EXCLUSIVE — A public university is being pressed for answers from a GOP lawmaker after the Washington Examiner revealed the school took cash from a State Department-funded"disinformation" tracker to help"censor" conservatives.
The National Endowment for Democracy has since announced it will no longer fund GDI, while the Global Engagement Center has defended its grant. The multinational software company Oracle also cut ties with GDI recently following their"brand safety" partnership, which came after Microsoft suspended its relationship with the group and launched a purported internal review. Microsoft has stonewalled on providing details about its said review.
Internal messages from UT notably show that personnel at the disinformation lab expressed concerns that it would come under the national spotlight following a Washington Examiner report in February 2023 that laid bare GDI's covert blacklist operation. The report led to an outcry among conservatives, who had long suspected that right-leaning websites were being targeted over their advertising revenue.
The Texas lawmaker's letter to UT Austin is the latest escalation of the GOP's attempts to investigate relationships between state-backed entities and groups that have targeted conservative websites for being purported"disinformation" peddlers.