Sarah Rogers Dos
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GUK 9 26
Inside the US state department, critics are still attacking a shuttered office established to counter foreign propaganda. Now, some of its work is also being resumed
Joseph Gedeon in Washington
Sun 30 Aug 2026
A botched leak of purportedly explosive government files to a prominent conservative online personality was supposed to offer proof of what the Trump administration and its allies have long alleged: that a little-known office inside the US state department, created to fight foreign propaganda, had secretly become a tool for domestic censorship.
Two former high-ranking officials at the Global Engagement Center (GEC), a target of Republican ire that lost its funding in 2024 and was disbanded after Donald Trump’s return to office in 2025, say the documents show nothing of the kind.
Instead, they argue, the files are a symptom of a protracted and bitter political fight over an office that spent nearly a decade tracking and countering foreign influence operations, particularly from Russia, China and Iran.
Trump administration shutters US office countering foreign disinformation
And the state department is now resuming some of this work in other parts of its operation, including plans – laid out in a proposal reviewed by the Guardian – to pay social media influencers across south-east Asia as part of an $11m campaign to counter Chinese propaganda.
Sarah Rogers, the state department’s undersecretary for public diplomacy, provided the so-called “GEC files” to Jennica Pounds, a rightwing online data analyst known as DataRepublican – only for Pounds to claim earlier this month she was leaked the documents as part of a bid to “entrap” her.
Rogers, who denied this claim, then published the files herself, claiming officials inside the center “betrayed their stated mission”. The files included a 2022 GEC report on “gendered disinformation”, a flashpoint in the culture wars.
“These guys have consistently misrepresented what the GEC did, and this was a great example of that,” said Daniel Kimmage, who served as the center’s principal deputy coordinator and acting coordinator from its founding in 2017 until its complete dissolution in 2025. His own congressional testimony was included in the leaked files.
Kimmage and Carrie Goux, a Joe Biden appointee and the center’s former acting deputy coordinator, say nothing in the material shows the GEC, whose mandate was explicitly foreign-facing, ever turned its tools on Americans.
“If the smoking gun was a gendered disinformation report, that feels like they came up short,” Goux said. “There seems to be absolutely nothing here.”
Weaponization
The dispute is the latest chapter in a years-long campaign by conservatives to portray the GEC as part of a broader effort by the US government and technology companies to suppress rightwing speech.
Republican congressmen including Michael McCaul, former chair of the House foreign affairs committee, argued in a July 2024 letter that the GEC was “at best indifferent to, and at worst complicit in” stretching the definition of disinformation to “censor” conservative speech in the US.
Trump’s return to the presidency drew this view into the heart of the federal government. The center was abolished in 2025, and what remained of its work scattered across the state department.
Much of that Republican-led campaign centered on how the GEC had funded the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a UK-based non-profit that rates media outlets by how likely they are to spread disinformation, to help monitor propaganda in Asia. But in 2022 the GDI separately published its own study of the US media market that rated several conservative outlets, including Newsmax, One America News and the New York Post, as high-risk – a finding its critics have cited ever since as evidence that a foreign-facing office had funded a group meddling in domestic politics.
The question raised by the files leaked this month is narrower, however: whether they show the GEC itself ran a domestic censorship operation. Kimmage and Goux insist they do not.
Kimmage said his own congressional testimony, which Rogers included in the leak, had been selectively read. “If you look at the transcript, [the question was], ‘Does GEC take positions on US outlets?’ And I said, ‘No, it didn’t,’” he said.
Rogers “tried to twist that into something that it wasn’t”, according to Kimmage. “For people who talk a lot about weaponization of government, this seems a lot closer to the weaponization of government and psy-opping of the American people than anything that the emails from the Global Engagement Center show.”
‘False’ allegations
Pounds, the rightwing analyst, is not a neutral bystander. Days after the documents were released, she disclosed that she had been quietly working since July as a special government employee for the defense department.
On Friday, Pounds released a database to track US citizens in the Democratic Socialists of America. The Pentagon did not respond when asked whether the database is included in her scope of government work.
Both former senior officials, Kimmage and Goux, draw a sharp line between the accusations made by critics of the GEC and what the center actually did. “We were not ever looking at Americans,” Goux said. “We were looking at the foreign actors and what their [tactics, techniques and procedures] … are doing overseas.”
The GEC “did what its congressional mandate charged it to do, which is to fight foreign [misinformation and] disinformation”, added Kimmage. “This allegation that it’s censoring Americans is false.”
During its almost decade-long existence, the center published eight detailed public reports on Russian and Chinese information operations and ran four major exposures of Russian disinformation campaigns – in Latin America, Africa and Moldova, and on the Kremlin-linked network RT.
Its largest such operation traced a Kremlin-backed effort called the “African Initiative”, which the center said had recruited local journalists, bloggers and public figures to spread conspiracy theories about US-funded health programs across the continent.
In January 2024, the GEC helped broker an international pact on countering foreign state disinformation that eventually drew more than two dozen government signatories, among them Moldova, Spain, Estonia, Poland and Finland – a framework its backers hoped other countries would use to build their own version of the office.
A 2022 inspector general review found the GEC “generally effective” at supporting counter-disinformation programs overall, while flagging weaknesses in its internal controls, contractor oversight and strategic planning. That record was enough to sustain bipartisan support: senators Rob Portman, a Republican, and Chris Murphy, a Democrat, repeatedly pushed to fund and strengthen the center, and its authorization survived multiple renewal fights before House Republicans, increasingly focused on the domestic-speech question, declined to extend it again in 2024.
That mandate cost roughly $61m per year. The GEC employed about 120 people before Congress declined to reauthorize it, letting the office lapse at the end of 2024. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, later folded what remained of its work into a new counter foreign information manipulation and interference office, framing the closure as an end to wasteful, censorious government overreach.
Trust exercise
Now, less than a year after the GEC shut down, a proposal reviewed by the Guardian shows the state department preparing to pay up to 30 online influencers across 11 countries in south-east Asia $2,500 apiece as part of an $11m, multi-year campaign to counter Chinese propaganda.
The project, which would be operated by the US Mission to ASEAN, has three parts: a $5m messaging campaign, a $3m program training influencers and journalists to counter Chinese propaganda, and a $3m trip bringing about 180 participants to studios in Washington and Houston “for intensive collaboration, studio production and first-hand engagement with US institutions and creators”.
The proposal’s planning materials describe the ideal recruit as starting from a “welcoming” position of what one document calls the “rejecting-affirming continuum”: someone not yet sold on the US, but not hostile either. As participants move through the accelerator, the materials say, exposure to evidence of US commitment in the region and training in spotting propaganda from China (which has reportedly invested billions of dollars in disinformation efforts globally) is meant to carry them toward the “affirming” end of that scale, publicly backing closer ties with Washington on trade, tech standards and the South China Sea.
The document cited the rightwing analyst and new Pentagon special government employee, Jennica Pounds, the DataRepublican, as an ideal model to seek out in other recruits abroad.
Contacted for comment, the state department declined to directly address questions about the documents released by Rogers, the influencer proposal, the department’s current foreign influence programs and whether other regions are being targeted as well.
A state department official said: “Undersecretary Rogers has been clear that the department will continue to confront censorship, anti-American propaganda and coercive influence directly while demonstrating the enduring advantages of freedom, accountability and open communication.”
Meanwhile, the office of policy, planning and resources for public diplomacy (R/PPR) was separately shopping for commercial help with a similar mission this spring. A government filing from May 2026 shows the R/PPR requesting information from vendors on software that can mine open-source data, map “adversarial propaganda influence networks” and detect deepfakes.
That apparent contradiction is not lost on the GEC’s former staff.
“Are they trying to re-create it? Probably,” Goux said. “But now they’re spending a lot more tax dollars doing that, trying to get contractors to do some of the stuff that we were doing.”
Goux put the broader cost in plainer terms still. “The US has lost their seat at the table to do that, and that’s unfortunate,” she said. “I hope we can gain it back, but we’re losing trust too, and that’s significant.”
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yahoo [cda] actually nexstar BS
A Utah software engineer, who runs a massive pro-President Trump social media account that has drawn attention from the likes of Elon Musk, made a sinister declaration in a post on Aug. 21.
