The Biden administration is set to spend taxpayer dollars on a sweeping media education program that will train government employees, media professionals, librarians, educators, and information specialists in foreign countries on "countering disinformation," according to grant documents reviewed by the Washington Examiner.

Combating and studying "disinformation" has remained a top concern of the Biden White House, which has come under fire from Republicans for coordinating with private companies such as Twitter and Facebook on digital content moderation. Now, the State Department will award an American nonprofit group or higher education institution $1.9 million for a "digital literacy" program in at least 16 European and Central Asian countries on how "to counter Russian and other foreign disinformation efforts," funding records show.

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While the grant, for instance, cites Russia, an authoritarian country, as pushing "false messaging" and "propaganda," the concern is that the Biden State Department has proven itself as censorious in its efforts to target disinformation, according to Mike Benz, the agency's former deputy assistant secretary for international communications and information technology under former President Donald Trump.

"The phrase 'digital literacy' is a trick," Benz, now executive director of Foundation for Freedom Online, a censorship watchdog, told the Washington Examiner. "It's censorship doublespeak. By 'digital literacy,' they mean any U.S. citizen who does not read the right news sources online is digitally illiterate, and therefore has to be made 'literate' through reeducation."

A spokesperson for the State Department told the Washington Examiner that "disinformation" remains a "priority issue around the world," noting that the grant will "help achieve U.S. foreign policy goals."

"The U.S. Department of State grant process is administered consistent with applicable federal law and policies, including with respect to bias and preferential treatment," the spokesperson said. "The department cannot comment further on its selection process with respect to this particular request for proposals and potential awards."

Biden's efforts to tackle alleged disinformation have earned the ire of GOP members of Congress and watchdogs, which have raised concerns over the left-leaning nature of the various initiatives. The government has been markedly criticized on the heels of multiple Washington Examiner reports detailing how two State Department-funded entities, the Global Engagement Center and the National Endowment for Democracy, granted $665,000 to a group called the Global Disinformation Index — which has been secretly feeding conservative website blacklists to advertisers with the intent of shutting down disfavored speech.

The new $1.9 million grant is part of the American Spaces Digital Literacy and Training Program under the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which "strives to embed diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in all aspects of its work" and "increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries," according to its website. It was posted on March 31 and is accepting applications until June 7.

Those aged 18 to 50 will be eligible to be trained in the countries, which may include Albania, Greece, Russia, Armenia, Hungary, Croatia, Poland, Romania, Georgia, Estonia, and others, according to funding records. Lesson plans should tout the "ability to identify disinformation" and "build long-term resilience to disinformation," records show.

"The curriculum plan must include at least one asynchronous, self-guided and self-paced digital/online learning tool for public audiences in all priority countries," the State Department wrote in funding records. "The program also includes support for global activities to bolster American Spaces programming and outreach, to include at least one training, mentoring, and cultural visit to the United States for select American Spaces staff affiliated with partner organizations, as well as social media message map development and implementation and deployment strategies."

One Republican lawmaker who has been highly critical of the Biden administration's disinformation initiatives is Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Issa pressed the State Department in March over its grants to the Global Disinformation Index, blasting Secretary of State Antony Blinken for infringing on "the principles of our democracy, and the inherent rights of all Americans."

"We know the Biden State Department already organized, under the guise of stopping ‘misinformation,’ the suppression of free speech and targeting the mainstream conservative viewpoints," Issa told the Washington Examiner, noting that the "last thing" the department should be doing is investing taxpayer money into the "censorship industrial complex" through the latest $1.9 million grant.

The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which is handling the new disinformation-related award, counts Lee Satterfield as its assistant secretary of state. Satterfield, an Obama-era State Department official, also served various roles in the Clinton administration, including as chief of staff for then-Labor Secretary Alexis Herman.

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Scott Weinhold, principal deputy assistant secretary for the ECA, was assistant chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, from 2020 to 2021, where he headed up the State Department's team evacuating people from Kabul International Airport. The administration has long been slammed for the deadly withdrawal, which saw billions of dollars in military equipment falling into the hands of the Taliban.

"President Biden has a history of being somewhat detached from the truth himself, so I don't know if he can be trusted to determine what is truth and what is fiction," Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI), a member of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, told the Washington Examiner.