Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday announced the decision to close the department’s Global Engagement Center, which was used as the point organization to pressure social media companies to censor information on the COVID-19 pandemic and response under the Biden Administration.

Rubio announced that the center — which was briefly rebranded towards the final days of the Biden Administration — will be closed “to preserve and protect the freedom for Americans to exercise their free speech.”

“Over the last decade, Americans have been slandered, fired, charged, and even jailed for simply voicing their opinions. That ends today,” the secretary announced in an X post.

He concluded the post by announcing the immediate closure of the department‘s Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference, formerly the Global Engagement Center (GEC), which, “cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year and actively silenced and censored the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving.”

The GEC faced intense scrutiny from Republican lawmakers after independent reporter Matt Taibbi uncovered evidence that it was used to pressure social media companies to censor American citizens over opinions the Biden Administration deemed problematic.

During the “Twitter Files” releases in 2023, Taibbi found that the center collaborated with the FBI, CIA, US Strategic Command and a number of additional agencies to censor posts about COVID-19, January 6 and several additional topics.

The also GEC hired the Atlantic Council think tank’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRL) to assist with its censorship efforts, the documents revealed. In June of 2021, a DFRL analyst sent then-Twitter trust and safety department chief Yoel Roth a list of 40,000 accounts suspected of “engaging in inauthentic behavior in support of” India’s ruling political party “and Hindu nationalism more broadly,” according to an excerpt from an email.

“But the list was full of ordinary Americans, many with no connection to India and no clue about Indian politics,” Taibbi wrote.

The DFLR also claimed American citizens were engaging in deliberate “disinformation” campaigns by questioning the narrative on COVID-19, including the theory that the virus originated in a Wuhan viral research facility.

While the agency’s stated goal was to “proactively address foreign adversaries’ attempts to undermine US interests using disinformation and propaganda,” Rubio said the program was primarily used to stifle speech when announcing its closure on Wednesday.

“Freedom of speech and expression have been a cornerstone of what it means to be an American citizen. For centuries, the United States served as a beacon of hope for millions of people around the world,” Rubio said. “Over the last decade though, individuals in America have been slandered, fired, charged, and even jailed for simply voicing their opinions.

“That ends today. Under the administration of President Trump, we will always work to protect the rights of the American people, and this is an important step in continuing to fulfill that commitment.”