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The U.S. State Department is seeking to build out a consortium for “independent journalism” that will produce critical reporting on public policies in European countries, with a particular focus on immigration, “civilizational values” and “the state of sovereignty.”

President Donald Trump has not tried to hide his disdain for most European governments. “Your countries are going to hell,” he declared in a September 2025 speech at the United Nations, stating that Europe’s “open borders” — a claim at odds with Europe’s highly visible efforts to dissuade and deport immigrants — are leading to societal collapse. Vice President J.D. Vance has also openly campaigned for right-wing opposition parties across the continent, including the neo-fascist Alternative für Deutschland.

Now the Trump administration is seeking to bolster its critique of Europe under the guise of journalism.

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For decades, the U.S. Department of State gave money to groups protecting free speech, human rights and persecuted minorities in poor and authoritarian countries. 

To decide what to fund, staffers with deep expertise typically pored over reams of information on abuses under the most repressive regimes and held an open competition to fund groups to work in those countries. 

This year, Trump administration officials presented State Department workers with their own list of organizations that should be funded. To the shock of many staffers and lawmakers, they proposed at least a dozen grants that would bypass the normal open bidding process. They also sought to give taxpayer dollars to groups aligned with conservative and anti-immigration movements in Europe as well as advocates for white South Africans, according to interviews and documents reviewed by ProPublica. 

Among the organizations appointees have considered funding in recent months are a British free-speech organization that has fought against bans on “gay conversion therapy” and an Afrikaner group run by a controversial figure who has called for self-governance of the white ethnic minority within South Africa.