(Headline USA) The Biden administration tried to defend its new “Ministry of Truth” this week by claiming the disinformation board will focus on foreign interference rather than at-home censorship.
The Department of Homeland Security revealed last week that it has launched a new Disinformation Governance Board to monitor “misinformation” online. Republicans and other critics immediately slammed the board as an abuse of power waiting to happen, but the White House has attempted to position it as a nonpartisan coordinating body for the DHS’s work responding to foreign disinformation.
“It’s continuing work that was done by CISA back to 2020,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said this week, referring to the federal cybersecurity agency that is a component of DHS. She added that the board will “help coordinate internal activities from the department related to disinformation that poses a threat to the homeland.”
The board’s focus “is not to adjudicate what is true or false online,” she insisted, but to combat disinformation spread by foreign adversaries, such as Russia and China, and trans-national criminal organizations.
“It will operate in a nonpartisan, apolitical manner,” Psaki said. “It’s basically meant to coordinate a lot of the ongoing work that is happening.”
When asked what would qualify as “misinformation” in this context, Psaki said: “Things that would incite violent extremism. Human traffickers and other trans-national criminal organizations, any efforts at malign foreign influence, [and] anything that would endanger individuals during emergencies.”
Republicans, however, said the board poses too much of a threat to free speech, especially under Nina Jankowicz, a far-Left activist who has denied the legitimacy of the Hunter Biden laptop story and advocated for strict COVID-19 lockdowns.
The Federal Government has no business creating a Ministry of Truth.
The Department of Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Board” is unconstitutional and unamerican, and I’ll be introducing a bill to defund it. https://t.co/n3H9c8XGB1
— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) April 29, 2022
