State Department shutters controversial Global Engagement Center after COVID censorship controversy

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday shuttered the State Department’s controversial Global Engagement Center, which under the Biden administration faced heavy criticism from House Republicans who said it was used to censor Americans.Rubio made the decision “to preserve and protect the freedom for Americans to exercise their free speech” after the center — which was briefly rebranded during former President Joe Biden’s final months in office — “spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving.“It is the responsibility of every government official to continuously work to preserve and protect the freedom for Americans to exercise their free speech,” he said in a statement.“That is why today I am announcing the closure of the State Department’s Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI), formerly known as the Global Engagement Center.”The former Florida senator called out the “previous administration” in the statement, charging that its handling of the now-closed center was “antithetical to the very principals we should be upholding and inconceivable it was taking place in America.”The State Department had previously notified Congress of its intention to close the GEC, which had effectively stopped operating in December after lawmakers voted against funding it for the current fiscal year.Republicans began taking aim at the GEC after journalist Matt Taibbi revealed the Biden administration had used it to pressure American social media platforms early in the COVID-19 pandemic to censor various individuals and news organizations, purportedly to counter “disinformation,” such as theories that the virus leaked out of a laboratory in China.“We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation ‘requests’ from every corner of government: the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, the Global...