Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the Trump administration will impose visa restrictions on foreign officials engaging in censorship of American citizens and attempting to regulate American companies.
On Wednesday, Rubio said the State Department would begin banning foreign officials from securing visas to travel to the United States if they have engaged in censorship of Americans.
“Free speech is among the most cherished rights we enjoy as Americans,” Rubio said in a statement:
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. [Emphasis added]
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. [Emphasis added]
The move comes as the European Union approved the Digital Services Act, designed to censor certain discussions on social media and elsewhere online, while countries like China, Venezuela, Russia, Iran, and Cuba continue censorship campaigns to cripple opposition to their governments.
In February, Vice President JD Vance warned that the European Union was abandoning shared democratic values by adopting the online censorship policy.
“For years we’ve been told everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values,” Vance told European Union leaders in Germany.
He continued:
Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy. But when we see European courts cancelling elections and senior officials, threatening to cancel others, we have to ask if we are holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard.
Vance explained, “And I say ourselves because I fundamentally think we are on the same team. We must do more than talk about democratic values, we must live them.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.
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