Feds blew $267M fighting misinformation under Biden as Trump vows to ban censorship cartel

WASHINGTON — The federal government spent up to $267 million of your money to study and counteract so-called “misinformation” since President Biden took office in January 2021 — as President-elect Donald Trump vows to bar official use of the term.The funds doled out to universities, nonprofits and private companies spiked from $2.2 million in 2020, the final full year of Trump’s first term, to a staggering $126 million in 2021 before tapering off — even as leading US public health officials were imposing mandates they later admitted had no scientific basis — the taxpayer-transparency group OpenTheBooks said in a report released Friday.The findings were released by the group, which was founded by Republican budget hawks, as Trump’s Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) looks for areas to trim wasteful spending, and after Trump himself pledged to ax the terms “misinformation” and “disinformation” from the federal lexicon.OpenTheBooks does not account for the cost of in-house efforts by the Biden White House and various executive branch agencies to fight purportedly incorrect speech, including by pressuring social media companies to censor content.Proponents of fighting alleged “misinformation” argue that it’s in the public’s interest to weed out incorrect claims — with Biden personally accusing social media companies of “killing people” by platforming posts critiquing the COVID-19 vaccine in 2021, as anti-“misinformation” spending surged.Opponents of speech-policing argue it both violates the First Amendment and prevents vigorous debate and competing narratives that allow for a more full understanding of issues of public concern.Critics also note that much of what is initially deemed “misinformation” later turns out to either gain broad evidentiary support or outright confirmation, such as the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese lab that was doing risky US-funded “gain of function” research.An...