US bill gives Rubio sweeping ‘thought police’ powers
A bill introduced by the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee authorizes the US secretary of state to revoke passports or refuse to issue them to individuals deemed misaligned with Washington’s preferred policies.
Upon legislation, the bill proposed by Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), would allow Marco Rubio to take such action against those even “determined” to have, what it calls, “assisted or abetted a foreign terrorist organization,” various American media outlets reported on Saturday.
Critics have denounced the proposed measure for its vague language that provides the State Department with a “sweeping thought police” mandate by allowing crackdown on speech.
Mast, however, has framed the bill – part of a broader “State Department Reorganization” process – as a means of targeting “terrorists and traffickers.”
Since becoming secretary, Rubio has rapidly expanded the Department’s “terrorism” list.
In March, he revoked Turkish student Rümeysa Öztürk’s visa after she wrote a campus op-ed urging divestment from the Israeli regime.
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“Marco Rubio has claimed the power to designate people terrorist supporters based solely on what they think and say,” said Seth Stern of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, an American non-profit organization.
He called the proposal “thought policing at the hands of one individual.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)’s Kia Hamadanchy said the appeal process offered in the bill, asking Rubio to review his own decision, was meaningless. “There’s no standard set. There’s nothing.”
News about the proposed legislation comes within the context of US President Donald Trump’s past and present actions aimed at coming down hard on criticism of Washington’s radically escalated push under him to target the Israeli regime’s critics.
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The policy has seen Trump withhold visas from those seeking to reach the US from Muslim countries, and order intensified police action against the campus protests that have swept the country since October 2023, when the Israeli regime launched a war of genocide on the Gaza Strip.
The latter drive has gone hand-in-hand with far-and-wide visa revocation practices, which saw Rubio announcing in March that more than 300 visas had been cancelled due to pro-Palestinian protests.
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In June, the top diplomat threatened people not aligning with the country’s pro-Israeli stance with visa revocations, using an incident involving a pro-Israeli march as an excuse.
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