Advancing National Security through Public Diplomacy

Good morning everybody. The purpose of today's hearing is to understand the vision and direction that new Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy has for implementing the public diplomacy policies and directives from the Trump administration and Congress in NDAA 2026 and the role public diplomacy plays in supporting national security. I now recognize chairman of the subcommittee on South and Central Asia, Representative Huizenga for an opening statement.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and good morning and I'm glad that we are joined today by Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers, good to see you again. Public diplomacy is a critical national security tool with real impact. When done right, it convinces countries and their people to partner with, invest in, and defend the United States. When done wrongly, it turns people against us, undermines our values, and wastes taxpayer dollars. We are in a competition to win the hearts and minds of people around the world. The Chinese Communist Party spends billions of dollars every year on propaganda, censorship, and the export of digital authoritarianism. This is a coordinated global campaign to erode American influence and to convince the world that authoritarianism is the future. The CCP is wrong, and it must resort to lies and censorship to achieve its goals. America has the truth on its side. Our values of freedom, liberty, and free markets have secured more individual rights than any other governmental system ever devised and has lifted billions of people around the globe out of poverty. Public diplomacy is how we share that story. Successful public diplomacy persuades nations and people with a clear and simple truth. Partnering with the United States of America is the best path to prosperity and security for your people. Partner with America and not the CCP. Unfortunately, the Biden administration approach to public diplomacy left America with a damaged image in my opinion. Instead of telling the truth about America, they wasted taxpayer money on radical ideological projects and a censorship industrial complex that violated our core values. The Biden State Department spent 25,000 on transgender opera in Colombia, $150,000 to quote build the capacity of intersex leaders in India, $20,000 for a drag show in Ecuador, $72,000 for queering the map of Slovakia, whatever that means, and the list goes on. And to people in Washington, that may not sound like a whole lot of money. Go ask the average American taxpayer how much 25,000 or how much 150,000 is to them. I assure you that we do not win the hearts and minds in Michigan or the global south or anywhere else by wasting taxpayer dollars on drag shows for kids. The Biden administration through the Global Engagement Center spent roughly $50 million a year of taxpayer dollars, which I might add, a lot of that is borrowed, facilitating global censorship including we know now of Americans. It wasn't just wasteful, it was strategically devastating. It destroyed bipartisan consensus, discouraged countries from wanting to partner with us, and aligned our tactics with the repressive regimes that are supposed to be who we are confronting. That era is over. This committee has come together on a bipartisan manner to fix it. Through last year's state authorization effort and the NDAA, we authorized in law two out of three key public diplomacy officials. We mandated non-political exchanges. We required a real strategy to counter lies from China and other adversaries with the truth. We stood up for internet freedom, which has been under attack around the globe. We supported President Trump's goal of hosting the 2035 World Expo in America, and we elevated the role of sports diplomacy. And as our gold medal winning Olympic teams recently proved, excellence in sports can capture the imagination and the admiration of the world. As a representative of Michigan, I'm proud to learn that our great state produced both game winning goal scorers by the way, be that Megan Keller from Farmington Hills and Jack Hughes from Canton. And as we look to the future, America will be able to showcase all of the things that make our country great by hosting the upcoming FIFA World Cup and the 2028 Olympics in LA. None of this would have been possible without President Trump's decisive leadership and prioritization of this issue. But the job is not finished. The critical remaining piece of public diplomacy is enhancing the Bureau of Global Public Affairs into a true strategic communications hub to combat foreign lies by promoting the truth. This is how we proactively counter CCP propaganda around the globe, defend the free flow of information, and creatively use technology to overcome information barriers to reach people. The bipartisan foundation is here. It's critical that we get this last remaining piece through. Under Secretary Rogers, thank you for your efforts in realigning public diplomacy with its congressional mandate and for arranging bipartisan briefings on all of the public diplomacy requests and Chairman Mast's State Department authorization letter to Secretary Rubio, including the new partnership between community colleges and the State Department. Your engagement with this committee is appreciated, and I look forward to your insight and recommendations. And with that I yield back.

Thank you, Chair Huizenga. Now recognize Ranking Member Meeks from New York for any opening statement you might have.

Thank you, Chairman Mast, and thank you Under Secretary Rogers for appearing before the committee. I am really glad that we are holding this hearing today, particularly because we've not had many administration officials to be before us. So I'm pleased that we will have you today and you know, I can't help but say and again ask the chairman for more hearings with administration officials, particularly in regards to Iran. You know, we have not had one single administration witness testify publicly on Iran in the past year. And even after the administration bombed Iran in June, I would have loved to have had individuals in here from the administration to talk to them. Love to would have had the conversation with Mr. Witkoff and Kushner about what has been taking place with regards to their conversation. I do believe the American people deserve to know why the president has taken us to war and what the objectives and nature of the eminent threat are and how much it will cost the American people. To me these are just basic questions that should be easy to explain before dropping bombs. My constituents of course did not elect me to be a rubber stamp. But let me go back to you, Madam Under Secretary, and let me say and start emphasizing a point on which I think that we do agree. Public diplomacy is not symbolic. It is our front line tool for ensuring the United States, not China, not Russia, shapes how billions of people understand democracy, freedom, and American values. It's how we counter foreign disinformation and propaganda and it demonstrates United States leadership to win the hearts and minds of individuals. Now, we need to tell the story. And I, quite frankly, from what I have read and too often when I've looked at some of your statements, which I have had some some problems with like political engagements and social media activity, rather than this I think it should be a global message, not just something subject to Europe. And you've met in Europe with a lot of partisan political actors in Europe and publicly criticized allied governments and domestic policies, where I think you should be explaining America's foreign policy, that I think is what your mandate is. And your public statements on migration and political issues in allied countries have at times caused controversy. And your activities in Europe from what I'm told has disrupted US-EU trade discussions and I've even understood from my just doing some quick research that some of your senior officials in your own administration have raised objections to to that approach. So I'm concerned that the focus of your tenure at times appeared more aligned with advancing a domestic political brand than strengthening America's global credibility. That is not public diplomacy and it diminishes the credibility of your Under Secretariat and the professionals who serve within it. The public diplomacy mission was not meant to be confined to one continent, which I was talking about earlier, or one issue. It's global by design and for good reason. You know, China is rapidly expanding state run media, cultural diplomacy and exchanges around the world. While Russia continues aggressive information warfare. Authoritarian actors are filling influence gaps wherever America appears absent. So US public diplomacy has never been more important or needed and should not be neglected. The world is watching an America that has launched trade wars and military wars also. They are trying to understand what America stands for. That is precisely I think the mission of your office and that's why you're there to do just that. This should have been an opportunity to showcase American leadership and values, you know, we're hosting FIFA World Cup and celebrating America's 250th anniversary. Yet anti-US sentiment seems to be rising and some countries have issued travel advisories for the United States, tourism has declined and the perception environment makes your mission more, more critical, not less. So Congress needs to strengthen and did strengthen public diplomacy under the Secretariat at State because leadership and public diplomacy is essential to national security. The authority carries expectations that America's global voice be coordinated, credible, and focused on advancing America's standing, not weakening it. And so if public diplomacy is perceived as partisan or ideological rather than strategic, it will undermine its own effectiveness and hand our adversaries exactly the narrative they want. It erodes trust and undercuts our power of persuasion. So I know you got a big job ahead of you. I look forward to hearing from you and and I hope that we can refocus the office to a degree to its actual mission but I do thank you for being here because it's been rare for me to see people from the administration before this committee. I yield back.

Thank you Ranking Member Meeks, I appreciate your opening statement. Before we go to the opening statement of our witness, since you identified China as a concern which we agree on, I am going to submit something for the record just before we get going. It is an article cited State Department identifies Code Pink and other far left group as vectors of Chinese influence operation and specifically denoting how they get their money from a network of connections to the Chinese Communist Party. And so I'm going to submit this for the record right now since we have Code Pink in the room, I thought now would be a really great time to to put this for the record and identify their their network with the Chinese Communist Party. In that, other members of the committee are reminded that opening statements may be submitted for the record. So without objection, so ordered. We are pleased to have Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah B. Rogers with us today. Your full statements will be a made a part of the record. I'll ask you to speak about whatever it is that you want, but try to limit it to around five minutes so that other members have time for questions as well. And we're pleased to have you today and you're recognized for any opening statement you wish to give.

Thank you very much. Good morning, Chairman Mast, Ranking Member Meeks, and distinguished members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. It is a profound honor to serve as Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, and I am deeply grateful for the trust placed in me by President Trump and Secretary Rubio. I welcome this opportunity to update the committee on our work. As the President has said, the United States is conducting military operations in Iran under Operation Epic Fury to eliminate threats posed by the Iranian regime to America, our forces, and our partners. The State Department's priority is the safety and security of U.S. personnel, facilities, and American citizens. Now, I understand that this is the first hearing this committee has had since commencement of operations, and as Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, I probably can't answer every question you have about Iranian operations, but I can tell you that for me, one of my foremost priorities is ensuring the safety of American exchange participants in the region. Our ECA Bureau is working around the clock to support them with all necessary resources. Our Global Public Affairs communicators are ensuring that timely safety guidance reaches all American citizens through social media and the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program, acronym STEP, notification system. Beyond immediate operations, a primary focus of my tenure has been freedom of expression. That is not a partisan issue. Freedom of speech is America's most famous freedom and our number one strength. Both parties have often agreed on that. I have engaged in high-profile advocacy in Europe and the UK against the extraterritorial enforcement against Americans of censorship laws. I'm also working to foster constructive solutions to real policy challenges that prompt a misguided censorious response. Threats to child safety online, deepfakes, antisemitism, and genuine anti-American propaganda operations by foreign actors and other vectors of malign foreign influence. Through advocacy, grants, and direct outreach, we're making clear to foreign publics that freedom of speech is foundational to prosperity, innovation, and long-term stability. Freedom of expression is central to our work, but it is one part of a much broader mission. I am harnessing our entire public diplomacy enterprise to advance the President's America First agenda, ensuring that every engagement delivers measurable results for the American people and tells the story of our excellence, confidence, and leadership. Our new Public Diplomacy Strategic Plan, to be released next month, will place sovereignty, security, and economic renewal at the center of our foreign policy communications. We are increasing clarity of U.S. resolve, countering anti-American propaganda and foreign influence operations, and reinforcing the responsibilities of our allies and partners. To ensure that every single one of those dollars is spent wisely, ambassadors and their public diplomacy teams now use a new grant approval process. No more trans-ops in Colombia. All spending is tracked, approved, and targeted to advance U.S. policy objectives, the ones the American people voted for, through rigorous monitoring and evaluation. I see public diplomacy as deploying two essential tools. The first is long-term relationships. Through the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, we maintain a global network of exchange programs, English language initiatives, and cultural partnerships that connect us to millions of emerging leaders each year. Former participants in these programs have gone on to become key foreign officials, bringing profoundly positive experiences to the negotiating table and producing more favorable agreements for the United States. Thanks to programs like Fulbright, Gilman, and IVLP, we get to make deals with people we know, who know us, and who've seen some of the best of America, not just partisan media toplines. The second major tool in the public diplomacy toolkit is strategic messaging. The Bureau of Global Public Affairs shapes global media narratives using every digital channel to reach our key audiences. We are harnessing artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to identify emerging trends and measure effectiveness. We have also implemented new unified branding guidelines centered on the American flag, ensuring that U.S. programs abroad are clearly associated with American leadership. Our regional bureaus bring these tools to life. In the Western Hemisphere, we're contributing to ending illegal immigration and disrupting transnational criminal organizations. In Europe, we're defending freedom of expression and supporting civilizational self-confidence. In the Indo-Pacific, we're highlighting U.S. technological leadership, and in the Middle East and Africa, we're building partnerships that promote peace and economic opportunity. We're also seizing unique opportunities to amplify our impact. As the country enters a decade of sports ahead of the FIFA World Cup and Los Angeles Olympic Games, we're championing sports diplomacy. Through USA pavilions at World Expos and our partnership with the NFL, we're showcasing American excellence and opening doors for U.S. business. As we approach our 250th birthday, we're using this milestone to celebrate American achievement on the global stage. Throughout this work, I'm committed to being a responsible steward of every single dollar the taxpayers entrust us to spend. I'm grateful for the committee's partnership and I look forward to working with all of you. Thank you.

Thank you, Under Secretary Rogers. I'm now going to recognize members for any questions that they may have, alternating between Republicans and Democrats. We're going to begin with Representative Huizenga.

Thank you once again, Mr. Chairman. Under Secretary Rogers, as a First Amendment advocate and Supreme Court litigator, and now as the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, you've made freedom of speech a defining issue of your career. I deeply appreciate your focus on that issue. That is one of the things that distinguishes us as a country and as a people. Last year, I chaired a subcommittee hearing on the censorship industrial complex run out of the then Global Engagement Center, or GEC. One of the witnesses was the Biden administration's, well, I dubbed her the disinformation czarina, Nina Jankowicz. Ms. Jankowicz claimed that the GEC facilitating the censorship of Americans was just a, quote, "right-wing conspiracy theory." Under Secretary Rogers, could you please clarify clearly state for the record whether the Biden State Department was facilitating the censorship of Americans and how they were doing so?

Thank you very much, Congressman Huizenga, and thank you for your opening statement, which made really resonant points. I try not to be a czarina in this role and I hope that I succeed. I think, you know, a recent corpus of evidence that we can look at are the results of the House Judiciary GOP investigation, which focused on the transnational component of the Biden-era censorship regime, and that shows communications between social media companies and foreign regulators where foreign regulators are trying to choke off the expression of certain viewpoints and the conduct of certain political debates by Americans on American soil on American social media. But you're right, this was happening domestically too before the people elected President Trump to stop it. So under the Biden administration, and there's a large corpus of documents that came out in what's called the Murthy litigation, people can Google M-U-R-T-H-Y and there's a whole like appendix of documents, and that also came out in the Twitter files via journalist Matt Taibbi, you essentially had during COVID, and it became so conspicuous during COVID, you had this network of NGOs funded by the government that, having seen the inside of this apparatus, these NGOs if you want them to, they really do act as agents of the government. You had NGOs like the Stanford Internet Observatory, Election Integrity Partnership, the Global Disinformation Index, reaching out to social media companies and working with this kind of cartel of like Stasi organizations that call advertisers and tell people to de-amplify certain content. You had them suppressing what they called adverse narratives. So notice, not foreign propaganda, and not misstatements of fact, and not deepfakes, but adverse narratives. Narratives we don't like that promote the wrong political outcome. Narratives like, for example, the COVID virus leaked from a lab. Well, we now know that people at the CIA thought that was more likely than not. Narratives like the vaccine isn't completely sterilizing. We now know that that was true. And narratives like there were irregularities surrounding the 2020 election, which happened under truly irregular circumstances. In private practice, I represented Charlie Kirk, who I promise you was not a Russian bot. People might have disagreed with Charlie's views, but he was all-American, and he was on a top 20 censorship target list maintained by this NGO network. Needless to say, we've put a stop to that under President Trump.

