Contrary to what you'll hear in next Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing, the greatest threat to both free expression and national security isn’t coming from efforts to combat disinformation — it’s coming from politicians determined to dismantle those efforts.
For years, Republican lawmakers on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, led by figures like Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), have targeted think tanks, research institutions, and nongovernmental groups (NGOs) that help protect our democracy from foreign interference. Under the guise of “defending free speech,” they’ve deployed subpoenas, public smear campaigns, and legal intimidation tactics that have crippled organizations dedicated to exposing disinformation and tracking hostile foreign influence.
The first casualty? Our national security. By shutting down groups that effectively track Russian, Chinese, and Iranian influence operations, these politicians leave America vulnerable, allowing foreign adversaries to manipulate our elections and information ecosystem without resistance. Rep. Jordan and his allies refuse to acknowledge the reality of foreign influence because it contradicts their political narrative. Instead, they characterize counter-disinformation efforts as schemes to silence conservatives — ignoring how these same efforts have identified foreign actors across the political spectrum.
This isn’t about principle; it’s about power. By dismantling foreign interference watchdogs, as well as the government programs dedicated to this threat, they aim to weaken accountability structures, creating an environment where falsehoods and foreign propaganda flourish unchecked, provided it serves their political interests. Rather than protecting the free exchange of ideas, they’ve systematically weakened the organizations that safeguard American democracy from foreign and domestic threats. This represents an active silencing campaign, orchestrated at the highest levels, aimed at neutralizing the civil society groups and researchers crucial to defending our democratic institutions.
The Essential Partnerships
One of the most devastating consequences of this campaign has been the targeting of NGOs and research institutions that were on the frontlines of countering foreign propaganda and influence operations. These groups have provided essential intelligence, working in tandem with government agencies, tech companies, and independent researchers to mitigate the threats posed by Russia, China, Iran, and other adversaries. As we described in our “Flooding the Gap” report, this ecosystem of public-private partnerships was spurred by widespread Russian interference in the 2016 election. These partnerships reached their peak during the 2020 election, when dozens of groups like the Election Integrity Partnership, the Stanford Internet Observatory, and the Disinformation Defense League helped uncover coordinated Russian, Chinese, and Iranian operations to undermine our political process.
At the time, these efforts weren’t partisan — in fact, congressional Republicans like then-Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) were strong supporters of efforts to counter foreign influence through the State Department’s Global Engagement Center and the Foreign Influence Task Force at the FBI. Republicans in both chambers, including Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), then-Chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, led the charge to create the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is responsible for protecting critical national infrastructure like pipelines, election machines, water treatment plants, and power grids. But after the 2020 election, when many of these groups vocally countered President Trump’s false claims of election fraud, they became targets for partisan actors on the right.
The Chilling Effect: Legal Attacks and Intimidation
Even after the Supreme Court rejected the central claims in Murthy v. Missouri, affirming that partnerships between the government and civil society groups to combat disinformation are both lawful and critical, these attacks did not stop. Instead, NGOs and academic researchers found themselves the targets of strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP) designed to drain resources, intimidate experts, and force organizations to shut down. It is no mistake that these retaliatory lawsuits have largely been brought in states without anti-SLAPP legislation.
As a result of these attacks, many of these institutions have been forced to close or significantly scale back their operations. Shuttered groups include the Stanford Internet Observatory, the Election Integrity Partnership, First Draft, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, the Carnegie Endowment's Partnership for Countering Influence Operations, and more. Other have slowed down or gone underground, like University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, Newsguard, Graphika, the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub.
Researchers have been doxxed, stalked, and threatened with violence. Some have received death threats so severe that they’ve had to relocate their families or abandon the field entirely. This isn’t just a professional loss — it’s a national security crisis, leaving America more vulnerable to cyber warfare, election manipulation, and the unchecked spread of foreign propaganda.
Opening the Floodgates to Foreign Influence
With these organizations dismantled or paralyzed, the United States is now far more vulnerable to foreign influence than it has been in years. Russian disinformation networks are spreading election-related conspiracy theories with little resistance. China is amplifying divisive rhetoric to sow discord among American voters. Iranian operatives are manipulating social media to push anti-democratic narratives. The very groups that once tracked and countered these threats have been gutted — by our own elected officials.
And perhaps that’s the point. Foreign influence in our democracy was once seen as a bipartisan threat, something that united political adversaries. Yet the current administration has taken a different approach, welcoming foreign governments to meddle in American democracy, as long as it serves the interests of those in power. Look no further than Attorney General Pam Bondi’s decision to deprioritize enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the main law that governs foreign lobbying in the U.S., and to dismantle the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force. The announcement that the U.S. would suspend offensive cyber operations against Russia came even as Russia increases its cyber intrusions against our critical infrastructure. For an even more egregious example, see President Trump’s crypto meme coin (TRUMP), which offers an efficient way for foreign actors to directly line the pockets of the president and exert leverage over Trump’s policy decisions. It’s easy to see how foreign governments could buy tokens to win Trump’s favor — or threaten to sell them off, which could crash the token’s price and substantially impact our president’s net worth.
Hypocrisy and a Democracy at Risk
The hypocrisy of labeling these NGOs as agents of censorship becomes all the more glaring when we consider that their work and their speech — defending against foreign influence by identifying foreign conspiracy narratives and actors — is being actively dismantled by government officials who claim to be defending free speech. The very organizations that were tracking and exposing foreign interference are now being silenced, revealing the true agenda behind these attacks. It’s not about safeguarding the free exchange of ideas or upholding democratic principles. It’s about ensuring that the flow of disinformation, propaganda, and foreign influence is uninterrupted and unchecked.
NGOs are one of the first pillars attacked when democracies fall, targeted precisely because of their role in holding power accountable and defending the public good. And while these attacks started with NGOs, the same intimidation playbook has been deployed in recent weeks against a much wider range of groups perceived to be standing in the administration’s way: law firms, independent and government-backed news outlets, top-tier colleges and universities, and federal judges.
The real threat to free expression isn’t from the work of NGOs combating disinformation: it’s the systematic erosion of the very institutions. By labeling these democracy defenders as agents of censorship, those in power are not only undermining our national security, but enabling and emboldening foreign adversaries to exploit our vulnerabilities. In their pursuit of political advantage, they are putting our nation at risk, and the public must understand that this is the true assault on our freedoms.
Now, more than ever, it is critical to stand up for the organizations that fight to protect the integrity of our elections and our democracy from foreign influence. When they fall, we all lose.