The State Department is removing all posts on its public accounts on the social media platform X made before President Trump returned to office on Jan. 20, 2025.
The posts will be internally archived but will no longer be on public view, the State Department confirmed to NPR. Staff members were told that anyone wanting to see older posts will have to file a Freedom of Information Act request, according to a State Department employee who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation by the Trump administration. That would differ from how the U.S. government typically handles archiving the public online footprint of previous administrations.
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The move comes as the Trump administration has removed wide swaths of information from government websites that conflict with the president's views, including environmental and health data and references to women, people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community. The government has also taken down signs at national parks mentioning slavery and references to Trump's impeachments and presidency at the National Portrait Gallery.
The White House has also launched a revisionist history account of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and has replaced the government's coronavirus resource sites with a page titled "Lab Leak: The True Origins of Covid-19."
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The removal of State Department X posts from public view appears to be less about ideological differences with past statements and more about control of future messaging. The directive will see the removal of posts from Trump's first term as well as those under then-Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
In response to NPR's questions about the removals, an unnamed State Department spokesperson said the goal "is to limit confusion on U.S government policy and to speak with one voice to advance the President, Secretary, and Administration's goals and messaging. It will preserve history while promoting the present." The spokesperson said the department's X accounts "are one of our most powerful tools for advancing the America First goals and messaging of the President, Secretary, and Administration, both to our fellow Americans and audiences around the world."
The State Department did not respond to NPR's specific questions about whether content will also be removed from other social media sites or whether there will be ways for the public to access archived posts without filing a Freedom of Information Act request.
"All archived content will be preserved in alignment with Federal Record Act requirements and Department policies," the spokesperson said.
Some current and former State Department employees as well as academics worry that it will make the historical record of the government's communications and actions harder to trace.
"For all the many challenges, certainly, that social media has introduced into politics, it has also created this level of an imperfect but certainly some level of transparency," said Shannon McGregor, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies the role of social media in politics. "Even if [the X posts are] still accessible in some kind of archive, it still puts up a greater barrier in terms of having access to that information."
In a similar but unrelated move this week, the CIA abruptly took down its World Factbook, a widely used reference manual seen as an authoritative source of information about countries, their economies, their demographics and more. The CIA's announcement said the publication, which has been published since 1962 and first went online in 1997, was being "sunset" and gave no further explanation for the decision.
Accounts for embassies, ambassadors, bureaus affected
The State Department directive applies to all the department's active official X accounts, including accounts for U.S. embassies and missions, ambassadors and department bureaus and programs, according to screenshots of internal guidance seen by NPR. The department has used its posts on X and other social media sites for years to share everything from policy announcements and speeches by the secretary of state and ambassadors, to fact sheets for travelers and images from around the world.
"These posts to be removed are not just press statements. They include our embassies' July 4 livestreams, photos of COVID vaccine donations to other nations, holiday greetings, condolences, cultural programming, and the day-to-day record of diplomacy. They show who the U.S. engaged with, when, and how—often the only public record of those moments," Orna Blum, a long-serving senior foreign service officer and public diplomacy specialist who retired last year, wrote in a LinkedIn post about the directive.
"Once removed, there will be no easy public, searchable access to this history. [The Freedom of Information Act] is slow, discretionary, and often redacted. It's a backstop—not a substitute for open archives," Blum wrote.
Since Obama, the first president to use an official account on the social media site then called Twitter, left office in January 2017, handing over online accounts has been part of the transition process between administrations. Some content is archived, but those records typically remain in public view.
Federal agency accounts, including @StateDept on X, are passed along to the incoming administration intact, meaning that posts made under earlier administrations remain visible on their timelines. The State Department also has publicly available archived versions of its website under previous administrations dating back to President Bill Clinton.
Some high-profile accounts, including those of the president, vice president, first lady and White House, are handled differently. For example, the @POTUS handle on X is handed over from one president to the next with its existing roster of followers, but posts from the outgoing president are moved to a new archive account, such as @POTUS44 for Obama, @POTUS45 for the first Trump term and @POTUS46Archive for Biden.