Well, amen, hallelujah. And so that just to be clear, these were organizations that ostensibly were supposed to stop foreign misinformation, yet they turned inward, correct?

So I think what happened is, you know, around 2016 you get this mandate to protect America's cyber infrastructure and there's this decision made that that includes America's cognitive infrastructure. So let that detonate in your brain for a moment, and under that nomenclature, I guess your brain is part of the power grid and the government gets to control what goes in and out of it. What's tricky is there are foreign narratives that get intentionally injected into and amplified by what appear to be domestic IP addresses. But instead of exposing and conducting counter-speech against those foreign narratives, which the government was doing, they want to step further and a step too far. They would find like a guy in Idaho tweeting something that, you know, they thought Russia wanted him to tweet and they would tell Twitter to take it down.

Okay. We passed out of this committee the first comprehensive authorization of the State Department in over 20 years, and I was proud to have the authorizations passed out of our subcommittee for your role as Under Secretary and the addition of the ECA Assistant Secretary signed into law during the NDAA. The final piece left to finish is the enhanced Assistant Secretary for Global Public Affairs, which was rebranded as Assistant Secretary for Strategic Communications. China, Russia, Iran are actively, actively pushing their anti-American message across the globe and it's critical that we are actively pushing back, in my opinion. Last few seconds here, how are you thinking about combating foreign propaganda efforts and will you commit to working with this committee to finalize authorization of the R-family section that this Congress more strategically enhanced public diplomacy at State?

I'm highly committed, Congressman. I'm going to use every tool in our toolkit and more, just not censorship. And I think as Justice Louis Brandeis famously said, when you're combating falsehoods and fallacies, the best remedy is more speech, not enforced silence. I want to do more speech and I'm really grateful for all the support this committee can provide.

That's wonderful. Appreciate it, and with that I yield back, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. Ranking Member Meeks.

Yes, Madam Under Secretary, you know, you are right when you are the first witness here since this war, and we're now at war in Iran. And in the past, the department has touted its close public diplomacy cooperation with the U.S. military entities like CENTCOM. Yet there does not seem to have any real coordination at this time, even as we've been surging military assets into the region for weeks. And we also see that in the changing messages about our objectives and in the late evacuation advisories for U.S. citizens that have left so many American citizens stranded. My office is getting calls every day in Texas from people who are stranded because there was no plan about them getting out. Now, if the administration can't get its message straight when speaking to Americans, I can only imagine it's worse overseas. So, did your bureau engage in any advanced planning about how to manage the information environment and effects of this war on global public opinion?

Thank you, Congressman. So my bureau is always engaged in advanced long-term planning on how to respond to crisis situations. We have really dedicated career professionals I've been very impressed by who maintain a round-the-clock crisis task force. We have a whole special dedicated facility for that that Secretary Rubio toured and highlighted yesterday. I want to highlight that since February 28th, the department has facilitated the safe return of over 17,500 American citizens from the Middle East, and as of yesterday, including a single-day surge of 8,500 arrivals yesterday. Thousands more have successfully transitioned to safe havens in Europe or Asia, so they're not home, but they're somewhere safe. You know, public diplomacy means we try to communicate in an authentic, agile way.

How did you message? How was that messaged?

Well, so our Bureau, our Bureau of Global Public Affairs and our Bureau of Consular Affairs have been coordinating closely. Consular Affairs, not my bureau, is principally responsible for those kinds of consular services. Here's how you get on a plane, here's how you get home. We've been working to amplify that.

But did you have that conversation before the bombs started dropping?

So the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy is not part of the tactical, operational, or strategic planning for commencement of military operations.

So there was no direct planning, direct planning.

But, but no, Congressman Meeks, respectfully, that's entirely wrong. There's constant direct planning going on. We are constantly, constantly bolstering our infrastructure for crisis communications and communications in closed societies like Iran, where the government doesn't want our message getting in. We are constantly bolstering our ability to communicate with global publics and the American public.

Reclaiming my time. Reclaiming my time.

No, I'm, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Congressman Meeks.

Don't try to filibuster me.

I'm going to answer because I'm speaking up, I'm speaking up for my dedicated career professionals and political professionals who have been working around the clock in this crisis. And you are not going to malign their work.

Stop trying to filibuster, just answer the question.

Legislators filibuster, not me.

Just answer the question. Now tell us what was done in your secretariat to prepare for the war with Iran.

So as I've, as I've explained and I'll, I'll try to answer again. I think we are constantly bolstering...

No, I want to know specifically about the war in Iran. I don't know what constantly means. Specifically with preparation for the war in Iran, what did you do?

So specifically in Iran, I'm happy to give you very Iran-specific stuff. So we coordinate closely with USAGM, which beams and otherwise gets messages into Iran. And we also run a social media platform called USAbafarsi that is one of the main sources, frankly, of outside information in Iran. And so preparing for any conflict or any crisis, these are key tools. Maintaining them is something my office did to prepare for this war, that we're doing to prepare for any crisis or any conflict in the future. Those are evergreen preparation measures and I don't think they should be...

So you were working with Carrie Lake on that?

Yes, absolutely.

Okay. And you know that Carrie Lake, who's the de facto leader of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, has been working to dismantle the proven tools that we need to communicate to people of Iran and the broader East. She cut Voice of America's Persian service to almost zero, only to then scramble back to try to fix it by her mistake by bringing staff back from administrative leave. She continues to hamstring Radio Farda by refusing the use of USAGM medium wave transmissions into Iran, forcing Radio Farda to find alternative platforms, wasting precious time and taxpayer money. We ought to be surging more on content so that the Iranian people know what's happening and where we stand with them. That has not been happening. And your bureau working with Ms. Lake, seems to me that there is even a disconnect there. I'm out of time, but I just want to say that there are other things that we do need your commitment on with reference to carrying out the statute as you carry out your responsibilities to work on programming that shall be non-political in character and shall be balanced and representative of the diversity of American political, social, and cultural life and that academic and cultural programs maintain scholarly integrity and meet the highest standards of academic excellence or artistic achievement. You know, because this is what the law says and the law also goes on to require you to ensure the department does not fund organizations engaging in partisan political activity in the United States. These two provisions are very important. In fact, the first one I read was written twice in the statute by Congress. It's that important. And I yield back.

Thanks the ranking member for his comments about surging media. I hope you're as interested in surging ordinance that actually destroys and degrades the imminent and constant threat against the United States of America that has been Iran that you denied was a threat for several hours yesterday.

I'm interested in getting some witnesses in here to testify.

You have one in front of you. You didn't want to let her speak.

Whitcoff, Kirchner, individuals from the State Department.

You have an individual in front of you.

This is the first one. And I'm talking this has been over a year.

Take the time to ask questions here.

Get Whitcoff here, I will.

Write a letter to him, maybe he'll write you back. You guys can be pen pals. I'm going to recognize Representative Self.

Have a job to do.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary, I'm over here. I chair the Europe Subcommittee of this full committee and my concern about Europe itself goes well beyond the Digital Services Act. Earlier this week, I was on a Zoom call with multiple chairmen of foreign affairs committees in our allies in Europe. We were discussing hybrid war and they wanted to talk about Russian interference in elections. I reminded them that we have examples of our European allies interfering with elections amongst our European allies, specifically in Romania, but there are other examples. What are you doing to make sure that your free speech extends to our allies in Europe against other allies in Europe?

Well, thank you so much for the question, Congressman. I think, you know, along with freedom of expression, a core American value and a core American interest is the liberty of democratic self-determination and really those two go hand in hand. If you can't campaign in a democracy and you can't hear what your campaigning elected officials want to say, if you can't rally people to support your cause or debate you if they oppose you, then you don't have a democracy. You don't have self-government. So when you try to, you know, ban political parties using a cordon sanitaire or choke off political opposition on the internet, these are real concerns that undermine the shared values that have underpinned our NATO alliance for years. Now what I will say though is that diplomacy, soft diplomacy and also trade negotiations and the full spectrum approach this administration has taken, I think have produced really constructive engagement in Europe. So President Trump had a great meeting yesterday with Chancellor Merz and we also saw a German court a few days ago preliminarily, not totally throw out, but preliminarily refuse to ban the popular party AfD as extremist. And then we saw a follow-up, we saw an editorial in a very mainstream German newspaper, kind of like a German New York Times, the German name I would butcher so I won't try to say it, but they basically said, look, we may not agree with AfD, but we have to let them participate in the democratic process. This ruling is probably right. And that's really what we're going for. You know, there's a lot of bad faith accusation that when we stick up for democratic self-determination and free expression in Europe that we're taking partisan sides. No, we're taking the side of self-governance, which we chose 250 years ago and we think has benefited our allies too.

Okay, so let's go to platform X because the Digital Services Act also probably intends to censor U.S. speech on X. What are you doing about that?

So there's no probably about it, Congressman, unfortunately. And that's what the House Judiciary investigation recently revealed, but it's also common sense. We knew that before those documents came out. We knew that one of the targets of our recent 3C sanctions policy, Imran Ahmed, who worked for a British NGO, that one of the goals, one of the goals of that British NGO's activity was to quote, kill Musk's Twitter in order to undermine American political freedoms. We also saw a letter from a former European Commission representative, Thierry Breton, sent to Mr. Musk in August 2024, threatening adverse regulatory action if Elon dared to allow President Trump, now President Trump, the frontrunner in a presidential election, to speak on that platform. The letter basically says, nice platform you've got there, wouldn't want anything to happen to it, and if you allow an American candidate for an American elected office to speak to the American people, we will crack down on you. Interestingly, that letter made reference to separate ongoing regulatory proceedings against X, purportedly on content-neutral topics like blue check verification and algorithm transparency. And the letter says, if you let President Trump speak, things might get worse for you in this other ongoing investigation. Now that other investigation culminated in an unprecedented 120 million euro fine against X just this winter and that has spurred a lot of my engagement in Europe.

Okay, have you suggested shield legislation against Britain's Online Safety Act? This is, this is what we need to be doing. We need to be making legislation so that we can make a firm statement here in the legislative branch. Even if the executive branch is doing all you're doing, we need to make a firm statement in the legislative branch and I would ask for suggested legislation to shield Americans.

Congressman, I couldn't agree more and thank you very much for bringing it up. So we have the 2010 SPEECH Act, that's the law that says you can't enforce British libel judgments here because they go against the First Amendment. Simple step would be to amend that. You can't enforce foreign liability for the content or viewpoint of speech on social media platforms or anywhere else. And I believe that Senator Schmitt has a version of this proposed, there was a version recently proposed in Wyoming. I'm happy to work with your staff or anyone's staff on that legislation. You're absolutely right, it is a core priority.

I would like to do that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

Thank you, Representative Self. Representative Bera.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I travel a lot and meet with foreign leaders around the world and while these programs don't fall under your purview, the best diplomacy we had in the 1950s, 60s, 70s were foreign exchange students. And I meet with a ton of leaders that have come here, they might not like American policy, but they love the American people. They love what we represent. They saw the freedoms that we have here and they take that back. These are prime ministers, these are presidents across the world. And the second best thing we can do is the Peace Corps, sending our young men and women, again not your purview necessarily, but it is the best part of America is the American people, who we are, what we represent, etc. Nowadays when I travel abroad, we're not having those students come to the United States. That's a problem. They're going to China right now. We're not sending our young people abroad in the numbers that we did previously to show them who the American people are. Again, you see the Chinese filling void after void after void. That's why I introduced H.R. 6428 with my friend from South Carolina, Joe Wilson, and Mr. Chairman, I'm glad that we're going to mark that up shortly. It really is just asking the State Department to take a quick look at what we're doing abroad, the programs that we support, but also inventorying what the PRC is doing. So we have a good sense of what this competition is about so we know where to allocate those funds. So again, I'm appreciative that we are going to mark that bill up. One way we have been trying to combat this is supporting young leaders in foreign countries. One of those programs that I get a chance to meet with regularly is the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative, YSEALI. I meet with these young folks that have gone through a program that the United States government's funded. They learn about who we are, we help develop that next generation of leader who will be the next prime ministers, the next legislators in their own country. For fiscal year 2026, Congress appropriated 35 million for the YSEALI program. However, as I kind of look at this, only about half of that has currently been posted to the YSEALI program, creating a real disruption in program implementation. What I'd like, this does fall under your purview, have all awards for Young Leaders Initiatives for FY 25 been fully dispersed by your department?

Thank you, Congressman. So I understand that a number of programs were some disbursements were delayed in interagency but are now on track. And I know my staff have been briefing staff on the details of appropriations and I'm happy to get more information if the Congressman needs it. But what I can say is YSEALI is one of these programs that's on track. And we've actually we're using that program to convene about 70 professionals in the Indo-Pacific to combat online scams, which are one of our really important challenges over there. The YSEALI Professionals Program, the newest cohort will arrive in the United States on March 9, 2026, and those participants will engage with U.S. interlocutors on economic prosperity, natural resource management, civic engagement, and governance.

So I've got your commitment that the congressionally appropriated funds will get distributed, both the FY 25 and FY 26 funds.

There are interagency processes there, but I will totally commit to follow the law, including any law pertaining to the appropriations from this Congress, and I like this program and I want to support it.

