This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A report from Open the Books has revealed that under the anti-free speech agenda of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the government has handed out some $267 million to look at "misinformation" and how to convince Americans "it would be better if your voice were silenced in favor of the 'expert' class."
The report notes that Biden and Harris have delivered those funds to research grants "with the term 'misinformation' in the proposal."
"Of course, the COVID pandemic was the driving force behind so much of the misinformation debate. Sure enough, the feds have spent at least $127 million in grants specifically targeted to study the spread of 'misinformation' – or to help people 'overcome' it, so to speak — by persuading them to go along with COVID-related public health recommendations and mandates," the report confirmed.
Of course, the evidence now reveals that many of those campaigns, the experimental COVID shots, the masks, the distancing, simply were made up by various officials as they spoke, and did essentially nothing to help Americans.
"In one particularly brazen instance, $200,000 was spent slandering President-elect Trump himself. The grant resulted in a paper suggesting populist leaders and movements in various countries kept people from coming together in 'solidarity' and public officials need to have the 'main say' on health guidance next time," the report said.
Another instance of the truth being slapped with the "misinformation" label happened when the scandal erupted over FEMA workers "avoiding homes with Trump signs."
That was, until "FEMA itself admitted it had happened."
One of the pushers behind the anti-free speech agenda was Anthony Fauci, who is a former government health official who delivered to the public many of his mandates about COVID.
While he demanded "vaccines for children, masking and double masking, and six feet for social distancing," the report said, many requirements "have since been found to have dubious scientific basis."
"There is robust documentation by now proving that the Biden-Harris administration worked closely with social media companies to censor content deemed 'misinformation,' which often included cases where people simply questioned or disagreed with the administration's COVID policies," the report said.
Other reports have confirmed that what the Biden-Harris regime called "misinformation" or "disinformation" was nothing more than their political party's chosen opinion on an issue.
"In February the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government issued a scathing report against the National Science Foundation (NSF) for funding grants supporting tools and processes that censor online speech," the new revelations found.
That report said, "The purpose of these taxpayer-funded projects is to develop artificial intelligence (AI)-powered censorship and propaganda tools that can be used by governments and Big Tech to shape public opinion by restricting certain viewpoints or promoting others."
That scheme actually involved spending $13 million in tax money on "censorious technologies."
"Federal spending records show at least $127 million tax dollars funding anti-misinformation efforts directly related to COVID-19 for a variety of activities, from on-the-ground advocacy working to dispel vaccine misinformation, to scientific studies on how supposed misinformation is spread online," the report explained.
"The result of all this was a record loss of trust in science and government and compounding economic and social disasters that may never be able to be fully quantified."
The report notes that when Biden and Harris took office, the spending on such censorship plans exploded from $2.2 million in 2020 to $126 million in 2021.
The report notes the federal government calls misinformation that which "has led people to decline vaccines, reject public health measures, and use unproven treatments."
"These definitions leave a lot of room for interpretation and abuse—who decides what the 'best available evidence' is at any given time? And who decides which experts should be considered authoritative or not?" the report charged.
"Famously, then-National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease director Anthony Fauci promoted the notion that people should stand six feet apart from each other to achieve 'social distancing' to reduce COVID transmission."
But Fauci himself later admitted to Congress that was simply made up and lacked any "scientific basis."
But that factor triggered the closure of schools, business and more, costing children massive learning losses and triggering business collapses.
In one instance, the report said, the Department of Health and Human Services spent more than $80 million "to build a network of nonprofits through which to disperse materials about COVID and flu vaccines."
"One notable research grant awarded to George Washington University in FY 2022 targeted former president Donald Trump. The study, called 'Pandemic Communication in Time of Populism: Building Resilient Media and Ensuring Effective Pandemic Communication in Divided Societies' received a $199,516 grant from the National Science Foundation," the report said.
"Researchers on this Biden-era grant examined how so-called 'populist' leaders supposedly prevented society from coming together in 'solidarity' during the COVID pandemic. Trump's presidency was a focus of the research, along with the leaders of three other countries," the report said, with one researcher claiming, "What went wrong in different ways in all these countries and in a lot of countries around the world that had populist governments…there was just this very high level of polarization and politicization of the pandemic response…and it really interfered with the ability of society to pull together in a consistent way and to get through the pandemic."
That conclusion was that "experts" should have the "main say" on such issues, even though those "experts" repeatedly were completely wrong during COVID.
The report cited the conclusions of the House Committee on Energy & Commerce's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, which said the Biden-Harris administration's response to the pandemic "resulted in a collapse of the public's trust in public health messaging."
That's because "the administration most concerned with 'misinformation' itself trafficked in misinformation: on masks, on risks to children, on social distancing, and on the need to vaccinate even infants."
In a commentary at Fox News, writer Justin Haskins said, "The federal government shouldn't be involved, directly or indirectly, in the fact-checking industry. Nor should it engage in efforts designed to limit the speech of citizens, particularly when taxpayers are the ones footing the bill."
He said, "What we found is clear evidence that the Biden-Harris White House used funds to support or develop Orwellian surveillance and propaganda strategies, create methods and tools to restrict speech online, and even to finance highly politicized reports critical of Trump."
