A mere three weeks after its announcement,
DHS's disinformation governance board is being suspended.
And that follows weeks of controversy that's been fueled by right wing attacks.
Now before I get into the details about this,
let me just note my own biases should be upfront.
I think that it's the right move to suspend this disinformation board.
I think the disinformation board was not defined clearly.
I think that it seemed to be some weird, vague, aimless government organization
as part of DHS that would have absolutely been abused by a GOP administration.
But with that said, let me tell you how this all went down and the failures of
DHS under the leadership of Joe Biden to really sell this to the American people.
So unlike the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 1984 that became
a derogatory comparison point.
Neither the board nor the person who's supposed to serve as the head of
the board Jankiewicz had any power or ability to declare what is true or false.
Or compel internet providers, social media platforms or
public schools to take action against certain types of speech.
In fact, the board itself had no power or
authority to make any operational decisions.
So the disinformation board didn't really have much power in terms of,
I guess censoring the various platforms where disinformation tends to spread.
So what exactly would it do and honestly, till this day,
it is not clear and that is a failure on the part of DHS.
So the board, as Taylor Lorenz Reports was created to study best practices
in combating the harmful effects of disinformation to help DHS counter
viral lies and propaganda that could threaten domestic security.
I find that fascinating because the disinformation board and
DHS overall did a pretty terrible job countering the disinformation by
the right wing in regard to the disinformation board.
And honestly, the disinformation board and DHS did a pretty good job assisting
the right wing with their disinformation and their attacks because they
were just so terrible in explaining what the hell they were up to right.
The government is not supposed to violate our First Amendment rights.
And if you're not abundantly clear about what your disinformation board is
supposed to do as part of a government agency, the DHS and
people are gonna wonder like what is this?
And it could be a massive violation of my constitutional rights.
I think that is a legitimate common sense concerned to have, which is why it
was important for them to be clear about what this board was supposed to do.
Now Alejandro Mayorkas, who's the secretary for the Department of
Homeland Security was asked about this and his answer was terrible.
Let me remind you of what that looked like.
>> What will it do.
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.
And the board this working group internal working group well,
draw from best practices and communicate those best practices to
the operators because the board does not have operational authority.
>> Will American citizens be monitored?
>> No. >> Guarantee that.
>> So what we do,
we in the Department of Homeland Security don't monitor American citizens.
>> But with this board change that.
>> No, no, no, the board does not have any operational authority or capability.
>> So when you watch that, did you get anything out of it?
Did it answer any questions about what the disinformation board,
which again would be part of the Department of Homeland Security?
What would it do that did not answer any questions?
And so when you're not clear about what it's gonna do and
when the rollout is as disastrous and chaotic as it was in this case,
it opens an opportunity for the right wing to run with it.
To run with whatever narrative they have and that is in fact what happened.
And by the way, just one quote from a spokesperson from DHS,
the board's purpose has been grossly mischaracterized.
It will not police speech quite the opposite,
it's focus is to ensure that freedom of speech is protected.
Really, how?
How would it protect freedom of speech?
I don't really understand.
But anyway, let's talk about the rollout of this new department,
which again, has now been suspended.
And I think suspending it was the right choice to be clear.
The board itself and DHS received criticism for
both it's somewhat ominous name and scant details of specific mission.
Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas said it could have done a better job of
communicating what it is and what it isn't agreed.
In fact, America's himself could have done
a better job in describing what the purpose of this board was supposed to be.
Now, administration officials did not brief the relevant congressional staff and
committees ahead of the board's launch.
And members of Congress who had expressed interest in disinformation weren't even
given a detailed explanation about how it would operate.
Like is there anyone competent in the federal government right now?
What what is this?
So then that creates an opportunity for the right wing to viciously attack
the person who was supposed to be the head of the disinformation board.
Okay, so Nina Jenga wits is her name.
She has now stepped down, which I guess it's the right move.
It didn't even really matter.