Great. I appreciate it is important for us to protect our freedom of speech, our First Amendment rights and so forth. Can you give me in the era of AI, in the era of how our adversaries very easily can mimic Americans, can use propaganda to influence our elections. Again, I'm not talking about American citizens doing their First Amendment rights. I'm talking about adversaries who may choose one political party versus another. How are you and how is the State Department approaching influence and propaganda in the era of AI?

So this is really a team effort and we coordinate closely with our intelligence community. My staff have touchpoints with them every couple of weeks. I was just out at one of the main intelligence campuses last week getting detailed briefings and engagements on this. We also coordinate closely with the DOD MISO operations that, when I was kind of in the wilderness waiting to be confirmed, I met with prior Under Secretaries and they all said, make sure you have better interagency coordination. One hand needs to know what the other hand is doing and I've really made that a priority and it's really made a difference. The other thing we do is we don't censor and we don't suggest censorship and we don't incentivize it, but we do talk to the social media companies. They are some of our sentinels on the front lines. They see the incoming bot activity and they can tell us what they're seeing.

Can I get your commitment to come back to this committee and give us a briefing on the tools that are necessary to combat what is going to be a challenging playing field?

Not only will I commit to any briefing that this committee requests, but I will point to 30 days ago I submitted a report to this committee, or maybe it was to all of Congress, on our FIMI, Foreign Malign Influence strategy, and I'm very interested in the AI issue. I think there are some very exciting tools and I've just dedicated some funds to incentivize development of tools that help individual users discern what's true instead of choking off things the government thinks are adverse.

Okay. Thank you.

Representative Barr.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And Secretary Rogers, thank you for your service. Critics of this administration's America First policy like to complain asserting that we are alienating our allies and driving them towards the grasp of Xi Jinping's so-called charm offensive. There was this ridiculous interview this morning on CNN with some British diplomat who was suggesting that because we're ridding the world of this menace in Iran that somehow we were alienating allies. Don't see that with our Gulf allies. Don't see that with Saudi Arabia. Don't see that obviously with Israel. We see appreciation and gratitude for ridding the world of this the world's leading state sponsor of terror and their capabilities. But under President Trump's leadership, we are seeing a historic level of engagement, negotiation, strategic alignment through trade restructuring, but we're also supporting our allies with the return of hard power deterrence. So can you respond to some of these critiques and explain how this America First agenda is actually supporting our allies and helping us better compete or and deter our adversaries?

Absolutely, Congressman, and thank you. So America First has never meant America alone. And as Secretary Rubio underscored at Munich, one reason we want our European allies to invest more in their own defense, for example, is because we believe a safe, strong, prosperous allies make us a safe, strong, and prosperous too. A hard deterrent obviously matters in in the new foreign policy order that we're entering. I think we have taken we took the prior order for granted for too long and the landscape is shifting. Now this actually dovetails a bit with the with the misinformation topic because some Iranian propaganda that we've seen successfully countered on Twitter is this idea that these Gulf countries aren't aren't being bombed randomly by Iran. They're not targeting civilian populations. They must have just been hitting U.S. military bases. And we see community notes on these tweets and we see people respond and ratio them thoroughly with videos of Iran bombing the Burj Al Arab hotel and random people in residential apartments. So the battlefield on which we fight the information war is evolving, but I think the new tools for winning on that field can be harnessed and marshaled by us in really favorable and impactful ways. I also think that we're renegotiating our nuclear deterrent framework now. And that's something that my colleague Tom DiNanno would be more equipped to talk about, but I think messaging on that has been made easier by the administration's resolve.

And do you believe that the willingness to use and to display the exquisite capabilities of our military in Operation Midnight Hammer with the Maduro extradition and with this campaign Epic Fury, do you think Xi Jinping is more or less deterred? Do you think Kim Jong Un is more or less deterred? And do you think Vladimir Putin is more or less deterred?

Without a question more, Congressman.

Let me ask you about another PRC issue. In December, the House passed and President Trump signed into law the FY 26 NDAA, which included portions of my bill, the Countering PRC Malign Influence Fund Act. This fund was designed to provide the Department of State, subject to clear congressional oversight, enhanced tools to combat Chinese Communist Party coercion, manipulation, and malign influence abroad. How is your office, Secretary Rogers, attacking the issue of Chinese malign influence and how can the U.S. work with allies like Taiwan to counter U.S. skepticism narratives promoted by Chinese proxies in the Indo-Pacific?

I wish I had more than five minutes to answer that question because it is such a multi-pronged effort and it's so important. So we are using our exchange fellowships and person-to-person engagement to generate tangible results. For example, we ran a communications program in Mexico warning about Chinese economic coercion and the Faustian bargain that China offers with ports and infrastructure. That campaign succeeded and contributed to new tariffs on Chinese goods. In the Indo-Pacific, we are actively fostering all of these alliances and in the C5 countries, we've got these great critical minerals deals that are helping to secure our supply chain. Those are all very important. We are also working to expose Chinese United Front spending, which sounds consistent with the aim of your legislation, and those efforts are so multifaceted that I cannot discuss most of them in this setting. But they are very serious.

Well, I applaud you, the administration, the President, Secretary Rubio for all of this great work. China is increasing their diplomatic budget by 9.3 percent. There is a charm offensive, but what you all are doing in the Indo-Pacific is incredibly important and I know our allies in Taiwan are grateful for all of this good work and there should be no misunderstanding of this administration's resolve when it comes to deterrence in the Western Pacific. I yield back.

Thank you.

Very good. We now recognize the representative whose name gets screwed up the most, Representative Olszewski.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Chairman Mast and Ranking Member Meeks for holding this hearing. Thank you to Under Secretary Rogers for your presence today. As has been noted, this is our first hearing since the President forced us into a war with Iran and make no mistake, this is a war. The President has said as much himself. We've lost American service members. We've lost a lot of resources. This will be a protracted military engagement. The President hasn't ruled sending boots on the ground. We expect a supplemental budget request and I believe Americans will be asked to pay billions of dollars in support of this fight. Iran is a brutal and repressive regime. They cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons. Strikes and wars are sometimes justified, but the Constitution demands, demands congressional approval. Instead, this war has been started with no congressional authorization, no public debate, no clear evidence of an imminent threat, no coherent plan for what comes next, and no explanation of how these strikes are in the best interest of Americans. Under Secretary, you said something recently to a colleague I'd like you to repeat. If you can't hear what your campaigning elected officials want to say, if you can't rally people to support your cause or debate you if they oppose you, then you don't have a democracy. I couldn't agree with you more. How true that is, but also how sad that those that you report to, including President Trump, fail to operate that way with Iran and in other places. And as has been pointed out, as the war rages on, I think it's unconscionable that the State Department didn't have a plan before the strikes to evacuate Americans from harm's way. I have to imagine that layoffs have only worsened this administration's response. Farsi and Arabic speaking Foreign Service officers have been let go. The Consular Affairs Bureau has been hit hard by RIFs and reports suggest that the FBI fired a dozen agents and staff from counterintelligence units tasked with monitoring threats from Iran just days before the attack. So let's be consistent in our values. If we're going to talk about protecting national security and prioritizing diplomacy, which I support, let's not be silent as the President starts wars of choice. Turning to your work, Under Secretary Rogers, I want to start by asking if you agree that community colleges play an important role in advancing the State Department's mission to shape an international environment where all Americans can thrive.

I think all of our higher education infrastructure can if we engage properly.

That's great. Thank you for that and I agree. I think community colleges are super helpful. It's why I was proud to work with Chairman Mast and his team to include report language during the State Department reauthorization effort to require the Assistant Secretary for Educational and Cultural Affairs to brief Congress. After going back and forth for about two months, we finally did get such a briefing scheduled and so we thank you for that. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you and your team for working closely with my staff to get something on the books. It was a little frustrating, I'll admit, Under Secretary, to get that going, but I do appreciate you finally getting it scheduled. I was also shocked when I learned that there may be an effort to move this request out of the State Department and into the Department of Education, in part because I thought this was an administration that was abolishing the Department of Education. So I wanted to ask, are there ongoing conversations or efforts within the State Department to move some ECA programs to the Department of Education?

Not to which I'm party. I we do have some interagency agreements and conversations with the Department of Education. Those have generally focused on streamlining and enhancing and augmenting those capabilities, usually by centralizing them under State, but it's possible there's some mutual exchange. So for example, I've acquired the Section 117 of the Higher Ed Act capability to investigate and hold to account universities that don't comply with their transparency obligations vis-a-vis foreign money. That's obviously I wanted to mention that earlier very important on the foreign malign influence front. We've also acquired there were some English language programs that were kind of divided between Education and State and it didn't really make sense and we're moving to bring those under State. I'm not aware offhand of anything moved from State to Ed, but it sounds like there are staff briefings ongoing and I'd be happy to get back to you.

If we can follow up, that'd be great. I appreciate that. And just as I wrap my last 45 seconds here, I'll note that the fiscal year 26 solicitations for the Community College Administrator Program were recently posted. I wanted to also thank you for that. We are still waiting for the solicitations for the Community College Initiative Program, the CCI, and so just want to reaffirm our support of that and that we hope to see that happen soon. And again with that, we thank you for your time, your presence, and Mr. Chairman with that, I yield back.

Thank you.

Representative Kim.

Thank you, Chairman Mast and Ranking Member. I want to thank our Under Secretary Rogers for joining us today. You know, the world remains focused on Operation Epic Fury during which President Trump is demonstrating decisive leadership against an evil regime that has perpetuated decades of state-sponsored terrorism that killed Americans and brutal oppression of its own people and a persistent nuclear threat to the United States and to our allies. I want to turn attention to the non-kinetic efforts like strategic information operations and public diplomacy that are critical to sustaining the momentum, weakening the regime, and supporting the Iranian people's desire for change. So can you talk about how the R family tailored and disseminated messaging to the Iranian people over the past several months from the start of the December 2025 protests through the current military operation?

Absolutely, thank you so much, Congresswoman. This is very important for us and I'll talk about what I can talk about in this setting and we could arrange other briefings for other material. So we have facilitated internet freedom efforts in closed societies including Iran all year. The VPN efforts I think are a matter of public record and we continue to engage in those and others. We also have a flagship social media presence that I mentioned earlier, USAdarFarsi with over 2.3 million followers. That's up from 1.5 million in 2021, so it's grown significantly and that's concentrated on three social media platforms, X, Instagram, and Facebook, and that directly conveys U.S. foreign policy to Persian-speaking audience. Large numbers of Iranians comment on, debate, and react to U.S. policies across these platforms. We are also using multiple other vectors to reach Iranians directly. Our message supports their aspirations for freedom while exposing the regime's repression and regional destabilization. Although I don't control the USAGM assets which Deputy CEO Lake supervises, my office does coordinate with her office and there's been some misleading reporting suggesting that those efforts were dismantled or downscaled. We're very committed. You know, our Kuwait tower was briefly compromised but we fixed that and we're very committed to getting messaging into Iran.

Thank you. Can you, I know you talked about a lot of that. You know, I wanted to ask you about how the R family has taken to debunk the Iranian regime's disinformation and to advance the America's commitment to internet freedom. You're touching on those but I want you to go into a little more specific maybe using examples to, you know, the internet freedom, anti-censorship tools in the Iranian people's right to free expression and then you mentioned coordinating with other US agencies and allies. Talk about specifically on how you are aligning those messages to counter the regime's anti-US narratives.

Of course, Congresswoman. So when we coordinate with other agencies that includes AGM which includes the Open Technology Fund and we've provided direct support for censorship circumvention technology in Iran and that's something we continue to coordinate closely on. A lot of our other efforts on propaganda and information operations including providing technology to the Iranian people are very sensitive and I can't discuss them in this setting. In terms of the broader information war since the start of the conflict, because the situation is so fluid and so complicated, messaging has been very centralized but you know, leading up to this, like digital freedom has been a core priority of my office and we've invested in, you know, I think I think one difference versus prior administrations is we don't only direct our digital freedom efforts at closed societies but we care a lot about closed societies. So we're investing in technologies to make free internet available to everyone everywhere and that would impactfully include Iran.

Thank you. To the extent that you want to share more in different setting, I would love to invite you to that. Thank you. I want to ask you a question about North Korea. North Korea's regime enforces draconian censorship measures and severe restrictions on freedom of speech like isolating its people from global perspectives and denying them access to the critical unbiased information and sustaining the regime's propaganda. It should be in the US's national interest, security interest to break that information barrier and empower the North Korean people with accurate external viewpoints. So question to you is the what strategies and public diplomacy tools is the R family utilizing when it comes to information freedom in North Korea?

Thank you very much, Congresswoman. So on North Korea, we are in complete alignment with our allies and partners and we continue to call for the complete denuclearization of the DPRK. Both President Trump and South Korean President Lee support meaningful dialogue and have called on DPRK to abide by its international obligations. USAGM again has some really useful assets here that we're bringing back online. So the VOA Korean language service resumed broadcasting in December 2025 with daily 15 minute shortwave broadcast and digital content and plans to expand programming in in FY 26. And we've done, you know, we do surveys because everything we spend has to be, it has to produce a result, right? So we want to make sure that North Korean defectors and others are listening and we've found evidence that they are. Radio Free Asia received full FY 25 funding and the broadcasting again, you know, into North Korea has just resumed and we refer members of the committee to USAGM leadership for further information.

Thank you very much. My time's up. I yield back.

Representative Dean.

Pardon me while I adjust, my microphone is not working. Thank you, Chairman Mast, Ranking Member Meeks for holding this hearing. Thank you, Under Secretary Rogers for testifying before us today. I want you to know that I'm a former college professor. I've seen firsthand the power of international exchange programs, both for students as people growing, for their cultural understanding, personal growth, professional development, but also for our country. These programs strengthen our support around the world, building generations of leaders that appreciate and trust the United States. I'm deeply concerned by this administration's deprioritization of these programs and delays in distributing the grants, despite bipartisan congressional support. Last year, Congresswoman Chellie Pingree and I led a letter to the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs about payment freezes. I believe this issue has been resolved but I have also learned about the concerning trend of the Office of Management and Budget preventing program awards from being completed. I ask you, Under Secretary, to please provide a full report to this committee as well as to the Appropriations Committee where it is reasonably under our jurisdiction to ensure that these grants will be processed for FY 26 expeditiously. Will you do that?

