Marco Rubio Announces Hypocritical “Free Speech” Visa Restrictions

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced some bizarre new visa rules Wednesday against foreign officials curtailing the rights of Americans.

“For too long, Americans have been fined, harassed, and even charged by foreign authorities for exercising their free speech rights,” Rubio announced on X. “Today, I am announcing a new visa restriction policy that will apply to foreign officials and persons who are complicit in censoring Americans. Free speech is essential to the American way of life—a birthright over which foreign governments have no authority.”

In a follow-up post, Rubio said, “Foreigners who work to undermine the rights of Americans should not enjoy the privilege of traveling to our country. Whether in Latin America, Europe, or elsewhere, the days of passive treatment for those who work to undermine the rights of Americans are over.”

It’s not clear what prompted these new rules, or if there’s a particular case of an American being punished by a foreign government that Rubio is referring to. However, Elon Musk is facing legal issues in a number of countries over incendiary posts on X, such as Brazil, which briefly banned the platform last year amid rampant disinformation about the country’s 2022 election.

Musk also pushed disinformation last summer over far-right riots in the United Kingdom and continues to attack the country’s Labour government, earning a rebuke from Prime Minister Keir Starmer in January. Last month, European Union regulators were reportedly considering fines for the X platform and demanding product changes for breaking EU laws against illicit content and disinformation.

Is Rubio’s move designed to protect Musk, a major benefactor of Trump and the Republican Party? It’s ironic for the country’s top diplomat to complain about the free speech of Americans overseas when Rubio himself is targeting immigrants in the U.S., particularly international students, for exercising their own free speech rights, revoking their visas and trying to deport them.

One such student, Rümeysa Öztürk, was arrested after writing an opinion piece about Israel’s war on Gaza in her school newspaper, and Rubio even seemed to confirm last week that her detention and visa revocation were for that reason. Whatever is behind these new visa rules, it’s highly likely that they’re for something other than free speech because Rubio is clearly a hypocrite.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon is threatening to withhold federal funding from universities that don’t align themselves with Donald Trump’s administration.

During an interview on CNBC Wednesday, McMahon discussed whether other universities had to fear federal funding for academic research being ripped away, following the news that Trump planned to gut roughly $100 million in government contracts to Harvard.

“Universities should continue to be able to do research as long as they’re abiding by the laws and are in sync, I think, with the administration and what the administration is trying to accomplish—but primarily, abiding by the laws,” McMahon said.

The Department of Homeland Security has alleged that Harvard did not do enough to counter antisemitism on campus and baselessly claimed that the school had collaborated with the Chinese Communist Party.

Earlier this month, Trump signaled plans to have the university’s tax-exempt status revoked, and most recently tried to strip Harvard’s ability to enroll international students. A judge temporarily blocked the administration’s effort after the university immediately sued, calling the move an “unlawful and unwarranted action.”

“We had conversations with President [Alan] Garber, and I expected that we would have more, but Harvard’s answer was a lawsuit so that’s where we are now,” McMahon said.

Republican Representative and House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green wants the federal government to “listen” to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Russians don’t seem to be taking President Trump very seriously, it’s a sort of schizophrenic message coming out of them. I wouldn’t take what [Dmitry] Medvedev says very seriously, though. If you read his Twitter feed it’s … clearly absurd,” Green said, referring to the former Russian president, who recently alluded to the risk of World War III on X.

“I think we really just need to listen to Trump, Putin, the Kremlin, and our [National Security Council] folks. That’s who we need to be listening to,” the Tennessee congressman added.

A Republican congressman suggesting that we defer to the intelligence of the Kremlin is yet another example of just how far the party has departed from its long-held stance on Russia.

And exactly what NSC folks is Green talking about? Trump fired over 100 of them via email just before Memorial Day weekend. The NSC has been in disarray for months, as Signalgate saw the removal of Director Mike Waltz. Now, rife with internal turnover, it enters another crucial moment in Russia’s war on Ukraine.

A State Department spokesperson attacked Cindy McCain and the U.N. World Food Programme in a confused response to a question about aid reaching people in Gaza. 

