Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

8. Media Agencies (USAGM, CPB) · Notable

Enforce the Smith–Mundt bar on USAGM messaging to domestic audiences

Not started

244 8. Media Agencies (USAGM, CPB)

“Additionally, the Smith–Mundt Act stipulates that USAGM services are meant to tell the American story abroad—never to domestic audiences—but the agency has used its taxpayer funding to promote partisan messaging in the U.S.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    No enforcement of the Smith-Mundt bar on domestic dissemination was found. Retested on 2026-09-03 against State's own record: "Smith-Mundt" returns zero hits across the full extracted text of the 2025 Comprehensive Annual Report on Public Diplomacy and International Broadcasting (2025-11-25), and the only Smith-Mundt page in State's 12,637-page sitemap is a staff report on a July 2011 meeting. Federal Register full-text "Smith-Mundt" since 2025-01-20 returns zero documents, and the phrase appears nowhere in the enrolled texts of P.L. 119-60, 119-74 or 119-75. Congress moved on the ground without acting: H.R. 5704, "Repeal the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2013", was introduced and referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on 2025-10-08 and has gone no further, which is `not-started` on the four-rung ladder.

    No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Lead, not Evidence: H.R. 5704 as introduced (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-119hr5704ih/html/BILLS-119hr5704ih.htm), referred 2025-10-08. A bill that has only been introduced does not count as progress.
  • Lead, not Evidence: NPR reported on 2026-03-23 that VOA staff sued alleging the agency was made to carry propaganda (npr.org/2026/03/23/nx-s1-5756465/…, also recorded for #628), and the docket Newhouse v. U.S. Agency for Global Media, D.D.C. 1:26-cv-00980, was filed 2026-03-23. A complaint is an allegation, not a dated instrument enforcing the bar, and the docket page refused to open for us.
Action
restrict
Object
USAGM domestic dissemination under the Smith–Mundt Act
ID
631