Yes. Thank you, Congresswoman. We will provide whatever transparency the committee wants and I was confirmed in October and I believe that some of these programs that were stalled are now coming back online.

And I do appreciate that and I appreciate your service and I appreciate that you are new in this role. Speaking of diplomacy and disinformation and propaganda, here we are at war with Iran. What happened to diplomacy? For me as a member of Congress, for me as a United States citizen, how I had hoped that our Secretary of State, not Mr. Witkoff, not Mr. Kushner, they could have been supportive in the diplomacy, but how is it that this administration cut off diplomatic conversations around what to do next in Iran and instead the President went on a feeling, a feeling as the Secretary of State said the day before we went to war with Iran because we knew that Israel was going to go to with war with Iran and here we are with 50,000 troops in the region and we're following Israel into that? I don't think that is A, the use of diplomacy. War should be the last resort, diplomacy should be before that. We didn't exhaust that. And so sadly, this administration can't get its act together on what was the imminent threat, what's the purpose of this war and what's the outcome. I just want to read into the record the names of the six deceased members of our military who died in the very first day of this war of choice by President Trump. Captain Cody Cork. Sergeant First Class Nicole Amor. Sergeant First Class Noah Tegens. Sergeant Declan Cody. Major Jeffrey O'Brien. Chief Warrant Officer Robert Merzan. They are gone. Day one. Without any explanation to Congress, I can take that personally under Article 1 Section 8, but without any convincing of the American people that we would spend billions of dollars and blood and treasure. Talk about disinformation, failure of diplomacy, propaganda put forward. Will you go back to the Secretary of State and convey to him that A, he should have been the one negotiating this and that B, they need to get a clear idea of how we get out of this mess because the war is ever broadening and we failed to use diplomatic tools, we are continuing to fail to use them. Will you go back and take that message to the Secretary of State and to the President?

I'm always happy to convey the committee's feedback to the State Department leadership as appropriate but Congresswoman, I have a slightly different recollection of those events than you do. President Trump is one of the greatest dealmakers alive and as we know, deals aren't...

This isn't deals. This is not about a real estate deal. Life and death negotiations. That's the problem. Life and death negotiations over whether a regime whose motto is death to America can have a nuclear weapon. Those life and death negotiations are not just a science, they're an art and I trust, I trust the judgment of this President and I trust the judgment of my boss, Secretary of State. I pardon me, you're new, the rules are new, I get my time. You're new here. I get that. But you cannot just talk over us. These are our five minutes. You are here to answer questions and I am able to cut you off.

If you're cutting me off or do you want me to, do you want to cut me off or do you want me to answer?

Well, you answered falsely. You decided the war that you, that's not perjury and I...

Representative Davidson of Ohio is recognized.

... decided it was about nuclear.

Representative Davidson of Ohio.

Chairman, thank you.

I yield back.

I already recognized Davidson, so it's a little late.

Thank you, Chairman. Ms. Rogers, I thank you for being here today and for your work and it's timely because there's just a lot going on in the world. And we think about the importance of public diplomacy. Look, I was stationed in Europe during the end of the Cold War and you know, 9 November 1989's going to be one of the most famous days in history. And shortly after that, I was in Berlin, meeting people who were experiencing their first hours of freedom. You know, Ronald Reagan had said, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall and Gorbachev didn't tear it down. Nor did the United States. The people on the other side of it tore it down. And they couldn't believe what we had in the West. A guy my about my age then, I was 19, said, is it like this everywhere? And it was obvious that he was deceived. He was told that we had a couple blocks for show just like they did. He couldn't believe that stores were open 24/7, that you could walk in and get fresh milk and that everyone could go in, not just the party people. And I'm like, they want everyone to go in so they sell more stuff. He's like, but then how do they get the shelves to be full? And we've gone from that to one of Reagan's quotes at the time was, freedom's never more than one generation away from extinction. But here we are in a time and place where in our own country, in this Congress, we've got people who describe themselves as socialists. We've got across Europe, people from Western Europe, people from London and Paris and Germany who are claiming asylum on the other side of the Iron Curtain. I experienced it when I was in Budapest last year. I met Jewish people who said Budapest is great, I can walk around and wear a kippah and feel safe. I would never feel safe like this in London or Paris. Meanwhile, if you look what's going on in Europe as Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio called out, I mean, they're putting people in jail for speech. You know, if you look in, you know, Britain's abortion buffer zone law, they're putting people in jail for even silent prayers that might be in favor. I mean, they're putting people in jail for memes. Meanwhile, they do have hate speech laws in Europe, they don't have a First Amendment. They're selectively enforcing that where you know, if you call out rape gangs in Britain, well, that's that's hate speech. Well, I don't know, maybe you should do something about the crime. But if you say things that are anti-Semitic, that's on the rise and nobody's doing anything about it. Christian churches are being burned. We talked about that a couple weeks ago and later that night, a church in London was burned and a church in Montreal. I mean, they're just the North American Europeans up there in Canada, I think. But meanwhile, Christians are under attack. So your role in defending speech and religion is just so important with public diplomacy. And this all comes into context of the Digital Services Act. They're trying hard to prevent the truth and speech from reaching ordinary people in Western Europe, in the European Union in particular and they're taking action against American companies to try to make sure their people don't find out truthful things. So in that context, could you highlight your lines of effort?

Absolutely, Congressman. And there are public lines of effort and then there are kind of bilateral diplomatic ones. So first, you know, we've used the tool of diplomacy to just raise our voice and advocate for American interests. I'm faulted sometimes for the volume and the intensity of my advocacy on this issue, but I can't help it. I'm an American. Free speech is the most important asset I have. And that's true for all Americans whether they realize it or not. I have met with a lot of the plaintiffs in these free speech cases. I have not been able to meet with Adam Smith-Connor, the abortion buffer zone plaintiff, but that story is incredible. He's standing there with his hands clasped and the police walk up to him and they say, what is the nature of your prayer today, sir? And then they arrest him based on his answer. And every time I put that to a British audience, do you want to live in a society where the police can say, what is the nature of your prayer today, sir, and arrest you if you name the wrong God or the wrong cause or you admit that your aborted son died and that you're sad about it? So I, you know, those engagements have been productive. Every day, this is not an exaggeration, every day I wake up and I have social media notifications and messages from grateful British people saying thank you for standing up for us. I have an initiative called freedom.gov that hasn't totally launched yet, it's just a landing page that extols freedom. I get more visits there from Britain than from anywhere else, even though Britain is not the most populous country in the world. These people, I mean, this is a message that resonates with free people who have the same, who have the same heritage and values that we do fundamentally even if they lack a First Amendment. There are other lines of effort too. So Tanner Greer has ongoing trade negotiations with the EU and obviously, you know, that team is going to negotiate strongly for President Trump's agenda and this is part of President Trump's agenda. I've also engaged at the OECD, which is a place where, you know, non-European countries can engage with a lot of European ones on internet governance issues. And while those are Chatham House discussions, they've been very, very productive. I actually had a great exchange with a European diplomat where we started off at odds over the Digital Services Act and our different definitions of freedom. And Representative Davidson, your comments really resonated with me because I quoted Reagan's Brandenburg Gate speech to her and she got tears in her eyes and she said she was a little girl in Eastern Europe. You know, and she wanted that wall torn down. And that was, you know, then she and I were friends now, we kind of exchange some gifts and we stay in touch. And I think when you, when you remind Europeans about these values that we kind of recite rotely when we invoke our NATO heritage, when you remind them what they meant in times when their freedoms were threatened, you really see a response. And I think we're seeing a lot more constructive engagement from Europe. We're seeing an omnibus regulatory simplification bill in the EU because sane heads in Europe are starting to prevail and they realize this regulatory thicket is strangling the spirit of liberty and creation that Secretary Rubio invoked in Munich. And that spirit of liberty and creation is what has animated the West and what must continue to animate us if we're going to beat our adversaries.

Thank you. It'll definitely take vigilance. I appreciate your efforts and happy to help in any way. My time's expired and I yield.

Representative Amo.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for being here, Under Secretary. But I want to point out a fact. We're here today to talk about public diplomacy, but everything we've seen from the Trump administration has done just the opposite. Instead of leading with diplomacy, President Trump chose war with Iran. He attacked Iran in the middle of diplomatic negotiations with no imminent threat to the United States, no authorization from Congress, no clear justification for the attack and, importantly, no plan for what comes next. Now, six American service members are dead. Americans in the region are stranded in dangerous conditions. Violence is spreading across the Middle East and our embassies are sheltering in place. That's not diplomacy. That's recklessness. How are our diplomats supposed to do their jobs when they're sheltering in place or when the embassy is on fire from Iranian drone strikes? Trump's unconstitutional war with Iran isn't the only way he sabotaged public diplomacy. Trump gutted Voice of America. He only reopened the Persian service in June 2025 because he was about to strike Iran for the first time. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to enter into the record this column from the Washington Post, Carrie Lake is making Trump's job harder in Iran. She has gutted America's ability to get good information to the Iranian people in a conflict.

So ordered.

Look, he's fired expert staff. He's cut embassy programs and he's withheld funding for international education and cultural exchange programs run by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. From the Fulbright program to the International Visitor Leadership Program to the Sports Visitor program, your bureau supports dozens of education and cultural exchange programs that have enjoyed decades of bipartisan support from Republicans and Democrats. Under Secretary Rogers, since the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs falls under your purview, you should know the answer to these easy, very easy, yes or no questions. Do educational and cultural exchanges benefit American scholars who want the opportunity to study abroad?

So long as those programs are conducted in the American interest, yes.

Yes or no? Yes or no? Thank you. Have these educational and cultural exchanges helped connect the U.S. with emerging world leaders, yes or no?

Yes.

Have these educational and cultural exchanges strengthened our alliances and supported American national security?

Often.

Great. That's why these programs are some of the most effective and cost-efficient tools of public diplomacy that we have. They give Americans and students a chance to study abroad and make connections in a global economy. They give students the opportunity and funding needed to study abroad and provide our students with the skills they need to compete in the international economy. They help our students build relationships with future leaders around the world. In fact, the International Visitor Leadership Program alumni include more than 500 heads of state and government, over 1,000 members of parliament and 12 Nobel laureates. So it's not charity. That's strategic investment in American leadership. But last year, the Office of Management and Budget sat on fiscal year 2025 funding for 22 of these programs until the very end of the year. Congress appropriated the funds. The funds were released to the State Department, but the Trump administration simply did not distribute it. So Under Secretary Rogers, if these programs are important, as you confirmed, to public diplomacy and we have that agreement, why hasn't that funding reached these critical programs yet?

Thank you, Congressman. So I think a few things have happened. There have been slight top-line reductions in public diplomacy spending including ECA, but it's been eight to 10 to eight to 10 percent, it's not been catastrophic and with efficiencies we've reaped, we saved 180,000 man-hours last year alone through AI media dashboards, I think, and with money we've gotten through interagency ...

But when does the funding get in there? I'm sorry. When is the funding getting to those programs?

So my understanding is there were some interagency delays, but now these programs are back, are getting back online or getting back online. So for example, our Young African Leaders Initiative, I think, is back online and will have our first summit this summer. That was an example of one.

All right, but I'm going to follow up with you on that because I want to know when the money gets there because Congress appropriated it. So it's got to get to where it needs to be. And so what assurances, based on your agreement about these programs, can you give this committee that fiscal year 2026 funds will be distributed on time, not with delay, as directed by Congress so these programs don't get disrupted again?

So congressional appropriations are the law and I commit to following the law.

Great. You know, it's good to hear that from a Trump administration official. If this administration truly believes in the public diplomacy, the funding and the flow of the funding has to follow the rhetoric that you've shared with me. And so with that, I yield back.

Representative yields back. I will say thank you for disrupting funding to things like transgender comic books that were funded through Fulbright. That's a perfect thing to disrupt funding for, absolute waste, fraud, abuse. So thank you for disrupting the funding to that. Representative Perry, you are recognized.

Thanks, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Secretary, for being here. You may be well aware at this point that there's a communist flotilla heading from the United States to deliver aid to Cuba's communist regime. A coalition of anti-American organization across America is collecting monetary support and material aid to offset the blockade of the island and demonstrate that the people of Cuba are not alone in communism, unfortunately, as well in the United States of America. A non-exhaustive list of this coalition includes Progressive International, the People's Forum, Code Pink with well-known documented ties to China, the Chinese Communist Party, the Palestinian Youth Movement and the Sunrise Movement. What do you know about the planning, organization, funding, and intended execution of this flotilla including any potential violations of U.S. law restricting aid, travel and transactions with Cuba or in general?

Thank you very much, Congressman. So fighting communism in the Western Hemisphere is a key focus of our administration and it's a great privilege to be part of a State Department that fights communism. I am not crisp on the granular tactical details of that flotilla, but obviously we have an embargo against Cuba and there are various sanctions in place and I'm confident that even though I don't oversee these organs of the administration, the relevant ones will pursue all necessary recourse. Now as to, as to public diplomacy vis-a-vis Cuba, I can tell you that in Cuba like other closed societies and like other antagonists in our Western Hemisphere, we're very interested in promoting internet freedom and other causes that might help the Cuban people prevail over their horrible regime.

