US State Department closing office aimed at countering foreign disinformation

Washington: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday he was shutting down a State Department office that had sought to counter foreign disinformation, accusing it of censorship and wasting US taxpayer money.

Rubio in a statement said he was closing the State Department's Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference office, previously known as the Global Engagement Center.

The GEC had already shut down in December 2024 under former Democratic President Joe Biden after Congress did not extend its mandate that was set to expire. It was reorganized to create a different public diplomacy office known as R/FIMI.

The GEC had come under intense criticism from some Republicans who said it was straying from its mission, accusing it of disfavoring opinions by conservative media in particular.

Democratic lawmakers and other Republicans supported the center, which had a budget of $61 million and a staff size of more than 120. They said it played an important role in combating Russian and Chinese disinformation. Billionaire Elon Musk, a close ally of President Donald Trump who has led an unprecedented push to shrink the US federal government since the latter took office on January 20, had said in a 2023 post on X that the center was "the worst offender" in US government censorship and media manipulation. Thousands of employees have been fired in the push to downsize the federal government, which has also led to the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development.

The White House has accused the former administration of censoring Americans' speech in order to suppress views the government did not approve of.

Since taking office, however, Trump has sought to deport foreigners who took part in pro-Palestinian protests against US ally Israel's war in Gaza following an October 2023 Hamas attack, accusing the protesters of vandalism and harassment.

On Wednesday, Rubio said the office formerly called the GEC cost American taxpayers more than $50 million per year and "spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving."

"This is antithetical to the very principles we should be upholding and inconceivable it was taking place in America," Rubio said.

He did not provide details in the statement of how the effort had silenced the voices of Americans.

In an online conversation on Wednesday with former State Department official and conservative activist Mike Benz, Rubio said that the mainstream media broadcasts “disinformation every day,” but said countering falsehoods with facts was better than using government to silence people.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the functions of the Global Engagement Center and its successor office remain as critical as ever.

She added that by shuttering the office and dismantling Voice of America and other outlets, Trump was "completely ceding the global information space to our adversaries, who are only too happy to fill the void with anti-American propaganda."

“Moscow and Beijing celebrate each time this Administration dismantles another critical foreign policy tool," Shaheen said.

The center was first established in 2016 by executive order during the administration of President Barack Obama. It remained operational during Trump's first term when it released a special report on Russian disinformation and propaganda.

But it was a consistent target of ire by conservatives. Texas' Republican state attorney general, Ken Paxton, and two conservative media companies in December 2023 sued the State Department, accusing it of funding technologies used to counter disinformation online that they claim censor right-leaning news outlets.

Paxton filed a lawsuit, along with The Daily Wire and The Federalist, which alleged that the State Department had funded technology that could "render disfavored press outlets unprofitable."

They said the State Department did so through two organizations that received grants or contracts from the Global Engagement Center.