Trump Shut Down State Dept Foreign Disinformation Unit
The State Department's Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub was closed in April 2025 after Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared it an instrument of government-sponsored censorship.
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The State Department’s Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub (R/FIMI) was closed in April 2025 when acting undersecretary Darren Beattie told assembled staff their office was being shuttered and their jobs eliminated, according to reporting by MIT Technology Review and Type Investigations.
- The R/FIMI unit, which tracked foreign disinformation, was shut down in April 2025 by acting undersecretary Darren Beattie, with staff told their jobs were eliminated
- Secretary Rubio publicly celebrated the closure, calling it the end of 'government-sponsored censorship in the United States through the State Department'
- The closure is part of a broader dismantling that has also hit CISA, the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force, and USAID, gutting election-integrity infrastructure
Secretary of State Marco Rubio framed the closure as a victory. “We ended government-sponsored censorship in the United States through the State Department,” he said shortly after in a video interview with right-wing internet activist Mike Benz. One former R/FIMI staffer, speaking anonymously for fear of retaliation, described the mood in the room as oscillating “between somber and outraged,” with “lots of young, dedicated staff crying and wrecked.”
The shutdown of R/FIMI and its predecessor, the Global Engagement Center, fits a wider pattern. The second Trump administration has also dismantled the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s relevant functions, the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, and USAID, erasing much of the federal infrastructure built to track foreign attempts to influence elections. The campaign is rooted in a far-right theory that anti-disinformation work constitutes a “censorship-industrial complex” targeting conservative and populist speech - a framework that has now been used to justify travel bans, sanctions, and tensions with the European Union over its own tech regulations.
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