The United States has now officially shut down an agency that, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was used by the Biden administration to systematically censor US citizens with uncomfortable views.
The Global Engagement Center (GEC) was established in 2016 within the US Department of State, with a mission to “recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation”.
In December, the center was renamed Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI), but on Wednesday, Marco Rubio announced that it had been permanently shut down.
– Under the previous administration, this office, which cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year, spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving, Rubio said.
– This is antithetical to the very principles we should be upholding and inconceivable it was taking place in America.
In an interview published Wednesday with conservative activist Mike Benz, Rubio explained that the GEC was initially intended as a tool to combat extremist propaganda from groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS, but that the operation later began “going after individual American voices”.
– We ended government-sponsored censorship in the United States through the State Department, he declared.
Today, @SecRubio announced how we’re protecting and championing free speech at the State Department. pic.twitter.com/q5v5ZYvdOz
— Department of State (@StateDept) April 16, 2025
“Worst offender in US government censorship”
Rubio added that the Biden administration had supported groups that “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 about 120 people. In December, Republican members of Congress refused to provide continued funding for the unit.
President Donald Trump and his supporters have long accused Democrats of using government institutions to silence conservative views online. In 2023, tech billionaire Elon Musk also criticized the GEC, calling it “worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation” and “a threat to our democracy”.
Journalist Matt Taibbi also accused the center of trying to suppress discussions on COVID-19 under the pretext of fighting “Russian personas and proxies”.
Already last year, a group of Republican members of Congress harshly criticized the GEC in a letter to then Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The letter accused the Center of bias in favor of “American progressives” and of trying to silence opinions that were “deemed politically inconvenient or disagreeable”.
