Marco Rubio announces new visa restriction policy for foreigners ‘who are complicit in censoring Americans’
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has announced that the US will introduce new visa restrictions on “foreign officials and persons who are complicit in censoring Americans”.
In a post on X, Rubio said that “Americans have been fined, harassed, and even charged by foreign authorities for exercising their free speech rights” and foreigners who “undermine” those rights “should not enjoy the privilege of traveling to our country”.
Here’s the full post:
For too long, Americans have been fined, harassed, and even charged by foreign authorities for exercising their free speech rights. 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.
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 is unclear how this would work in practice.
Key events
White House to send Congress small spending package to formalize Doge cuts – Politico
The White House intends to send Congress a small spending package next week intended to formalize cuts made by Elon Musk’s Doge team targeting federal spending, Politico reports, citing senior GOP officials.
Two Republicans told the news outlet the “rescissions” bill will target NPR and PBS, as well as foreign aid agencies already hollowed out by the Trump administration through the Musk-led so-called “department of government efficiency”. But it’s worth noting that “the package set to land on Capitol Hill is expected to reflect only a fraction of the Doge cuts, which have already fallen far short of Musk’s multi-trillion-dollar aspirations,” Politico writes.
The House speaker, Mike Johnson, said on X earlier that the House “is eager and ready to act on Doge’s findings so we can deliver even more cuts to big government that President Trump wants and the American people demand”. He said the House “will act quickly” on a package without saying when it might be submitted or what it might contain.
It follows a long internal battle over how to formalize the cuts that have been made by Doge. Politico writes: “Republicans on Capitol Hill have been growing impatient as they await the White House request, after the Trump administration confirmed more than six weeks ago that it intended to send a more than $9bn package of proposed cutbacks. It’s unclear whether the forthcoming submission will meet that target, which is itself a tiny fraction of the $1.6tn in yearly discretionary spending.”
Joseph Gedeon
Robert F Kennedy Jr has threatened to ban government scientists from publishing in the world’s leading medical journals, which he branded “corrupt”, and to instead create alternative publications run by the state.
The US health secretary said on the Ultimate Human podcast:
We’re probably going to stop publishing in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, Jama and those other journals, because they’re all corrupt.
He accused the publications of being controlled by pharmaceutical companies. Instead, Kennedy outlined plans to launch government-run journals that would become “the pre-eminent journals” because National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding would anoint researchers “as a good, legitimate scientist”.
The three publications Kennedy targeted are among the most influential medical journals globally, established in the 19th century and now central to disseminating peer-reviewed medical research worldwide. The Lancet and Jama each report more than 30m annual website visits, while the New England Journal of Medicine claims more than 1 million weekly readers.
Kennedy has similarly accused the agencies he now oversees – including the NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services – as “sock puppets” for the pharmaceutical industry.
Lawrence Summers, the former Harvard University president and former US treasury secretary, has issued a sharp statement criticizing Donald Trump’s attacks against the university.
In a post on X, Summers wrote:
I could have never conceived that the US President would be far more aggressive against a great university than he would be against a Russian dictator engaged in invading a US ally.
Why is it smart to starve cancer research, students on financial aid, innovation in public education and brilliant young people whose dream was to come to America while holding out the prospect of business deals to Vladimir Putin? I cannot imagine.
His comments came after the Trump administration directed federal agencies to cancel all government contracts with Harvard University worth an estimated $100m. Summers continued:
Totalizing efforts at destruction are never legal in America, and doing vast damage beyond their object is a reason the founding fathers separated powers.
The judiciary has to stop the overreach and support the reasonable enforcement of law with regard to Harvard and many other places.
House judiciary committee Republicans have welcomed Marco Rubio’s announcement about the US’s new visa restrictions policy, calling it “excellent news”.
In a post on X, the official X account for the House judiciary Republicans, they wrote:
We’ve been exposing foreign censorship efforts over the past year. Now, those who want to silence your speech are being held accountable.
It’s all very unclear at this stage, but what we do know is that the Trump administration has been putting European legislation to regulate digital services under scrutiny and increasing pressure, claiming it amounts to a kind of digital censorship.
The European Digital Services Act (DSA) lays down new rules for online platforms, seeks to strengthen user rights and intends to hold tech companies to account. As part of tariff negotiations, the Trump administration has been trying to get the EU to roll back key digital regulations in defense of US tech giants (many of whom are, lest we forget, Trump backers), with a number of US officials calling the legislation “incompatible” with US free speech.
The EU has been determined to enforce the legislation, and Rubio does mention Europe in his X post. But we’ll of course bring you more clarity on this as we get it.
Here’s slightly more clarity on what this is about. In a statement announcing a new visa restriction policy targeting foreign nationals who “censor” Americans, Marco Rubio said:
It is unacceptable for foreign officials to issue or threaten arrest warrants on US citizens or US residents for social media posts on American platforms while physically present on US soil.
