery of. The House Committee on Small Business applauded the decision in a social media post on Tuesday as “a win for free speech and Main Street America!”

“The shuttering of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center means there is one less way for unelected bureaucrats to violate Americans’ First Amendment rights,” the post said.

But the threat still looms.

“According to the center’s own assessment, countries like China have invested ‘billions of dollars’ to exert global information control through disinformation and propaganda,” the report stated.