Aaron Blake for WaPo:

The Department of Homeland Security’s decision to announce the creation of a Disinformation Governance Board has set off a backlash on the right — even as it’s not entirely clear what the perhaps unfortunately named board will do.

Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas mentioned the creation of the board in multiple congressional hearings this week. In one, he linked it to efforts to combat misinformation from human smugglers. In another, he said it would be used to counter Russian cyber and election misinformation: “We have just established a mis- and disinformation governance board in the Department of Homeland Security to more effectively combat this threat, not only to election security but to our homeland security.”

Amid a growing anti-censorship fervor on the right, a bevy of Republicans have suggested the initiative amounts to policing speech. Elon Musk declared it “messed up.” Many on the right likened it to the “Ministry of Truth” from George Orwell’s book “1984.”

They’ve also questioned the fitness of the board’s executive director, Nina Jankowicz, who has in the past supported Democrats, praised efforts to crack down on coronavirus misinformation on social media, and expressed skepticism of the provenance of Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“Rather than police our border, Homeland Security has decided to make policing Americans’ speech its top priority,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) claimed…

But there remain few details on what the board will actually do. DHS hasn’t issued many specifics — including whether and how much it might monitor disinformation from “our own citizens” and whether what it would do would amount to “policing.” (The Post reached out for more information on Friday; the department previously declined the Associated Press’s request for an interview on the subject.) Despite Republicans’ expressed concern, they didn’t press Mayorkas in much detail across hearings Wednesday and Thursday. And the DHS does have a history of tackling disinformation, including during the Trump administration.

Under questioning from Democrats, Mayorkas said the board was part of an effort whose “goal is to bring the resources of the department together to address this threat,” specifically citing misinformation disseminated to Spanish speakers. In a separate hearing, he mentioned it briefly as part of efforts to combat Russian misinformation….

Somewhat similarly, the name “Disinformation Governance Board” does sound a bit ominous; it sounds less like an effort to combat disinformation than to, well, govern it. That choice of language plays into efforts to cast DHS’s initiative as something more than what the available evidence suggests.

But it would certainly be nice to know more about what precisely it is — and will do.