Convention of States Endorser and Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Wednesday that he has eliminated the State Department’s propaganda agency, formerly known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC), for censoring conservative voices.
As Convention of States (COS) reported in 2023, The Daily Wire, The Federalist, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton previously sued the Biden administration over its use of the GEC in “one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation.”
“Since the Founding,” the plaintiffs' lawsuit stated, “Americans have relied on a free and open press to provide a check on government abuses. The independence of the press from government licensing or control was so central to this nation’s founding that many of the former colonies incorporated declarations into their state constitutions.”
Founded in 2011 to counter international terrorist propaganda, the GEC, under Joe Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, eventually turned to censoring domestic speech unfavorable to the president. Reportedly, the department compiled a list of conservative news outlets, including The Daily Wire and The Federalist, accusing them of the “highest level of disinformation.” It then sent this list to would-be advisors and social media companies, urging them to defund and deplatform conservative press.
Although funding for the GEC expired in 2024, Biden moved its staff to the newly formed Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub, where they continued to monitor for “propaganda.”
Citing this history, Rubio revealed he believed it was better to shutter the agency entirely rather than trying to reform it.
According to the New York Times, “Mr. Rubio put all 40 or so of its employees on paid leave on Wednesday morning” after previously firing “about 80 contractors working for the office in March. . . . “
“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,” the secretary said in a statement. “This is antithetical to the very principles we should be upholding and inconceivable it was taking place in America.”
Speaking to The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro later on Wednesday, Rubio revealed he intends to investigate the GEC for acting as “a weapon against American political voices … to make sure it never happens again.”
WATCH:
Biden’s regime used YOUR tax dollars to censor you. @SecRubio is nuking their propaganda machine—firing the censors, ending the abuse, restoring free speech.
— The Ben Shapiro Show (@BenShapiroShow) April 16, 2025
Full breakdown on The Ben Shapiro Show tomorrow. Don’t miss it. pic.twitter.com/5V0KptOZyg
The State Department’s now-defunct “government-censorship complex” is one of many examples of the dangers of unchecked federal power. To join Rubio and other members of the Trump administration in support of Convention of States — the national grassroots organization aiming to keep the federal government in check — sign the COS petition below.
