WASHINGTON — Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers released internal government records over the weekend that she says provide new evidence of federal involvement in monitoring and suppressing lawful American speech during former President Joe Biden’s administration.
The documents center on the State Department’s now-defunct Global Engagement Center, an office created to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation.
Rogers alleges the center exceeded its foreign-policy mandate by monitoring domestic political speech and participating in systems that allowed posts from American citizens and news organizations to be reported to social media companies for possible moderation.
The allegations raise renewed questions about whether federal officials used “disinformation” programs to accomplish indirectly what the First Amendment prohibits the government from doing directly.
The Global Engagement Center was authorized to identify and counter foreign propaganda and influence operations. It was not created to police the lawful opinions of American citizens.
Rogers said the newly released material contradicts testimony Daniel Kimmage, then a deputy coordinator at the center, gave Congress in October 2023. Kimmage told lawmakers the center did not conduct domestic work.
The records highlighted by Rogers reportedly cover two areas: the center’s participation in research involving “gendered disinformation” and its relationship with the Election Integrity Partnership during the 2020 election.
The Election Integrity Partnership was a collaboration involving researchers from Stanford University and the University of Washington. It monitored election-related claims online and forwarded certain reports to social media platforms.
Its defenders say the partnership helped identify false information about voting procedures and foreign influence campaigns. Critics say it operated as a censorship clearinghouse through which government officials, researchers and private organizations could flag constitutionally protected political speech.
Rogers’ records allegedly show that the Global Engagement Center had access to the partnership’s internal ticketing system and participated in conversations involving American accounts and domestic election content.
Some of the accounts monitored by the system belonged to conservative media organizations and political commentators, including The Gateway Pundit.
The presence of an account in a monitoring database does not, by itself, prove that government officials ordered its suspension or that a particular post was removed. Social media companies maintained their own content-moderation policies and made final decisions about restricting posts and users.
The larger constitutional concern is whether government agencies pressured, encouraged or coordinated with private platforms to suppress lawful speech.
The First Amendment restricts government action, not the independent editorial decisions of private companies. But federal officials may violate the Constitution if they coerce private platforms into censoring speech the government could not lawfully prohibit itself.
Rogers initially published her allegations in a thread on X but later removed it. A copy of the thread and supporting material was preserved and published by The Gateway Pundit, which describes itself as one of the principal targets of the alleged censorship system.
The State Department has not announced whether the records will be formally released through an agency archive or submitted to Congress. The authenticity and full context of every document circulated with the deleted thread have not been independently established.
One portion of the material reportedly concerns a July 2022 Global Engagement Center report titled “Gendered Disinformation: Tactics, Themes, and Trends by State and Non-State Actors.”
Rogers argues that the project moved beyond foreign propaganda by examining controversies involving American political figures, including Nina Jankowicz, who had been selected to lead the Department of Homeland Security’s short-lived Disinformation Governance Board.
The Biden administration maintained that its communications with technology companies were intended to protect the public from foreign interference, election falsehoods and dangerous health misinformation. Officials denied operating a program to censor Americans based upon their political views.
Litigation over those contacts eventually reached the Supreme Court in Murthy v. Missouri.
In 2024, the Supreme Court ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing to obtain an injunction restricting the Biden administration’s communications with social media companies. The justices did not issue a definitive ruling that all of the government’s conduct was constitutional.
Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, dissented. Alito described the case as one of the most important free-speech disputes to reach the court in years and warned about government pressure against social media platforms.
The federal government has since reached settlements limiting how agencies may interact with technology companies.
In March, the government agreed that the surgeon general’s office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency would not threaten adverse government action to force platforms to suppress protected speech.
A separate settlement involving conservative media organizations restricts the State Department from coercing or significantly encouraging social media companies to censor protected content. The agreement remains in effect through January 2036.
Those settlements do not establish that every allegation against the Biden administration was proven in court. They do, however, create long-term safeguards against federal agencies using threats or regulatory power to silence lawful speech.
The debate is not about whether misinformation exists. It does.
Foreign governments spread propaganda. Criminals deceive the public. False claims travel quickly across social media.
But giving government officials the power to decide which political opinions are true enough to remain online creates a danger greater than the speech they claim to be fighting.
Today’s preferred government may target speech its supporters dislike. Tomorrow’s government can use the same machinery against them.
National security cannot become a blanket excuse for monitoring American political debate. Public health cannot become a loophole in the First Amendment. The label “disinformation” cannot be treated as a permission slip for government censorship.
Congress should obtain the complete records, place them in the public record and determine who authorized the Global Engagement Center’s domestic activities, if Rogers’ allegations are confirmed.
Americans deserve more than a deleted social media thread and competing political accusations.
They deserve the full truth about whether their government used taxpayer dollars, outside organizations and private technology companies to suppress their voices.
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