• The State Department confirmed posts will be internally archived but the public will need to file FOIA requests to access them
• The purge includes posts from Trump's own first term alongside those from the Obama and Biden administrations
• Critics call it a barrier to transparency while the agency says it will help "speak clearly and with one voice"

WASHINGTON, DC (TDR) — The State Department has begun ordering all of its official X accounts to delete every post made before President Donald Trump's second inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025 — a directive that will erase years of diplomatic communications from public view and depart from how the federal government has historically handled transitions between administrations.

The department confirmed the policy to NPR, stating that all archived content will be preserved internally in compliance with the Federal Records Act. But the posts will no longer be publicly accessible on the platform. Staff members were told that anyone seeking access to older posts will have to file a Freedom of Information Act request, according to a department employee who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.

"The goal of this process 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."

That explanation came from an unnamed State Department spokesperson responding to NPR's questions about the removals. The department also described its X accounts as among its "most powerful tools" for advancing America First goals "both to our fellow Americans and audiences around the world."

What's Actually Being Deleted

The scope of the directive is broader than it might appear at first glance. The purge covers not just Biden-era posts but content from Trump's own first term and the Obama administration — effectively wiping years of diplomatic communications, policy announcements, embassy event livestreams, COVID-19 vaccine donation records and cultural programming documentation from public view.

The main @StateDept account has over 6.6 million followers. But the directive extends far beyond a single feed. Archived data shows the department maintained at least 300 feeds across 11 languages between 2009 and 2017 alone, encompassing embassies and consulates worldwide.

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Orna Blum, a former State Department diplomat who served for decades, noted in a LinkedIn post what would be lost.

"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 program" events.

All accounts have a deadline of Feb. 20 to complete the deletions. The guidance specifies that already-dormant archived accounts — such as the @SecPompeo account used by Trump's first-term Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — are exempt from the order.

The State Department did not respond to NPR's questions about whether the policy will extend to other social media platforms.

How Government Archiving Usually Works

The decision stands in contrast to established federal practices for handling social media transitions between administrations. Under the system developed during the Obama-to-Trump transition and continued through subsequent administrations, high-profile institutional accounts like @POTUS are handed over to the incoming president while all previous posts are migrated to publicly accessible archive accounts maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

The @POTUS handle, for example, transitioned from Obama's posts to a public archive at @POTUS44. Trump's first-term posts were archived at @POTUS45. Biden's posts moved to @POTUS46Archive, where they remain publicly available today, maintained by the National Archives.

The key difference with the State Department's approach: those presidential archive accounts remain public and freely accessible. The State Department directive instead routes public access through FOIA requests — a process that can take weeks, months or even years to produce records.

"The U.S. government routinely preserves archived websites of past administrations, effective each Inauguration Day. They can easily be found online. The same could be done here through a read-only public archive. Choosing not to create a similar method is a policy choice."

That observation came from Newsweek's reporting on the matter, highlighting that the administration actively chose not to use publicly accessible archiving.

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Even at the city level, the contrast is notable. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently faced similar scrutiny for deleting posts by his predecessor Eric Adams under the @NYCMayor handle — but Adams' posts remain available in a public archive maintained by the city.

The Transparency Debate

The policy arrives amid a broader pattern of the Trump administration reshaping the government's digital footprint. In the same week the State Department announced its X purge, the CIA abruptly took down its World Factbook, a widely used reference manual that had been published since 1962 and available online since 1997. The agency said the publication was being "sunset" with no further explanation.

The administration has also removed information from government websites related to environmental data, health information and references to diversity programs. The White House replaced government coronavirus resource sites with a page titled "Lab Leak: The True Origins of Covid-19" and published an alternative account of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

Shannon McGregor, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies social media in politics, told NPR that removing the posts — even with internal archiving — creates a meaningful access barrier.

"Even 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. 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."

The Administration's Counterargument

Supporters of the approach argue there is a legitimate operational rationale for clearing historical posts from active government accounts. Administrations frequently update official websites and messaging to reflect current policy priorities, and social media accounts represent an extension of that communications infrastructure.

The State Department framed the move as necessary to prevent confusion about which positions represent current U.S. policy — particularly relevant for a department whose accounts communicate directly with foreign audiences and governments.

"The Department's official 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 administration has also described itself as the "most transparent" in U.S. history, though critics have pointed to delays in releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files and extensive redactions in documents made public as evidence to the contrary.

What the Federal Records Act Actually Requires

The Federal Records Act requires that federal agencies preserve official records, including social media posts made from government accounts. NARA defines records as "all recorded information, regardless of form or characteristics, made or received by a Federal agency under Federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business."

The State Department says it is complying with this requirement through internal archiving. The law does not explicitly require that such records remain publicly accessible on the original platform — but the established norm across administrations has been to maintain that public accessibility rather than funnel access through FOIA.

NARA's own transition guidance emphasizes that agency officials should use official accounts for government business and that records management requirements apply to social media content. The guidance does not specifically address whether agencies may remove publicly posted content from platforms while retaining internal copies.

The Presidential Records Act — which governs White House records separately from the Federal Records Act — has a more defined framework for archiving and public access, including staged public access schedules. Agency records under the Federal Records Act have less prescriptive public access requirements, which is partly why the State Department can argue its approach is technically compliant.

A Pattern or a Precedent?

NPR noted that while the social media purge is a relatively minor change in isolation, it reflects a broader approach to government messaging that treats social media content as an act of governance itself.

Other federal agencies have used their X accounts in ways that have drawn attention during Trump's second term. The Department of Homeland Security and Labor Department accounts have shared posts that critics described as containing rhetoric aligned with white supremacist themes and QAnon-adjacent messaging, according to NPR's reporting.

The question now is whether the State Department's approach will remain limited to one agency and one platform, or whether it signals a broader rethinking of how administrations manage the digital footprint of the federal government.

When the government can satisfy its record-keeping obligations while removing content from public view, who decides whether transparency means easy access or merely technical preservation — and does a FOIA-gated archive serve the same public interest as an open one?

Sources

This report was compiled using information from NPR's original reporting on the State Department directive, Newsweek's coverage of the "one voice" policy, OPB's reporting, official guidance from the National Archives and Records Administration on social media transitions, NARA's records on Trump Administration social media, the Biden Presidential Library's archived social media, CivicPlus documentation on federal social media records laws, and Houston Public Media's syndication of the NPR report.

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