So we hope they prevail too, but in the case that they don't, we have to safeguard the United States from these incursions from China, Russia, Cuba itself, communists in general. And I don't have the same level of confidence that other organizations within the administration are going to take this, take the appropriate action. So I would hope that the State Department would encourage in writing the appropriate agencies, most notably the Department of Justice, to investigate and take appropriate actions if United States law is being violated. And, and so I'm asking you to do that. Let's not just assume and hope that they're going to do that. And I appreciate that. So under the category of wasteful programs, in a recent interview you said AI with a Western soul is a top priority for our entire administration and should be a top priority for anyone who cares about freedom. And I generally agree with you, but I'm just going to underscore under the Biden administration, the State Department greenlit $25,000 on transgender, on a transgender opera in Colombia, $20,000 on drag shows in Ecuador, $30,000 to make an LGBTQ comic book in Peru that the Chairman referenced, $37,000 to study the relationship between collective movement, meaning walking, boxing and dancing, and systemic conditions of anti-trans violence, $72,000 on a student to travel around, I guess Czechoslovakia and Slovakia on a project about queering the map. Look, I've got a whole list of this stuff. And I know the gentleman just asked you about a bunch of these programs and you said it helped out, and I'm sure it does help out in fostering relationships. These countries have their own societies and their own culture and they don't need America's left-wing communist operation using taxpayer dollars to be imposed upon them. And so for, for the sake of the gentleman who asked you what the status was and, and, and asked for a report back, I'm going to say we don't want to fund these things. This committee has taken action during this session to make sure these things aren't funded. And we don't want them funded. And we're 38 trillion plus in debt. American taxpayers work hard for the money that they earn, they don't want it sent to these things. We know we need to have diplomacy, relationships, and so on and so forth. But we don't have to be working to make sure every country is focused on LGBTQ as much as we are. If they want to do that on their own, God bless them. But we got other priorities. And so I want to highlight that, there's another side of this conversation and this equation here and I just want to make sure you hear it because that's not the only voice in the room. And I know you know that, but it, it's outrageous. It is outrageous to fund $70,000 on DEI, on a DEI musical in Ireland. I'm sure Ireland can figure out how much DEI they want and, and they don't need America forcing that down their throat so that we can be friends. And so again, I would encourage proactive action regarding the DOJ on this flotilla. Let's just not hope that they're going to, and I will ask the DOJ when they're in front of me what they're doing. But I'm asking you as the State Department, the one in charge of international relations and foreign affairs to be proactive on that issue. We don't people need to know there are consequences for aiding and abetting the enemy. Thank you, I yield.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you Representative Perry. And I will submit for the record a copy of the LGBTQ trans comic book from Peru for the record in case anybody wants to go out there and see what your tax dollars were spent on, unfortunately. In that, yield five minutes to Representative Costa.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Before I begin, let me take a moment to recognize sadly the six lives that have been lost this week in the war that we are presently engaged in and our thoughts and our prayers are with their families having made the ultimate sacrifice. Members of this committee, let me return to the subject at hand. And I would like to offer a different narrative for the actions of this administration, Madam Secretary, that you have taken in the name of diplomacy. I believe that musing about taking Greenland from Denmark, a valuable NATO ally, or making Canada the 51st state is insulting. It's insulting to our allies. It does nothing to advance U.S. standing abroad nor is it in our national interest. Belittling our NATO allies and by the way, it's nice to have friends, including Denmark, whose people by the way fought and died alongside American servicemen in the front lines in Afghanistan on a proportional basis losing more lives after NATO answered America's call to arms when we for the first time invoked Article 5 after 9/11. And they came as allies in force. Calling the brave president of Ukraine P.T. Barnum while he's working successfully to push back the invasion by that communist war criminal Putin, our adversary, pushing back Russia against all expectations is not right. Shutting down USAID illegally without the act of Congress by the way. And now efforts to defund and undermine the Voice of America which serves to spread America's message abroad and provide unbiased news through the noise of authoritarian propaganda. The administration's continued to cut items in the State Department budget that are important to public diplomacy. Last January, I'm told over 10 ambassadors, Egypt and UAE and others were notified that their services were no longer needed. We're in the middle of a war. We don't have an ambassador I believe at UAE today or Egypt. That's got to be difficult. So while the United States spends this year $215 billion on public diplomacy, Russia and China spend a great deal more. I'm all for efficiencies in spending, but there's a point where the scale of resources is critical to carrying out our mission. And we are falling behind I think Madam Secretary in this category. So I don't see how these actions make your job any easier. These actions undermine America's reputation globally. I've been active on this committee and in with our European allies for years, for years. And they tell me they're confused. They don't understand what they're doing. They ask me what's going on in America. And when you look at poll after poll in European countries, our reputation is an all-time low. Madam Secretary, can you say or really say given these actions and public comments that as President Reagan used to say that America is that shining city upon the hill anymore as President Reagan used to say with great pride and love for our country? It's nice to have friends and our allies are wondering what's happened to us, where we are, can they still count on us, whether they be in Europe or whether they be in Asia. You've got a difficult job. Please respond.

Thank you Congressman. Without question, America remains the shining city on a hill and all else that Tocqueville and others over the years have extolled. I would say that you know if it seems like we have some disagreements with our allies like the Europeans, it's because we have a lot of conversations with them. We have conversations where we disagree and we have conversations where we agree. I think American participation in the European theater and...

The conversations are good but belittling people and insulting our allies is not good.

It's you know what I would say Congressman is it's my privilege to steward tools that increase America's representation abroad. Reputation abroad. So for example, I recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the NFL and sports some people think sports is soft, that it's trivial, but it's not. Sports brings people together in a way nothing else does.

Yes, sports are important.

Sports are very important. So we're going to do we're going to have flag football in the Olympics for the first time. I've advocated for that in the Brisbane, Australia...

And I hope you're going to give us the same support that Italy gave its nation for the Olympics this last month for the Olympics in California.

I think I think the administration is hugely supportive of FIFA World Cup, Olympics, all of these mega sporting events. The convening power of sports is very well understood by President Trump and by my office. You know, I had the privilege of touring the Warsaw Uprising Museum when I was in Poland recently. And if you want to talk about you know increasing America's representation reputation abroad, sometimes American kinetic actions against totalitarian and other brutal regimes are the best thing we can do for...

My time's expired but the conversation to be continued but the California delegation will be seeking out support as we prepare for the Olympics on behalf of America. Thank you.

We got more of your California delegation right now. Representative Issa.

Thank you Mr. Chairman and I want to thank my my friend and colleague from California because he's although he stole the shining city on the hill again ahead of me, the fact is he brought up some points that are extreme are extremely important and that I think that our concern across the aisle. And as usual, I found his comments to be more measured than some. And so let me go through a couple of things. We were the shining city on the hill, we were that beacon of hope all through the Cold War because Voice of America sent a consistent message, a message that started with whoever the President of the United States was and talked about freedom to these people who were oppressed, correct?

Correct.

And it did so in a very efficient fashion, correct?

That's my understanding, yes.

Now as we continue to build other messaging operations, some of them were directly out of the State Department, others went through a series of of independent nonprofits, correct?

Correct.

And as we sit here today, would it be fair to say that when the nonprofits have a cost based on publicly available figures of almost $5 per listener, while the Voice of America runs about 87 cents per listener, that there are inherent inefficiencies in what we've been doing.

It would certainly appear so from the accounting Congressman.

And that's in addition to some of the expenditures that were counterproductive to previous administrations, not just this one.

Absolutely.

So when the chairman tried to have a reauthorization that consolidated these programs back into their original intent, in other words, State Department and the administration work together with all the agencies to provide a message of freedom anywhere it's needed at any time at the most efficient way, that was what you were hoping to see come out of this committee and the chairman was trying to give you.

Very much so.

So as we sit here today and we're trying to figure out and quite frankly, I'd like to put it to the record some historic figures on the Voice of Asia trying to or yeah Voice of Asia trying to sell off all of their equipment because they could, although they were thwarted from it after it became public. Without objection, thank you. The fact is bringing together these messages so that whether it's Cuba or Venezuela, whether or not maybe the message to Venezuela changed in the last few weeks, but the money is still there to shift it would be one of the advantages of it being under a consolidated authority.

Yes. And I'll just add Congressman, you know the statute that created AGM directs, it doesn't just permit it directs the State Department to ensure foreign policy consistency. And so we've pursued tighter integration and tighter coordination and we're really supportive of anything the committee wants to do by way of reform in that vein.

Now one area that that is of particular concern I want to make sure that we all agree would be the case. We're not talking about eliminating third-party companies or individuals or nonprofits from participating in some portion of a message on again off again as needed, right?

Of course not.

So the idea that we're trying to get rid of grantees isn't the case, but let's ask the basic question. Do we need to have a grand a large money grantee who is not accountable as to who they hire, how they hire them, whether they hire them, whether or not they spend the money or do we need to have targeted independent operators maybe as much as an individual reporter who's working for us?

A core principle of my grantmaking is that every single dollar has to be accountable. So whether that's accomplished in the grant agreement or some other oversight mechanism, every single dollar I spend, whether I spend it or a grantee spends it, was taken from an American taxpayer who didn't want to forfeit that dollar. She had to forfeit it to the government. So I have to use that dollar well and that means accountability.

So let me just close by asking a question that I think everyone needs to understand because I believe it to be true. Isn't it true right now that grantees whose grants have expired are currently in litigation against the United States government demanding that they continue to continue to receive money and that they will not negotiate a new grant, but in fact are living with basically a judge's order to continue receiving money even if in fact they are producing no material responsive to their mandate.

That is one of several injunctions that has surprised me during this administration, Congressman.

So Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the time and I would simply say that we need to move forward to empower that money be well spent and I think we see the path and it was the path you had in your authorization bill. And I yield back.

Thank you, Representative Issa, and we will continue with the string of Californians and go on to Mr. Sherman.

Thank you. As we fight against Iran and we lose brave men and women, we should reflect that the most powerful force we have in the United States is not our aircraft carrier groups, but the truth. And here we are engaged with Iran and we have dramatically cut our broadcasting over the last year in the Farsi language to reach the people of Iran. And now we don't we see that the pro-democracy groups that might exist in Iran don't exist in sufficient strength to be an alternative yet to this government, although we hope it emerges. So we have literally shot ourselves in the foot thinking we need a new regime in Iran and that would be a good thing, whether it's appropriate for the U.S. to try to achieve that through force is another issue, but we stopped giving the Iranians the truth. A number of those who spoke here earlier took tiny, tiny expenditures and used that as an excuse for our dramatic cuts in providing the world the truth. It is said that the State Department provided $21,000 for drag show in Ecuador, simply not true. There was a proposal, it didn't happen. If any of us is judged by the stupidity of some of the proposals that take place, many, many crazy things are proposed to me in my office, sometimes by a Republican colleague. Then there's this myth of $47,000 for transgender opera. This was to support As One, an opera written in the United States that happens to have a transgender protagonist. I don't you would think that those who represent a percentage of the American population would be portrayed in American culture. And finally, the myth that the USAID provided $32,000 for a transgender comic book. There was in fact a series of comic books, one of them had a gay character, an LGBTQ person character. But even you put this all together and you say why have we given up the most powerful or substantially cut back on the most powerful tool we have in the world because of expenditures that don't amount to one-tenth of one percent of what we were doing. Now, well, I'll ask our witness here. What is the total staff of those what was the total staff of those broadcasting in Farsi and communicating in Farsi in 2024 versus 2025?

So I would have to refer you to USAGM for exact personnel numbers.

I'm asking a numerical question. It is my time. I am reclaiming that time. Will you give me a numerical answer? If not, I'll go on.

I have to refer you to USAGM for personnel numbers, but I think it's very important to supplement the record because some of what's been said is misleading.

Well then if you if the Chairman grants you time, then you can say what you want. I only granted me five minutes. I've long advocated that we reach those in southern Pakistan in the Sindhi language. This the Appropriations Committee has directed Voice of America to do that on occasion and provided funds for doing it. Pakistan is the only nuclear power that has ever had a military coup and some would say that's dangerous. Do you agree that Sindhi language broadcasting is important and are you doing anything about it?

So I'm not currently doing anything. VOA is running and USAGM is running these entities. I do think that when we select which languages we broadcast in, we have to select them according to our security priorities and I would engage in that analysis.

We are broadcasting I believe still in Greek because of an injunction, Congressman.

What? I think I could be misstating the procedural posture of litigation, but I think we're still engaging in some of those activities pursuant to an injunction that prevented us from reconfiguring.

That may be, but how you would ignore a language that is the second largest language in the only nuclear state that has had some elements of instability while broadcasting to stable countries in Europe surprises me. Administrations on both sides have given me a hundred different excuses. Your administration is certainly different and I hope that you will be broadcasting in the Sindhi language. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Sherman. I'm going to submit a couple items for the record right now because it bears on the testimony. Number one, Project Grant Award Completed Department of State Grant Summary specifically to raise awareness and increase the transgender representation through operas by American composer Laura Kaminsky. So just here's the grant award, going to submit that for the record. It is in fact not false that this took place. This is the completed award. I could probably do that for dozens and dozens of these, but we'll wait to see who brings up other ones and then I'll be happy to submit those ones for the records as well. But we'll submit that one for the record for right now. Representative Moylan, you are recognized.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Under Secretary, thank you very much and I'm glad to see we have some good engagements from the State Department in the Pacific Islands. The Deputy Secretary's recent trip there to Tonga and Fiji and Samoa. And how these trips are engaged in some interest and investment and economic development in the Pacific. And Under Secretary, of course, your engagement in Australian rugby and your recent trip to the Indo-Pacific Forum Vegas. I also be interested in learning more about the engagement that the Peace Corps has with the Pacific Islands. Though we have these great engagements going on by the U.S., we have bad engagements going on with the PRC. They're targeting the Pacific nations through the Belt and Road Initiative and disinformation campaigns. And our Pacific Islanders are also being educated by these exchanges with Chinese universities, in fact more so than with American universities. But diplomacy plays a big part and that's your duty and I think you're doing quite well. Thank you. And and also the islands are the Pacific Islands following your conversation and the Indo-Pacific Forum, I'd be interested to know more about what what your takeaway is with that. I also want to know how you feel the second island chain, our territories, our Pacific Island territories like Guam, the CNMI, American Samoa play in advancing the public diplomacy that we have in the Pacific Islands.

