"We are not afraid. At her birth, America was a lone beacon of freedom to the world. If necessary, we will happily be that lone beacon once again."
"During his historic comeback campaign in 2024, President Trump vowed to close the book on a dark chapter in America’s constitutional history: the weaponization of America’s own government to silence, censor, and suppress the free speech of ordinary Americans. The American people responded to this promise by giving President Trump a landslide victory last November.
"Everything this administration has done since then has been laser-focused on fulfilling the promises made during that campaign. Today, it is my pleasure to announce the State Department is taking a crucial step toward keeping the president’s promise to liberate American speech by abolishing forever the body formerly known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC).
"GEC was supposed to be dead already. But, as many have learned the hard way, in Washington, D.C., 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.
"Today, we are putting that to an end. Whatever name it goes by, GEC is dead. It will not return.
"Over the past half-decade, bodies like GEC, crafted by our own governing ruling class, nearly destroyed America’s long free speech history. The enemies of speech had new lingo to justify their authoritarian impulse. It was “disinformation,” allegedly pushed by nefarious foreign governments, that was the No. 1 threat to “our democracy.” To protect “our democracy,” this “disinformation” had to be identified and stamped out.
"GEC’s history shows the pernicious way Washington turns laudable public goals into a means of entrenching its own power and rolling back the freedom of regular Americans. GEC began life in 2011 as the Center for Strategic Counter Terrorism Communications (CSCC). CSCC’s purpose was to monitor the narratives of Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations and advise the American government on what counterterrorist narratives to use in response." . . .
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