State Department finally shuts down 'framework' behind 'censorship nerve center' Rubio shuttered

The State Department confirmed it formally removed the "framework" underlying both the Global Engagement Center, deemed the government's "censorship nerve center" by a first-term Trump administration official and defunded by Congress after the 2024 election, and GEC's surreptitious successor Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub, which Secretary Marco Rubio shut down in April.

Acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Darren Beattie told The Daily Wire there were "loose ends" to tie up, including GEC's agreements with other countries to "facilitate and provide a framework for cooperation on mutual objectives, including principally combating so-called ‘disinformation,’” which sometimes turned out to be domestic and often consisted of disfavored narratives.

Beattie said GEC used an "indirect approach to censorship whereby they would fund third-party organizations that would engage in activity from facilitating the demonetization of conservative sites to generally castigating certain narrative perspectives on COVID, on immigration, on foreign policy, as simply malign as a matter of foreign influence when in fact these were entirely legitimate points of view that often came from Americans."

His office is conducting a "meticulous transparency review" whose "very first tranche" will come out this fall, reflecting "the extensive review of hundreds of thousands of emails that will more specifically and systematically document exactly the kinds of nefarious activities that the GEC was involved in[,] in this unfortunate chapter of America’s history."

Beattie wouldn't say if that would be released through a vehicle like the Twitter Files, just that its approach would be "entirely appropriate and very satisfying as well."