Spending Proposal Reauthorizes State Dept Agency Tied To Domestic Censorship Effort

The spending bill up for debate in Congress to fund the government through the end of the year includes a provision that reauthorizes a State Department agency critics say is at the center of a government “censorship scheme.”

The bill would reauthorize the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which was created to counter messaging spread by foreign actors such as violent terrorists abroad, but instead allegedly worked to suppress Americans’ speech. Just last week, GEC was preparing to shut down operations because it had not been reauthorized by Congress. But the more than 1,500-page spending bill would give it at least one more year, leading to widespread criticism from Republicans.

The Daily Wire sued the State Department, along with The Federalist and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, over GEC’s relationship with anti-“misinformation” outfits like NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index (GDI). The suit alleges that those outfits were focused on suppressing American conservative media and that GEC’s support of these groups violated the First Amendment.

It’s just one unpopular provision in a massive spending bill that appears to be on its last legs. House Speaker Johnson (R-LA) is reportedly already moving on to a “Plan B” after conservative outrage over what’s included in the lengthy resolution.

President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance released a joint statement on Wednesday afternoon calling for Republicans to propose a resolution “WITHOUT DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS” that includes disaster relief and support for farmers. The statement specifically called out the legislation’s “sweetheart provisions for government censors.”

“If Democrats threaten to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, then CALL THEIR BLUFF,” the statement read. “It is Schumer and Biden who are holding up aid to our farmers and disaster relief.”

Johnson, tasked with negotiating the spending bill with a Democrat-controlled Senate, said the provision to fund GEC for another year was the result of compromise. He is opposed to GEC, his office says, and is committed to ending it.

“Speaker Johnson has killed multiple efforts to pass a 5-year reauthorization of the GEC during the past year, including as recently as the NDAA last week,” a Johnson spokesman said.

A source familiar with the negotiation says Democrats wanted to reauthorize GEC for five years, putting the next fight over its existence in 2029. The proposed provision would give GEC just a one-year lifeline, meaning the next time it would go up for reauthorization there will be unified Republican control of government.

Many conservatives on the Hill are furious about giving the controversial agency even those few months.

“This CR funds the censorship of conservative speech for the entire first year of the Trump administration,” wrote Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN). “Unacceptable!”

Its inclusion also earned the ire of Elon Musk, who used the GEC reauthorization to label the spending bill “a crime.”

“The more I learn, the more obvious it becomes that this spending bill is a crime,” Musk wrote on X. “It even includes funding for the worst illegal censorship operation in the entire government (GEC)!!”

A statement from President Donald J. Trump and Vice President-Elect JD Vance:

The most foolish and inept thing ever done by Congressional Republicans was allowing our country to hit the debt ceiling in 2025. It was a mistake and is now something that must be addressed.…

— JD Vance (@JDVance) December 18, 2024

Vivek Ramaswamy, who is set to be Musk’s partner at the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, similarly called out the reauthorization of the “key player in the federal censorship state” in his call for lawmakers to vote against the spending bill.

Johnson’s office says their team believes that reauthorizing GEC for one more year could ultimately make the agency easier to kill, which it says is the goal. The State Department had disclosed to Congress, his office says, that it had plans to absorb the function of the GEC into the department’s existing bureaucracy before Trump took office.

“This bill ensures the incoming Trump Administration has the maximum ability and authority to determine how to handle the office, its authorities, and funding,” said the Johnson spokesman.

In exchange for the one-year reauthorization, Democrats agreed to scrap a new reporting requirement for small businesses that could have led to $10,000 fines and possible jail time for businesses that don’t report details about their ownership to the government, according to CNBC.

The government would partially shut down on December 21 if no deal is reached. Musk says that a shutdown is an “infinitely better” option “than passing a horrible bill,” adding that he believes no legislation should pass until Trump takes office.

“No bills should be passed Congress until Jan 20, when @realDonaldTrump takes office,” Musk wrote. “None. Zero.”