Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday that the State Department will shut down the Global Engagement Center, which had served as the primary agency pressuring social media platforms to censor information related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the government’s response during the Biden administration. Rubio stated that the center—which was briefly rebranded in the final days of the Biden presidency—will be shuttered “to preserve and protect the freedom for Americans to exercise their free speech.”
“Over the last decade, Americans have been slandered, fired, charged, and even jailed for simply voicing their opinions. That ends today,” the secretary announced in an X post. He ended his post by announcing the immediate closure of the department‘s Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference, formerly the Global Engagement Center (GEC), which, “cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year and actively silenced and censored the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving.”
The Global Engagement Center (GEC) came under heavy scrutiny from Republican lawmakers after independent journalist Matt Taibbi uncovered documents revealing the center’s role in pressuring social media platforms to censor American citizens over views the Biden administration deemed problematic. As part of the 2023 “Twitter Files” releases, Taibbi revealed that the GEC had coordinated with the FBI, CIA, U.S. Strategic Command, and several other agencies to suppress content related to COVID-19, the January 6 Capitol riot, and other sensitive topics.
Documents also showed that the GEC enlisted the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRL) to support its efforts. In one instance, a DFRL analyst emailed then-Twitter Trust and Safety head Yoel Roth in June 2021 with a list of 40,000 accounts allegedly “engaging in inauthentic behavior in support of” India’s ruling party and broader Hindu nationalism. “But the list was full of ordinary Americans, many with no connection to India and no clue about Indian politics,” Taibbi wrote.
The DFRL also accused American citizens of spreading intentional “disinformation” for questioning the official COVID-19 narrative, including suggesting that the virus may have originated from a virology lab in Wuhan. While the agency’s advertised objective was to “proactively address foreign adversaries’ attempts to undermine US interests using disinformation and propaganda,” the secretary of state said the program was mostly used to censor speech when announcing its closure on Wednesday.
“Freedom of speech and expression have been a cornerstone of what it means to be an American citizen. For centuries, the United States served as a beacon of hope for millions of people around the world,” Rubio said. “Over the last decade though, individuals in America have been slandered, fired, charged, and even jailed for simply voicing their opinions. That ends today. Under the administration of President Trump, we will always work to protect the rights of the American people, and this is an important step in continuing to fulfill that commitment.”