They suspended, this disinformation board anyway.
But she was supposed to be the head of the group and
she was the target of this right wing smear campaign.
Just hours after Jankiewicz tweeted about her new job, far right influencer,
Jack Posobicc posted tweets accusing the Biden administration of creating
a ministry of Truth.
His 1.7 million followers quickly sprung into action.
By the end of the day, there were at least 53,235 posts on Twitter mentioning
disinformation governance board, many referencing Jenkowicz by name.
And then of course as we know, what tends to follow one of these right wing
spear merchants who spent all of their time Jenkowicz off on twitter is just
the right wing lawmakers taking the lead right?
Following his lead and that's exactly what happened here.
Republican lawmakers echoed Posobiecs, framing and
amplified it to their audiences.
Us Senate hopeful and Missouri, Attorney General Eric Schmitt and
Representative Andrew Clyde both posted similar tweets.
Former congressman or congresswoman,
I should say Tulsi Gabbert also posted a video repeating his statements.
And then as always all of the right wing rags decided to pick up the story and
fear monger about it as well.
But look, to be fair to them, I mean it raised red flags for
me too, what is this board supposed to do?
And even after like the media circuit, the DHS DHS Secretary, Mayorkas did.
It was still unclear.
And even if you're super trusting toward democrats, okay,
you think no, don't worry about like this sounds great, the government monitoring
disinformation is awesome because Biden's in charge and democrats are in charge.
First of all I disagree with that.
But secondly, okay, but democrats aren't always in charge and
would you like knowing that let's say the Trump administration has a so
called disinformation board meant to monitor disinformation?
Would you be okay with it if they're not clear about what the disinformation board
is then supposed to do in response to the disinformation.
Look, disinformation is a problem.
But I don't think the Department of Homeland Security dedicating
a portion of its department on a disinformation board is the answer.
And it's just a mess.
All of it is a mess.
So I feel bad for Jenkowicz because she ended up being collateral damage in
this whole disastrous situation.
Some were simply mocking her,
making fun of her for parodying a song for Mary Poppins.
I saw it by the way it was super cringe to talk about misinformation.
In another instance of performance, where Jankowicz sings a popular musical
theater song about a person's desire to become rich and
powerful was misrepresented to imply that she herself was after money and power.
And would sleep with men to get it because the right wing of course is always classy.
They got to have a face.
They gotta provide a face a person a specific individual to attack and
unfortunately she ended up being the person who had to deal with
the brunt of that.
But again this is more an issue with the haphazard way,
the Biden administration and his cabinet tends to roll things out and
handle certain situations.
And now they're closing up shop and it looks super weak, right?
Because they announced this three weeks ago and
now they're like we got a lot of attacks by the right wing, we should cancel this.
Let's not do it.
Look, if you want to dedicate government employees to studying disinformation,
how it spreads and whatever, just do it.
But like creating a disinformation board, I think rightly raises red flags.
Rolling it out in a haphazard way where people are questioning what
it's about is also a problem.
And then, when the person who's supposed to head this program gets smeared,
attacked and defamed by the right wing, you turn around and
you tell that woman to not defend herself and that's exactly what happened.
Final part of this story as she endured the attacks,
Jankowicz herself was told to stay silent.
After attempting to defend herself on twitter on April 27th,
she was told by DHS officials to not issue any further public statements according
to multiple people close to her.
I mean, it's just pathetic.
All of it, every part of this is pathetic.
The smear merchants, pathetic, haphazard way that the Biden administration and
DHS ruled this out pathetic.
And the way that they didn't let a woman who was being unfairly targeted defend
herself also, incredibly pathetic.
This is what they're wasting their time with when in reality the federal
government unilaterally could do things that actually materially
improve people's lives, like very easy, like canceling student loan debt.
But just do like the bare minimum do the 10,000, that you promised earlier.
I can't even do that.
It's just we're supposed to support this.
We're supposed to be excited by this party.
It's just one nightmare after the next.