Latest news with #PublicDiplomacy
Fox News
02-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
State Department unveils patriotic 'America First' rebrand as part of sweeping makeover
FIRST ON FOX: The State Department is launching a new, "America First" rebranding initiative to consolidate all the logos for its offices under a singular one depicting the American flag — an effort that aligns with the agency's massive overhaul plans. Whereas separate logos existed previously for offices including embassies, bureaus and programs under the U.S. Agency for International Development, the rebranding effort seeks to establish "consistent branding" across all these platforms to best reflect American contributions abroad, according to a State Department official. "The redesign is very simple, and that was to recenter and re-anchor the visual identity of American efforts overseas in the American flag," Darren Beattie, undersecretary for public diplomacy at the State Department, told Fox News Digital Tuesday. Beattie said that inconsistent branding across State Department offices and programs has meant that sometimes U.S. efforts abroad aren't as widely recognized, while other countries that do have uniformity in branding receive greater credit. "There's some things you look at it, and you have no clue that's associated with the United States government at all, and that's obviously contrary to our purposes," Beattie said. "If we're contributing something great overseas, we want that positivity and that contribution to be immediately visually distinguished as something associated with the United States." The State Department rolled out guidance on the rebranding effort Wednesday — just a day after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that USAID would officially no longer continue to provide foreign assistance. Fox News Digital first reported in March that the State Department would absorb remaining functions from the previously independent organization, which delivered aid to impoverished countries and development assistance. Compliance with the rebranding effort across State Department offices and bureaus is slated for Oct. 1, according to Beattie. The effort seeks to visually complement the State Department's reorganization already underway, which officials have said is the largest restructuring of the agency since the Cold War. Rubio unveiled plans in April to revamp the agency because the department was "bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission." Additionally, Rubio told lawmakers on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee overseeing foreign affairs in May that the restructuring aimed to "empower" regional bureaus and embassies who are responsible for spearheading the "best innovations." "They are identifying problems and opportunities well in advance of some memo that works its way to me," Rubio told lawmakers. "We want to get back to a situation or we want to get to a situation where we are empowering ideas and action at the embassy level and through our regional bureaus. Those are literally the front lines of American diplomacy. And so we have structured a State Department that can deliver on that." Fox News Digital first reported in May that the agency's reorganization plans would involve cutting or consolidating more than 300 of the agency's 700 offices and bureaus in an attempt to streamline operations. The reorganization involves axing roughly 3,400 State Department personnel, amounting to approximately 15% to 20% of the agency's domestic headcount, State Department officials previously told Fox News Digital.
Telegraph
03-06-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Trump official who shut down Russia propaganda unit has links to Kremlin
A senior official who dismantled the US government's Russian disinformation unit is married to a Russian woman with links to the Kremlin, The Telegraph can reveal. Darren Beattie has provoked alarm within the State Department since being appointed in February for his ardent pro-Russian views and focus on destroying the agency tasked with tackling Kremlin propaganda. Mr Beattie, the acting under-secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, is married to a woman whose uncle has taken several roles in Russian politics and once received a personal 'thank you' message from Vladimir Putin. In the years before joining the government, Mr Beattie wrote social media posts suggesting Western institutions should be 'infiltrated' by Putin, while he also attacked what he described as the 'globalist American empire'. Donald Trump is under pressure from many in his party, particularly senators, to take a tougher stance on the Russian leader while he continues to refuse to sign a ceasefire deal as the war in Ukraine drags on. Many of Mr Beattie's social media posts also concern China, repeatedly calling on the US to surrender Taiwan to Beijing, and labelling Britain a 'poor and pathetic kingdom' that would be 'far better off under Chinese dominion'. State Department sources expressed scepticism over whether he had undergone security vetting, a process which has been relaxed under Mr Trump. Mr Beattie was a member of the first Trump administration, but after being sacked in 2018 for allegedly attending a white nationalist conference, he reinvented himself as an ' alt-Right ' media figure. In May 2021, public records show, he married a Russian woman called Yulia Kirillova in a ceremony in Broward County, Florida. Ms Kirillova, who according to her Facebook page was educated in Moscow before studying abroad in Canada and Washington DC, is the niece of Sergei Chernikov, a Russian drinks magnate who part-owns a flat with her mother, Natalia. Mr Chernikov, whose net worth was estimated to be $150 million in 2005, reportedly received a letter of thanks from Putin for his help in the election campaign which first brought the Russian leader to power. The same year, Mr Chernikov took his first step into politics, taking a role in the ministry of natural resources, before becoming deputy governor of the Nenets region in Siberia. From 2008 to 2010, he was a member of Russia's civic chamber, which was founded following a proposal by Putin and is notionally meant to scrutinise the activities of the Russian government. When the chamber was set up, critics claimed that it would be staffed by Kremlin allies and used to diminish a rival power base in the Russian State Duma. Both before and after his marriage to Mr Chernikov's niece, Mr Beattie has repeatedly attacked what he called the 'globalist American empire' while praising both Russia and China as counterweights to its 'woke' ideology. 