The "Deep State" was setting her up to "commit a crime."
"I have never been more angry in my life," Jennica Pounds, who is behind the DataRepublican account that has nearly 1 million followers on social platform X, wrote in a recent thread.
Over the past week, the resulting saga around Pounds's allegations has become an obsession of right-wing social media circles, exposed the blurred lines in Pentagon public relations and raised questions about other MAGA-friendly influencers in the military space.
It all started with an offer from a senior State Department official to Pounds. Did she want to publish documents about allegations of censorship under the Biden administration?
"I wanted to give you the option of 'breaking' the story as sort of a gift," Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers wrote to Pounds.
Pounds initially seemed up for cooperating but later decided the markings on the documents "would have gotten me in big big trouble."
In a post to her X account, Pounds wrote Friday that "they tried to entrap me" while sharing a screenshot of the text exchange.
Rogers replied to Pounds's thread that Friday, revealing herself as the official involved.
"lol, these are my text messages and documents. The 'markings' are FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] redactions required even for voluntary disclosure. To prove this isn't a 'trap,' I will happily disclose the documents myself," she wrote, posting the documents in an ensuing thread.
Pounds had earlier concluded the documents "were nothingburgers that did not benefit them at all to release in public."
Once the exchange went public, the aggregators got to work. Right-wing news aggregator AF Post summarized the back-and-forth between the two women, adding further intrigue by writing that Pounds was an active employee at the Pentagon.
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A Pentagon official has since confirmed to The Hill and other news outlets that Pounds is a special government employee at the Defense Department, a work status she did not publicly disclose to her massive online following. It's unclear if Rogers knew about the job when she offered Pounds the internal documents.
The Hill has reached out to the State Department for comment.
After the revelation, Pounds said her Pentagon press credentials had expired in June, that she did not seek renewal and the next month she began working at the department to "serve the country in a more hands-on way." She said she would defer questions to Joel Valdez, the Pentagon's deputy press secretary.
The Defense Department declined to comment when asked about Pounds's role at the department.
Lauren Harper, the Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, told The Hill that Pounds should have disclosed her special government employee status to her followers because otherwise it "blurs the line between journalism and government PR."
Pounds, too, has championed transparency around potential conflicts of interest.
Late last month, Pounds questioned the alleged friendship between the director of military-leadership blog From the Green Notebook, retired Army Lt. Col. Joe Byerly, and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, with whom Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has clashed since the start of the Trump administration.
The DataRepublican revelations have raised questions around other prominent accounts that often back the Defense secretary.
Adam D'Ortona, an active-duty Army lieutenant colonel, has openly criticized congressional Democrats, backed Hegseth's push to root out diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts at the Pentagon and highlighted the Defense secretary's message of going to war against the department's bureaucracy.
D'Ortona, who has more than 100,000 followers on X, defended Pounds after it was revealed that she works for the Pentagon, arguing those concerned about the ethics of the incident are like a "burglar lecturing the homeowner about property rights."
Following the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, USA Today reported in September that D'Ortona works in Hegseth's office. Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson told the outlet at the time that D'Ortona is not an adviser or spokesperson for the Pentagon.
On Monday, D'Ortona wrote in a response to an X user that "ZERO people are paid" by the Pentagon to "post stories."
The Army referred questions about D'Ortona to the Pentagon. Hegseth's office did not respond to The Hill's request for comment.
Retired Col. Thomas Anderson, who writes under the pseudonym Cynical Publius, has backed Hegseth's anti-DEI crusade and has weighed in on a host of political issues, offering his view to more than 320,000 followers on X.
Anderson defended Pounds's employment at the department in an exchange with journalist Glenn Greenwald.
"I repeat: you do not understand the parameters of being an SGE [special government employee]," Anderson wrote Monday. "It has a specified legal status that she has stayed well within. I'm not your research assistant, I told you what to look up. Go look it up. The truth is never a 'cliché tactic.'"
When asked Tuesday by The Washington Post Pentagon reporter Dan Lamothe if he also has an SGE status, Anderson did not respond.
2026 Nexstar Media, Inc.
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Aug. 25, 2026,
For 17 months, the State Department has promised to deliver proof of a long-promoted conspiracy theory about its own agency: that its officials routinely censored conservative Americans. This week, it failed that mission, as Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers released a trove of documents that proved nothing.
The conspiracy theory has grown during President Donald Trump’s second term, providing the State Department with a rationale for dismantling the offices that once studied and countered foreign disinformation campaigns, for firing officials with decades of experience and for shuttering entire departments.
The effort was first led by acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Darren Beattie, a former far-right academic who had been fired from the first Trump administration after he attended a white nationalist conference. Beattie claimed the DOGE-style decimation of the State Department was necessary to rid the agency of officials who were tied to a baseless conspiracy theory known as the “censorship-industrial complex.”
Promoters of the censorship-industrial complex — a secret but somehow sprawling partnership between the Biden government, journalists, academics and civil society groups, aimed at silencing conservative Americans — have repeatedly failed to prove their case, in congressional investigations and in the courts, including the Supreme Court. Still, the theory persists.
Beattie had no evidence for his unfounded claims that the State Department had participated in that conspiracy, but in March 2025, he launched an investigation inside the State Department that he said would reveal all. Beattie requested the files, emails and other communications of State Department officials, including any records with seemingly random keywords like “Black Lives Matter,” “great replacement theory” and “Pepe the Frog,” as well as any communications with figures Beattie believed to be part of the conspiracy. (These included The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum, Bill Gates, disinformation researcher Nina Jankowicz and some 60 others, including this reporter.)
In the official announcement for the closure of the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub, formerly known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC), Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Mike Benz, a former pseudonymous racist YouTuber and chief architect of the censorship-industrial complex theory, that a reckoning was coming. It would be driven by evidence, disclosed in the model of the “Twitter Files,” a 2022 dump of internal Twitter records that Elon Musk gave to selected writers to show the alleged censorship of conservatives. (It didn’t.)
Rubio said the job now was to “document what happened.”
“Because one thing is to say it in a broadcast like this, another thing is to actually put it on paper,” he said.
This week, Rogers, Beattie’s replacement, finally had something to share.
According to a series of posts on X, some since deleted, Rogers messaged Jennica Pounds, a self-described analyst who goes by the moniker Data Republican, known for creating massive, if amateur, data troves used to allege government waste, fraud and abuse, which made her a favorite of Musk’s.
Pounds said she thought Rogers was handing documents about Cuba, but got “shoved a bunch of hard copy documents to leak” about the GEC.
“I wanted to give you the option of ‘breaking’ the story as sort of a gift,” Rogers told her, according to a direct message that Pounds posted.
Then things got weird. Pounds has been a reliable vector for the Trump administration to push its narrative that a so-called deep state, or shadow government, was operating in secret and against the best interests of its citizens. But when she received the State Department’s “gift,” Pounds determined that it was a plot by Rogers to entrap her into committing a crime, asserting that releasing or reporting on the documents would be illegal.
Rogers responded “lol” and released the documents herself in a series of 35 posts that borrowed the breathless cadence of the Twitter Files, drawing ominous connections between GEC emails, international projects to combat foreign disinformation, and nongovernmental coalitions. It all implied the existence of a censorship-industrial-complex operation — without proving it. Rogers’ document dump got little attention from right-wing media.
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“There were State Department employees sharing news articles. Diplomats had communicated with foreign governments. And somewhere in the rubble was a project examining ‘gendered disinformation’ that had been — wait for it — announced at the Summit for Democracy and published on the State Department website,” former senior foreign service officer Orna Blum wrote sarcastically on Substack.
Pounds seemed to agree with the former State Department official.
“The actual documents were nothingburgers,” she posted.
Neither the State Department nor Pounds responded to requests for comment.
The debacle may show that the half-decade of unproven censorship claims has exhausted their audience.
“The under secretary is yet again twisting decontextualized snippets of emails and long-public documents to try to propagate a conspiracy theory,” said Renée DiResta, an associate research professor at Georgetown University. As the former research manager for the Stanford Internet Observatory, DiResta has long been a boogeyman of the censorship-industrial complex theory.