Tammy Bruce was asked by NBC’s Andrea Mitchell about the resumption of aid trucks carrying food, water, and medicine into the territory following a three-month blockade by Israel, and seemed to be completely unaware of what was going on, saying that McCain, the head of the aid organization, should have “spoken up.”  

“This is, however, the first delivery of major aid, if not the only aid we’ve been hearing for months. I wish that Cindy McCain had spoken up that they had found a way to move food into Gaza because that certainly hadn’t been conveyed to us,” said Bruce on Tuesday. “But now—which, if that’s the case, that’s great.”

McCain said on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday that claims by the U.S. and Israel that Hamas was looting aid trucks in Gaza were unfounded, saying that the territory’s residents were so desperate for aid that they were mobbing the trucks. 

“Listen, these people are desperate. They see a World Food Programme truck coming in, and they run for it,” McCain said. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Hamas or any kind of organized crime, or anything.”

Bruce’s comments completely missed the fact that getting aid into Gaza was only difficult due to Israel closing all of Gaza’s crossings to aid trucks. Mitchell had to correct Bruce, telling her that until now, “there has been a blockade, a blockade by Israel of the food, so no one has been able to get through those crossings.” 

“Well, I thought you just said Cindy McCain said that she was able to do that. But I would also say that this process managed to overcome that dynamic, and the dynamic has changed,” Bruce said.

“Israel was blocking it,” Mitchell repeated.

“It clearly needs to expand. I don’t speak for this foundation, but clearly we’ve got to welcome any dynamic that allows getting aid and food into the region, which is happening right now. And that’s the story,” Bruce replied. 

Bruce, like many other Trump appointees, is a veteran of TV, in her case Fox News, and this isn’t the first time she has been caught off-guard by a basic question from a reporter. Last month, Bruce threw a tantrum over CNN’s Pamela Brown asking basic questions about Ukraine and Russia, and earlier this month, Bruce was taken aback when a reporter asked her about her boss, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, taking over as national security adviser. 

“It is clear that I just heard this from you,” a clearly flustered Bruce responded at the time. Clearly, she’s still out of her depth.

Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan bragged Tuesday that Democratic lawmakers haven’t done anything to stop the prosecution of one of their colleagues.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked Homan to respond to the “caterwauling” from the left over the outrageous charges against New Jersey Representative LaMonica McIver. Homan seemed pleased that by targeting McIver, he could push the buttons of another congressperson: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“Well remember, just a couple weeks ago AOC went on social media saying if we put a finger on any of her co-workers, uh congresspeople, that were at our York facility there would be consequences. Well guess what? We did it. I’m waiting on the consequences,” he replied smugly.

McIver was charged with “assaulting, impeding, and interfering with law enforcement,” after she and other lawmakers visited an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility to serve a summons over code violations discovered during an inspection. Instead, the group was barraged by federal agents and McIver was charged over allegedly attempting to stop the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka.

Ocasio-Cortez had warned in an Instagram video, “If anyone’s breaking the law in this situation, it’s not members of Congress, it’s the Department of Homeland Security. It’s people like Tom Homan and Secretary Kristi Noem.”

“You lay a finger on someone, on Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman … or any of the representatives that were there, you lay a finger on them, we are going to have a problem,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Because the people who are breaking the law are the people not abiding by it.”

Homan has repeatedly antagonized the New York Democrat, threatening her with prosecution because she’d tried to educate immigrants about their legal rights and claiming she was teaching them to evade arrest. Ocasio-Cortez responded by calling Homan a “coward.”

Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t the only one who tried to talk tough about targeting Democratic lawmakers. “It’s a red line,” said Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries earlier this month. “They know better than to go down that road.”

Neither Jeffries nor Ocasio-Cortez has publicly taken any action, but the case against McIver is already falling apart. New York Representative Dan Goldman, a former prosecutor, told The Hill that the first document filed by the government was so ridiculously flawed that it was “one of the most embarrassing publicly filed charging documents from a U.S. attorney’s office that I’ve ever seen.”