Thank you so much, Congressman, and I actually will be taking my first trip to East Asia Pacific region this spring. And I really did enjoy my engagements at the Indo-Pacific Forum. The games of rugby and football, which we think of as kind of Anglosphere games, are actually hugely important in Papua New Guinea and I sat next to one of the Deputy Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea at the forum and we connected on that and it was a really strong illustration of the convening power of sports. The Indo-Pacific, it contains more than half the world's people and about half the world's commerce and it is very, very strategically important for us given the strategic significance of the adversarial activity coming from China. And I think all of our counter-China activity is naturally beneficial to our Indo-Pacific posture because those island chains and those partner nations are so hotly contested by Chinese propaganda and malign influence. So for example, the effort that the authorities I just acquired from the Department of Education to you know, I don't want to say force, but elicit and if necessary force more transparency from our universities on their foreign funding, I think is very, very relevant on Pacific power. And I think our commercial diplomacy is very, very relevant there too because economic coercion is one of China's main weapons and what we've seen is we're trying to alert nations to the the very the the offer you can't refuse that China comes forth with that in fact countries should refuse because that port isn't free, that infrastructure isn't so great, and it turns out that if you hire an American company, they build it better, they treat your workers better, and their fishing fleet isn't committing horrendous abuses off the coast.

Exactly. And talk a little bit about the Global Engagement Center and with the recent situation with the Solomon Island elections and how China did their disinformation and influenced the local elections.

So China undertakes a variety uses a variety of vectors to insert propaganda and other information operations into contested countries. So the Global Engagement Center, this Congress declined to renew funding for it in 2024 before President Trump took office. The reason this Congress declined to renew funding was because the Global Engagement Center had become a political albatross because it was censoring Americans and that was bad and my office doesn't do it. But the Global Engagement Center is doing good things too. They were managing interagency coordination with the intelligence community and our military, my office is doing that. And the Global Engagement Center was undertaking some coordination with social media companies and technology companies to gather information about these kinds of threats, foreign bot hives and the like, my office is still doing that. We also I recently received a detailed briefing that I can't fully recap in this setting but would be happy to share with you on vectors of Chinese influence in the Pacific Islands. They're very detailed, they include infiltration of social media chats and the like, but also the purchase and co-optation of local media. That is something that we see a lot of. And so you know, I I have staff kind of embedded with China House at the State Department so that we can be especially closely coordinated on this issue and I'm happy to you know, continue to brief the committee or get you any information you want.

Thank you. And just quickly, you know, the Pacific Island our Pacific Island partners, the Freely Associated States. They're being hit by China so so much the PRC, but they would really appreciate if they can have more of the Peace Corps volunteers back. Is there any plans for that?

So I don't think I have direct I'm not doing anything right now with the Peace Corps, but I can certainly convey that message.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Representative Castro.

Thank you. Under Secretary Rogers, your office is statutorily responsible under the State Department Organization Act for explaining U.S. foreign policy to foreign audiences. That's the core mandate of public diplomacy. You've testified and spoken publicly about your office's role in messaging a quote unified and affirmative vision of U.S. foreign policy abroad and you've also traveled extensively to Europe to do exactly that. So I wanted to ask you in your capacity as a principal official responsible for communicating U.S. foreign policy to the world, we know that this war is already having worldwide consequences. Shipping through the Straits of Hormuz is effectively shut down, service members, American service members have lost their lives, oil and gas prices worldwide have skyrocketed and markets worldwide are in turmoil. So what message are you communicating to the world about U.S. goals in this war and specifically why did the President join Israel in going to war with Iran?

Thank you, Congressman. So because this is such a fluid evolving and kinetic situation, messaging on you know, this conflict has been very tightly coordinated and my office is not doing the diversity of messaging we would otherwise do on a more diffuse issue like freedom of speech, for example. But I think the alliances that we've nurtured and the relationships that we've fostered through exchange programs and other diplomatic engagements have borne fruit. I can remember I was sitting with an Australian sports reporter at the Indo-Pacific Rugby Forum...

Well, but let me ask you, I mean, you're supposed to be the main spokesperson for the State Department to the world. This is public diplomacy. So you're saying that they have sidelined you? That you're not part of that coordinating team effort?

We have, we have a separate spokesperson's office, but I...

Separate within the State Department?

There's, there's a spokesperson and there's me. So I'm not technically the spokesperson. I'm sort of an executive that oversees various communications...

But you're in charge of public diplomacy, right?

But I'm in charge of public diplomacy, which includes some fast-twitch media messaging and it includes some educational and cultural programs. So in the initial days of a fluid and kinetic conflict, I'm not...

But, but hold on, but I've got to reclaim my time because I've got to get some answers here. But, but the spokesperson is U.S. oriented. You're supposed to be speaking to the nations of the world, right? So if they've, if they've sidelined you, well, I guess, but tell me this. So what are the goals of this war?

So I would defer to the President and our military on the sort of tactical immediate goals, but I think the President has told us the strategic goal, which is that a regime whose motto is death to America cannot have a nuclear weapon. And I think a lot of Americans agree with that. Now, I think in terms of messaging around the world, we've seen the kinds of investments my office makes bear fruit. And the anecdote I was just about to share was that, you know, around the time this conflict broke out, I was sitting with an Australian sports reporter and we couldn't talk about foreign policy in the course of this interview, but he said, you know, Australia stands with you. And the reason Australia stands with us is because we've made investments in that relationship. Other, other allies of ours have stood with us as well. And I think as the situation evolves and our messaging approach diversifies and it's not just focused minute to minute, then my office will have more...

Well, but this is, this is an important moment that we're in. And the idea that you would be sidelined, that your office would be completely sidelined is, is disturbing. But let me ask you this in your official capacity. Are we at war with Iran?

So I would reject the characterization that my office has been sidelined. I would say the White House and the DOD are leading and the military should lead when it comes to military engagements. I'm not part of the military now. As to legal distinctions under the War Powers Act, as to legal distinctions under the War Powers Act and other statutes, I would have to defer to counsel on that. I think we're certainly in armed conflict with Iran. I think Iran wanting a nuclear weapon is specifically...

But Under Secretary, sure, let me, let me say this, Under Secretary. Like I've asked you these straightforward questions and you said you're not being sidelined, but then you keep saying that you've got to defer to some other groups of people. You have, in terms of the act that enabled your office, a very powerful, important role. And yet you seem to be sitting there saying that you don't have any role right now. So it's very disturbing to me and I think to other members...

Well, that mischaracterizes, that mischaracterizes my testimony, Congressman. So let me clarify my testimony to, to make sure everyone at home gets it. So I haven't been sidelined. I think the military and the White House are leading, you know, military efforts and that's the job of the Commander-in-Chief, not the Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy. Frankly, if the people who vote for Commander-in-Chief would be very surprised if I took that mantle. I didn't run for it and I'm not qualified for it. But, but I also want to say, you referred to my statutory mandate. My statutory mandate is to explain U.S. foreign policy, not formulate U.S. foreign policy. I obviously formulate, you know, educational and cultural exchange policy, but...

Sure, no, I understand. And just to keep us on time, let me make one closing remark. I think that, that by statute, you and your office have an important role to play. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that the administration agrees with me on that. I yield back.

I'm going to recognize myself for my period of questioning now. I'm going to start with just saying a few comments about Iran and then asking some questions outside of that. And the comments just bear on what you just said, Mr. Castro. We have an important role here. Yesterday we had several hours of debate about war powers, a war powers resolution, about whether Iran is the largest state sponsor of terror. We'll vote on those things today. And it, given that we do, we do have a very important job to do, 435 in the House of Representatives. It was astounding to me that there couldn't even be any level of nuance about the threat that Iran poses. When we have members of Congress here that have voted numerous times to say Iran is the largest state sponsor of terror, or the Iran proxies this, or their participation in October 7, or we literally almost every single member, Republican and Democrat, voted to say that their nuclear program is this existential threat and literally to use the verbiage of the bill that members voted on, use any and all means necessary to eliminate it. And, and to have members vote on that and vote yes and then want to come forward this week and say, nah. No threat at all from Iran. No, they've been doing this literally every single day. They killed three Americans a year and a half ago in Jordan. They knocked aircraft off of our ships. They hit merchant marine vessels. They fly drones at U.S. Navy vessels. Nah. There's no threat from Iran whatsoever. No, in fact, if they've been doing it every day for however many years, then it can't be imminent. I mean, that's the stupidity of some of the things that are being said here. If it's being done every day, that, that doesn't meet the definition of imminent. That is moronic. So I'm going to leave my comments about that there. I want to talk about some other things more related to your work and it's been brought up by me, by others. Some people call these things waste. Some people call these things good programs. Transgender operas. Somebody just said it doesn't exist. I submitted for the record the paperwork showing, yeah, this does exist and here's the receipt for it. And we have hundreds of these things just like this. The dollar amount, it's important. You know, some of these they are, you know, they're large dollar amounts. They're years' wages for many Americans. Are they huge in the dollar amount of what the United States of America spends? No. But the volume of crazy, I don't know a better word to use, crazy programs. The volume of crazy programs is astronomical when you look at how many transgender operas, musicals, plays, job fairs they were doing. How many drag shows they were doing. How, you know, not one comic book, multiple issues of comic books. And we could get into these. You know, DEIA flash mob in Kyrgyzstan. Diversity roadshow in India. Diversity and inclusion in Luxembourg, in Spain, in New Zealand, in Canada, in Malaysia. Teaching trans and intersex leaders in India. The, the volume of these things and some of them are very large numbers from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. Some of them are $10,000 and $20,000. It is amazing. But I want to ask you a few questions on these and, and maybe you can provide us some information on some of these things, whether here, whether in the future. So here was one, I don't even understand what this means. Study the relationship between collective movement, meaning walking, boxing, dancing, and systemic conditions of anti-trans violence. Is there a receipt for that?

So I actually came prepared to this hearing with certain details on all of these grants, but to the extent there are additional internal records, we'd be happy to work with the committee to provide them and I'm happy to supplement the record with a list of USA spending, you know, records and other things.

It's very, it's literally very helpful because as you witnessed yourself, we have, we will have members literally say, nah, Republicans just made that up. That didn't exist. You shouldn't be sidelining funding from these agencies. They weren't really doing these things. And their hand is in the cookie jar and they won't believe it, they probably won't even believe it if you submit the records. But I would prefer you submit the record. Can you tell me, what is queering the map?

So I think we were trying to make the maps more gay.

Literally? That's...

How do you make a map more gay? Or gay at all? I mean, especially with AI, you know, since the age of cartography, we've had pretty good maps, but maybe they weren't gay enough. So I, I know also I took critical theory in college. I think sometimes people use queer as a verb. I do understand that the maps that we were trying to make gay were I think of Czechia and Slovakia. So maybe those countries asked for it. I, I doubt it, but I don't know.

We do have real things to work on in Congress, like what's going on with the imminent threat of Iran. And it is embarrassing that we have to talk about the fact that things like this were funded. Non-binary and trans francophones' linguistic attitudes and ideologies towards inclusive French in Montreal, Canada, these things. I'm going to give you a list, my time has expired. I'm going to give you a list of these and any of these that you can provide me the receipt for, the Facebook link to where they wanted to take photos of how they were doing a DEIA flash mob in Kyrgyzstan, you know, whatever documentation they have of all of these things, we would love to see that and would absolutely love to know the individuals specifically that were busy writing these grants because they have no business receiving another paycheck from the people of the United States of America. And that, I will recognize Representative Schneider.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The United States is at war. Operation Epic Fury is now in its sixth day. American troops are putting their lives on the line and as President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have repeatedly said, some will die. So far six American service members have made the ultimate sacrifice and I think it's important to remember every fallen hero, so I'll repeat their names again here. Major Jeffrey R. O'Brien of Indianola, Iowa. Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan of Sacramento, California. Captain Cody A. Cork of Winter Haven, Florida. Sergeant First Class Noah Tegtmeier of Bellevue, Nebraska. Sergeant First Class Nicole Armor of White Bear Lake, Minnesota. And Sergeant Declan Cody of West Des Moines, Iowa. Declan was a student at Drake University. My dear friend David Golder is on the board of Drake and he posted words of wisdom this morning in remembering Declan. And he said, quote, in moments like these, we must all come together to show much-needed love and compassion for the Cody family, end quote. And I will extend that to all of the families. May their memories be a blessing. And I say we should all be praying for the success of all our men and women defending our nation in Iran and around the world and their safe return home to their families and communities. There is no doubt that for 47 years Iran's evil regime has been a threat to U.S. interests and American safety at home and abroad. I think we can all agree that we must never let Iran have a nuclear weapon. We must defeat Iran's ballistic missile program, thwart Iran's sponsorship of terrorism as the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, and support the Iranian people as they strive to throw off the oppressive yoke of this regime. Here's the thing. None of that's going to be easy. Which is why I think our founders smartly gave only Congress the power to take our nation to war. I would also argue that it will be infinitely harder to achieve our long-term goals without the sustained support of the American people. Yet the President and this administration in general have yet to coherently and consistently explain exactly why we are embroiled in another war. I also believe we increase our likelihood of success in confronting Iran's threats working with our allies and gaining the support of their populations, which of course is your remit. Public diplomacy is critical, especially at this moment, especially as the war spreads to allied nations and especially as the President calls on the Iranian people to rise up. But because of cuts in your department, we are not fully capable or able to communicate with the Iranian people or our allies. The questions before us is whether are the bureau responsible for telling America's story to the world, for countering adversary propaganda, for running the exchange programs and people-to-people ties that give the United States lasting influence is equipped to do its job at this moment. The Global Engagement Center, our counter-disinformation capability, expired and was not reauthorized in December 2024. Its successor was shuttered in April. USAGM, including the Voice of America and Radio Farda, our primary channels to the Iranian people, has been gutted from over 1,300 staff to barely 80. The administration proposed cutting exchange programs from $741 million to $50 million. Congress rejected that and appropriated $667 million because these programs work. But the FY 25 grant process was delayed for months and these programs are still pending. Under Secretary Rogers, I have great sympathy for your position. It has to be difficult communicating U.S. policy to the world when resources are so badly depleted and the messaging coming from the President, from Secretary Rubio, from Secretary Hegseth, and other administration officials changes by the minute. Last June, President Trump said Iran's nuclear program was obliterated. Yet a few days ago, Mr. Witkoff said Iran was two weeks from a nuclear weapon. The President said on March 3rd that Iran was about to attack, but on March 2nd Secretary Rubio said that the U.S. was acting out of concern of a retaliatory attack after Israel would strike Iran. The President has said that this war was about Iran's ICBM program with missiles targeting the United States. But ABC reports that U.S. intelligence believes Iran is years away from that capability. The bottom line is that Congress and the American people deserve full answers to several basic questions. Why are we at war? What are the goals of this war? What's the strategy for achieving these goals and what is the end game? With my little bit of time left, you cited earlier numbers of American citizens who have evacuated from this region. Earlier this week, the State Department put out a notice to immediately leave 14 countries by commercial means, ignoring the fact that virtually all commercial flights have been canceled. Yesterday, the State Department posted on its website from "the Office of the Spokesman" that one, one charter flight brought U.S. citizens out of the region. Under Secretary, how many flights has the U.S. Department arranged, either chartered or military, to evacuate U.S. citizens stranded by this war?