He said it was “similarly unacceptable” for foreign officials to demand content moderation from American tech platforms.
Marco Rubio announces new visa restriction policy for foreigners ‘who are complicit in censoring Americans’
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has announced that the US will introduce new visa restrictions on “foreign officials and persons who are complicit in censoring Americans”.
In a post on X, Rubio said that “Americans have been fined, harassed, and even charged by foreign authorities for exercising their free speech rights” and foreigners who “undermine” those rights “should not enjoy the privilege of traveling to our country”.
Here’s the full post:
For too long, Americans have been fined, harassed, and even charged by foreign authorities for exercising their free speech rights. 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.
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 is unclear how this would work in practice.
Trump has no plan for who will grow US food: ‘There is just flat out nobody to work’
Tareq Saghie
Last spring, Carmelo Mendez was pruning peach trees in Colorado on a temporary visa, missing his children and wife back home, but excited about how his $17.70 hourly wage would improve their lives. This spring, he’s back in the Mexican state of Tlaxcala, frantically searching Facebook for a job on one of the thousands of farms across the US that primarily employ guest workers like him.
Mendez is one of the more than 300,000 foreign agricultural workers who comes to the US every year on an H-2A visa, which allows him to temporarily work plowing fields, pruning trees and harvesting crops in states from Washington to Georgia, Florida to New York, Texas to California. But as federal immigration policies change rapidly, farmers and workers alike are uncertain about their future.
“Without [this guest worker program], I believe agriculture in the US would decline a lot because people there don’t want to do the work,” Mendez said.
As the fate of the hundreds of thousands of undocumented farm workers remains in limbo amid Donald Trump’s mass deportation threats, and the administration’s H-2A policies are undecided, the future of these guest workers remains unclear. Their numbers grow each year – and they are increasingly central to an industry historically dominated by undocumented workers. The industry isn’t creating new jobs either.
Farmers agree with farm workers like Mendez. They say they cannot attract other workers to their rural fields.
California changes high school sports rule after Trump post over trans athlete
The governing board for California high school sports is changing its competition rules at this weekend’s state track and field championships to allow more girls to take part amid controversy over the participation of a trans student athlete.
The California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) said it was extending access for more “biological female” athletes to participate in the championship meet. The group announced the change on Tuesday after Donald Trump posted on his social media site about the participation of a trans athlete in the competition.
The federation didn’t specify whether the change applies to all events or only events in which a trans athlete has qualified for the final. The change only applies to this weekend’s competition. The organization didn’t immediately answer a question about how many students it expects will be affected by the change.
The rule change may be the first attempt nationally by a high school sports governing body to expand competition when trans athletes are participating, though the action is so far limited to a single meet.
In a social media post yesterday morning, Trump threatened to pull federal funding in California if the state did not bar trans students from participating in girls’ sports. The post referenced AB Hernandez, a trans athlete who competes in girls’ track and field. She is scheduled to compete in the girls’ varsity triple jump, high jump and long jump in the state finals this weekend.
“THIS IS NOT FAIR, AND TOTALLY DEMEANING TO WOMEN AND GIRLS,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Trump’s comments came months after Gavin Newsom, the California governor, said on his podcast that transgender girls’ participation in girls’ sports was “deeply unfair”. Charlie Kirk, the conservative commentator who was a guest on the podcast, specifically referenced Hernandez when asking Newsom about the issue.
Trump said he planned to talk to Newsom about the issue on Tuesday. The governor’s office did not confirm the call but weighed in on the CIF rule change.
“CIF’s proposed pilot is a reasonable, respectful way to navigate a complex issue without compromising competitive fairness – a model worth pursuing,” Newsom’s spokesperson Izzy Gardon said. “The governor is encouraged by this thoughtful approach.”
Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem tell Ice to supercharge immigrant arrests to 3,000 a day – Axios
In a tense meeting at Ice headquarters in Washington DC last week, the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, and the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, demanded that immigration agents seek to arrest 3,000 people a day, two sources familiar with the meeting have told Axios.
“The new target is triple the number of daily arrests that agents were making in the early days of Trump’s term,” Axios writes, “and suggests the president’s top immigration officials are full-steam ahead in pushing for mass deportations.”
Four people familiar with the 21 May meeting told the news agency that Miller, the chief architect of Trump’s increasingly aggressive immigration policy, “laid into” immigration officials – “demanding that field office directors and special agents in charge get arrest and deportation numbers up as much as possible, pointing to the waves of unauthorized immigrants who were able to enter the US during the Biden administration”.
Noem took a milder approach in pushing for more arrests, soliciting feedback from Ice leaders, whereas Miller’s “directive and tone had people leaving the meeting feeling their jobs could be in jeopardy if the new targets aren’t reached, two of the sources said. A third person said he was trying to motivate people with a harsh tone. But it’s not the first time Miller has yelled at senior DHS officials about getting arrest and deportation numbers up, sources said.”
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