A sign for the State Department sits outside the Harry S. Truman Federal Building in Washington, DC, July 11, 2025. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images .
switch captionAnna Moneymaker/Getty Images
The State Department is removing all posts from its public accounts on social media platform X made before President Trump returned to office on January 20, 2025.
The messages will be archived internally but will no longer be publicly available, the State Department confirmed to NPR. Staffers have been told that anyone wanting to view older positions will need 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. This would differ from how the U.S. government generally handles archiving of the public online footprint from previous administrations.
The move comes as the Trump administration has removed large swaths of information from government websites that conflicted 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 also removed signs in national parks mentioning slavery and references to impeachment and Trump’s presidency at the National Portrait Gallery.
The White House also launched a revisionist retelling of the history of the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and replaced government coronavirus resource sites with a page titled “Lab Leak: The True Origins of Covid-19.”
The removal of State Department The directive will result in the elimination of positions from Trump’s first term as well as those of then-Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
In response to NPR’s questions about the referrals, an anonymous State Department spokesperson said the goal “is to limit confusion about U.S. government policy and to speak with one voice to advance the goals and messages of the President, the Secretary, and the Administration. This will preserve history while promoting the present.” The spokesperson said the department’s
The State Department did not respond to specific questions from NPR about whether the content would also be removed from other social media sites or whether there would be ways for the public to access archived posts without filing a Freedom of Information Act request.
“All archived content will be preserved in accordance with the requirements of the Federal Record Act and department policies,” the spokesperson said.
Some State Department employees and former employees, as well as academics, worry that it will make it more difficult to trace historical records of government communications and actions.
“Despite all the many challenges that social media has certainly introduced into politics, it has also created this level of imperfect transparency, but certainly some level,” 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] always accessible in some sort of archive, it always poses a greater barrier in terms of accessing this information.
This week, in a similar but unrelated move, the CIA abruptly withdrew its World Factbook, a widely used reference manual considered an authoritative source of information about countries, their economies, their demographics and much more. The CIA announcement said the publication, published since 1962 and first posted online in 1997, was “discontinued” and gave no further explanation for the decision.
Accounts of embassies, ambassadors, offices concerned
The State Department’s directive applies to all active official department X accounts, including accounts at U.S. embassies and missions, ambassadors, and department offices and programs, according to screenshots of the 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 from the secretary of state and ambassadors, to fact sheets for travelers and images from around the world.
“These posts that will be deleted are not just press releases. They include our embassies’ July 4 livestreams, photos of Covid vaccine donations to other countries, holiday greetings, condolences, cultural programs and the daily review of diplomacy. They show who the United States engaged with, when and how – often the only public record of these moments,” wrote Orna Blum, a longtime senior foreign service official. and public diplomacy specialist who retired last year, wrote in a LinkedIn article about the directive.
“Once deleted, there will no longer be easy public, searchable access to this history. [The Freedom of Information Act] is slow, discretionary and often redacted. It is a safety net, not a substitute for open records,” Blum wrote.
Since Obama, the first president to use an official account on the social network then called Twitter, left office in January 2017, the divestiture of online accounts has been part of the transition process between administrations. Some content is archived, but these recordings generally remain accessible to the public.
Accounts for federal agencies, including @StateDept on The State Department also has publicly archived versions of its website from previous administrations dating back to President Bill Clinton.
Some high-profile accounts, including those of the president, vice president, first lady and the White House, are treated differently. For example, the @POTUS account on
State Department guidance indicates that removals of
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently faced similar questions and concerns about transparency and the preservation of government records after his administration began deleting posts made by his predecessor, Eric Adams, under the handle @NYCMayor on X. However, Adams’ posts can be found in a public archive maintained by the city.
As State Department Archives Old Posts, Other Agencies Post Extreme Content
Taken in isolation, the removal of State Department social media content constitutes a minor change, unrelated to broader overhauls of U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy or the administration’s widespread changes to the federal bureaucracy.
But Trump’s communications strategy for the second term has been defined by a mentality that social media content governs and that governance also comes through content creation.
The Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Labor and other federal government accounts have shared posts containing white supremacist rhetoric and nods to conspiracy theories like QAnon. And Trump administration staffers frequently use X to confront critics and post memes that support the president.
Trump faced unusual backlash from some of his fellow Republicans on Friday after sharing a video on his social media site containing false claims of election fraud — as well as a short clip of an unrelated video containing a racist depiction of former President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as monkeys.
This post was removed after the White House initially defended it as an “internet meme.”
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