“The mass censorship claims were a hoax,” DiResta said.
Over the weekend, some of the State officials pushed out in last year’s purge lit up Signal chats, commenting on Rogers’ rollout of the long-promised proof of the conspiracy that had cost them their jobs and hollowed out the agency where they had spent their careers. One former senior official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, told MS NOW: “In the end, it’s not the greatest consolation on earth to find out that the people who wrecked 10 years of your work and your career are a bunch of galaxy-level dipshits.”
The release did reveal something, however: an unintentional revelation about an undisclosed relationship between a federal agency and Pounds, a professed independent researcher who has often criticized others, without evidence, of being “a fed.”
In her posts, Pounds alleged that Rogers was trying to threaten her employment, revealing along the way that since July she had been a special government employee of the Department of Defense. Before that, Pounds had been provided credentials as a member of the Pentagon’s hollowed-out press corps.
A Defense Department official confirmed her employment but declined to give further details.
Brandy Zadrozny is a senior enterprise reporter for MS NOW.
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PRO-TRUMP INTERNET SLEUTH Jennica Pounds—better known as “Data Republican” to her nearly one million followers on X—made a grim announcement on Friday. Deep-state operatives embedded within the Trump administration had tried to entrap her into committing treason.
“It’s not okay when the Deep State sets you up to commit a crime,” she wrote in a now-deleted thread. “I have never been more angry in my life.”
In Pounds’s portentous telling, an unnamed official—soon after revealed to be Sarah B. Rogers, the undersecretary for public diplomacy at the State Department—had offered to leak her government documents about Cuba to publish as an “exclusive.” While Pounds was initially enthusiastic, markings on the documents prompted her to panic that she was being set up. Had she published the documents, Pounds felt, she would’ve exposed herself to criminal prosecution. She took the news of her supposed entrapment directly to her audience.
The idea that Trump administration officials would conspire to send Pounds to prison is bizarre on its face. After all, Pounds is an administration favorite. Her tweets claiming to have data to justify Elon Musk’s cuts aimed at USAID and other government agencies made her an out-of-nowhere star during the DOGE era, even though she didn’t seem to have a solid grasp of how government spending actually worked.1
Pounds’s accusations against Rogers—who is also beloved in the MAGA movement for her efforts to support free speech for far-right extremists in Europe—confounded right-wing media figures. Was Rogers really
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Trump has done his best to curry the favor of Europe’s far right, but after seeing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán go down to humiliating defeat despite Trump’s support, the far right now wants to put daylight between itself and America’s leader.
“President Donald Trump’s offensive behavior toward Christians and his unnecessary and unpopular war in Iran isn’t just splitting his political base at home — it’s also alienating his allies abroad,” wrote MS NOW’s Zeeshan Aleem on Sunday. “Right-wing nationalists in Europe are becoming more and more wary of association with Trump and growing inclined to keep him at a distance to protect their own political projects. The trend marks a blow to Trump’s aspirations of creating an international bloc of right-wing nationalist states that work in concert to quash the left.”
Aleem ticked off a number of prominent Italian conservatives who are denouncing Trump including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a number of German lawmakers from the far-right Alternative for Germany party, Romania’s European Parliament member Diana Sosoaca and French far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Their criticisms have ranged from his meddling in European domestic politics, his invasion of Iran and his attacks on Pope Leo XIV.
“Those bold criticisms speak to how incredibly damaging Trump’s war on Iran has been for his standing within his movement,” Aleem observed. “The surge in global oil prices is politically radioactive; far-right leaders and parties in Europe affiliated with Trump risk becoming associated with the energy crisis unless they take steps to create distance from him.”
Indeed, as recently as last week, the United Kingdom’s Brexit champion Nigel Farage downplayed his relationship with Trump, who he once said was ushering in “the beginning of a golden age,” by instead saying “I happen to know him, but that’s by the by.”
Overall, this pattern speaks to how Trump’s brash approach to governance has alienated America’s European allies.
“Trump, for so many people, epitomizes the ugly American — somebody who is bumptious and vulgar and ignorant about foreign cultures,” former Time Magazine editor Rick Stengel said in a recent podcast appearance on The Bulwark with former Daily Beast editor-in-chief John Avlon on Sunday. “So I think people sort of have come to the end of their patience with America.”
Ironically, Trump has aggressively courted the European far right as his natural ideological allies. Trump appointee Susan B. Rogers was selected as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in large part to ingratiate herself to the far right, such as by describing German migrants as “barbarian rapist hordes,” falsely claiming Sweden’s immigration policy has caused sexual violence (“If your government cared about ‘women’s safety,’ it would have a different migration policy”) and incorrectly stating that “advocates of unlimited third world immigration have long controlled a disproportionate share of official knowledge production.”
Rogers even met with members of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) Party, which espouses an ideology widely perceived as neo-Nazi.
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PCO
A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration from deporting a British man who was recently placed on a visa ban after U.S. officials accused him and four other Europeans of online censorship.
Center for Countering Digital Hate CEO Imran Ahmed filed a complaint Thursday against Secretary of State Marco Rubioand Attorney General Pam Bondito prevent “the imminent prospect of unconstitutional arrest,” the lawsuit reads.
“The government’s actions are the latest in a string of escalating and unjustifiable assaults on the First Amendment and other rights, one that cannot stand basic legal scrutiny,” it continues. “Simply put, immigration enforcement—here, immigration detention and threatened deportation — may not be used as a tool to punish noncitizen speakers who express views disfavored by the current administration.”
The suit adds that Ahmed is a lawful permanent resident with a wife and son who are U.S. citizens.
The complaint cites other recent cases where foreign nationals on student visas, including Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk, were stripped of their documentation and faced with deportation as “part of a larger pattern of attempted repression of constitutionally protected speech.”
“The government has no power to punish Mr. Ahmed for his research, protected speech, and advocacy, and Defendants cannot evade those constitutional limitations by simply claiming that Mr. Ahmed’s presence or activities have ‘potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States,'” the suit reads.
The administration placed the visa ban on Ahmed, along with French former European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton, Global Disinformation Index CEO Clare Melford and HateAid leaders Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon, on Tuesday.
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Breton backed the EU’s Digital Services Act, which compelled online platforms to tackle hate speech and misinformation and remove it from their pages. U.S. officials claim the law unfairly targets American tech companies and citizens, Reuters reported.
On Tuesday, Rubio accused the five of leading “organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose.”
“Today, @StateDept will take steps to bar leading figures of the global censorship-industrial complex from entering the United States,” Rubio posted on social media. “We stand ready and willing to expand this list if others do not reverse course.”
Undersecretary of State Sarah Rogers shared Rubio’s message and warned that “if you spend your career fomenting censorship of American speech, you’re unwelcome on American soil.”
Breton criticized his visa ban, asking in an X post if “[former. Sen. Joe] McCarthy’s witch hunt” was back.
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sadly no paste --> whole page no lnx
Washington
By —
Fatima Hussein, Associated Press
U.S. bars five Europeans it says pressured tech firms to censor American viewpoints online
:{:{Politics Dec 24, 2025}:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department announced Tuesday it was barring five Europeans it accused of leading efforts to pressure U.S. tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints.
The Europeans, characterized by Secretary of State Marco Rubio as "radical" activists and "weaponized" nongovernmental organizations, fell afoul of a new visa policy announced in May to restrict the entry of foreigners deemed responsible for censorship of protected speech in the United States.
"For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose," Rubio posted on X. "The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship."
The five Europeans were identified by Sarah Rogers, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, in a series of posts on social media. They include the leaders of organizations that address digital hate and a former European Union commissioner who clashed with tech billionaire Elon Musk over broadcasting an online interview with Donald Trump.
Rubio's statement said they advanced foreign government censorship campaigns against Americans and U.S. companies, which he said created "potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences" for the U.S.
The action to bar them from the U.S. is part of a Trump administration campaign against foreign influence over online speech, using immigration law rather than platform regulations or sanctions.
The five Europeans named by Rogers are: Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate; Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, leaders of HateAid, a German organization; Clare Melford, who runs the Global Disinformation Index; and former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, who was responsible for digital affairs.
