Writing in The Federalist this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio brags that he is protecting freedom of speech by ending his department's misbegotten crusade against "disinformation." Yet Rubio is simultaneously undermining freedom of speech by targeting anti-Israel activists for deportation because he deems their opinions harmful to U.S. foreign policy interests. More generally, Rubio's ringing defense of First Amendment rights is hard to take seriously given all the ways his boss has sought to punish people for speech that offends him, whether through deportation, regulation, litigation, criminal investigations, or executive decrees targeting disfavored lawyers and journalists.
Rubio says he 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)." Congress defunded the GEC last year based on concerns that its efforts to combat "disinformation" had targeted constitutionally protected speech. But as Rubio notes, the State Department during the Biden administration sought to keep the program alive under a new name.
"We are putting that to an end," Rubio writes. "Whatever name it goes by, GEC is dead. It will not return."
