Free Republic

The Biden administration's new State Department diversity chief previously called America a "failed historic model" and demanded the destruction of tradition "at every juncture" on the altar of antiracism. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced last week the appointment of Zakiya Carr Johnson as their chief diversity and inclusion officer. Blinken touted Carr Johnson for bringing "expertise and a fresh perspective on how we build a workforce that reflects America." Carr Johnson previously served as then-President Barack Obama's senior adviser and director of the first Race, Ethnicity and Social Inclusion Unit at the State Department.

Hours of closed-door testimony from three top State Department officials shed new light on the “unprecedented” situation in the final days of the US presence in Afghanistan as the officials were rushed to the country with virtually no time to prepare and no established emergency evacuation plan in place when they arrived. The three officials, John Bass, Jim DeHart and Jayne Howell, were all plucked from unrelated assignments and rushed into Afghanistan in the hours after Kabul fell to the Taliban due to their extensive experience in Afghanistan. The transcripts of their interviews with the House Foreign Affairs Committee, obtained...

Today, America First Legal (AFL) released documents from litigation against the U.S. Department of State’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), exposing the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s internal “Disinformation Primer.” Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO), founded by Mike Benz, analyzed these documents and discovered that: The US Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Center on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) created an internal “Disinformation Primer” that revealed the agency’s explicit praise for private sector censorship strategies and proposed additional censorship practices and techniques; USAID’s censorship proposals were aimed at influencing private-sector technology companies, media organizations, education ministries, national governments,...

The rise of the administrative state and inverse totalitarianismThe State Department is censoring and limiting the circulation of disfavored press outlets.According to a new lawsuit filed in December on behalf of two media organizations, those being The Daily Wire and The Federalist, as well as the State of Texas and AG Ken Paxton versus the U.S. Department of State (the State Department) through its Global Engagement Center (GEC) and various US government officials, it is alleged that the defendants are actively intervening in the news-media market to both censor and limit the circulation of disfavored press outlets. These illegal activities...

A man who served as a State Department security officer was arrested Tuesday by the FBI on four charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Kevin Alstrup, whose current status at the department is unclear, was arrested in Washington and faces four misdemeanor charges, including disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, unlawful picket and parading, entering and remaining in a restricted building and disorderly conduct in the Capitol building. The Hill has reached out to the State Department for comment. According to the arrest affidavit, the FBI obtained information that Alstrup was employed by the State Department...

White House adviser John Podesta will replace John Kerry as the nation’s lead climate diplomat, the White House announced on Wednesday. “We need to keep meeting the gravity of this moment, and there is no one better than John Podesta to make sure we do,” White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, in a written statement shared with reporters. Podesta will remain at the White House and will get the title of senior advisor to the president for international climate policy. In that role, he will lead the Biden administration’s international climate policy agenda and will coordinate with other officials...

The Biden administration has bypassed Congress to send 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition to Israel. The deal is needed, says Secretary of State Antony Blinken, because “Israel is in combat right now with Hamas, and we want to make sure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself against Hamas." The $106 million sale is only a fraction of the $14.3 billion the U.S. wants to send to Israel but can't because Republicans are demanding changes to immigration rules and funds for border security as the price for aid to Israel, Ukraine, and other nations. Joe Biden has indicated...

A report in Vanity Fair details actions by some members of the U.S. State Department to block efforts to investigate the origins of the coronavirus because the inquiry could open “a can of worms.” An internal memo sent to department heads by Thomas DiNanno, former acting assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, warned “not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19.” The “can of worms” in question was the extensive funding by the U.S. government into the Wuhan Virology Lab’s “gain-of-function” virus research. It’s unclear whether DiNanno was concerned that an...

VIDEOAlger Hiss 2.0. The State Department's architect of the disastrous Iran deal has turned out to likely be working as an intelligence asset for the mullahs. Robert Malley, the spiritual son of State Department traitor Alger Hiss. It was no secret as to where Malley's sympathies lay since you can hear him for yourself speaking lovingly about Hamas. Amazingly, despite Malley having being busted months ago, the Biden regime still went ahead with the horrible Iran deal, giving them BILLIONS of dollars, despite the fact that the deal was brokered by a known Hamas sympathizing Alger Hiss.

Despite the concerns about Burisma within the U.S. embassy, the Ambassador and other State Department officials continued to interact with the company’s representatives. During Donald Trump's first impeachment in 2019, State Department officials insisted they considered the Burisma Holdings energy firm in Ukraine that employed Hunter Biden to be corrupt and wanted nothing to do with it. But evidence that has emerged since shows U.S. embassy officials had extensive interactions with Burisma and its representatives between 2015 and 2018. The evidence marks the latest evolution of a Democrat-driven narrative on the Bidens and Ukraine that was used to impeach Trump...