Rogers in her post on X called Breton, a French business executive and former finance minister, the "mastermind" behind the EU's Digital Services Act, which imposes a set of strict requirements designed to keep internet users safe online. This includes flagging harmful or illegal content like hate speech.
She referred to Breton warning Musk of a possible "amplification of harmful content" by broadcasting his livestream interview with Trump in August 2024 when he was running for president.
Breton responded Tuesday on X by noting that all 27 EU members voted for the Digital Services Act in 2022. "To our American friends: 'Censorship isn't where you think it is,'" he wrote.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said France condemns the visa restrictions on Breton and the four others. Also posting on X, he said the DSA was adopted to ensure that "what is illegal offline is also illegal online." He said it "has absolutely no extraterritorial reach and in no way concerns the United States."
A statement from Ballon and von Hodenberg, the co-CEOs of HateAid, called the move, "an act of repression by a government that is increasingly disregarding the rule of law and trying to silence its critics by any means necessary."
Most Europeans are covered by the Visa Waiver Program, which means they don't necessarily need visas to come into the country. They do, however, need to complete an online application prior to arrival under a system run by the Department of Homeland Security, so it is possible that at least some of these five people have been flagged to DHS, a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss details not publicly released.
Other visa restriction policies were announced this year, along with bans targeting foreign visitors from certain African and Middle Eastern countries and the Palestinian Authority. Visitors from some countries could be required to post a financial bond when applying for a visa.
Associated Press Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.
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XIT
Sarah Rogers just appeared happily alongside an AfD deputy described in a strategy memo to the Kremlin as “under our absolute control.” AfD taunts Holocaust survivors as a matter of course, and praises Russia—freedom of speech in need of no partisan endorsement by a sitting U.S. State Department official. Her criticisms of online regulation by our most stalwart ally, with which our intelligence sharing is almost limitless, is tendentious and sinister, particularly in light of Donald Trump’s threats to cancel FCC licenses for TV channels he considers too critical of his administration.
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...Ms. Rogers received her Juris Doctor degree from Columbia Law School in 2008, and her Bachelor of Arts degree in international relations from Dartmouth College in 2005. At Columbia, she served as a Staff Editor of the Journal of Transnational Law and was recognized as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.
Before joining Brewer, Attorneys and Counselors, Ms. Rogers was an associate at Latham & Watkins LLP, where she represented clients in state, federal and bankruptcy court in a wide variety of cases.
She also worked in-house for Philip Morris International, managing litigation and regulatory concerns in the Americas.
Ms. Rogers’s representative matters include: • Representation of Caesars Acquisition Corp. in connection with the Caesars bankruptcy; • Representation of bondholders and administrative agents in various bankruptcy proceedings; • Representation of an international investment bank in connection with government investigations, bondholder class actions, and other matters relating to residential mortgage-backed securities; • Representation of senior executives of multiple global financial institutions in federal, state and regulatory investigations concerning potential violations of U.S. sanctions laws; and • Representation of Ernst & Young in disputes concerning tax strategies.
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Donald Trump is giving the the former modeling agent who discovered his first lady in the 1990s a job in his administration.
Paolo Zampolli and Trump have a long and fruitful relationship dating back 30 years when the Milan native worked as Director of International Development for the Trump Organization.
'I am pleased to announce that I am appointing Paolo Zampolli as Special Envoy for Global Partnerships,' Trump said.
Trump said that Zampolli - who previously served on the President's Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition - will wear many hats in the gig.
'With his extensive experience working with the United Nations, the Kennedy Center, and various International initiatives, Paolo will help us advance America's Interests on the Global stage. Congratulations Paolo!'
Zampolli has served as a Member of the Board of Trustees to the Kennedy Center since 2020, appointed by Trump.
In 1998, he introduced Trump to Melania - who he secured the H1B Visa for - at a party at New York City's famous Kit Kat Club.
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MERIDIAN OFF BS
Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, U.S. Department of State
Sarah Rogers was sworn in as the 11th Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy on October 10, 2025.
Under Secretary Rogers joins the Trump administration following a career as a law-firm partner and free speech activist. In 2024, she litigated a winning Supreme Court appeal under the First Amendment challenging the “debanking” of disfavored speakers by hostile regulators. She also spearheaded and supported challenges to social media censorship and the weaponization of law enforcement, including in connection with the successful appeal of the wrongful conviction of Douglass Mackey. An expert on high-stakes advocacy inside and outside courtrooms, she has represented clients including the National Rifle Association, major tobacco manufacturers, and investors and executives in the artificial intelligence industry.
Under Secretary Rogers received her Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from Dartmouth College and her Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School. During 2003, she gained her first exposure to public diplomacy as an undergraduate intern and Nelson Rockefeller fellow in the Bureau of International Information Programs at the U.S. Department of State.
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SEMAFOR
US President Donald Trump is set to nominate a slate of top State Department officials, including the third-highest ranking position at the agency and several crucial posts overseeing arms control, the Middle East, and South and Central Asia, according to a list of nominees from the White House dated Feb. 11 obtained by Semafor.
The nominations include a New York lawyer, Sarah Rogers, who has defended the National Rifle Association on free speech grounds and litigated against content moderation. Her appointment to be the under secretary for public diplomacy — a role that had, in the Biden administration, been involved in efforts to combat false information on social media, signals that the Trump administration is planning to globalize its push to force social platforms to allow a wider range of speech.
Rogers will replace Darren Beattie, an outspoken and divisive MAGA figure who is acting in the role. Beattie, who was never expected to take the role on a permanent basis, had courted controversy in the past for associating with extreme figures and espousing foreign policy views at odds with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s hawkishness.
Rogers has no obvious foreign policy experience, but brings a similar point of view on key issues around speech and social media platforms. A partner at the New York litigation boutique Brewer, Rogers represented the National Rifle Association alongside the ACLU in a winning appeal to the Supreme Court last March. She also represented the NRA against the New York State Attorney General, who was seeking to dissolve the organization, which the NRA beat back on First Amendment grounds. And she represented the playwright David Mamet in an amicus brief in support of a Texas law barring platforms from moderating content based on political viewpoints.
Rogers is one of a handful of top State Department officials proposed for Senate confirmation.
Allison Hooker has been tapped for under secretary for political affairs, the third most senior role in the department. Hooker is an expert on Indo-Pacific security and previously served in Trump’s first administration as the lead Korea specialist on the National Security Council.
Trump has also tapped Thomas DiNanno of the Hudson Institute as under secretary for arms control and international security, meaning he could play a crucial role in potential “denuclearization” talks with Russia and China — something the president has said he wanted.
Christopher Pratt, who was the principal deputy special envoy for hostage affairs in the first Trump administration, has been selected to become assistant secretary for political-military affairs, a key role managing arms transfers and security partnerships.
Joel Rayburn, a former diplomat and Middle East specialist who worked for Sen. Bill Hagerty, a Tennessee Republican, has been tapped as the department’s top Middle East official. Paul Kapur, a professor at the US Naval Postgraduate School, will be nominated to lead the department’s efforts in South and Central Asia. And Caleb Orr has been selected to lead the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, which oversees global trade and sanctions efforts.
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William A. Brewer III (Bar No. 700217) wab@brewerattorneys.com Sarah B. Rogers (Bar No. 700207) sbr@brewerattorneys.com
BREWER, ATTORNEYS & COUNSELORS 750 Lexington Avenue, 14th Floor New York, New York 10022 Telephone: (212) 489-1400 Facsimile: (212) 751-2849
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DEC 18 2025
12.18.2025-Rogers-Letter-UPDATED-FINAL
MANY FTNOTE EG EFB MY PARA
The Honorable Sarah B. Rogers Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs United States Department of State 2201 C Street, NW Washington, DC 20520
:{:{Washington, DC 20520 Dear Under Secretary Rogers, I write today to express my grave concerns about the threats to American speech and sovereignty posed by an emergent international censorship regime. In recent weeks, the architects of this regime have launched a full-scale bid for control of American public discourse, seeking to impose hard-left ideological strictures on our nation from abroad. We must confront this campaign of foreign subversion with swift and decisive action.}:
I therefore strongly encourage the State Department to impose sanctions and visa restrictions on the foreign individuals and entities involved in this assault on our freedom of speech. Foreign regulators are attempting to enforce radical new censorship laws against US-based social media platforms like X.1 In so doing, they have levied an attack on our citizens’ liberties by seeking to impose a censorship regime on Americans’ ability to speak in the digital public square. These attacks pose a direct challenge to our sovereignty and independence as a nation. The European Union recently fined X approximately $140 million under the Digital Services Act (DSA)—the main law the EU wields to impose European censorship standards.
