Trump's Terms State Department will delete X posts from before Trump returned to office
Feb 9, 2026
Shannon Bond, an NPR reporter who broke the story on the State Department’s social media purge, explains the decision to delete pre‑Jan. 20, 2025 X posts. She outlines how agencies used to archive public posts. Conversation covers the State Department’s rationale, worries about losing the historical record, and how this move fits a wider pattern of information control.
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State Department Will Hide Pre-2025 X Posts
- The State Department will remove public X posts made before President Trump's 2025 inauguration and keep them only in internal archives.
- That change departs from past practice and could make tracing diplomatic history harder for the public and historians.
Prepare For FOIA To Access Removed Posts
- Journalists and researchers should expect to file Freedom of Information Act requests to access removed X posts.
- Plan for delays and bureaucratic steps because FOIA requests can be slow and burdensome.
This Breaks A Government Archival Norm
- Previously, agencies left past social media posts publicly visible or moved high-profile handles to public archives during transitions.
- The new approach breaks with that archival transparency norm for many State Department accounts.