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Foreign Policy

Trump administration shutters US office countering foreign disinformation

By April 16, 2025May 2nd, 2025No Comments

Source: The Guardian

The closure represents a huge victory for critics who had alleged that the office was involved in censoring American speech. It comes as part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to dismantle what it describes as government overreach in monitoring speech.

R/Fimi became the successor to the GEC, an Obama-era office that was defunded in December after Republicans in Congress blocked the reauthorization of its $61m budget. During its existence, the GEC had developed AI models to detect deepfakes, exposed Russian propaganda efforts targeting Latin American public opinion on the Ukraine conflict, and published reports on Russian and Chinese disinformation operations.