SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
nonprofits
New 'Thought Policing' Bill May Let Rubio Strip Passports from US Citizens Over Political Speech
“Marco Rubio has claimed the power to designate people terrorist supporters based solely on what they think and say,” said one free speech advocate.
Sep 13, 2025
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.
The bill, introduced by Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), will come up for a hearing on Wednesday. According to The Intercept:
Mast’s 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—or merely charged—of material support for terrorism...
The other section sidesteps the legal process entirely. Rather, the secretary of state would be able to deny passports to people whom they determine “has knowingly aided, assisted, abetted, or otherwise provided material support to an organization the Secretary has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.”
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 them as "Hamas supporters."
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.
Mast—a former soldier for the Israel Defense Forces who once stated that babies were "not innocent Palestinian civilians"—has previously called for "kicking terrorist sympathizers out of our country," speaking about the Trump administration's attempts to deport Khalil, who was never convicted or even charged with support for a terrorist group.
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.
As Kia Hamadanchy, a senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, noted in The Intercept, there is little reason to restrict people convicted of terrorism or material support for terrorism, since—if they were guilty—they'd likely be serving a long prison sentence and incapable of traveling anyway.
“I can’t imagine that if somebody actually provided material support for terrorism, there would be an instance where it wouldn’t be prosecuted—it just doesn’t make sense,” he said.
Journalist Zaid Jilani noted on X that "judges 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."
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, "who has already made this determination." He said that for determining who is liable to have their visa stripped, "There's no standard set. There’s nothing."
As Seth Stern, the director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, noted in The Intercept, the language in Mast's bill is strikingly similar to that found in the so-called "nonprofit killer" provision that Republicans attempted to pass in July's "One Big Beautiful Bill" 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 "terrorist-supporting organization."
Stern said Mast's bill would allow for "thought policing at the hands of one individual."
“Marco Rubio has claimed the power to designate people terrorist supporters based solely on what they think and say,” he said, "even if what they say doesn’t include a word about a terrorist organization or terrorism."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Climate Justice Is Under Siege; Help Us Defend It
Why we can’t afford to lose the progress frontline communities have built.
Aug 26, 2025
The climate justice infrastructure dedicated to serving vulnerable communities across the United States took decades to build. And it is now at risk.
After nearly 20 years working in frontline communities on environmental justice and community development, I joined Emerald Cities Collaborative as president and CEO in April 2022. Hope around renewed commitments to climate justice, community resilience, and economic opportunities was palpable, as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act had just been signed into law shortly after my start. With an influx of federal investments and mandates for racial equity, the promise of that moment energized the climate justice and environmental justice movements.
Today, a coordinated attack on the environmental nonprofit sector and diversity, equity, and inclusion threatens to dismantle the physical and social support networks that serve frontline communities. It is imperative that we understand what’s at stake, who benefits from the current infrastructure, and what the consequences of inaction could be.
Climate justice infrastructure provides the framework for implementing equitable climate investments for all that advance racial justice, economic justice, and environmental justice. This infrastructure includes the physical investments—such as green buildings, solar panels, green infrastructure—and the social supports necessary to ensure their equitable implementation. From community organizing to capacity building for grassroots nonprofits and workforce development programs, environmental nonprofits serve as the backbone of this social infrastructure. These efforts address both climate change and the systemic inequality that leads to disproportionate impacts on vulnerable communities.
We must stand up for nonprofits and the future that they help build—a climate future that is not only green but just.
Significant public and private investments in greener, more resilient energy, water, food, and housing infrastructure—driven by the urgency of climate change—created an unprecedented opportunity to address the environmental, income, wealth, and health disparities within low-income communities and communities of color. Realizing the full potential of these rapidly accelerating investments required a coordinated strategy that integrated local coalition building, policy, project, workforce, and small business development support. This is where the environmental nonprofits stepped in. Environmental nonprofits provided their expertise, on-the-ground leadership, capacity building, and connective tissue to support community-led climate projects, advocacy, and policy.
The breadth of organizations building this critical climate justice infrastructure is remarkable—from national nonprofits and statewide advocacy groups to grassroots organizations and volunteer community groups. We are grateful for their commitment! At Emerald Cities Collaborative (ECC), our history, experience, and dedication to climate justice, along with our support for coalitions and partnerships, equity-centered clean energy policies, and economic inclusion efforts, uniquely positioned us to serve as an intermediary within the broader ecosystem. ECC deployed a coordinated strategy of local coalition building, policy education, project implementation, workforce initiatives, and contractor development to connect disadvantaged communities nationally and in our primary regions (Northwest, Northern California, Southern California, DC-Maryland-Virginia, and Northeast) to the growing clean energy economy. We connected federal and state funding to grassroots implementation and translated new federal initiatives into community-accessible dialogue. The overarching goal was to ensure that the climate and economic benefits of the emerging clean economy were reachable to low-income communities and communities of color.
As a result of the efforts of national nonprofits, community-based organizations, and institutions, many organizations and communities historically left out were able to access federal funding for community climate investments, many for the first time. Communities that have borne the brunt of environmental injustice have benefited from stronger leadership, enhanced organizational capacity, and new tools for community education and organizing.
These gains are all at risk due to the growing attack on environmental nonprofits, the rollback of climate policies, and the disintegration of environmental justice funding. Legal and reputational attacks, such as naming Emerald Cities Collaborative in the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Exploring the Green Group Giveaway Behind the Biden-Harris Environmental Justice Programs report, demonstrate how politically motivated attacks are being used to sway public opinion. This, coupled with the outright illegal termination of environmental justice grants, has had a chilling effect on our work.
