# Global Engagement Center The **Global Engagement Center** (GEC) was the [[Department of State]] office that tracked and pushed back on propaganda and disinformation aimed at the United States and its allies by foreign governments and terrorist groups. It grew out of a counterterrorism messaging unit set up in 2011, took its name from an executive order President [[Barack Obama]] signed in March 2016, and was given a wider mandate by Congress that December to take on state propaganda from Russia, China and others. It closed on December 23, 2024, when Congress did not renew it. The small office that inherited its staff was shut down by Secretary of State [[Marco Rubio]] on April 16, 2025. **Why it's on the map:** The GEC is a central exhibit in the [[Censorship Industrial Complex]] argument, the claim pushed by [[Mike Benz]], the [[Twitter Files]] writers and conservative media that the government's counter-disinformation work was turned against Americans' own speech. Its end is one of the clearest cases of that argument becoming policy. Congress let the office lapse, the second Trump administration abolished what was left, and a 2026 settlement made two conservative news outlets the official monitors of the State Department's conduct for ten years. None of it rested on a court ruling that the office had broken the law. ## What it did - **The mandate.** The Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act, written by Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and [[Chris Murphy]] (D-Conn.), was folded into the defense bill for fiscal 2017 (see [[NDAA]]) and signed in December 2016. It told the center to lead the government's work against "foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts." Congress strengthened that authority in 2018. The law also set an end date of December 23, 2024, unless Congress renewed it. - **Size.** The center spent more than $50 million a year and had about 125 staff at its peak. - **Grants and technology.** Much of its money went to outside groups, at home and abroad, working on ways to spot and counter disinformation. From 2018 to 2021 its technology team ran Disinfo Cloud, an online catalog of counter-disinformation tools, and held "tech challenges" that paid prize money to companies. Through those programs the British-based Global Disinformation Index received $100,000 in 2021 and [[NewsGuard]] $25,000 in 2020. - **Reports.** It published studies of Russian and Chinese propaganda networks. A 2022 review by the State Department's inspector general found muddled lines of authority and heavy reliance on contractors, but judged the center "generally effective" in working with other agencies. ## The case against it The center's mission was foreign, but critics said some of the groups it funded rated American outlets. The Global Disinformation Index kept a list of "risky" news sites for advertisers that included [[The Daily Wire]] and The Federalist. In December 2023 those two outlets and Texas Attorney General [[Ken Paxton]] sued the department, the GEC and Secretary [[Antony Blinken]] in federal court in East Texas, arguing that the State Department had paid for tools used to cut off their ad revenue. The House Foreign Affairs Committee held hearings on the same complaints. [[Mike Benz]] made the center a recurring target, and the [[Twitter Files]] named it among the government offices that sent reports to the platforms. ## How it ended | Date | Event | |---|---| | Dec. 23, 2016 | The defense bill gives the center its legal mandate, with an end date eight years out | | Dec. 17, 2024 | A stopgap spending bill from Rep. Tom Cole would have extended the center for a year. The House takes no further action on it | | Dec. 21, 2024 | Congress passes a different stopgap bill with no extension | | Dec. 23, 2024 | The center closes. Its staff move into a new, smaller office, Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R-FIMI) | | Apr. 16, 2025 | Rubio closes that office, saying it had "actively silenced and censored" Americans. Acting Under Secretary [[Darren Beattie]] tells its roughly 40 remaining employees that their jobs are gone. It had a budget of $51.9 million | | Sept. 17, 2025 | The department says it has ended all of its frameworks for countering foreign misinformation | | Apr. 2026 | The department settles the Daily Wire suit. Under a consent decree that runs until 2036, the Daily Wire and The Federalist receive yearly reports on its compliance | ## What the record shows - **No ruling on the merits.** The lawsuit ended in a negotiated consent decree, after the administration it sued had been replaced by one that agreed with the plaintiffs. No court decided whether the State Department had violated anyone's rights. Renée DiResta, writing in Lawfare, noted that the outlets' central claims were never tested at trial. - **What was lost.** MIT Technology Review reported that the April 2025 closure left the department without an office that actively tracks disinformation campaigns from Russia, China and Iran. Sen. [[Jeanne Shaheen]], the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the work remained as critical as ever. - **Who got the credit.** Rubio explained the closure in an op-ed in The Federalist, one of the plaintiffs. [[Mike Benz]] announced the news on X minutes before Rubio did, and the State Department posted an interview about it that Rubio gave to Benz the same day. ## Connections - [[Department of State]] · [[Marco Rubio]] · [[Darren Beattie]] - [[Censorship Industrial Complex]] · [[Mike Benz]] · [[Twitter Files]] - [[Hines v. Stamos]] · [[Murthy v. Missouri]] · [[Prebunking]] - [[NewsGuard]] · [[The Daily Wire]] · [[Ken Paxton]]