While the fine purported to be about “transparency” requirements, that rationale is a ruse. Those mandates are simply a tool the EU uses to facilitate its army of censorial, far-left NGOs’ harassment of pro-free speech companies like X under other provisions of the DSA. More broadly, the fine demonstrates the EU claims the power to control the design and speech policies of US-based social media platforms. Indeed, media reports indicate that the EU’s broader investigation into X’s “hands-off approach to policing user-generated content”—i.e., X’s refusal to algorithmically censor Americans’ speech according to European bureaucratic diktats—remains ongoing.2 The EU’s message to X is clear: This fine is a warning—start censoring Americans or else.}:
:{I commend the actions the Trump administration has already taken in the face of these unprecedented attacks against our nation’s sovereign political prerogatives, such as the visa restrictions and sanctions on the Brazilian government officials involved in efforts to censor American speech.3 As the administration considers additional steps, including potential visa revocations against foreign censors, 4 I fully support these deliberations and encourage the State Department to impose additional sanctions on the foreign individuals, entities, and NGOs responsible for these attacks on free speech. 5
The Missouri v. Biden lawsuit I filed as Attorney General of Missouri helped reveal how the Biden administration created a domestic censorship-industrial complex to wield against Americans.6 Central to that censorship regime was the State Department—particularly the Global Engagement Center.7 Part of the State Department’s model was to use the Global Engagement Center and a cabal of NGOs as proxies to coerce and pressure social media companies to censor Americans through both (1) targeted takedowns of specific statements, and (2) broader algorithmic censorship to artificially suppress speech the Biden administration and their NGO allies disfavored.8 By working with these NGOs as cut-outs, the State Department helped fund and build a vast censorship enterprise carefully crafted to censor Americans’ speech while simultaneously evading constitutional scrutiny.9 To ensure our government would no longer censor our fellow Americans, I successfully fought to defund the State Department’s censorship apparatus and shutter the Global Engagement Center.10}:
:{:{:{Since President Trump returned to the White House, Secretary Rubio and the State Department have taken decisive action to systematically dismantle the US censorship-industrial complex.11 But just as the Biden administration’s “subtle and sophisticated” censorship regime 12—which one federal judge likened to an Orwellian Ministry of Truth 13—began to end, countries around the globe took up the mantle by codifying and strengthening their own censorship regimes.}:
NOTES
11 See, e.g., Exec. Order No. 14149, 90 Fed. Reg. 8243 (2025); Marco Rubio, Protecting and Championing Free Speech at the State Department, U.S. DEP’T OF STATE (April 16, 2025), https://www.state.gov/protecting-andchampioning-free-speech-at-the-state-department. 12 Murthy, 603 U.S. at 99 (Alito, J., dissenting). 13 See Missouri, 680 F. Supp. 3d at 729. 14 See, e.g., Dawn Carla Nunziato, The Digital Services Act and the Brussels Effect on Platform Content Moderation, 24 CHIC. J. INT. LAW 115 (2023) (“[T]he DSA’s substantive content moderation and notice and take down provisions will likely incentivize the platforms to remove large swaths of content…. And the platforms will likely alter their globally applicable terms of service and content moderation guidelines in response to the DSA’s mandates in ways that will be speech-restrictive worldwide.”). 15 THE FOREIGN CENSORSHIP THREAT, supra note 1, at 18–37, 117 (explaining DSA relies on and empowers an army of NGOs to censor speech, including American speech). 16 U.S. Dep’t of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 2024 COUNTRY REPORTS ON HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES: UNITED KINGDOM, at 3 (explaining that the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act of 2023 expanded British regulators’ authorities to target “online harm” from United States social media companies). 17 E.g., Ashley Belanger, 4chan fined $26k for refusing to assess risks under UK Online Safety Act, ARSTECHNICA (Oct. 13, 2025), https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/4chan-fined-26k-for-refusing-to-assess-risks-under-ukonline-safety-act/. 18 U.S. Dep’t of State, supra note 16, at 1–5 (detailing the deteriorating state of free expression in the UK). 19 Press Release, “eSafety statement: removal notices target illegal online material,” Australian Government eSafety Commissioner (Oct. 7, 2025), https://www.esafety.gov.au/newsroom/media-releases/esafety-statement-removalnotices-target-illegal-online-material; Cind... }:
Building on the Global Engagement Center’s model, the European Union implemented the DSA, a law that imposes massive penalties on social media companies that refuse to censor speech disfavored by European bureaucrats.14 And just like the Global Engagement Center pioneered, one of the key mechanisms the DSA uses to enable censorship is empowering EU-government approved NGOs to flag content for removal and adjudicate which speech—including American speech—should be censored.15 The United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act presents similar issues as the EU’s DSA.16 Britain’s online speech regulator—the Office of Communications (Ofcom)—recently embarked on a campaign to enforce the Online Safety Act against Americans exercising their free speech rights here on American soil.17
Unfortunately, this British censorship is unsurprising, as the State Department recently noted that the “human rights situation worsened in the United Kingdom” over the past year, in large part due to “serious restrictions on freedom of expression, including enforcement of or threat of criminal or civil laws in order to limit expression.”18 Australia too has attempted similar censorship against American citizens’ speech. For example, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner recently demanded X take negative action against certain posts from United States citizens on United States soil—and threatened X with daily fines if it did not comply.19 This spate of censorship demands came after the eSafety Commissioner previously }:
:{:{issued global takedown orders demanding X and Meta censor videos proving an attack on a Christian church was an Islamic terrorist attack.20 Brazil has also tried to censor speech originating in the United States. For example, Brazil has issued global takedown orders against online speech from users on US soil.21 In light of these recent foreign censorship attempts against Americans, I was pleased to see the State Department’s recent decision to impose visa restrictions and sanctions against the Brazilian officials responsible for this censorship.22}:
Those visa restrictions and sanctions sent an important message to the world that the United States will not stand idly by while foreign governments try to extraterritorially suppress our citizens’ right to free speech and censor the information we can see. Those actions were a welcome first step. But we need to do more. Three tools the State Department should consider using to combat foreign censorship are the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act,23 as implemented by Executive Order 13818,24 and Sections 212(a)(3)(C)25 and 212(f)26 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
The Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act and EO 13818 provide powerful tools to punish and deter the global censorship-industrial complex that menaces the freedoms of Americans. Those authorities permit the Secretary of State to sanction human rights abusers by freezing their US assets, prohibiting all transactions with them, and blocking their travel to the US.27 Sanctioning the global censorship-industrial complex would not only send an important diplomatic message that the United States will not tolerate foreign censorship but also forcefully deter and punish all the foreign individuals and entities who seek to impose it. For the past decade, the State Department has used Magnitsky-EO 13818 sanctions under administrations from both parties against foreigners in far-flung countries who attack the freedom }:
:{:{of expression of their fellow countrymen.28 Now, however, we face a situation in which the targets in question are waging a direct assault on the liberties of not only their citizens but also our own citizens, right here on our own soil. That fact makes the case for sanctions all the more urgent. The fundamental principle of America First demands that we protect our citizens’ fundamental rights from the threats they face from abroad.}:
The State Department should also consider imposing visa and travel restrictions against this global censorship regime’s apparatchiks. For example, leading foreign censors—including EUDSA regulators, the Australian eSafety Commissioner, Brazilian officials, and representatives from the UK’s Ofcom—recently participated in a confab at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center to “to discuss the state of compliance and enforcement” with “multi-jurisdictional regulations.”29 In other words, they travelled to the United States to discuss how to force social media companies to censor Americans.
