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White House press secretary Jen Psaki branded the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) ‘disinformation board’ as a tool to fight illegal immigration, noting that its first warnings were sent out under the Trump administration in 2020.
‘This is a continuation of work that was done under the [Trump] administration,’ Psaki assured reporters at her daily briefing on Monday.
She said the board’s work would be to ‘to address the use of disinformation in helping smugglers prompt the movement of more migrants to the border.’
‘For anyone out there who might be concerned about the increase of migrants to the border, this is the kind of apparatus that’s working to address disinformation. And again, it’s continuing the work of the Department of Homeland Security in 2020,’ Psaki said.
In March, there were 221,000 migrant encounters at the southern border, more than any month since the early 2000s.
Critics immediately fired off about the new plan for the dystopian-sounding board when it was announced last week, especially about Nina Jankowicz, who has been chosen to head the Disinformation Governance Board. Jankowicz has been critical of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and stories about the Hunter Biden laptop.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday praised President Joe Biden’s new disinformation czar as ‘qualified and neutral’ despite a slew of Republicans criticizing her as partisan.
Asked about that criticism on CNN’s State of the Union, Mayorkas called Nina Jankowicz ’eminently qualified, a renowned expert in the field of disinformation.’
‘And neutral?’ host Dana Bash asked.
Mayorkas answered, ‘Absolutely so.’


Jankowics poses with her own book, How to Lose the Information War
He also pledged the White House’s new Disinformation Governance Board will not be used to monitor American citizens, despite mounting right-wing concerns that it will be a tool for censorship and surveillance.

Jankowicz has been appointed by the Biden administration to head the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board as executive director
Jankowicz’s appointment in particular has caught criticism from conservatives, after her previous dismissal of reporting by the New York Post and DailyMail.com on Hunter Biden’s laptop as a ‘Trump campaign product.’
The laptop’s contents, some of which are reportedly linked to a federal tax fraud investigation into the president’s son, had been dismissed in October 2020 by Democrats and mainstream media outlets as ‘Russian disinformation’ before being authenticated by the Washington Post earlier this year.
A Wilson Center fellow who once advised the Ukrainian government, Jankowicz has also come under scrutiny for praising former British spy Christopher Steele.
Steele is behind the notorious and now-debunked Russia dossier that purported Trump had strong ties with Moscow.
Jankowicz also caught heat for an old tweet criticizing advertisements promoting mask-wearing at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised against public mask-wearing at the time.

Mayorkas said the board would not have ‘operational authority’ despite GOP claims it will be used to crack down on dissent
Prominent Republicans like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have compared the disinformation board to the ‘Ministry of Truth’ in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, claiming it’s being done to silence right-wing voices.
‘It’s clear I mean, those criticisms are precisely the opposite of what this small working group within the Department of Homeland Security will do,’ Mayorkas said on CNN‘s State of the Union.
However, he acknowledged that the Biden administration ‘probably could have done a better job of communicating what it does and does not do.’
‘The fact is that disinformation that creates a threat to the security of the homeland is our responsibility to address, and this department has been addressing it for years.’
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced last week that it was creating the board in a bid to crack down on disinformation coming from Russia as well as disinformation spread by human smugglers to encourage migrants to attempt to cross the southern border.

Biden’s Homeland Security chief was forced to defend the new disinformation board after a slew of Republican criticism
Mayorkas said Sunday that the board will not have ‘operational authority’ but was vague when asked about exactly what it will do.
‘We know the problems but it’s still not clear to me how this governance board will act,’ host Dana Bash pressed.
Mayorkas answered: ‘So what it does, is it works to ensure that the way in which we address threats, the connectivity between threats and acts of violence are addressed without infringing on free speech, protecting civil rights and civil liberties, the right of privacy.’

Many Republicans have compared it to the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984
‘The board — this working group, internal working group — will draw from best practices and communicate those best practices to the operators, because the board does not have operational authority.’
The Biden official gave a firm ‘no’ when asked whether Americans will be monitored.
‘What it will do is gather together best practices in addressing the threat of disinformation from foreign state adversaries, from the cartels, and disseminate those best practices to the operators that have been executing and addressing this threat for years,’ he said instead.
He drilled down the point during a separate interview on Fox News Sunday, claiming his department was not the ‘opinion police.’
‘There are people in the department who have a diverse range of views, and they’re incredibly dedicated to the mission,’ he said when pledging the board will not step on free speech.
It comes days after Florida’s GOP governor pledged his state would be ‘fighting back’ against the disinformation board and accused President Joe Biden of using it to attack his critics.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas pledged to introduce legislation to combat the board
‘You cannot have a Ministry of Truth in this country. We’re not going to let Biden get away with this one. So we will be fighting back,’ DeSantis said during a press conference.
‘When you’re not doing well, you have two options: You can try to do better. Or you can try to silence your critics. [Biden] is doing the latter.’
Meanwhile, Republican Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton said he would introduce legislation to defund the board.
‘The Federal Government has no business creating a Ministry of Truth,’ Cotton wrote on Twitter Friday.
‘The Department of Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Board” is unconstitutional and unamerican, and I’ll be introducing a bill to defund it.’
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy wrote on the platform: ‘The Biden administration’s proposed Ministry of Truth is completely un-American.’
‘Republicans have already introduced legislation to stop it, and we will force votes and a discharge petition to defund this Orwellian idea,’ he added.
Source: dailymail