logo
US Announces Visa Curbs Targeting Social Media ‘Censorship'

US Announces Visa Curbs Targeting Social Media ‘Censorship'

Yahoo28-05-2025
(Bloomberg) -- US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced visa restrictions on foreign officials and other individuals who 'censor Americans,' including those who target American technology companies, as the Trump administration steps up a confrontation with other countries over their social media policies.
NYC Congestion Toll Brings In $216 Million in First Four Months
NY Wins Order Against US Funding Freeze in Congestion Fight
Without giving specifics, Rubio cited instances of foreign governments censoring protected speech in the US, saying it was unacceptable for foreigners to 'issue or threaten arrest warrants on US citizens or US residents for social media posts on American platforms,' according to a statement on Wednesday.
It is unclear from the statement what prompted the move and whether it was directed at any particular official or country. In a social media post, however, Rubio alluded to Latin America and Europe in saying 'the days of passive treatment for those who work to undermine the rights of Americans are over.'
At the same time, an article posted on the State Department website on Tuesday singled out the European Union's Digital Services Act, alleging that it's being used to silence dissident voices.
'Independent regulators now police social media companies, including prominent American platforms like X, and threaten immense fines for non-compliance with their strict speech regulations,' according to the article, written by an official from the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.
President Donald Trump has sharply criticized the EU over its regulatory crackdown on some of the biggest US tech companies and threatened to strike back with penalties.
His administration is also at odds with a Brazilian Supreme Court justice, Alexandre de Moraes, who briefly banned access to Elon Musk's X and US video-sharing platform Rumble Inc.
Last week, Rubio told lawmakers that the US might impose sanctions on Moraes under the Magnitsky Act, which freezes the US assets of foreign officials accused of corruption and bans them from traveling to the country.
On Wednesday afternoon, Brazil's Supreme Court said in a statement that 'Moraes does not and has never had any assets, money, or property in the United States.'
--With assistance from Daniel Carvalho.
Mark Zuckerberg Loves MAGA Now. Will MAGA Ever Love Him Back?
Millions of Americans Are Obsessed With This Japanese Barbecue Sauce
YouTube Is Swallowing TV Whole, and It's Coming for the Sitcom
Inside the First Stargate AI Data Center
How Coach Handbags Became a Gen Z Status Symbol
©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Trump admin to open nation's largest immigration detention center in Texas with $1.2B contract
Trump admin to open nation's largest immigration detention center in Texas with $1.2B contract

New York Post

time25 minutes ago

  • New York Post

Trump admin to open nation's largest immigration detention center in Texas with $1.2B contract

The Trump administration will open the nation's largest immigration detention center in Texas thanks to a massive contract worth $1.2 billion, according to a report. The feds will be able to hold up to 5,000 illegal immigrants at a time at Fort Bliss Army base in El Paso, Texas, to meet the demands of the rapidly expanding Trump administration's deportation campaign, Bloomberg reported. Shackled migrants walk toward a military transport plane before their deportation from the US. US Department of Defense/AFP via Getty Images The Department of Defense awarded the contract, which ends Sept. 30, 2027, to Virginia-based Acquisition Logistics LLC to set up a tent city on the base. The Trump administration has sought to erect temporary facilities to hold migrants as it attempts to make room for the 3,000-person quota it's seeking to collar each day. The effort has been turbocharged by a new flood of $45 billion for new detention beds from Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The massive spending bill will double Immigration and Customs Enforcement's detention capacity, with the goal of holding 100,000 illegal immigrants at a time as the Trump administration seeks to carry out 1 million deportations each year. ICE opened 'Alligator Alcatraz,' a tent detention center erected by the state of Florida in the middle of the alligator-infested swampland of the Everglades, earlier this month. The feds can currently hold up to 3,000 illegal immigrants there and hope to expand that to 5,000. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has also set his sights on two additional military bases, Camp Atterbury in Indiana and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey, for the deportation campaign, according to the Associated Press. The Trump administration has set out to deport one million illegal immigrants each year. AFP via Getty Images 'We're looking for any available bed space we can get that meets the detention standards we're accustomed to,' Trump's border czar Tom Homan said Friday. 'The faster we get the beds, the more people we can take off the street,' he added. Fort Bliss has previously been used for immigration purposes, housing unaccompanied migrant kids and Afghan refugees following the US withdrawal from the war-torn country, according to Stars and Stripes.

Supreme Court allows Trump to remove 3 Democrats on the Consumer Product Safety Commission
Supreme Court allows Trump to remove 3 Democrats on the Consumer Product Safety Commission

Chicago Tribune

time25 minutes ago

  • Chicago Tribune

Supreme Court allows Trump to remove 3 Democrats on the Consumer Product Safety Commission

