DHS’s Disinformation Governance Board Found Dead; Usual Suspects Blamed for Its Demise

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On April 27, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced that his agency was establishing a “Disinformation Governance Board” before the 2022 elections. His announcement of the board and its purpose starts at 1:34 of the video clip below.

This is how Politico described the creation of yet another arm of the administrative state.

DHS is standing up a new Disinformation Governance Board to coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security, focused specifically on irregular migration and Russia. Nina Jankowicz will head the board as executive director. She previously was a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as part of the Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship and oversaw Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute.

The mind boggles at the thought process that imagined the government defining “disinformation was a) a good idea or b) that it would be met with shrugs. As Representative Jim Jordan pointed out in his questioning of Mayorkas two days later, basically everything the US government has told us about COVID would properly be classified as disinformation.

He also pointed out that Nina Jankowicz had stated that the Steele Dossier was real and the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. Mayorkas feigned ignorance.

When Mayorkas faced Senator Josh Hawley the next week, it worsened.

Hawley described Jankowicz as a “human geyser of misinformation.” “Why,” Hawley demanded, “don’t you just dissolve this board? I mean, you haven’t heard a single Senator support this board. It is an abomination, it is unconstitutional, and frankly it is embarrassing. And the fact that you’ve chosen this person to lead it is appalling.”

Finally, the heat grew so intense that even a collection of numb-nuts like the Biden White House decided that the pain was too great. This morning, the Washington Post ran a scooplet that said the Disinformation Governance Board was on hold and would not be implemented. Naturally, they blamed the “far right” and bad communications planning, not the fact that the idea was stupid and an affront to the Constitution.

The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday paused a new and controversial board’s work on disinformation and accepted the resignation of its leader, capping weeks of concerns about impinging on free speech rights and at times frenzied conspiracy theories about the board itself.

What remains to be seen is whether the debate over the board will damage ongoing U.S. efforts to counter disinformation used as a weapon by Russia and other adversaries. Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas acknowledged the board had become a distraction to the department’s other work, which includes safeguarding U.S. elections, two officials familiar with his decision said.

The Disinformation Governance Board’s director, Nina Jankowicz, wrote Wednesday that the board’s future was “uncertain,” according to a resignation letter obtained by The Associated Press.

While the board has not formally been shuttered, it will be reviewed by members of a DHS advisory council that’s expected to make recommendations in 75 days. The Washington Post first reported the board’s pause.

In keeping with the Washington Post’s reputation of letting people with a personal interest in the case portray themselves as disinterested journalists, the Post tabbed the odious Taylor Lorenz, the sleazy pseudo-journalist who doxed the editor of the “Libs of TikTok” Twitter feed, who, from Twitter seems to be buddies with Jankowicz, to write the behind the scenes story.

On the morning of April 27, the Department of Homeland Security announced the creation of the first Disinformation Governance Board with the stated goal to “coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security.” The Biden administration tapped Nina Jankowicz, a well-known figure in the field of fighting disinformation and extremism, as the board’s executive director.

In naming the 33-year-old Jankowicz to run the newly created board, the administration chose someone with extensive experience in field of disinformation, which has emerged as an urgent and important issue. The author of the books “How to Be a Woman Online” and “How to Lose the Information War,” her career also featured stints at multiple nonpartisan think tanks and nonprofits and included work that focused on strengthening democratic institutions. Within the small community of disinformation researchers, her work was well-regarded.

But within hours of news of her appointment, Jankowicz was thrust into the spotlight by the very forces she dedicated her career to combating. The board itself and DHS received criticism for both its somewhat ominous name and scant details of specific mission (Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said it “could have done a better job of communicating what it is and what it isn’t”), but Jankowicz was on the receiving end of the harshest attacks, with her role mischaracterized as she became a primary target on the right-wing Internet. She has been subject to an unrelenting barrage of harassment and abuse while unchecked misrepresentations of her work continue to go viral.

In Lorenz’s telling of the story, the supervillain was Jack Posobiec.

Just hours after Jankowicz tweeted about her new job, far-right influencer Jack Posobiec posted tweets accusing the Biden administration of creating a “Ministry of Truth.” Posobiec’s 1.7 million followers quickly sprung into action. By the end of the day, there were at least 53,235 posts on Twitter mentioning “Disinformation Governance Board,” many referencing Jankowicz by name, according to a report by Advance Democracy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that conducts public-interest research. In the days following, that number skyrocketed.

So, we will be safe from Karens with badges hunting us down for saying the wrong things for a few more days.

I’ve frequently said that we are ruled by idiots. Even so, the stupidity of this idea took me by surprise. The idea only makes sense if you think the current party will be in the White House forever. Who on the left would want a President Trump or President DeSantis in command of a “Disinformation Governance Board?” A child could see that this atrocity would be the target of lawsuit after lawsuit, and the courts would eventually reduce it to nothingness.

As we approach a critical election where our ability to criticize Democrat policy will bring down cries of racism, we can be thankful that we won’t be plagued with a battalion of C-student journalists from cheap schools masquerading as fact-checkers telling us what we can and cannot write and using a federal agency as their authority.

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6 thoughts on “DHS’s Disinformation Governance Board Found Dead; Usual Suspects Blamed for Its Demise”

  1. I should be surprised that any of this happened but sadly, I am not…. the progressive left has ‘gotten away’ with so much that I am sure the Ministry of Truth sounded great to their ears and somewhere in a corner of their tiny minds, it made some kind of sense…. they continue to push everything, and all things, that are extreme, not American, even mildly conservative and / or ethical — BLM, ‘trans’ everything, racist everything, government as the solution to any and all problems, far right threats are the most extreme, open boarders for illegals, packing the Supreme court, ballot harvesting during elections, killing of the unborn…. One good thing that happened was that this little tempest in a teapot exposed just how outrageous the Joey Robinette admin has become (or most likely, always was). Thank the Lord for some sane elected conservatives who have the backbone to speak out — admittedly, conservatives are assisted by bumbling incompetents like Mayorkas….

  2. My bet is it’s not dead, just playing possum until they can find someone to replace Skanky Janky who’s every bit as radical but without the in-your-face Scare The Normies history.

    • If you recall the trial balloons Obama floated, throughout his two terms, there is a connection here, to them. That crazy girl might even still be the one when it pops back up. All this tells me is that Obama is likely the one calling all the shots. Just another trial balloon. Neverending.

      • You, the classic Obama Two-Step… take as many steps forward as they can until they freak the normies out, then take just enough step back to dull the roar from the hostile crowd, rinse and repeat.

      • And it gets worse… Scary Poppins is getting replaced by both Jamie Gorelick (she who brought us 9/11 with her “wall of separation”) and Michael Chertoff (who dramatically expanded DHS, and never met a person he didn’t want to cavity search just for breathing).

  3. “Who on the left would want a President Trump or President DeSantis in command of a “Disinformation Governance Board?” ”

    Well, under a President Biden or Harris, the judiciary would see this was a critical use of government resources to keep disinformation and propaganda from the American people, and it’s desperately needed. Under a President Trump or DeSantis, it would be a blatantly unconstitutional threat to all people’s right to expression, and cannot be tolerated.

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