'The rise of non-woke (China) and anti-woke (Russia) geopolitical competitors to the Globalist American Empire is not a bad thing,' he wrote in October 2021. He also said he looked forward to its 'prestige and power' collapsing on the world stage and claimed that its 'position in the global order [is] rapidly deteriorating'. Mr Beattie, and Revolver, the news outlet he founded after leaving the first Trump administration, argues that the US has sought to engineer 'colour revolutions' around the world – a common trope in Russia and China to dismiss pro-democracy movements as Western-backed coup attempts. The businessman has claimed the US is running 'colour revolution ops' in Ukraine, Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Myanmar, and that an American 'colour revolution brigade' is pushing for a 'forever war in Ukraine'. Two months before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he said: 'Imagine the whining from the Globalist American Empire if Putin 'invades' Ukraine… I love it when our national security bureaucrats fail!' He has also praised Putin as 'brave and strong', and claimed the Russian leader had 'done more to advance conservative positions in the US than any Republican'. He also declared: 'Nato is a much greater threat to American liberty than Putin ever was.' 'The funny thing is just about every Western institution would improve in quality if it were directly infiltrated and controlled by Putin,' he wrote in September 2021. Many of his posts focus on Britain, claiming it treats white people 'far worse' than the Uyghur population that Chinese authorities have imprisoned in camps in Xinjiang. He has labelled Britain a 'sewage pit' and 'the most utterly repulsive dystopia on earth'. In a post more than two years after the outbreak of war in Ukraine, he criticised the UK's policy of 'antagonising Russia'. All of these social media posts were still online at the time of writing, although Mr Beattie has deleted disparaging tweets about Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, having previously claimed his now-boss attended 'gay foam parties'. According to Ms Kirillova's Facebook page, she moved to Washington on Jan 28, roughly a week before her husband began his role at the State Department. Despite his wide-ranging brief at the heart of the US government, Mr Beattie is said to have focused a disproportionate amount of time on seeking to dismantle the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference hub, known as R/Fimi, while building cultural ties with Russia. 'Censorship network' R/Fimi, which tracked and countered propaganda from sources including Russia, China and Iran, was a relatively small agency with a budget of just over $50 million at the time it was shut down. The US's adversaries are estimated to spend tens of billions of dollars a year on foreign disinformation. Mr Beattie's news outlet Revolver had spent years attacking R/Fimi, accusing it of being part of a 'censorship network' designed to silence conservative voices. Sources said Mr Beattie had doggedly pursued the agency after being appointed, taking it apart piece by piece. Contractors were sacked and officials were ordered to stop communicating with others in the State Department or external partners without explicit permission. Even before it was disbanded in mid-April, when Mr Beattie told staff in a brief speech that it was 'severely misaligned' with the administration's priorities, its work had essentially wrapped up. Mr Rubio confirmed in an interview distributed by the State Department the same day that Mr Beattie had played a major role in abolishing R/Fimi. At the same time as Mr Beattie was working on dismantling the agency, he is said to have pushed to rebuild relations with Russia, insisting on instituting cultural exchange programmes in fields such as ballet and hockey. He is also said to have taken a significant interest in classified material related to Russia, prompting widespread concern about turning over sensitive information to him. Sources were highly sceptical if it had undergone a security vetting process, which the State Department's website notes can take anywhere from a couple of months to over a year to complete. Beattie limited to 210 days in post On his first day in office, Mr Trump unilaterally granted top-secret security clearances to personnel in the Executive Office of the President citing a backlog in processing. The office is not part of the State Department. MIT Technology Review reported this month that Mr Beattie had launched a sweeping effort to obtain records from R/Fimi staff shortly before it closed, apparently with the intention of characterising it as an organisation dedicated to smearing conservatives. He asked for communications with or about reporters who write about foreign disinformation, along with references to Mr Trump and his allies. One official said the move amounted to a 'witch hunt'. Mr Beattie would need confirmation by the Senate to take on the under-secretary role full-time: as an acting official, he is limited to 210 days. Allies in the media have suggested he is unlikely to survive his time in the spotlight, and have suggested permanent posts where he could be installed without requiring backing from senators. A senior State Department official said: 'No one in America cares about a British gossip column. This is all fake news and low even for tabloid standards. 'Darren is a tremendous colleague who is committed to advancing President Trump's America First agenda. 'In a few short months, he has been able to spearhead high-level projects that have been critical in advancing a foreign policy that puts our national interests first.' Mr Chernikov and Ms Kirillova have been approached for comment.
