{"id":43937,"date":"2025-09-15T12:16:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T19:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=43937"},"modified":"2025-09-15T12:16:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T19:16:13","slug":"new-thought-policing-bill-may-let-rubio-strip-passports-from-us-citizens-over-political-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/09\/15\/new-thought-policing-bill-may-let-rubio-strip-passports-from-us-citizens-over-political-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"New \u2018Thought Policing\u2019 Bill May Let Rubio Strip Passports from US Citizens Over Political Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"US-POLITICS-VANCE\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks during the American Compass Fifth Anniversary Gala at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, on June 3, 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0(Photo by Saul Loeb\/AFP)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMarco Rubio has claimed the power to designate people terrorist supporters based solely on what they think and say,\u201d said one free speech advocate.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

STEPHEN PRAGER<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sep 13, 2025 (CommonDreams.org)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Free speech advocates are sounding the alarm about a bill in the US House of Representatives that they fear could allow Secretary of State Marco Rubio to strip US citizens of their passports based purely on political speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bill, introduced by Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), will come up for a hearing on Wednesday. According to The Intercept<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Mast\u2019s new bill claims to target a narrow set of people. One section grants the secretary of state the power to revoke or refuse to issue passports for people who have been convicted\u2014or merely charged\u2014of material support for terrorism…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other section sidesteps the legal process entirely. Rather, the secretary of state would be able to deny passports to people whom they determine \u201chas knowingly aided, assisted, abetted, or otherwise provided material support to an organization the Secretary has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Rubio has previously boasted of stripping the visas and green cards from several immigrants based purely on their peaceful expression of pro-Palestine views, describing<\/a> them as \u201cHamas supporters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These include Columbia protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after Rubio voided his green card; and Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts student whose visa Rubio revoked after she co-wrote an op-ed calling for her school to divest from Israel<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mast\u2014a former soldier for the Israel Defense Forces who once stated<\/a> that babies were \u201cnot innocent Palestinian civilians\u201d\u2014has previously called for \u201ckicking terrorist sympathizers out of our country,\u201d speaking about the Trump administration\u2019s attempts to deport Khalil, who was never convicted or even charged with support for a terrorist group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Critics have argued that the bill has little reason to exist other than to allow the Secretary of State to unilaterally strip passports from people without them actually having been convicted of a crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Kia Hamadanchy, a senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, noted in The Intercept<\/em>, there is little reason to restrict people convicted of terrorism or material support for terrorism, since\u2014if they were guilty\u2014they\u2019d likely be serving a long prison sentence and incapable of traveling anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can\u2019t imagine that if somebody actually provided material support for terrorism, there would be an instance where it wouldn\u2019t be prosecuted\u2014it just doesn\u2019t make sense,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Journalist Zaid Jilani noted on X<\/a> that \u201cjudges can already remove a passport over material support for terrorism, but the difference is you get due process. This bill would essentially make Marco Rubio judge, jury, and executioner.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bill does contain a clause allowing those stripped of their passports to appeal to Rubio. But, as Hamadanchy notes, the decision is up to the secretary alone, \u201cwho has already made this determination.\u201d He said that for determining who is liable to have their visa stripped, \u201cThere\u2019s no standard set. There\u2019s nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Seth Stern, the director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, noted in The Intercept<\/a><\/em>, the language in Mast\u2019s bill is strikingly similar to that found in the so-called \u201cnonprofit killer\u201d<\/a> provision that Republicans attempted to pass in July\u2019s \u201cOne Big Beautiful Bill\u201d Act. That provision, which was ultimately struck from the bill, would have allowed the Treasury Secretary to unilaterally strip nonprofit status from anything he deemed to be a \u201cterrorist-supporting organization.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stern said Mast\u2019s bill would allow for \u201cthought policing at the hands of one individual.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMarco Rubio has claimed the power to designate people terrorist supporters based solely on what they think and say,\u201d he said, \u201ceven if what they say doesn\u2019t include a word about a terrorist organization or terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

STEPHEN PRAGER<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephen Prager is a staff writer for Common Dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Full Bio ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks during the American Compass Fifth Anniversary Gala at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, on June 3, 2025. \u00a0(Photo by Saul Loeb\/AFP) \u201cMarco Rubio has claimed the power to designate people terrorist supporters based solely on what they think and say,\u201d said… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43937"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43937"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43938,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43937\/revisions\/43938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}