It is well-established that the federal government has the power to block the entry of individuals who seek to undermine the foundations of our society.30 Going forward, the State Department should consider blocking visas for similar conferences on US soil under Sections 212(a)(3)(C) and 212(f) of the INA.31 There is no reason to facilitate foreign censorship of US citizens by granting these would-be tyrants entry into our country for coordination meetings. I also encourage the State Department to consider revoking the visas of foreign censors, such as Imran Ahmed, who is reportedly here on a visa.32 Ahmed is the former British Labour Party operative who founded the George Soros-funded censorship organization Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).33 Ahmed and CCDH have been involved in both the Biden administration’s censorship regime and the burgeoning global censorship-industrial complex.34 For example, he }:
:{:{and CCDH worked to censor US media outlets, encouraged the Biden administration to censor Americans, and promised to “kill” X because of its support for free speech}:.35 Given the United States’s recent diplomatic efforts to combat global censorship and promote the freedom of speech and expression around the world, the continued presence of foreign censors like Ahmed in the country is detrimental to the United States and would have adverse consequences for its foreign policy.36 The State Department should consider revoking his visa and the visas of similar malign foreign actors.
The American people will not abide this brazen foreign censorship. Our Constitution and laws prohibit it. If the United States is to protect the freedoms that form the beating heart of our way of life, then we must fight back and prevent foreign governments from violating our sovereignty and eviscerating our freedom of speech by imposing their censorship laws on our citizens on our own soil. I look forward to working with you to protect Americans’ free speech against foreign censorship. To that end, I request your response to the following questions to help inform my legislative process: 1. Does the State Department have the statutory tools it needs to combat this foreign censorship threat, or are additional authorities needed? 2. Are any additional legislative solutions needed to help the United States combat the global censorship-industrial complex’s threat to American free speech and sovereignty? Sincerely, }:
EG
28 See, e.g., Press Statement, “Sanctioning Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes for Serious Human Rights Abuse,” U.S. Dep’t of State (July 30, 2025), https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-thespokesperson/2025/07/sanctioning-brazilian-supreme-court-justice-alexandre-de-moraes-for-serious-human-rightsabuse (Trump administration sanctioning individual for, amongst other reasons, “violations of the freedom of expression); U.S. Dep’t of State, Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Annual Report, 89 Fed. Reg. 13795, 13799 (Feb. 23, 2024) (Biden administration sanctioning individual for violating “right to freedom of expression”); U.S. Dep’t of State, Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Annual Report, 90 Fed. Reg. 12921, 12922 (Mar. 29, 2025) (Biden administration sanctioning three individuals, including non-governmental actors, for “undermining fundamental freedoms” like the “freedom of expression”); see also Exec. Order. 13818 at §§ 1, 6 (permitting sanctions against foreign entities).
29 Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center Coordinates International Internet Censorship, STANFORD REVIEW (Oct. 29, 2025), https://stanfordreview.org/breaking-stanfords-cyber-policy-center-coordinates-international-internet-censorship/; Stanford Cyber Policy Center, Compliance and Enforcement in a Rapidly Evolving Landscape (Sep. 24, 2025), available at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IhhjHBNxUESW8k79pt9wIwH_kr8ETnO7/view?usp=sharing.
30 E.g., Kleindienst v. Mandel, 408 U.S. 753, 765–70 (1972) (upholding exclusion of avowed communist from US).
31 See supra notes 25 and 26 and accompanying text. 32 Connor Stringer, Trump to deport boss of Starmer-linked charity, TELEGRAPH (Nov. 9, 2025), https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/11/09/trump-to-expel-boss-of-labour-linked-ngo/.
33 Chuck Ross, George Soros Gave $250K to British Group Working To Censor Conservative News Sites and ‘Kill Musk’s Twitter’, WASHINGTON FREE BEACON (Nov. 17, 2025), https://freebeacon.com/democrats/exclusive-georgesoros-gave-250k-to-british-group-working-to-censor-conservative-news-sites-and-kill-musks-twitter/. 34 Id
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XIT APR 9
RCP 5 MIN VID CONFORM
State Department Nominee Sarah Rogers: Terms Like Disinformation Have Lost Their Meaning, I Will Bring Transparency
Posted By Ian Schwartz
On Date April 11, 2025
Sarah Rogers, nominee for Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, delivers her opening statement at her Senate confirmation hearing.
"We have heard the CEO of NPR, which is funded in part by the United States, describe the First Amendment as the number one challenge besetting American journalism," Rogers testified. "But actually free speech, which is America’s most famous freedom, is America’s number one strength. That the right to free speech protects inconvenient speech isn’t a weakness. It’s the whole point."
SARAH ROGERS: Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Shaheen, and distinguished members of this committee, it is an honor to appear before you today as President Trump's nominee for Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy. I want to thank President Trump and Secretary Rubio for their trust and confidence. Thank you, members and staff of this committee, for meeting with me these past few weeks. If confirmed, I look forward to working closely with this committee to communicate America's interests and values across the globe.
I also want to thank my parents, Sally and Jeff, who journeyed here from South Carolina, and my husband, Jeff, for their love and patience and support. I could not have done any of this without each of you. Public diplomacy is the soul of soft power.
It comprises the voice and the vision that America presents to the world. For billions of people, our State Department is the closest encounter they ever have with the U.S. government as an institution. The things our diplomats say, and the things our government funds, tell the people of the world what America's values and priorities are.
In the past, we prioritized suppressing so-called disinformation. That term can target foreign propaganda worth fighting. But these efforts lost their purpose.
If I'm confirmed, I will bring clarity of purpose and transparency in our efforts. We have heard the CEO of NPR, which is funded in part by the United States, describe the First Amendment as the number one challenge besetting American journalism. But actually, free speech, which is America's most famous freedom, is America's number one strength.
That the right to free speech protects inconvenient speech isn't a weakness. It's the whole point. And free speech also furnishes our best response to rivals, like Iran and the Chinese Communist Party, who want to replace the free exchange of ideas with distortions scripted by the state.
China, in particular, spends roughly $11 billion annually on propaganda, more than ten times what we spend on public diplomacy. But having dedicated my entire career to advocacy, inside and outside the courtroom, including for the First Amendment, I'm confident we can make each American dollar count more. That's because we are privileged to tell the American story, and American excellence and innovation sell themselves.
If confirmed, I am committed to appropriately stewarding the public diplomacy resources, equipping our practitioners with the skills and resources they need to conduct pragmatic foreign policy that advances our national interests. President Trump has presented a clear foreign policy agenda for the American people, and its lodestar is America first. We must prioritize America's security, strength, and prosperity in each dollar we allocate, and each decision we effect.
If confirmed, I will ensure that U.S. public diplomacy is well positioned to deliver these results for the American people. By leveraging advanced messaging capabilities to speak authoritatively and directly to those who seek to enter the United States illegally, the Department can address the crisis at our border. Using sophisticated technology and target audience analysis, we can ensure the message lands with clarity, candor, and force.
The State Department's public diplomacy function is uniquely capable in this respect. If confirmed, it will also be my honor to steward the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which includes the Fulbright, Gilman, and other exchange programs, along with sports and music diplomacy, and the shared safeguarding of antiquities and cultural heritage sites. And I will ensure that we take advantage of numerous opportunities afforded by public diplomacy to advance economic opportunity for the American people and American businesses.
Just next week, the State Department's public diplomacy team will lead our engagement at Expo Osaka, the largest public and economic diplomacy event in the Indo-Pacific region in 15 years. With projected attendance of 28 million, the Expo could generate an audience exceeding the Olympics and the World Cup. This is an incredible chance to build commercial partnerships while showcasing American excellence.
Mindful of our imperative to efficiently deploy and never to waste taxpayer dollars, the department must also harness the power of AI to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of public diplomacy. AI has the ability to process enormous amounts of data and deliver actionable insights in a fraction of the time that it would take a human to do the same. It can help us understand evolving narratives, identify trends among key audiences, and automate routine administrative tasks.
All of this frees up time for State Department professionals to focus on higher value work, including person-to-person diplomacy. Thank you for inviting me here today, and I welcome the committee's questions.
This is one I'm especially excited about. Sarah Rogers is a free speech champion—and we've worked together on some of the big anti-censorship fights of the past few years. Another sign that this State Department is serious about dismantling the censorship-industrial complex.