However, the impacts are not evenly distributed. Grassroots organizations and BIPOC-led nonprofits are disproportionately vulnerable to these attacks compared with large national organizations with greater resources and political capital. Fear and misinformation have caused some philanthropic funders to pull back. Organizations are being forced to divert resources from mission-critical work to legal defense and crisis communications. And this does not include the mental and emotional toll that environmental justice and climate justice leaders are experiencing.
The stakes are high. Without the valuable work of these organizations, climate solutions may revert to top-down, extractive models that center profit over community. The loss of high-road jobs, apprenticeships, and clean energy workforce programs, along with increased vulnerability to extreme climate events, will unduly affect frontline communities already facing the greatest risk. At the same time, the voices of Black, Indigenous, and immigrant-led movements are in danger of being systematically excluded from the climate conversation.
For us to meet our national climate goals and the just transition agenda, we need strong local, community-driven infrastructure. How can we ensure that the momentum for equitable climate investments in frontline communities is not entirely lost? Will we use this moment to accelerate climate justice—or allow fear and misinformation to dismantle it?
Now is the time for philanthropy, government, and the public to stand in solidarity with national and frontline organizations. Philanthropy must fund general operating support and legal protections for national BIPOC-led and frontline nonprofits. We must resist and roll back state-level attacks on nonprofit speech and operations, as well as the easing of climate policies. And we must educate audiences, donors, and lawmakers about the irreplaceable role of climate justice organizations.
The attack on climate justice infrastructure is about PEOPLE, PROGRESS, and PRINCIPLES! We must stand up for nonprofits and the future that they help build—a climate future that is not only green but just. We must stand up for communities that are resilient and thriving, not just surviving. The alternative is not an option.
Keep ReadingShow Less
DHS Strips Security Grants From Muslim Nonprofits Based on Report From Islamophobic 'Hate Group'
The Council on American-Islamic Relations says the Muslim groups being targeted "were smeared as 'Hamas-aligned'... because of their opposition to Israeli human rights abuses."
Aug 20, 2025
The Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday that it has suspended more than $8 million in grants to Muslim organizations it claims have "alleged terror ties" following a report from a notorious anti-Muslim group.
The money comes from FEMA's Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP), which provides aid to religious groups at risk of hate-based terrorist attacks, including security alarms, cameras, and armed guards.
DHS said it made the decision following a report from the Middle East Forum (MEF), a pro-Israel group, which alleged that DHS had given $25 million to "terror-linked groups" between 2013 and 2023. According to DHS, it has already suspended the funds to 49 different projects based on this report.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) describes MEF as an "anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim hate group" and its leader, Daniel Pipes, as "racist."
The foreign policy commentator was nominated to the board of the United States Institute of Peace by former President George W. Bush in 2003 despite a long history of anti-Muslim rhetoric.
This has included referring to Muslims as "brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene" and blaming the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which was committed by a US-born white supremacist, on Muslim "fundamentalists."
In 2004, after being nominated to the position, Pipes said he did "support the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II," and suggested it as a model for dealing with Muslims.
In the report, MEF described CAIR, which it says received $250,000 from FEMA, as a "Hamas-aligned" group. But the only evidence it cites is the organization's naming as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the 2007 trial of the Holy Land Foundation for allegedly funnelling money to Hamas.
CAIR was never charged with a crime, but that case has nevertheless been used to tie it and many other Muslim nonprofits to terror groups with little to no evidence of wrongdoing.
MEF also singled out other organizations like the Islamic Society of Baltimore, merely because it was once "previously under FBI surveillance."
Others MEF singled out for their harsh rhetoric towards Israel. For instance, it described Michigan's Islamic Institute of Knowledge as an "outpost for Iran's revolutionary brand of Shi'a Islamism" because its leaders have allegedly "echoed Iranian regime rhetoric regarding Israel, including comparing Israel to the Nazis and blaming it for October 7."
It also suggested that other mosques and organizations have terrorist affiliations because leaders have family members who were, at some point, Iranian clerics or government officials.
According to DHS, merely "alleged" terrorist ties are enough for funding to be pulled, and that includes the allegations made by the MEF.
While DHS said it is conducting its own review to determine which groups to strip funding from, it told Fox News: "We take the results of the MEF report very seriously and are thankful for the work of conservative watchdog groups."
MEF previously told the New York Post that it is working with DHS to "rescind grants to extremist groups."
CAIR says the groups being targeted "were smeared as 'Hamas-aligned' by MEF because of their opposition to Israeli human rights abuses."
During his second term, Trump and congressional Republicans have aggressively targeted nonprofit organizations that criticize his policies, particularly those critical of Israel.
Trump has attempted to coerce universities, including Harvard, into cracking down on pro-Palestinian speech by students by threatening their nonprofit status.
In May, Republicans also snuck a provision into their giant reconciliation bill that would have given the treasury secretary unilateral authority to strip the nonprofit status of any organization he deemed to be supportive of a terrorist organization, which, to the Trump administration, often simply means voicing solidarity with Palestinians. However, that "nonprofit killer" measure was struck from the final version of the law.
This month, DHS updated its terms for providing grants to nonprofits. One new section now requires nonprofits to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Another requires them to swear off boycotts of Israel, which CAIR describes as "a political test targeting supporters of Palestinian rights."
"Our civil rights organization has no active federal grants that the Department could eliminate or cut," a CAIR spokesperson told Fox. "The government cannot ban American organizations from receiving federal grants based on their religious affiliation or their criticism of Israel's genocide in Gaza."
CAIR also condemned DHS Secretary Kristi Noem for "making decisions based on the ravings of the Middle East Forum, an Israel First hate website."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular