Note from LifeSiteNews co-founder Steve Jalsevac: This is a good news story regarding ongoing Trump admin efforts to end the massive government and corporate censorship industry. Donald Trump and Marco Rubio deserve praise for this.
This eliminates government funding for NewsGuard, a long time, frequent critic of LifeSiteNews and numerous other conservative alternative news media whose reports social media firms, tech companies, and others use to determine who they should censor.
However, there is unfortunately still one large exception that allows for increased, heavy suppression of legitimate criticisms of actions by the state of Israel. That undermines all the good being done on eliminating censorship. The U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment makes no provision for such an exception. Free speech is considered to be an inviolable right in the United States and is an essential requirement for a just, free society.
Two recent LifeSiteNews articles highlight the dangers of this Trump administration trend. Seeking truth is ‘antisemitic’? and Is the Trump admin weaponizing the justice system against critics of Israel?
To contact the president click HERE.
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(Reclaim The Net) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio has officially ordered the closure of the State Department’s Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) office, ending a controversial chapter in what he described as a “shameful” period of federally sanctioned speech suppression.
The move dismantles the only formal office in the department tasked with countering foreign propaganda but, as Secretary Rubio and many others have noticed, it had morphed into something far more troubling: a taxpayer-funded engine that repeatedly ended up silencing American voices.
“For centuries, the United States served as a beacon of hope for millions of people around the world,” Rubio said in a statement. “Over the last decade though, individuals in America have been slandered, fired, charged, and even jailed for simply voicing their opinions … That ends today.”
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His decision to eliminate R/FIMI follows years of escalating concern over how programs meant to counter foreign disinformation have instead repeatedly targeted domestic speech.
The office, created in late 2024 as a scaled-down continuation of the now-defunct Global Engagement Center (GEC), claimed to focus exclusively on foreign influence campaigns. Yet evidence increasingly showed that both R/FIMI and its predecessor were entangled in activities that penalized Americans for their political views.
While framed as a defensive measure against foreign adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran, the actual outcomes of these efforts routinely involved actions that resulted in blacklisting American media outlets, throttling their reach online, and labeling dissenting opinions as dangerous misinformation.
The censorship was indirect but impactful: through partnerships with non-profits and tech platforms, GEC-funded projects influenced what Americans could say, see, and share.
In 2023, The Daily Wire and another media company filed a lawsuit accusing GEC of violating the First Amendment. The suit cited the office’s funding of organizations like the Global Disinformation Index and NewsGuard, which rated right-leaning publications as “unreliable” or “risky,” pressuring advertisers to pull funding. These efforts, though outsourced, were unmistakably rooted in U.S. government policy.
By the time R/FIMI was formed, the damage was already evident. Rubio, now secretary of state under the Trump administration, saw little reason to continue funding an office that he said served to “actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving.”
At $51.9 million a year, the price tag for speech suppression was steep; yet, for years, it went largely unchecked.
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Inside the State Department, the end came swiftly. R/FIMI employees were summoned to a surprise morning meeting with Acting Undersecretary Darren Beattie, where they were informed the office was being shut down and their positions eliminated.
Beattie had already ordered staff to stop working weeks earlier, a clear signal the shutdown was in motion. The remaining employees will be placed on administrative leave and terminated within 30 days.
Rubio’s announcement is closely aligned with a broader push from the White House to eradicate government programs that have meddled in the domestic information space. A recent executive order plainly states that federal efforts under the guise of fighting “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “malinformation” had crossed constitutional lines and “infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens … in a manner that advanced the government’s preferred narrative.”
Despite claims that such programs were essential for national security, the pattern was clear: these offices, again and again, failed to stay in their lane. What was supposed to be foreign-facing surveillance too often ended up policing Americans instead. And those being policed were not enemies of the state or agents of foreign powers, they were journalists, commentators, academics, and ordinary citizens expressing lawful opinions.
The collapse of R/FIMI follows the defunding of its predecessor, the GEC, after Congress, led by Republicans, blocked its $61 million reauthorization in 2023.
Like R/FIMI, GEC was originally tasked with foreign counterpropaganda, but its reach into domestic tech moderation quickly drew backlash. Its origin dates back to an Obama-era executive order, initially focusing on counterterrorism messaging before shifting to fight global propaganda. Along the way, its mission blurred into something else entirely.
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Meanwhile, other entities accused of enabling censorship have also been hit. The Stanford Internet Observatory, which had played a prominent role in identifying “misinformation” during U.S. elections, was closed amid legal threats and public scrutiny.
The Department of Homeland Security’s CISA has also been implicated in this so-called “disinformation-industrial complex,” facing sharp criticism for its role in flagging social media posts and coordinating with platforms to remove them.
Rubio’s decision sends a clear message: “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. “Under the administration of President Trump, we will always work to protect the rights of the American people.”
Reprinted with permission from Reclaim The Net.