"Despite not being confirmed by the U.S. Senate, John Kerry is still negotiating with the Chinese Communist Party to push a radical, Green New Deal agenda detrimental to American interests," House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said in a statement to Fox News Digital on Friday. "President Biden granted his Climate Czar the ability to unilaterally set foreign policy and bind the United States to international agreements without consent from Congress," Comer continued. "China now recognizes that this is an opportunity to take advantage of this Administration’s weak leadership that consistently puts the priorities of Americans last."...

The State Department reportedly postponed its regularly scheduled meeting with Facebook representatives on Wednesday following a court decision on Tuesday that restricted talks between Biden administration officials and social media firms.

The U.S. State Department has issued a fresh travel warning advising Americans against heading to China over selective enforcement of local laws and the "risk of wrongful detentions." The warning comes nearly two months after China sentenced a 78-year-old U.S. citizen to life in prison over spying charges. "The People’s Republic of China (PRC) government arbitrarily enforces local laws, including issuing exit bans on U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries, without fair and transparent process under the law," the State Department says.

According to USA Spending, a site that tracks how and where taxpayer dollars being spent, at least $2,315 worth of grants from the Biden State Department have gone to the Nepal Federation of Sexual and Gender Minorities between April 16, 2023 and this week. Never mind, apparently, that the United States is nearly $32,000,000,000,000 in debt and we're potentially days away from Biden bumbling his way into the first default in U.S. history. Nope, the Biden administration is still throwing taxpayer dollars at woke causes around the globe. The description of how the State Department grant funds — read: taxpayer...

The new Foreign Malign Influence Center oversees efforts that span U.S. military, law enforcement, intelligence, and diplomatic agencies. WITHIN THE FEDERAL government, offices dedicated to fighting foreign disinformation are springing up like daisies, from the Pentagon’s new Influence and Perception Management Office to at least four organizations inside the Department of Homeland Security alone, as well as ones inside the FBI and State Department. To oversee the growing efforts — which arose in response to concerns about the impact of Russian meddling in the 2016 election but have now expanded — the director of national intelligence has created a new...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov may not be able to attend when the UN Security Council meets in the United States later in April. He has not yet been granted a visa to enter the United States writes Svenska Dagbladet with reference to the Russian news agency Tass. "No visa has been issued yet. Not a single visa has been issued," Lavrov told the news agency. The Security Council has a rotating presidency, and Russia currently holds the presidency and Lavrov is the chairman. [Original text in Swedish - translation by SB]

WASHINGTON, D.C (LifeSiteNews) — LGBT activism groups can access millions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money to promote the homosexual and transgender agenda, thanks to a State Department grant program...dedicated to advancing and defending the human rights and fundamental freedoms of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI+) persons around the world,” the department’s website states.

MOSCOW, Feb 13 (Reuters) - The United States has told its citizens to leave Russia immediately due to the war in Ukraine and the risk of arbitrary arrest or harassment by Russian law enforcement agencies."U.S. citizens residing or travelling in Russia should depart immediately," the U.S. embassy in Moscow said. "Exercise increased caution due to the risk of wrongful detentions.""Do not travel to Russia," it added."Russian security services have arrested U.S. citizens on spurious charges, singled out U.S. citizens in Russia for detention and harassment, denied them fair and transparent treatment, and convicted them in secret trials or without presenting...

The three-hour hearing showed that corporate-government collusion goes far deeper than the major platforms in Silicon Valley. The Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government held its second hearing Thursday with a focus on the “Twitter Files” that exposed corporate-government collusion in Twitter’s censorship regime. But the three-hour hearing showed the public-private partnership goes far deeper than the major platforms operating out of Silicon Valley. Lawmakers heard testimony from independent Substack journalists Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi, two of the primary reporters who published the series after Elon Musk took over the platform. The pair shared how the...

There’s a movement brewing to shut down conservative websites that offer views and information contradicting left-wing orthodoxy. Investigative reporter Gabe Kaminsky did an excellent job of uncovering how activist organizations, some partnered with the State Department, work to blacklist and defund conservative media. His ongoing series at the Washington Examiner is worth reading and explains how this is part of a larger effort to effectively shut down conservative media publications. It’s predictable—yet nevertheless disturbing—stuff. “Major ad companies are increasingly seeking guidance from purportedly ‘nonpartisan’ groups claiming to be detecting and fighting online ‘disinformation.’” Kaminsky wrote. “These same ‘disinformation’ monitors are...