So that's a great question and it varies minute to minute, so I'd have to have my office get you updated information. What I can tell you is that in a...

So let's take 24 hours ago. 24 hours ago what was the number?

...in a fluid, in a fluid evolving and life-threatening situation, the fact that the administration doesn't speak in unified media toplines but gives you varied information shows that we're being honest, which is what we have to do to rebuild trust in the wake of global engagement center.

Okay, but answer my question. I'm asking you a question. How many flights have been arranged by the State Department?

I am telling you that I don't have that information because the situation is fluid and rapidly evolving. I read some statistics into the record earlier...

What was it yesterday? I'll submit these questions for writing and ask for...

...but those were the statistics, those were the statistics as of this morning. I don't have the statistics now.

So it's one.

The gentleman's time has expired. I now recognize myself for five minutes. Under Secretary, sports diplomacy is an incredibly important effort that this administration has taken and run with. In his first term, President Trump helped bring this year's FIFA World Cup and 2028 Summer Olympics to the United States. Now both President Trump and Secretary Rubio have promoted sports diplomacy as an important soft power tool. I also applaud reports of a sports diplomacy playbook to really focus these events on showcasing the best parts of American culture. Can you describe the Bureau of Public Diplomacy's role in sports diplomacy and America's mega decade of sports?

It would be my privilege and my pleasure. And it's really great to inherit this job at this moment where we're not only gearing up to celebrate America's 250th birthday, which obviously dovetails tremendously with sporting events, but as we've, this administration has come into office that is so committed to sports, which are really one of the unique convening assets we have. And I cannot tell you how many times I've sat in a diplomatic exchange where maybe there are some disagreements or tensions in the room, but sports just melts everyone, it makes them smile. Sports brings people together. It's aphoristic but it's true. So I just entered into an MOU with the NFL to promote together the American story and this great quintessentially American sport overseas. The NFL has been playing games abroad and will play its first international game in Melbourne, Australia this September. I believe that's the 49ers and the Rams. We're really looking forward to that. Games in Dublin and in Germany have also gone extremely well. We're also supporting American, promoting American baseball and softball overseas. We have, I think, 55 million baseball fans conservatively in Japan that watched the international baseball championship last year. And we'll continue to do that. FIFA World Cup is a tremendous, tremendous opportunity. And we are organizing watch parties at many of our embassies as well as events with our exchange program participants at home. We have sports envoys who do things like organize clinics in foreign countries. Some of these are famous coaches, professional athletes, who members of the public in these foreign countries are really exhilarated to see. These are kids who've grown up and maybe the most prominent American they've seen on TV is someone like Tom Brady. And we, it's a thrill to do this. I'm glad you're familiar with our sports diplomacy playbook. And we have, you know, also the other thing that the State Department has done that's a little outside my remit but very important is... Sorry, did you have another question?

Yeah. Okay. So appreciate that. So you brought up the World Cup and unfortunately, I think there's an implementation challenge here, which is that the Department of Homeland Security is shut down and in particular FEMA with respect to some of the planning that needs to go into effect to ensure the safety of everyone attending this event. So what is the administration but the State Department's concerns with respect to the department being shut down and the lack of funding? I mean, the appropriations bill includes 625 million in funding for security planning and execution of the World Cup and yet that is being held up at this moment.

We are, thank you Congressman, we are extremely concerned and I've been involved in FIFA World Cup task force meetings and I'm so, so impressed with the depth and breadth and diligence of the security expertise at DHS and to some extent our, at our security assets at the State Department. And you need that to pull off this kind of event. I mean, the security concerns are intricate, they are intense. This is a global event of global interest and concern where it's common sense that terrorists would love to strike. So you know, the clock is ticking. This is a team that was working at a diligent brisk pace and now a segment of the team has been shut down. I'll also note that although it's less apposite to your question, DHS funding also assists the State Department with key priorities like countering illegal migration. We got some of our funding through an interagency agreement with DHS and that's in peril too.

Thank you for that answer. Over the past decades and even more so as technology has advanced, the Iranian regime has engaged in influence operations to spread disinformation around the world. In the last U.S. election, Iran pushed fake or misleading news content seemingly to create division, distrust, and confusion among American voters. And this propaganda cannot be allowed. The State Department's Bureau for Public Diplomacy is empowered to counter these disinformation campaigns. Under Secretary Rogers, what actual tools does the bureau have to expose and effectively respond to these tactics?

So we have interagency and public coordination and we have counter speech and exposure tactics. We can also develop tools and technologies and promote their development in the private sector that do not censor content but help Americans or other audiences on the receiving end discern whether something is AI generated, whether something is real or fake, where the content comes from. Those are the kinds of technologies that I'm interested in supporting. My office coordinates tightly with our intelligence community, which monitors this stuff extensively, as well as with the DOD MISO team that monitors that for purposes of DOD information operations. And we are in touch with the private sector who are often our sentinels on the front line. So we saw over the weekend as soon as this operation launched, Twitter X immediately blocked just thousands upon thousands of Iranian bots and disclosed information about where they came from. We also saw Twitter X take voluntary steps to demonetize and suspend accounts that were tweeting AI altered images of the war during the war. And I think again, my office has not encouraged any censorship or takedown of any content, but we see, we see the private sector responding and we see I think exposure of these things as really key because people don't want to retweet content from an Iranian bot. You don't have to censor it, they don't want to retweet it.

Thank you. My time has expired. I now recognize the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Keating, for five minutes.

Yeah, thank you Mr. Chairman. As we gather here this morning to talk about many varied issues surrounding foreign affairs, I must first and foremost express the gratitude and the shared national sacrifice and sorrow that six members of our military gave, that their family is experiencing as a Gold Star family member myself, I understand how generationally this can have an enormous effect on the family. Our prayers remain with those people as well as the members of our military who have been injured so far. Our prayers are for their recovery as well. When the President commented on this terrible loss of our service members, he said, "That's just the way it is." I say it's not the way it has to be. And I can say that as a member of Congress because we should be part of this effort. We should be part of determining the reason why we've gone to war. We should be part of clearly defining what those objectives in war would be and we have to be part of what some strategic end might be. And those things are things as a member of Congress we can't determine because we're not getting that kind of information from the administration. This committee presents a very important part in moving forward in trying to deal with the situation that all wars ultimately end in and that is diplomacy. That's how wars end. But you have to have those factors going in. I want to comment drilling down on an issue too, much more seemingly mundane but still important to my district as well as I think diplomacy and democracy, the spread of democracy as well as the economic effects of this. And that's a program that I think we should be able to promote more in other countries and it's a very successful program, one that puts our country in a great light in these other countries, one that is a shared experience that these people take home and the statistics in interviewing people when they participate in this program are quite extraordinary about what the image of the United States is and what they tell the people in the countries they come from when they're here. And that's the J-1 visa program. You know, there's an increasing number of embassies that are announcing that they have less capacity right now than in previous years for these J-1 visas. And it's a growing concern. It could lead to a downturn in the number of participants when this word gets out. So I was hoping as part of the message to the world that we can encourage the fact that, and I hope it will bear truth in practically moving forward with this, that this program is up and running, that people should participate, that the delays might be a little bit more than they are as we check backgrounds, but that it won't hurt their ability to participate and move forward in this because I think it's a valuable program and an important time for our country for those people from around the country now who are questioning the United States. People will be coming back firsthand with their experience here. So are you working at all with the Bureau of Consular Affairs and the embassies to really help ensure that these resources are there and the communication is there that this program is alive and well and viable?

Thank you Congressman. I'm absolutely working on J-1 and I'm working with CA and our embassies, but I'd also love to work with this Congress. So in the current legislative package, we actually have a couple of legislative proposals on J-1 that we think would really benefit the program. The current sponsor fee, so as you know J-1 is a source of workers, seasonal workers, summer camp counselors, and private sector benefits from these workers, but they're supposed to pay to support the administration of the program. That fee was set in I believe 1994 and it was never indexed to inflation. So we're trying to update that fee and that'll bolster the vetting and hopefully speed it up. And that's one legislative proposal that we've made. We just want to index it to inflation and make it flexible to actually cover costs. We also have, we've requested a federal statutory preemption so that idiosyncratic municipal and state wage and labor and working regulations cannot target J-1s for disparate treatment. That's another legislative proposal we've made. This program needs reform. Those are two reforms we've proposed, but the program's alive and well.

Thank you. I yield back.

Thank you, Mr. Keating. I now recognize Representative Kean for five minutes.

Thank you. Public diplomacy is critical to advancing the interests of America and its allies abroad. From the Olympics to the World Cup, America is uniquely positioned to host visitors from around the world over this next decade. I look forward to hearing from Under Secretary Rogers about the work the State Department is doing to prepare this American decade of sports.

Thank you. I'm sorry.

No, sorry. Miss Rogers.

I was looking forward to.

Exactly. Miss Rogers, the American Decade of Sports Act recently passed this committee with bipartisan support. It addresses the important role of diplomacy through sporting events. You recently released the Sports Diplomacy Playbook to guide the department's efforts in sports diplomacy. Can you discuss the key priorities in your Sports Diplomacy Playbook?

Thank you so much, Congressman. Sports diplomacy is a real crown jewel of what is sometimes called soft power, but this is serious strategic power. Sports brings people together like nothing else. And I can tell you I've had diplomatic interactions that maybe were tense or contentious and when we get to focus on topics like America 250 or sports, everyone lights up. It really has a convening power. So one thing we're doing is we're using our ECA exchange programs to foster clinics overseas, so coaches and players can travel abroad, work with local kids. We are also organizing ECA programs domestically surrounding the World Cup and we're organizing watch parties and other events at our embassies surrounding World Cup, Super Bowl, all these big mega sporting events. I've also advocated personally for American sports in the upcoming Brisbane Olympic Games. So we have this succession of Pacific games. We have LA 28, then we have Australia 32, then back to Salt Lake City. And one purpose of my recent engagements in the Indo-Pacific has been to really make the most of that engagement and maximize the spread of these quintessentially American sports in this very strategically significant Indo-Pacific theater. And I think those engagements have borne quite a bit of fruit. I was thrilled and I know Secretary Rubio was thrilled and maybe he was even a little bit envious that I got to sign a memorandum of understanding with the NFL to promote that quintessentially American sport overseas. So NFL has been playing international games. They will play their first in Australia in Melbourne this September. That's the 49ers and the Rams. Games in Dublin and in Germany have also received tremendous uptake. So promoting those American sports and the commerce and opportunities they provide for American business and American media have been really core to what I'm doing.

My home state of New Jersey, speaking of FIFA, has been chosen as one of the hosts for that World Cup this summer. What are the important things that New Jersey can do to lead at this juncture in that regard?

Thank you so much, Congressman. I grew up in New Jersey, so I want New Jersey to get the most out of the World Cup too. So what New Jersey can do is work with my office and we'll enthusiastically work with you on some of these ECA events that we want to host surrounding the final. And I think we'll work well on that. And another thing that Congress can do is please get DHS funded because the World Cup Task Force is a very tightly knit team. I've participated in those meetings. The security and homeland security component of World Cup is extremely challenging and we need DHS back online.

Okay. Thank you. Cultural, I agree with you on that. Cultural exchange programs such as Fulbright provide opportunities for students across New Jersey and the United States to travel abroad and promote American values. Can you share some of the ways your office is working to highlight programs like these and ensure that American students have opportunities to engage in these important programs?

Absolutely. Thank you very much, Congressman. So a top priority of my office right now is ensuring the safety of our exchange program participants in the Middle East. And as of this morning, all 71 of them were accounted for and we are keeping them safe and providing crisis resources. More broadly, we are aligning these programs with the President's America First foreign policy to make sure that they aren't tarnished and damaged and that their public brand is not corrupted by foolish expenditures like the ones the representatives mentioned earlier, like spending ECA money on trans operas or DEI jargon in Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyzstan never asked for that, I'm sure. By being faithful stewards of these programs, we promote their value as soft power assets long-term. And I'd love to highlight a few examples of what we're doing. So our Young Southeast Asian Leaders Institute, we're using that to convene a very impactful conference in the Indo-Pacific on online scams. That's one of the big threats we face in that region. International Visitors Leadership Program is another great program we have. We've used that to combat illegal migration, for example. And when I was in London, I attended a gathering of IVLP alumni who'd combated migration in the English Channel and elsewhere in the world, who shared tips and tricks for interdicting human trafficking and unlawful international payments. It was a really high expertise, high value gathering that would not have happened if not for ECA. ECA programs have also yielded tangible results on critical minerals and supply chain issues, which are critical to our national security and foreign policy. So for example, we've seen alumni of these programs secure a tungsten deal in Kazakhstan, the first ever corn purchase by Tunisia, which was a big deal, and we've seen these programs have borne other fruit all over the world.

Thank you. I yield back.

Thank you, Representative Kean. I now recognize Representative Titus for five minutes.

