EU, Canada and Lithuania pull out of disinformation conference after US pressure
The Trump administration was bothered by panels that referred to the U.S. as a disinformation threat.
The Trump administration pressured diplomats from the EU, Canada, and Lithuania to withdraw from a disinformation conference in Vilnius, Lithuania. The conference, titled #Disinfo2026, featured panels that labeled the U.S. as a "foreign information manipulation and interference" actor (FIMI). The State Department conveyed concerns to American embassies and requested assess whether governments agreed with U.S. being characterized as a FIMI actor.
The U.S. labeled the inclusion of these panels as a "false equivalence" that obscured the scale and nature of Russian and Chinese interference in democracies. Three U.S. citizens appeared on one of the panels that prompted the cable. The State Department asked several countries to reconsider their participation, but Canada and Lithuania ultimately withdrew their support. The EU's External Action Service was also removed from the official programming.
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