The government funding bill includes a one-year extension of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), an agency that funds organizations that censor conservative media including Breitbart News.
The provision extending funding for the program is on page 139 of the 1,537-page continuing resolution, which was unveiled Tuesday night just hours before the House will vote on the short-term spending bill.
The Washington Examiner’s Gabe Kaminsky posted on Twitter that the bill “includes a one-year extension on the State Department’s Global Engagement Center — the agency me and Matt Taibbi reported has funded speech suppression efforts and is being sued by the Federalist and Daily Wire.”
The GEC faces lawsuits over its funding of the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a British group pressuring advertisers to defund right-of-center media outlets in the United States, and NewsGuard, a blacklisting organization that rates the “misinformation” levels of news outlets to target conservatives for censorship.
Multiple congressional probes have investigated the GEC over its funding of groups that censor conservatives and free speech.
In September, a congressional report raised serious concerns with the GEC including its funding of groups that targeted and censored small businesses inside the United States –overstepping its mandate to combat foreign disinformation.
That report from the House Small Business Committee alleged that the GEC, which has an estimated budget of $61 million and a staff of 125, has been funding groups engaged in domestic censorship, thereby skirting its primary mandate of thwarting foreign disinformation.
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Breitbart News Editor-in-chief Alex Marlow detailed in an August interview Real Talk with Marissa Streit how and why GDI, NewsGuard, and other censorship organizations target conservative outlets like Breitbart.
“If they control our speech, if they censor information, if they censor education and news, they control everything,” she said. “They control the borders, they control education, they control the military. They control everything, because we don’t get to hear about what they’re doing.”
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) took the lead on negotiating the bill for Republicans, but the deal’s timing, contents, process, and more has received harsh pushback from GOP members across the ideological spectrum.
Johnson likely must enlist Democrat help and pass the bill under a suspension of the rules, which requires two-thirds majority but would enable him to bypass objections from inside his own party that would defeat the bill.
Government funding expires at midnight Friday.
Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.
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