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Trump aides close State Dept. office on foreign disinformation

(NYT) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his aides shut down a State Department office Wednesday that tracks and counters global disinformation from foreign actors, including the governments of China, Russia and Iran, U.S. officials said.

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The closing of the office, the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub, had been in the works for weeks. Rubio put all 40 or so of its employees on paid leave Wednesday, the first step in firing them this spring. The State Department fired about 80 contractors working for the office in March and cut almost all contracts related to its work.

The office had been tracking disinformation campaigns by rival powers of the United States, as well as terrorist groups, and publishing reports on them. Some Republican lawmakers in recent years have accused federal employees and nongovernment experts working on tracking disinformation of trying to stifle the views of right-wing political groups around the world and trying to coordinate with social media companies to do so. Russian disinformation often circulates in far-right online channels.

Rubio released a statement Wednesday announcing the closure, saying that the office and its precursor in the Biden administration had “spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving.” Rubio did not present any evidence to support the claim.

Musk’s team is building a system to sell ‘gold card’ immigrant visas

(NYT) — Members of Elon Musk’s government-slashing task force are building a system for the United States to sell special immigration visas, which President Donald Trump has labeled “gold cards,” for $5 million apiece.

Engineers associated with Musk’s team have been working with employees from the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to create a website and application process for the visas, according to three people familiar with the discussions and documents seen by The New York Times.

The project represents something of a shift in mission for Musk’s team, the Department of Government Efficiency, from its initial task of cutting government costs toward a new goal of generating revenue.

In late February, Trump announced his idea for a gold card to give “very high-level people” a “route to citizenship.”

The president and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick provided few details at the time about who would qualify for the program but noted that it would replace the EB-5 visa, which grants permanent residence to foreign nationals willing to invest in U.S. businesses. That program provided green cards to individuals who invested either $800,000 or $1.05 million, creating at least 10 jobs for American workers. It raised about $4 billion for the federal government last year.

The gold card project is being led from the DOGE side by Marko Elez and Edward Coristine, who have been working on it since at least last month. Elez and Coristine have met with officials at various agencies that oversee facets of the visa and immigrant vetting process to understand which existing processes can be incorporated into their new system.

The State Department referred requests for comment to the White House. The White House and Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.