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Trump administration reportedly drafting plans to revoke visas of Musk critics [1]

['Ellsworth Toohey']

Date: 2025-12-11  

The Trump administration has revoked over 85,000 visas since January, according to the State Department. Six of those went to foreign nationals who criticized Charlie Kirk on social media. Now, as reported in Mehdi Hasan's Zeteo, the administration may be preparing to revoke the visas of two prominent critics of Elon Musk's X: former EU commissioner Thierry Breton and Imran Ahmed, founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

Zeteo claims to have seen a draft memo outlining options for Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Neither the State Department nor any official source has confirmed or denied the report.

Rubio announced in May that the State Department would target foreign nationals involved in "censoring Americans," which in practice means fact-checkers and content moderators. The administration has already revoked visas and green cards based on political speech, including those of student activists.

Breton, who resigned from the European Commission in September 2024, had been a vocal critic of X's policies. Ahmed runs an organization that tracks online hate and disinformation—work that has made him a target of Musk's ire. The EU just hit X with a $140 million fine for violating the Digital Services Act, citing deceptive verification practices and a lack of transparency.

The U.S. government using visa policy to punish critics of a private citizen's social media company would be new territory. But given what we've already seen, it's far from surprising.

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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2025/12/11/trump-administration-reportedly-drafting-plans-to-revoke-visas-of-musk-critics.html

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