Well, thank you very much. When you come at the end, you get to kind of summarize what everybody else has been saying, so I appreciate that. Thank you for being here. You know, right this very minute, we are engaged in this illegal war against Iran. And since the hostilities were launched by the President, the administration's been unable to settle on one message. Why now and what next? We've seen it go from one explanation to another from the President to his team saying different things. Let's review it. It was regime change. It was threat reduction. It was get back to the negotiating table. It was imminent threat. It was, you name it. So I'm just wondering, in your role, how you think that our foreign audiences are going to be able to understand what they're trying to do when the members of Congress can't even understand it and we haven't gotten a message to the American people. At the same time all that confusion is going on, I would remind you that we don't have ambassadors in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Kuwait, or Iraq. That cannot be helpful because these missions aren't there to be able to help to explain what's going on. On top of that, last July's RIF, you targeted the PD sections of several bureaus, so the State Department or your different divisions have just been eroded. People aren't there to help with this message globally. And based on your answers to questions by Mr. Castro, you don't have much authority either or you don't know what's going on and so that's been eroded. So I just wonder if you can help us understand how you're getting this message out. And let's start with the message. Are we at war? Let's start with the basic. Are we at war?

We are in an armed conflict with a regime that wants us dead and has said so constantly. Now, Congresswoman, you and a few others have purported to cite confused or contradictory messages from the administration. I think rapid, fluid, evolving truth-telling from our leaders is consistent with a rapid, fluid, evolving kinetic situation. And frankly, it would be a propagandistic...

Well, frankly, I don't think they're telling the truth. I don't think it's truth-telling. I think it's obfuscating, hiding the fact, trying to confuse the public and don't know what's going on.

Congresswoman, I'm not hiding anything if you'd let me speak. I'll give you some facts if you'd let me speak, but you don't want to.

I do, please.

Okay, so here are some facts. Here are some facts. So what we've heard from the administration, right, is that Iran would not say the magic words, no we're not going to get a nuclear weapon. They kept saying the magic words, death to America, but they wouldn't say no we don't want a nuclear weapon. So we heard that something was going to happen. Then we heard that Israel was going to do a strike and we did not want to get struck ourselves.

All those things have been rebutted. They've been rebutted by numerous sources that those things aren't true. Those are just things that have come out of the mouths of the Secretary of State or the President or the Secretary of Defense.

Well, if you're going to go and say what our great Secretary of State says and call him a liar, then I can't help you. But I can tell you that foreign audiences have been more receptive to our position.

So you say we are not at war. We are not at war. Is that what you're saying?

Don't mischaracterize my testimony. Do not mischaracterize my testimony.

Well, the President says we're at war. Are we at war or not?

We are in a kinetic conflict with a regime that wants us dead. That's my testimony.

A kinetic, say that again, kinetic conflict? Is that what you called it?

Well, I can use other words. I can say armed conflict. I can say violent conflict. I can say a conflict where they've shot six of our boys and women.

Oh, please. Say it all so we can have more confusion just like you've said it all about what the reason was.

There's no confusion, Congresswoman, about dead servicemen and women.

You are exactly right. That's why I'm asking you if we're at war. So don't give me some euphemisms to describe war. War is war with death of our service people. Death to America, not a euphemism. Let me remind you. Let me remind you. You're supposed to be in communication with the rest of the world. Perhaps you're unfamiliar with this. Do you remember when Putin invaded Ukraine? They asked him if it was a war. Oh no, it's not a war. It's a special military operation. That sounds a lot like what you're saying about intense conflict or whatever the term was you used.

Yeah, conflict is a four-letter word, but I'm glad that I'm not the public diplomacy officer for the Kremlin.

No, I really hate the strategy that we are using to get out the word of the public, to get out the word to the global audience that we don't know what's going on. We don't know why we did it. We don't know what the plan is. We don't know when it's going to end.

That's actually not what, that's not my testimony.

Three weeks, six weeks, maybe we're going to use these kind of forces, maybe we're going to put boots on the ground.

Are you testifying or am I?

We don't know. We don't know nothing. And so we are now, not only do we not know anything to reassure our allies and the American public and the Congress, we're using the language of Putin when he invaded Ukraine. Do you think that's appropriate? I yield back.

That misstates my testimony publicly as you can hear it.

I thank the gentlelady for her time. I now recognize Representative Jayapal for five minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for appearing before us today, Madam Under Secretary. Your role in overseeing public diplomacy functions at the State Department is critical, I think, to promoting our soft power abroad and to attracting the best and the brightest to the United States. And we've done this successfully in the past, in part reflected in the fact that we've long been the top choice for international students and nearly half of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. I'm one of those people. My parents sent me to the United States by myself when I was 16 years old. They had $5,000 in their bank account and they used it all to send me here, even though I was never going to live on the same continent as them again, because they really believed that America was the best place in the world where I would get the best education and the most opportunity. Before coming to the State Department, you were a lawyer with a focus on the First Amendment. And in your confirmation hearing, you stated that quote, "free speech is America's number one strength," and that quote, "protecting inconvenient speech isn't a weakness, it's the whole point." And I wanted to know if you still stand by that.

With all my heart.

And is it correct that the First Amendment applies to everyone in the United States regardless of citizenship status? Do you agree with that?

So the Supreme Court has made clear that foreign nationals who are guests in the United States have a lot of the same First Amendment rights as Americans, but they're not completely coextensive.

Well, the U.S. Constitution applies to everyone within our borders regardless of legal status. That's not legally correct. Over the past year, and we have some Supreme Court cases around this as well, over the last year we've seen the State Department go after free speech rights, revoking student visas for speech that the Trump administration doesn't like and specifically criticisms of the Israeli government. Your administration's actions were so blatantly unconstitutional that a Reagan-appointed judge, William Young, ruled that the administration violated the First Amendment and stated that Secretary Rubio was engaged in quote, "an unconstitutional conspiracy." In your capacity as Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, you've made numerous statements criticizing European regulations aimed at restricting hate speech for infringing on the right to free speech. And we had a hearing on this actually in the Judiciary Committee as well. In a recent interview, you said it was your job to quote, "hold out to the world what America's values and priorities are and they aren't censorship anymore." You stand by that statement, I assume?

Absolutely.

And so do you think that you can effectively maintain our global reputation while your own department is cracking down on the free speech rights of people right here at home?

Well, I don't agree with every characterization that the gentlelady's offered or that every district court judge has offered regarding the activities of the department. And I think the great thing about the rule of law and the great thing about the court system is that we have a right of appeal and we've seen that in the Mahmoud Khalil case, for example, bear out. I think that, you know, the legal cases you reference raise issues under the Immigration and Naturalization Act that will be adjudicated through the courts and my department has always abided by Supreme Court rulings and we will.

But as a free speech, and thank you for the answer, but as a free speech proponent, and I think you've clearly said that, don't you think that the crackdown on people who just disagree, who write an op-ed, Remesa Osturk is an example, who write an op-ed and then are put into proceedings to deport them, have real consequences on free speech in general and the perspective that the United States protects and has a First Amendment right for people to be able to say what they want, even if it means disagreeing with the government? We are losing people from around the country and I know this for a fact because they write to me and say, I don't want to come to the University of Washington, to the United States and take a position that I've been offered at the University of Washington because everything that I have said on my Twitter account is being analyzed and if I've said anything about X number of issues, including Gaza, then I'm going to be denied my visa or I'm going to come and I'm going to be deported. And so I guess I'm wondering how you as an advocate for the First Amendment and for free speech can really say and function in your role when we are so clearly, and you may give me one example, I could probably give you five others of where courts have ruled against this administration and what they've done, but it is clearly affecting our reputation abroad. And so how do you defend that?

So I think the way that I address this conversation, and it does come up, is I make a few points. So number one, you know, in America, if it were true that everyone who wrote an op-ed critical of the government or Israel got arrested or deported, that would be pretty bad. It's not true and the sad to say even...

But it is true with Ramesa Osterk, it is true. I mean, I questioned Secretary Rubio about this and he had nothing to say, but the courts just ruled on Ramesa Osterk.

I'm aware of that ruling, I haven't reviewed it because it's not directly in my purview, but what I'll say is even if every single person who, even if a critical op-ed got you deported in America, you would still be better off writing a critical op-ed in America than anywhere else. This morning...

But you can't distinguish and say you're better off because some people have First Amendment rights but other people don't. The First Amendment has to apply across the board.

My testimony, my testimony is that even if...

It sounds like the chairman wants us to yield back, but I would be happy to continue. Even if you're a foreign national, even if you're a foreign national, you are not going to get arrested for calling me... No, let me say to you, you can't say we have First Amendment rights and then only apply them to some people and not to others. Mr. Chairman, she was continuing, so I had to continue.

The gentlelady's time has expired. The gentlelady's time has expired. I do want to thank the Under Secretary for the valuable testimony and the members for their questions. The members of this committee may have some additional questions for the Under Secretary and we certainly will ask you to respond to these in writing. If there is anything you would like to add for the record that you did not get a chance to adequately reply to, feel free to right now if you'd like, otherwise you can submit it in writing.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, there's a couple of things I would like to say. When I, and I want to finish addressing, I see Representative Jayapal is gone, but I think she raised an important issue. So what I tell people is that no matter who you are in America, you have freer speech rights here than you would anywhere. You won't get thrown in jail for calling a rapist a pig, that happened in Germany. You won't get thrown in jail for praying silently, that can happen to you in Britain. And you certainly won't get shot in the street for criticizing your government, that happened to the brave people of Iran. And our government is working, you know, constructively on all of these issues. I'll submit more in writing. I also want to say there've been some really unfair comments about AGM Deputy CEO Lake during this hearing that I'd like to supplement the record to contextualize. So it is absolutely true that our AGM broadcasting services with respect to Iran are up and running and they're critical, but those services haven't always been helping the Iranian people or advancing American foreign policy priorities. There were investigations in 2016, for example, that concluded that those assets were wrongly being used to stifle criticism of the Iranian regime. So Representative Lake had to do some streamlining, she had to do some housecleaning, that was what the president wanted. We will rebuild those resources to the extent appropriate and consistent with the wishes of the American people and make sure they are aligned as the statute requires with foreign policy priorities as we continue to integrate going forward.

I see we have another member that graced us, so we will now recognize Ms. Kamlager-Dove for five minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's always a challenge when committees are happening at the same time and thank you Under Secretary Rogers for being here today and thank you for meeting with me some time ago. So while Trump is waging a war in the Middle East, this committee is once again sitting on the sidelines. We did not have a single hearing on Iran leading up to this conflict in which Americans have now died and I'm sure we won't be having any now. I think it is a shocking dereliction of duty. But Under Secretary Rogers, you are here today and you are responsible for public diplomacy and one thing I've been pleased to see is the department's prioritization of sports diplomacy. So I do appreciate that you have elevated the sports diplomacy division into its own office and drafted a comprehensive sports diplomacy strategy, two of the major directives in my American Decade of Sports. And when we talked you shared that you had some travel to Milan, I think, in preparation for the Olympics. But apart from that, however, it does seem your focus on tweeting may have distracted you from the other parts of the job, including overseeing the educational and cultural exchange programs that Congress is deeply committed to. Last year OMB illegally froze $100 million in congressional appropriations for 21 educational and cultural exchange programs, causing an entire year of missed programming. And I'm concerned OMB's unprecedented involvement in the State Department's award review process is going to derail our exchange programs yet again. So Under Secretary, do you know if OMB is on track to review and clear on all programs by mid-year before we likely see a second year in a row of missed programming?

I know there are detailed interagency negotiations ongoing. I can't comment on exact dates or deadlines. I will say that my office will abide by the law, including appropriations laws to all of these programs.

So you don't know and there's no push to get it done. Okay, so can you commit that the Young African Leaders Initiative, our flagship public diplomacy program in Africa, will receive its award in time to recruit a cohort of Mandela Washington Fellows for 2027?

I can commit that that program is already back online actually and we're having a summit this summer and again, any interagency processes or appropriations or disbursements for FY 26, I'm happy to get you details on, I don't have them, but I know Young African Leaders is something that we're doing and it's going on this year.

Okay, so I think I heard you say it's back online, that it is something that is supported, that you have details that you will share with us.

We, my office will share whatever details we can share. My staff I think have been briefing the appropriators and we're happy to continue doing that.

I really appreciate that. Thank you so much. Trump's draconian travel ban includes an embargo on exchange visas for 39 countries, which means we are no longer running educational and cultural exchange programs in a good chunk of the world. So have you asked, are you planning to ask, have you asked Secretary Rubio to issue national interest exceptions for exchange program participants in countries subject to a travel ban?

I know that in Africa at least we're already doing that. Those exceptions are being issued and again, my staff could get your staff numbers, but I don't even have to ask the Secretary because that's ongoing.

Okay, well I hope because that's not the information that we've been receiving and I've had multiple meetings with folks from many countries who are asking us what we can do. So I'm sharing with you on record and asking that you can continue to do that. One of them is Tajikistan, that they're not getting that information, so they're not understanding the waivers, maybe they're not understanding the directives, it would be great if that could be a little more visible. Many of the participants in the YALI initiative are coming from countries subject to the travel ban. So you did mention Africa as a continent. So my hope is that what we know is that 26 African countries are subject to exchange visa travel bans. So I don't know how that squares with the YALI commitment.

Well, the reason that I mentioned Africa as a continent is because Africa's also a regional bureau in our State Department and I engaged with them specifically to prepare for this hearing and that was the context in which I received information that we are issuing these exemptions.

So it was there that you received information about the work to relieve the travel bans for some of these countries.

I have no reason to believe that that work is region specific. I think it's national interest specific and it would be the same considerations and processes everywhere.

That would make sense. The question is specific to some, so it would be great if you could get us a list of the countries, the African countries, that are now on this list to have a change in policy on the travel bans, if that's what I heard you say.

I don't know about a change in policy on travel bans, I just know that to the extent there are travel bans there are national interest exemptions which are being issued and I'm happy to have my staff continue to brief and respond to whatever info the committee wants.

That would be great. We'll follow up to make sure that we get that information. Thank you, Mr. Chair, I yield back.

Thank you. And I just want to note we did in fact have a full committee hearing on Iran in April of last year, a return to maximum pressure comprehensively countering the Iranian regime's malign influence. And as chair of the Middle East and North Africa subcommittee, I've held numerous hearings on the Middle East, Iran in particular, including a classified briefing. Many of my colleagues that are on the committee from the Democratic side choose not to show up or engage on that committee and the record reflects that. Pursuant to committee rules, all members may have five days to submit statements, questions, and extraneous materials for the record subject to the length limitations. Without objection, the committee stands adjourned.