We support our Publishers and Content Creators. You can view this story on their website by CLICKING HERE.

A State Department agency, which has been called out for allegedly blacklisting Americans and news outlets, was set to be refunded — until now.

The Global Engagement Center was included on page 139 of the CR bill that was being hammered out among lawmakers but has now been revised out of the bill.

“That’s a victory,” Liz Wheeler of “The Liz Wheeler Show” tells Mike Benz, a former Trump State Department official who has been at the forefront of rallying against government censorship for years now.

“Thanks to you, raising your voice and telling Congress, ‘Get that out of here, there will be no censorship, no spying on the American people’ — especially a sub agency of the State Department that pretends to combat foreign disinformation and then aims its censorship tentacles at you and me,” she continues.

“But my outstanding question about the Global Engagement Center and the fact that it was in this bill, even after it had been exposed, my question is why would speaker Mike Johnson allow that provision in the first draft of the bill? Because the fact that he allowed it in the bill means that he was fine with renewing it’s authority, funding it for an additional year. Why would he be OK with that?” Wheeler asks.

“Unfortunately, the answer to this is a lot more complicated than I think people want to hear,” Benz answers, noting that even though the Global Engagement Center will not be reauthorized, it will continue “whether there is a formal office or not.”

“Sounds to me like they’re going to take this sub agency, which right now we can actually look at and identify, and they’re going to hide these swamp creatures in other agencies,” Wheeler comments, which Benz confirms.

As for why Johnson allowed the GEC in the bill, Benz has another answer.

“It gets to something very existential, to not just Democrats but also to all of the Republicans in Congress whose primary donors or stakeholders that they answer to, their allies or their financiers in the foreign policy establishment who rely on the battering ram of the blob, the battering ram of the State Department, the CIA, USAID, and the Pentagon to accomplish international affairs that benefit their donors,” Benz explains.

Want more from Liz Wheeler?

To enjoy more of Liz’s based commentary, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.