Marco Rubio announces end of rebranded Global Engagement Center

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Wednesday that the State Department’s Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R-FIMI), formerly known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC), is shutting down.

According to Foundation for Freedom Online Executive Director Mike Benz, the State Department placed all 30 full-time staff at R-FIMI on leave, eliminated all 50 full-time positions, and delivered a notice to Congress announcing the end of R-FIMI’s existence. 

In a piece written for The Federalist published Wednesday, Rubio said, "Whatever name it goes by, GEC is dead. It will not return." GEC was closed down in late December after Congress did not renew its funding. 

Rubio said of the change from GEC to R-FIMI, "GEC was supposed to be dead already. But, as many have learned the hard way, in Washington, DC, few things ever truly die. When Republicans in Congress sunset GEC’s funding at the end of last year, the Biden State Department simply slapped on a new name. The GEC became the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R-FIMI) office, with the same roster of employees. With this new name, they hoped to survive the transition to the new administration."

He said that groups like GEC "nearly destroyed America’s long free speech history" over the past half-century.

Biden administration officials were sued by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, The Daily Wire, and The Federalist over GEC for "engaging in a conspiracy to censor, deplatform and demonetize American media outlets disfavored by the federal government." They claimed that GEC had been used by the Biden administration to carry out censorship efforts and called GEC "one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation."

"Congress authorized the creation of the Global Engagement Center expressly to counter foreign propaganda and misinformation. Instead, the agency weaponized this authority to violate the First Amendment and suppress Americans’ constitutionally-protected speech," Paxton’s office said at the time. 

The suit claimed that The Daily Wire, The Federalist, and other conservative news organizations had been branded as "unreliable" or "risky" by GEC, "starving them of advertising revenue and reducing the circulation of their reporting and speech — all as a direct result of [the State Department’s] unlawful censorship scheme."