Free Speech

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday shuttered the State Department’s controversial Global Engagement Center, which under the Biden administration faced heavy criticism from House Republicans who said it was used to censor Americans.

Rubio made the decision “to preserve and protect the freedom for Americans to exercise their free speech” after the center — which was briefly rebranded during former President Joe Biden’s final months in office — “spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving.

The Trump administration is shuttering the state department’s last remaining bastion to monitor foreign disinformation campaigns.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that the State Department is closing an office designed to counter foreign disinformation, stating that the effort had “spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans.”

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.

Thousands of people in the UK have been detained and questioned by police over online posts deemed threatening or offensive, The Times has reported, citing custody data.

According to figures published on Friday, officers make around 12,000 arrests annually under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988. These laws criminalize causing distress by sending messages that are “grossly offensive,” or by sharing content of an “indecent, obscene or menacing character” via electronic communications networks.

On March 24, a shadowy group that calls itself Canary Mission posted a new feature on its website, “Uncovering Foreign Nationals,” in response to President Trump’s recent executive order on combating antisemitism.

The group, which says its mission is to single out those who promote “hatred of the U.S.A., Israel and Jews on North American college campuses,” listed the names of seven students and academics, including three current and former professors at Columbia University.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is allegedly implicated in a vast, government-backed censorship scheme, according to internal documents obtained by law group America First Legal through ongoing litigation against the U.S. Department of State's Global Engagement Center (GEC).

The French government’s claim that a scientist was denied entry into the United States because of an opinion he expressed about the Trump administration is “blatantly false,” a U.S. official has said.

India's IT ministry has unlawfully expanded censorship powers to allow the easier removal of online content and empowered "countless" government officials to execute such orders, Elon Musk's X has alleged in a new lawsuit against New Delhi.

The lawsuit and the allegations mark an escalation in an ongoing legal dispute between X and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government over how New Delhi orders content to be taken down. It also comes as Musk is getting closer to launching his other key ventures Starlink and Tesla in India.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the government will deport lawful permanent residents who support Hamas and came to the U.S. as students “with an intent rile up all kinds of anti-Jewish student, antisemitic activities,” referencing the Palestinian rights protests at universities in 2024.