The hearing featured testimony from Ben Weingarten, an investigative journalist at RealClear, which itself has been blacklisted by the GDI, along with Carrie Sheffield, a policy analyst who previously ran a small business that was heavily reliant on digital ad revenue. “Commercial freedom and freedom of expression go hand in hand,” Sheffield said. “The Supreme Court has noted for more than a century, businesses are voices for the people.”

The State Department helped fund the Global Disinformation Index, which creates a blacklist of disfavoured organisations and attempts to starve them of ad revenue by discouraging brands from partnering with them, as previously reported by the Washington Examiner and UnHerd. News of the grant triggered a lawsuit against the federal government from two conservative media outlets alleging violations of the First Amendment, as well as a Congressional investigation.

The grant in question, $100,000 to GDI, was used to translate existing technology into foreign languages to be used in eastern Europe and Asia, according to Velázquez. Thus, she argued, Republicans are attacking American efforts to combat foreign propaganda during “a crucial moment in history for our national security”. However, according to Washington Examiner reporter Gabe Kaminsky, the State Department has refused to turn over its funding records to Congress, so its claims that the funding went toward foreign language translations can’t be verified.

“Even the State Department-funded National Endowment for Democracy, which also funded GDI, acknowledged its prior support of the British group posed an issue based on the NED’s ‘strict policies and practices in place’ ensuring it only funds groups working on international issues,” he told UnHerd.

The New York representative also suggested that Republicans were abandoning their free market principles by cracking down on disinformation software, an innovation she says fills a key market demand: to avoid having one’s products advertised alongside misleading content. These comments were echoed by Dr. Mary Anne Franks, a legal scholar who spoke in defence of the GDI Wednesday. Franks argued that, by attempting to block funding to the GDI and opening investigations into the project, Republicans were themselves engaging in censorship, in this case by preventing disinformation researchers from sharing their findings with private businesses.

Civil liberties attorney Jenin Younes made the opposite case, laying out legal precedents which forbid the government from using third parties to engage in exactly the type of censorship they’re constitutionally barred from engaging in directly. “Those who think there’s nothing wrong with the government censorship regime exposed through this case should think long and hard about what this means when power changes hands,” she said. “Do you want President Trump’s administration funding tools and technologies designed to censor speech he disfavours?”

“This lawmaker is delivering a straw-man argument,” Kaminsky said of Velázquez. “Conservatives are raising concerns over the fact that the U.S. government would at all support or be affiliated with an organisation taking steps to impact the ability of American companies to function… GDI is very much involved in domestic politics.”

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is UnHerd’s US correspondent.

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