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AN 12 25
Employees at the U.S. Department of State are hesitant “to give advice that the political appointees might not want to hear” as officials "become guarded about what they say" under President Donald Trump, multiple former State Department lawyers told HuffPost.
In an article published Saturday, HuffPost reports “a severe and unusual fear of being punished for doing their jobs has spread among staff at the State Department’s legal office, bolstering concerns about how the Trump administration is crafting foreign policy.”
According to the report, lawyers at the Office of the Legal Adviser at State (“L”), fear repercussions “if they suggest the administration’s plans could break domestic or international law.”
The president’s “drastic” international moves — including “strikes on accused drug boats in the waters around South America” — have drawn particular concern among former State Department employees, according to the report.
“It’s really difficult to imagine how any State Department lawyer could sign off on these strikes,” former “L” employee Charlie Trumbull told HuffPost. “That leads me to believe that the normal vetting process for vetting these things is not functioning as it did.”
Trumbull added there’s “much more hesitancy to give advice that the political appointees might not want to hear.”
“We’ve always had a culture where we speak frankly, challenge things and really push ideas to ensure they’re solidly supported,” a former lawyer told HuffPost.
“There’s an underlying fear of … providing advice that wasn’t well-received and then being cut out of a subject, being further and further removed from the job that you spent your career trying to do,” that lawyer added.
According to the report, “L” has experienced “a drastic and uncommon loss of staff since Trump’s second term began.”
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GGL 12 25
[### Brewer Partner Sarah Rogers Nominated for State ...
Brewer Attorneys
https://www.brewerattorneys.com › news-src › firm-news](https://www.brewerattorneys.com/news-src/firm-news/firm-partner-sarah-rogers-nominated-for-state-department-position)
Feb 12, 2025 — Brewer partner Sarah Rogers has been nominated as U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, pending Senate confirmation.
[### Sarah B. Rogers - United States Department of State
U.S. Department of State (.gov)
https://www.state.gov › biographies › sarah-b-rogers](https://www.state.gov/biographies/sarah-b-rogers)
Oct 10, 2025 — An expert on high-stakes advocacy inside and outside courtrooms, she has represented clients including the National Rifle Association, major ...Read more
Missing: BREWER | Show results with: BREWER
[### Wake Up Call: Trump to Name Brewer NRA Lawyer ...
Bloomberg Law News
https://news.bloomberglaw.com › business-and-practice](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/wake-up-call-trump-to-name-brewer-nra-lawyer-to-diplomacy-role)
Feb 13, 2025 — President Donald Trump is set to nominate Sarah Rogers, a lawyer at New York litigation boutique Brewer known for defending the National ...Read more
[### declaration of sarah b. rogers
Michel & Associates, P.C.
https://michellawyers.com › uploads › 2020/07](https://michellawyers.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2020-02-28-Dec-of-Sarah-B.-Rogers-ISO-MPI.pdf)
I am a partner at the firm Brewer, Attorneys & Counselors, counsel for the National. Rifle Association of America (“NRA”) in the above-captioned matter.Read more
5 pages
[### Supreme Court Accepts NRA First Amendment Case
National Rifle Association
https://home.nra.org › statements › supreme-court-accept...](https://home.nra.org/statements/supreme-court-accepts-nra-first-amendment-case-a-historic-step-forward-for-the-nra-and-free-speech/)
Eugene Volokh joins Brewer in representing the NRA, along with Brewer Partner Sarah B. Rogers and firm counsel Noah Peters. For more information on the case ...Read more
[### Supreme Court Unanimously Rules for NRA in First ...
Brewer Attorneys
https://www.brewerattorneys.com › successes-src › firm...](https://www.brewerattorneys.com/successes-src/firm-advocates-for-the-nra-in-first-amendment-case-b4era)
Sep 21, 2025 — Eugene Volokh joined Brewer and the ACLU in representing the NRA, along with Brewer partners Sarah B. Rogers and Noah Peters. Related News.Read more
[### NRA v Vullo ACLU Brief | American Civil Liberties ...
American Civil Liberties Union
https://www.aclu.org › documents › nra-v-vullo-aclu-brief](https://www.aclu.org/documents/nra-v-vullo-aclu-brief)
Jan 9, 2024 — NRA v Vullo ACLU Brief. Document Date: January 9, 2024. Download ... Brewer III Sarah B. Rogers Noah Peters B REWER ATTORNEYS & C ...Read more
[### Nomination of Sarah Rogers as Under Secretary of State ...
Facebook · Members Take Back Our NRA
20+ comments · 10 months ago](https://www.facebook.com/groups/309304408832668/posts/542037632226010/)
Pres. Trump has nominated Sarah Rogers of Brewer, Attorneys and Counselors, to be the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy.
[### Unanimous First Amendment Victory for the NRA ...
Reason Magazine
https://reason.com › The Volokh Conspiracy](https://reason.com/volokh/2024/05/30/unanimous-first-amendment-victory-for-the-nra-represented-by-the-aclu/)
May 30, 2024 — Vullo (the NRA was represented by the ACLU, with David Cole arguing before the Court; by William Brewer, Sarah Rogers & Noah Peters of Brewer ...Read more
Unanimous First Amendment Victory for the NRA (Represented by the ACLU)
:{:{Eugene Volokh | 5.30.2024}:
From Justice Sotomayor's opinion today in NRA v. Vullo (the NRA was represented by the ACLU, with David Cole arguing before the Court; by William Brewer, Sarah Rogers & Noah Peters of Brewer Attorneys & Counselors; and by me):
[A.]Six decades ago, this Court held that a government entity's "threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion" against a third party "to achieve the suppression" of disfavored speech violates the First Amendment. Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan (1963). Today, the Court reaffirms what it said then: Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.
Petitioner National Rifle Association (NRA) plausibly alleges that respondent Maria Vullo did just that. As superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services [DFS], Vullo allegedly pressured regulated entities to help her stifle the NRA's pro-gun advocacy by threatening enforcement actions against those entities that refused to disassociate from the NRA and other gun-promotion advocacy groups. [More factual details below. -EV] Those allegations, if true, state a First Amendment claim….
A government official can share her views freely and criticize particular beliefs, and she can do so forcefully in the hopes of persuading others to follow her lead. In doing so, she can rely on the merits and force of her ideas, the strength of her convictions, and her ability to inspire others. What she cannot do, however, is use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression….
[B.]In Bantam Books v. Sullivan(1963), this Court explored the distinction between permissible attempts to persuade and impermissible attempts to coerce. There, a state commission used its power to investigate and recommend criminal prosecution to censor publications that, in its view, were "'objectionable'" because they threatened "youthful morals."
The commission sent official notices to a distributor for blacklisted publications that highlighted the commission's "duty to recommend to the Attorney General" violations of the State's obscenity laws. The notices also informed the distributor that the lists of blacklisted publications "were circulated to local police departments," and that the distributor's cooperation in removing the publications from the shelves would "'eliminate the necessity'" of any referral for prosecution. A local police officer also conducted followup visits to ensure compliance. In response, the distributor took "steps to stop further circulation of copies of the listed publications" out of fear of facing "'a court action.'"
The publishers of the blacklisted publications sued the commission, alleging that this scheme of informal censorship violated their First Amendment rights. The commission responded that "it d[id] not regulate or suppress obscenity but simply exhort[ed] booksellers and advise[d] them of their legal rights." This Court sided with the publishers, holding that the commission violated their free-speech rights by coercing the distributor to stop selling and displaying the listed publications.
The Court explained that the First Amendment prohibits government officials from relying on the "threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion … to achieve the suppression" of disfavored speech. Although the commission lacked the "power to apply formal legal sanctions," the distributor "reasonably understood" the commission to threaten adverse action, and thus the distributor's "compliance with the [c]ommission's directives was not voluntary." To reach this conclusion, the Court considered things like: the commission's coordination with law enforcement and its authority to refer matters for prosecution; the notices themselves, which were "phrased virtually as orders" containing "thinly veiled threats to institute criminal proceedings" if the distributor did not come around; and the distributor's reaction to the notices and followup visits….
