The Trump administration announced it is closing an agency that funded and participated in âcensorshipâ of disfavored viewpoints online.
The State Departmentâs Global Engagement Center (GEC) is shutting down almost a decade after its creation due to âfree speechâ concerns, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a Wednesday press release. The GEC faced criticism from Republicans in Congress as well as a lawsuit for funding groups that allegedly created âblacklistsâ for right-leaning media outlets to stave off their profits.
âUnder 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,â Rubio said. âThis is antithetical to the very we should be upholding and inconceivable it was taking place in America.â
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Former President Barack Obama first established the GEC via executive order in 2016 supposedly to counter foreign terrorist propaganda. The agency later moved toward funding entities such as the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a Europe-based group that creates âexclusionâ lists describing conservative websites as spreaders of false information and pressuring online platforms to avoid doing business with them, according to the Washington Examiner.
The GEC also reportedly helped the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and private groups track social media posts with supposedly false information and report them to platforms to be taken down.
âBy 2020, it had grown into this movement of like actually going after individual American voices,â Rubio said in a Wednesday broadcast interview about the GEC.
The Daily Wire and The Federalist also sued the State Department in 2023 for funding the GDI, alleging the government violated the First Amendment and federal law at their expense.
Congress effectively defunded the GEC in December by excluding it from a spending bill after some Republicans opposed its activities and use of public funds, the Washington Examiner reported.
âTo the extent weâre spending money now, we are going to spend money on messaging,â Rubio said. âItâs going to be pro-American messaging and itâs going to be incentivizing and protecting free speech, which is threatened all over the world.â
âThe best way to counter disinformation is free speech,â Rubio said.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporterâs byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].