An explosive new report from Open the Books investigates how the U.S. authorities is utilizing your tax {dollars} to silence free speech, focusing on those that dare to go in opposition to “authorized” narratives.
In accordance with the report, “Since 2021, the Biden-Harris administration has spent $267 million on analysis grants with the time period ‘misinformation’ within the proposal.”
The report reveals that $127M was spent simply on learning and countering Covid-related speech alone.
President Trump’s incoming Chairman of the FCC, Brendan Carr, has already signaled his intent to deal with the difficulty. He lately despatched a letter to the CEOs of Fb, Google, Apple, and Microsoft on the central roles their firms have performed within the censorship cartel.
In his letter, Carr famous that the tech giants had been “taking part in a censorship cartel that included not solely expertise and social media firms however promoting, advertising, and so-called “fact-checking” organizations in addition to the Biden-Harris administration itself.”
The report from Open the Books underscores Carr’s issues about direct authorities funding of those efforts.
Misinformation-related grants really stretch again to FY2017 through the first Trump presidency. $273 million has been awarded for grant proposals containing the time period since then—however there was an explosion of money through the years-long Covid malaise. The overwhelming majority of that determine ($267 million) was for grants that started in 2021 or later.
METHODOLOGY NOTE: This possible doesn’t cowl all grants given to fight misinformation, as a result of transaction descriptions could not embody this key phrase, however the pattern in spending illustrates a sudden explosion of curiosity in misinformation beginning in 2021.
An infinite year-over-year bounce in new grants occurred between 2020 and 2021—from $2.2 million to $126 million because the federal authorities poured cash out to deal with COVID-related “misinformation,” amongst different tasks.
Whereas spending has since slowed down, it’s nonetheless far larger than it was pre-pandemic in 2020: $18.3 million in new grants started in FY 2024.
Whereas the report supplies a deep-dive into how public grants, funded by taxpayers, had been centered on “dispelling” misinformation, in 2020, the main target for contracts was “usually involved with monitoring or eliminating supposed misinformation at its supply,” usually focusing on unbiased information retailers.
The Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft is presently concerned within the Murthy vs. Missouri lawsuit. The investigation continues on this lawsuit on how the federal government was pushing social media to silence our web site and others.
Read the full report here.