Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that the previous administration attempted to stifle dissenting viewpoints.
The United States has officially closed the government agency that, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was used by the Biden administration to censor American citizens.
The State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) was established in 2016 by former President Joe Biden with the stated mission to “recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation.”
Rubio announced Wednesday the closure of the GEC, which had been operating as the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) office since December.
Rubio stated, “Under the previous administration, this office, costing taxpayers over $50 million annually, spent millions to actively silence and censor the voices of the Americans it was meant to serve.” He added, “This contradicts the very principles we should uphold, and it is inconceivable that it was happening in America.”
In an interview with conservative activist Mike Benz published on Wednesday, Rubio mentioned that the GEC was initially intended to combat extremism, such as propaganda from Al-Qaeda and ISIS, but later shifted to “going after individual American voices.”
He stated, “We ended government-sponsored censorship in the United States through the State Department.”
Rubio said the Biden administration supported groups that were “literally tagging and labeling voices in American politics – Ben Shapiro, The Federalist, others – tagging them as foreign agents.”
The GEC had an annual budget of $61 million and employed approximately 120 people. In December, congressional Republicans declined to renew its funding.
President Donald Trump and his allies have long accused the Democrats of using the government to suppress conservative opinions online. In 2023, tech billionaire Elon Musk described the GEC as the “worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation,” and “a threat to our democracy.” Journalist Matt Taibbi claimed the agency attempted to suppress discussions about Covid-19 under the guise of fighting “Russian personas and proxies.”
Last year, a group of House Republicans addressed a letter to then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken, asserting that the GEC was biased towards “American progressives” and worked to silence opinions “deemed to be politically disfavored or inconvenient.”