The State Department guidance says the X removals do not apply to official accounts that are already dormant and marked as "archived," like the @SecPompeo account used by Trump's first-term secretary of state, Mike Pompeo.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently faced similar questions and concerns about transparency and preserving government records after his administration began to delete posts made by his predecessor, Eric Adams, under the @NYCMayor handle on X. However, Adams' posts can be found in a public archive maintained by the city.
As the State Department archives old posts, other agencies post extreme content
In isolation, the removal of State Department social media content is a minor change unrelated to larger overhauls of American diplomacy and foreign policy and the administration's widespread changes to the federal bureaucracy.
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But Trump's second-term messaging strategy has been defined by a mindset that social media content is governing and that governing is also achieved through content creation.
The Department of Homeland Security, the Labor Department and other federal government accounts have shared posts that contain white supremacist rhetoric and nods to conspiracy theories like QAnon. And Trump administration staffers frequently use X to spar with critics and post memes that support the president.
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On Friday, Trump faced uncharacteristic pushback from some fellow Republicans after sharing a video on his social media site that contained false claims of election fraud — and a short snippet of an unrelated video that contained a racist depiction of former President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as apes.
That post was deleted, after the White House initially defended it as an "internet meme."
Transcript
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
A new State Department policy is raising fresh concerns about government transparency. The department is removing posts from its official accounts on the social media platform X, posts made before President Trump returned to office in 2025. The posts will be internally archived, the State Department confirmed to NPR, but they will no longer be easily accessible to the public. NPR's Shannon Bond broke the story and is with us now to tell us more about it. Good morning, Shannon.
SHANNON BOND, BYLINE: Good morning, Michel.
MARTIN: Tell us more about the details of these changes.
BOND: Yeah. So the State Department is scrubbing posts that were made up to the day that President Trump was inaugurated for the second time. And staff were told that anyone who wants to go back and see older posts - you know, say, from the Obama administration, the Biden or the first Trump terms - will have to file a Freedom of Information Act request. And, you know, as journalists know, that can be a very slow and bureaucratic process. Now, that's according to an employee who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. And, Michel, this is a change that would really be quite different from how the government typically archives the online footprint of previous administrations. You know, those records usually remain in public view.
MARTIN: Could you say more about how this has worked in the past for people who don't know?
BOND: Yeah, so many federal agencies, including the State Department, you know, they have social media accounts. The State Department has quite a few. They have ones for embassies, for officials like the secretary of state, ambassadors, programs, bureaus. And previously, when the administration changed over, the new people in charge, you know, take control of the social media account. But, you know, they leave what's previously posted there. That is different for some high-profile accounts. So if you take the POTUS handle on X - that's what's used by the president - that is handed over to the incoming president. Old posts are moved to a publicly available archive account.
MARTIN: A publicly available archive account. OK. So why is the State Department making this change? Did they tell you?
BOND: Well, a state department spokesperson told us that the leadership wants to, quote, "speak with one voice" on social media and that they want to, quote, "limit confusion on U.S. government policy." And it's true, Michel. You know, when you scroll back through this X timeline - and you can go back, you know, to 2015 - it can be very striking to see how messaging has changed under different administrations. But as one retired diplomat pointed out, you know, these accounts provide a day-to-day record of diplomacy as it's happening, and that's valuable for historians and the public to see.
Now, the State Department did not respond to our specific questions about whether there will be ways for the public to access archived posts without having to go through filing a Freedom of Information Act request. And as minor as this change might sound, it's really troubling to many people, who worry it's going to make the historical record of the government's communications and actions over time harder to trace. And there's worries that it could be adopted more widely across agencies.
MARTIN: And how does this fit in with the way this Trump administration handles information more broadly?
BOND: Yeah, I mean, we have seen the Trump administration take down information from government websites, often information that conflicts with the president's views. So that includes environmental and health data. It's removed signs at national parks that mention slavery. The National Portrait Gallery removed references to Trump's impeachment after the administration repeatedly pressured the museum. And so deleting the State Department's posts on X, it appears to be less about those kind of ideological differences. I think it sounds much more about control of future messaging. And so what I would say, this broader pattern this fits into, this administration really cares about social media. It really believes that the message it puts out is reality.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Shannon Bond, who, as we said, broke this story. Shannon, thank you.
BOND: Thanks, Michel.
(SOUNDBITE OF FORCE OF NATURE'S "JUST FORGET")