7. Intelligence Community · Major
Prohibit the IC from monitoring domestic disinformation
Printed page 216 7. Intelligence Community
“The IC should be prohibited from monitoring so-called domestic disinformation. Such activity can easily slip into suppression of an opposition party’s speech, is corrosive of First Amendment protections, and raises questions about impartiality when the IC chooses not to act.”
What has happened
- Attempted
As part of the 'ODNI 2.0' reorganization, DNI Gabbard announced that the Foreign Malign Influence Center would be reduced and its functions absorbed elsewhere in ODNI. This shrinks the IC element that tracked influence operations but is a foreign-influence office; no order prohibiting domestic-disinformation monitoring has been found.
- Attempted
Executive Order 14149 ordered that no federal officer 'engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen' and directed the Attorney General to investigate 2021-2025 federal activity — a government-wide directive, not an IC-specific ban on monitoring domestic disinformation.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- The Primary source for the 2025-08-20 announcement — ODNI’s press release and the “ODNI 2.0” fact sheet (https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/ODNI-20-Fact-Sheet.pdf) — could not be read: dni.gov refused to open for us. Lead: once a person with a browser opens it, it replaces the Just Security piece the Status now rests on.
- Axios, 2025-08-20 (https://www.axios.com/2025/08/20/tulsi-gabbard-odni-staffing-cuts): allowlisted but the page refused to open for us — lead.
- Searched: presidential documents and notices in the Federal Register, and White House presidential actions, for “disinformation”, “malign influence”, “misinformation” (nothing); ODNI Federal Register notices since 2025-01-20 (Privacy Act and NIU board notices only).
- Action
- restrict
- Object
- IC monitoring of domestic disinformation
- ID
- 575