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed the Trump administration to remove three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, who had been fired by President Donald Trump and then reinstated by a federal judge. The justices acted on an emergency appeal from the Justice Department, which argued that the agency is under Trump's control and the president is free to remove commissioners without cause. That's what Trump did in May, providing no reason for removing all three Democratic commissioners on the five-person board, despite a federal law that allows commissioners to be fired only for 'neglect of duty or malfeasance.' The court provided a brief, unsigned explanation that the case is similar to earlier ones in which it allowed Trump to fire board members of other independent agencies, whom Congress protected from arbitrary dismissals. The three liberal justices dissented. 'By means of such actions, this Court may facilitate the permanent transfer of authority, piece by piece by piece, from one branch of Government to another,' Justice Elena Kagan wrote for herself, as well as Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The commission helps protect consumers from dangerous products by issuing recalls, suing errant companies and more. The fired commissioners had been serving seven-year terms after being nominated by President Joe Biden. U.S. District Judge Matthew Maddox in Baltimore ruled in June that the dismissals were unlawful. Maddox sought to distinguish the commission's role from those of other agencies where the Supreme Court has allowed firings to go forward. A month earlier, the high court's conservative majority declined to reinstate members of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board, finding that the Constitution appears to give the president the authority to fire the board members 'without cause.' The administration has argued that all the agencies are under Trump's control as the head of the executive branch. Maddox, a Biden nominee, noted that it can be difficult to characterize the product safety commission's functions as purely executive. The fight over the president's power to fire could prompt the court to consider overturning a 90-year-old Supreme Court decision known as Humphrey's Executor. In that case from 1935, the court unanimously held that presidents cannot fire independent board members without cause. The decision ushered in an era of powerful independent federal agencies charged with regulating labor relations, employment discrimination, the airwaves and much else. But it has long rankled conservative legal theorists who argue the modern administrative state gets the Constitution all wrong because such agencies should answer to the president. Kagan wrote that the court already has 'all but overturned Humphrey's Executor.' Other removals are making their way to the high court, including the firing of a member of the Federal Trade Commission, the very agency at issue in Humphrey's Executor. Last week, a federal judge ordered Rebecca Slaughter reinstated as a commissioner. Slaughter returned to work Friday. By Tuesday, she had been sidelined again after an appeals court temporarily blocked the judge's order. The Consumer Product Safety Commission was created in 1972. Its five members must maintain a partisan split, with no more than three representing the president's party. They serve staggered terms. That structure ensures that each president has 'the opportunity to influence, but not control,' the commission, attorneys for the fired commissioners wrote in court filings. They argued the recent terminations could jeopardize the commission's independence.

FEMA chief rejects criticism, calls Texas floods response ‘a model' for dealing with disaster
FEMA chief rejects criticism, calls Texas floods response ‘a model' for dealing with disaster

Boston Globe

time25 minutes ago

  • Boston Globe

FEMA chief rejects criticism, calls Texas floods response ‘a model' for dealing with disaster

Advertisement Richardson's appearance came after a wave of criticism and fallout over the response, including the resignation Monday of FEMA's urban search and rescue leader. President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have touted the robust federal support for Texas despite their past support for eliminating FEMA. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Reports of delays on the ground denied The acting administrator denied reports that FEMA urban search-and-rescue teams were delayed over 72 hours because of a new rule imposed by Noem that she must personally approve any contract of $100,000 or more. Richardson said a Texas-based FEMA task force was on the ground on July 4, along with other Homeland Security assets like the Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection, and that additional support came within '24 hours' of being requested. Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., pushed back on FEMA's readiness, asking why more of the 28 FEMA urban search-and-rescue teams located around the country were not on standby ahead of receiving a request from the state of Texas. 'It haunts me that we could have had more urban search and rescue pre-positioned in place,' said Stanton. 'That was a choice.' Advertisement The leader of FEMA's urban search-and-rescue effort, Ken Pagurek, expressed frustration with the delays to colleagues before resigning Monday, according to CNN. In response to Pagurek's resignation, a DHS spokesperson told The Associated Press, 'It is laughable that a career public employee, who claims to serve the American people, would choose to resign over our refusal to hastily approve a six-figure deployment contract without basic financial oversight.' The Texas Division of Emergency Management did not respond to a request for comment on whether search-and-rescue efforts were impacted by delayed deployment of the FEMA teams. Richardson also denied a report from The New York Times that 84% of calls to FEMA went unanswered on July 7, three days after the July 4 floods, because Noem let lapse contract renewals with outside call centers. The contracts were renewed July 10, according to The Times. 'The vast majority of phone calls were answered. There was never a lapse in the contract,' said Richardson, echoing Noem's statements that the report was 'fake news.' Richardson defended his absence from the ground efforts in Texas, saying he worked from Washington, D.C., 'to kick down the doors of bureaucracy' and denying suggestions that Trump or Noem told him to stand down. He did not visit Texas until July 12. FEMA's fate is still in question Since the Texas floods, Trump has deflected questions about FEMA's fate. In June, he said he wanted to begin 'phasing out' FEMA after the hurricane season 'to wean off of FEMA and bring it to the state level.' Advertisement Trump has been criticized for delaying decisions on disaster declaration requests, causing some states to wait as long as two months for approval to receive assistance to repair public infrastructure or help survivors. Lawmakers pressed Richardson on more general issues of FEMA reform as well, including concerns over long overdue preparedness grant funding, flood insurance and rules about how much financial assistance survivors can receive. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers asked about the fate of the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, which Trump canceled earlier this year. The grants supplied hundreds of millions of dollars in disaster mitigation funding. Twenty states are now suing the administration over the loss of funds. On Tuesday, Trump approved disaster declaration requests for Michigan, Oregon, Indiana, Kansas, West Virginia, Missouri and New Mexico and expanded assistance in Kentucky. Rep. Bob Onder, R-Mo., asked Richardson why it took a month for his state to get a disaster declaration. 'My constituents were frustrated by how long it takes to get temporary housing and debris removal assistance,' Onder said. Richardson referred back to Texas' declaration request: 'We turned that around within just a couple hours.' A Trump-appointed FEMA review council is in the process of crafting recommendations to the president on changes to the agency. Noem, who co-chairs the council, told its members five days after the Texas floods that FEMA 'needs to be eliminated as it exists today and remade as a responsive agency.' Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., said he and Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., would introduce the bipartisan Fixing Emergency Management for Americans Act this week, which would make FEMA an independent, Cabinet-level agency, incentivize states to prioritize resilience and improve aid for survivors. 'We don't need to wait for a FEMA review council,' said Larsen. 'We've been reviewing FEMA for a long time.' Advertisement

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store