Rubio Announces Ban On Foreign ‘Censors’ Coming To The US, While Simultaneously Having Students Kidnapped For Their Speech
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced this week that he’s barring visas for foreign nationals who “censor Americans,” declaring that “free speech is among the most cherished rights we enjoy as Americans.”
This is yet another example of the most censorial administration falsely wrapping itself in the cloak of “free speech warriors” to defend censorship. Rubio has spent his tenure as Secretary of State conducting the most aggressive authoritarian censorship campaign in recent American history — literally having students kidnapped off the street for their speech and moved around the country to hide them from the courts. He’s declared foreign students “lunatics” for their opinions and yanked their visas without warning or due process.
So when Rubio positions himself as a free speech champion, it’s worth examining what he’s actually doing versus what he’s claiming to oppose.
The New Visa Policy: Extremely Selective “Anti-Censorship”
Wednesday’s announcement targets foreign officials who “censor” Americans:
Free speech is among the most cherished rights we enjoy as Americans. This right, legally enshrined in our constitution, has set us apart as a beacon of freedom around the world. Even as we take action to reject censorship at home, we see troubling instances of foreign governments and foreign officials picking up the slack. In some instances, foreign officials have taken flagrant censorship actions against U.S. tech companies and U.S. citizens and residents when they have no authority to do so.
Today, I am announcing a new visa restriction policy that will apply to foreign nationals who are responsible for censorship of protected expression in the United States. It is unacceptable for foreign officials to issue or threaten arrest warrants on U.S. citizens or U.S. residents for social media posts on American platforms while physically present on U.S. soil. It is similarly unacceptable for foreign officials to demand that American tech platforms adopt global content moderation policies or engage in censorship activity that reaches beyond their authority and into the United States. We will not tolerate encroachments upon American sovereignty, especially when such encroachments undermine the exercise of our fundamental right to free speech.
In isolation, protecting Americans’ speech rights might be worth considering. But this isn’t happening in isolation — it’s coming from the most censorial administration in recent memory.
The real tell is what constitutes “censorship” in Rubio’s framework. The policy specifically targets demands that “American tech platforms adopt global content moderation policies.” Translation: this is about protecting platforms like ExTwitter from having to follow rules in places like the EU or Brazil that Elon Musk doesn’t like. Meanwhile, Rubio’s own government is literally disappearing people for their speech.
The Selective Enforcement Game
Expect this policy to be applied with surgical precision against countries whose content policies displease the administration — likely targeting EU officials, Brazilian judges, and Australian regulators who’ve pressured social media companies. And, yes, those all have done things we consider problematic, but banning them from the US entirely seems ridiculous and an attack on foreign sovereignty. We may disagree with their policies, but this is the US meddling in those policies elsewhere.
Meanwhile, will the visa ban apply to Recep Erdogan of Turkey? Narendra Modi of India? Vladimir Putin? All regularly engage in actual social media censorship, but somehow I doubt they’ll face visa restrictions.
The tell here is that Rubio chose to announce this through an “exclusive” article from Michael Shellenberger, one of the leading voices in the “censorship industrial complex” mythology — who is now employed as a “professor” at a “university” that espouses “academic freedom” but fires people who post on social media in a way that challenges a funder’s ideology. Shellenberger has spent years misrepresenting basic content moderation concepts while claiming private companies enforcing their own rules constitutes government censorship. Now, faced with an administration literally kidnapping people for speech, he’s writing puff pieces celebrating their “anti-censorship” efforts.
To show just how upside-down this has become, in this article (which I’m not linking to, because fuck that) celebrating Rubio’s announcement as pro-free speech, Shellenberger closed by also celebrating Trump’s decision to revoke the security clearance of Chris Krebs. According to Shellenberger’s fantasy, Krebs was fired for “demanding” social media company’s censor content — a thing that never happened. Krebs was the CISA director who accurately pointed out that the 2020 election was secure — and was fired for that speech, and is now being further retaliated against for that speech. Stripping security clearance from someone for contradicting your preferred narrative is textbook retaliation for speech, the exact kind of government censorship Shellenberger supposedly opposes.
The Same-Day Contradiction
As if to underscore the hypocrisy, on the very same day Rubio announced his anti-censorship visa policy, he also announced he’s revoking visas for Chinese students:
Under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields. We will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong.
Notice the language: “including those with connections” suggests that’s just a subset of all Chinese student visas being canceled. What constitutes “critical fields”? The administration won’t say, because the point is arbitrary power to punish anyone they want.
So on the same day Rubio claims to defend free speech, he’s revoking student visas based on nationality and academic interests. That’s not protecting speech — that’s targeting it.
The capstone came when Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced that universities should only receive federal funds if their research is “in sync with the administration.”
This is the opposite of everything conservatives claimed to stand for regarding academic freedom. It’s a direct assault on the First Amendment’s protection of intellectual inquiry.
The Real Pattern
The pattern here isn’t about protecting free speech — it’s about protecting the speech the administration likes while silencing the speech it doesn’t. When foreign students write op-eds critical of US policy, they get kidnapped. When foreign officials pressure US tech companies in ways that displease Musk, they get visa bans. When universities pursue research the administration dislikes, they lose funding.
But when Rubio wants to position himself as a free speech champion, he can count on useful idiots in the “free speech” movement to cheer him on, even as he’s conducting the most systematic attack on speech rights in recent American history.
If Rubio truly believed “free speech is among the most cherished rights we enjoy as Americans,” he’d stop being the biggest threat to that right in the US government.