Ultimately, Bantam Booksstands for the principle that a government official cannot do indirectly what she is barred from doing directly: A government official cannot coerce a private party to punish or suppress disfavored speech on her behalf….
[C.]To state a claim that the government violated the First Amendment through coercion of a third party, a plaintiff must plausibly allege conduct that, viewed in context, could be reasonably understood to convey a threat of adverse government action in order to punish or suppress the plaintiff 's speech. Accepting the well-pleaded factual allegations in the complaint as true, the NRA plausibly alleged that Vullo violated the First Amendment by coercing DFS-regulated entities into disassociating with the NRA in order to punish or suppress the NRA's gun-promotion advocacy.
Consider first Vullo's authority, which serves as a backdrop to the NRA's allegations of coercion. The power that a government official wields, while certainly not dispositive, is relevant to the objective inquiry of whether a reasonable person would perceive the official's communication as coercive…. As DFS superintendent, Vullo had direct regulatory and enforcement authority over all insurance companies and financial service institutions doing business in New York. Just like the commission in Bantam Books, Vullo could initiate investigations and refer cases for prosecution. Indeed, she could do much more than that. Vullo also had the power to notice civil charges and, as this case shows, enter into consent decrees that impose significant monetary penalties.
Against this backdrop, consider Vullo's communications with the DFS-regulated entities, particularly with Lloyd's. According to the NRA, Vullo brought a variety of insurance-law violations to the Lloyd's executives' attention during a private meeting in February 2018. The violations included technical infractions that allegedly plagued the affinity insurance market in New York and that were unrelated to any NRA business.
Vullo allegedly said she would be "less interested in pursuing the[se] infractions … so long as Lloyd's ceased providing insurance to gun groups, especially the NRA." Vullo therefore wanted Lloyd's to disassociate from all gun groups, although there was no indication that such groups had unlawful insurance policies similar to the NRA's.
Vullo also told the Lloyd's executives she would "focus" her enforcement actions "solely" on the syndicates with ties to the NRA, "and ignore other syndicates writing similar policies." The message was therefore loud and clear: Lloyd's "could avoid liability for [unrelated] infractions" if it "aided DFS's campaign against gun groups" by terminating its business relationships with them.
As alleged, Vullo's communications with Lloyd's can be reasonably understood as a threat or as an inducement. Either of those can be coercive. As Vullo concedes, the "threat need not be explicit," and as the Solicitor General explains, "[t]he Constitution does not distinguish between 'comply or I'll prosecute' and 'comply and I'll look the other way.'" … Vullo allegedly coerced Lloyd's by saying she would ignore unrelated infractions and focus her enforcement efforts on NRA-related business alone, if Lloyd's ceased underwriting NRA policies and disassociated from gun-promotion groups.
The reaction from Lloyd's further confirms the communications' coercive nature. At the meeting itself, Lloyd's "agreed that it would instruct its syndicates to cease underwriting firearm-related policies and would scale back its NRA-related business." Minutes from a subsequent board of directors' meeting reveal that Lloyd's thought "the DFS investigation had transformed the gun issue into 'a regulatory, legal[,] and compliance matter.'" That reaction is consistent with Lloyd's public announcement that it had directed its syndicates to "terminate all insurance related to the NRA and not to provide any insurance to the NRA in the future."
Other allegations, viewed in context, reinforce the NRA's First Amendment claim. Consider the April 2018 Guidance Letters and accompanying press release, which Vullo issued on official letterhead. Just like in her meeting with the Lloyd's executives, here too Vullo singled out the NRA and other gun-promotion organizations as the targets of her call to action.
This time, the Guidance Letters reminded DFS-regulated entities of their obligation to consider their "reputational risks," and then tied that obligation to an encouragement for "prompt actio[n] to manag[e] these risks." Evocative of Vullo's private conversation with the Lloyd's executives a few weeks earlier, the press release revealed how to manage the risks by encouraging DFS-regulated entities to "'discontinu[e] their arrangements with the NRA,'" just like Chubb did when it stopped underwriting Carry Guard. A follow-on tweet from Cuomo reaffirmed the message: Businesses in New York should "'consider their reputations'" and "'revisit any ties they have to the NRA,'" which he called "'an extremist organization.'" …
[T]his Court cannot simply credit Vullo's assertion that "pursuing conceded violations of the law" is an "'obvious alternative explanation'" for her actions that defeats the plausibility of any coercive threat raising First Amendment concerns. Of course, discovery in this case might show that the allegations of coercion are false, or that certain actions should be understood differently in light of newly disclosed evidence. At this stage, though, the Court must assume the well-pleaded factual allegations in the complaint are true.
{Vullo also argues that she is entitled to absolute prosecutorial immunity for her enforcement actions. Putting aside whether a financial regulator like Vullo is entitled to such immunity in the administrative context, because Vullo did not raise this defense below with respect to the First Amendment claim (or even with respect to allegations unrelated to the consent decrees), the Court declines to consider that argument here in the first instance.}:
[D.]Moreover, the conceded illegality of the NRA-endorsed insurance programs does not insulate Vullo from First Amendment scrutiny under the Bantam Booksframework. Indeed, the commission in that case targeted the distribution and display of material that, in its view, violated the State's obscenity laws. Nothing in that case turned on the distributor's compliance with state law. On the contrary, Bantam Books held that the commission violated the First Amendment by invoking legal sanctions to suppress disfavored publications, some of which may or may not contain protected speech (i.e., nonobscene material).
Here, too, although Vullo can pursue violations of state insurance law, she cannot do so in order to punish or suppress the NRA's protected expression. So, the contention that the NRA and the insurers violated New York law does not excuse Vullo from allegedly employing coercive threats to stifle gun-promotion advocacy….
[E.]That Vullo "regulate[d]" business activities stemming from the NRA's "relationships with insurers and banks" does not change the allegations that her actions were aimed at punishing or suppressing speech…. One can reasonably infer from the complaint that Vullo coerced DFS-regulated entities to cut their ties with the NRA in order to stifle the NRA's gun-promotion advocacy and advance her views on gun control. Vullo knew, after all, that the NRA relied on insurance and financing "to disseminate its message." {Vullo's boss, Governor Cuomo, also urged businesses to disassociate with the NRA to put the organization "into financial jeopardy" and "shut them down."} …
The NRA's allegations, if true, highlight the constitutional concerns with the kind of intermediary strategy that Vullo purportedly adopted to target the NRA's advocacy. Such a strategy allows government officials to "expand their regulatory jurisdiction to suppress the speech of organizations that they have no direct control over." It also allows government officials to be more effective in their speech-suppression efforts "[b]ecause intermediaries will often be less invested in the speaker's message and thus less likely to risk the regulator's ire."
The allegations here bear this out. Although "the NRA was not even the directly regulated party," Vullo allegedly used the power of her office to target gun promotion by going after the NRA's business partners. Insurers in turn followed Vullo's lead, fearing regulatory hostility….
[F.][N]othing here prevents government officials from forcefully condemning views with which they disagree. For those permissible actions, the Constitution "relies first and foremost on the ballot box, not on rules against viewpoint discrimination, to check the government when it speaks." Yet where, as here, a government official makes coercive threats in a private meeting behind closed doors, the "ballot box" is an especially poor check on that official's authority. Ultimately, the critical takeaway is that the First Amendment prohibits government officials from wielding their power selectively to punish or suppress speech, directly or (as alleged here) through private intermediaries….
Justice Gorsuch filed a one-paragraph concurrence concluding that courts should focus on deciding whether the plaintiff has "plausibly allege[d] conduct that, viewed in context, could be reasonably understood to convey a threat of adverse government action in order to punish or suppress the plaintiff 's speech," rather than trying to articulate any multifactor tests (as some lower courts have done in this area) elaborating on this core question.
Justice Jackson also concurred, highlighting the fact that some government coercion can directly stifle speech (for instance, when the government is coercing bookstores not to carry a book) while other coercion retaliates against protected speech (for instance, when the government is coercing financial intermediaries not to do business with speakers). Both may violate the First Amendment, but, she argued, they should be analyzed somewhat differently; read her opinion (PDF pp. 26-31) for more details.
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