REPORT: Rubio shutters controversial program Biden admin used to censor Americans

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From the New York Post: 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.

“Over the last decade, Americans have been slandered, fired, charged, and even jailed for simply voicing their opinions. That ends today. I am announcing the closure of the @StateDept’s Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference, formerly the Global Engagement Center (GEC), which cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year and actively silenced and censored the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving,” Rubio announced.

“The American people don’t need an obscure agency to “protect” them from speech by silencing, censoring or banning them. Today, we are putting that to an end. The State Department will no longer be spending taxpayer dollars to censor Americans,” Rubio also declared in a post on X.

He discussed the move with Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro:

Rubio also discussed his decision in an interview with Mike Benz, director of Foundation For Freedom Online.  WATCH BELOW:

Benz shared the following details:

BREAKING 🚨 The US State Department has just placed all 30 full-time staff at the Global Engagement Center’s remnant known as R-FIMI on leave, eliminated all 50 full-time staff positions and delivered a notice to Congress ending R-FIMI’s existence and $65 million in funding .

This historic development today was made possible by @SecRubio and Acting Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy @DarrenJBeattie, as part of a complete restructuring of the State Department’s activities and capacities to prevent the abuses and weaponization of the past.

The development today is the State Department’s initiation of a RIF (Reduction In Force) that will permanently end the positions at GEC / R-FIMI, so there is no more reshuffling of positions or simple renamings of the office to carry out the same malign censorship efforts.

While GEC was formally sunset late last year after a showdown in Congress to deny its reauthorization, the Biden State Department got around this by putting GEC’s staff and operations under a new name: the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference office (R-FIMI).

Last month, @SecRubio and Acting Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy @DarrenJBeattie terminated 100+ contractors that R-FIMI worked with, which formed a deep partner web between censorship operatives in the private sector and the muscle of the US gov’t to go after speech.

But in gov’t, it’s easier to terminate a contractor than a public employee. The structuring of today’s move as Stage 1 of a RIF to eliminate the office and dissolve the office entirely prevents the possibility of bureaucratic delays that come from contesting firings.

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