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CyberScoop ran a very welcome story last week headlined, “State Department’s disinformation office to close after funding nixed in NDAA.” One of the great side stories of this month’s budget battles was the permanent closure of the State Department’s Orwellian “disinformation” office, resulting in an astounding $61 million in annual savings as the House Weaponization Committee claimed a major scalp.

The “Global Engagement Center,” or GEC, was run by the U.S. State Department, and stopped operating for good on Christmas Eve since it ran out of money. Despite its massive budget, the office included only 120 staff, with the money primarily going out in grants to various leftwing think tanks and foreign media companies, including one that labeled both NewsMax and the New York Post as “Russian disinformation.”

GEC’s supporters claim the office tirelessly protects America from foreign disinformation from Iran, Russia, and China. But nobody believes them, since the GEC actually operates more like a taxpayer-funded Democrat political action committee.

GEC is most well-known for its pandemic censorship operation, when it coordinated the major social media companies in a vast cancelation effort aimed at American users who questioned vaccines or wondered whether the virus came from a lab in China. During last week’s funding debates, Senator Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) correctly called the GEC “an entity that is funded to censor conservatives.”

The news was most encouraging because it showed the House Weaponization Committee finally having a real-world impact, and it was the most significant strike yet against the progressive censorship complex. In fact, the Washington Post’s version of the story was headlined, “State Dept. disinfo unit faces shutdown amid GOP’s war on censorship.”

It’s like they think a “war on censorship” is a bad thing. The progressives have raced so far down the road to totalitarianism that they lost the plot and think all the other drivers agree with them. Well done, Republicans, it was a nice surprise stuffed into the Christmas budget stocking.

Twenty-one days.