The State Department’s Global Engagement Center, initially established to combat violent terrorists abroad, but which allegedly worked to suppress Americans’ speech, is “substantially likely” to be disbanded on December 23, according to a court filing from the department.

In February, The Daily Wire filed a lawsuit against the State Department, alongside The Federalist and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, regarding the Global Engagement Center’s ties to anti-“misinformation” organizations like NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index (GDI).

The lawsuit claims that these organizations were focused on suppressing American conservative media and that the Global Engagement Center’s involvement with them violated the First Amendment.

On Monday, the State Department filed a “notice of case development” to “inform the Court of an upcoming development that is substantially likely to occur on December 23, 2024—termination of the Global Engagement Center.”

The Daily Wire reported on Saturday that the center was created in 2016 to create propaganda “directed at foreign audiences abroad in order to counter the messaging and diminish the influence of international terrorist organizations and other violent extremists abroad.”

Following the controversy surrounding Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, the focus shifted to targeting “disinformation” on social media platforms. This became evident in the Twitter Files—internal communications revealing the government’s efforts to pressure the platform, which were released after Elon Musk acquired the company.

The department said the Obama-era law creating the Global Engagement Center had a sunset date of eight years from its creation, and that “Congress has not extended the termination of the GEC thus far, and it is Defendants’ understanding that reauthorization is unlikely to occur.”

It said the State Department has sent Congress a plan to “realign the Center’s staff and funding to other Department offices and bureaus for foreign information manipulation and interference activities in the event that the termination is not extended.”

“Defendants are conferring with Plaintiffs about the implications of these developments for this litigation,” the Department said.

Neither the State Department nor the Global Engagement Center is permitted to operate within the United States. However, a platform run by the Global Engagement Center, called Disinfo Cloud, promoted tools aimed at suppressing so-called disinformation.

The center also allegedly opened an office in Silicon Valley to exert influence over American tech companies, which control the flow of information to U.S. citizens.

The State Department has admitted to funding the Global Disinformation Index and NewsGuard through a middleman, Park Capital Investment Group. The Global Engagement Center ran a “Disinformation Cloud” that retweeted social media posts from GDI and NewsGuard and advertised that “NewsGuard launched a new tool, Responsible Advertising for News Segments (RANS), to help advertising companies avoid websites known to host or produce mis/disinformation.”

The Global Engagement Center refused to provide details about its operations, even after the House Small Business Committee sent it a subpoena.

NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index were paid after Disinfo Cloud ran contests for companies developing technology to identify “misinformation.” The State Department said the contests “were aimed at countering disinformation and propaganda overseas.”

However, “Defendants admit that Disinfo Cloud users included some members of academia, the private sector, and tech vendors, including some located within the United States,” it conceded in lawsuit filings.