Five Republican US lawmakers from both the House and the Senate have written to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, a Democrat, arguing in favor of new rules that would deny, or revoke existing visas to foreign officials considered to be acting against free speech principles.
The letter’s signatories have Brazil’s current authorities, and specifically, justice of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) Alexandre de Moraes in mind – as well as other members of this court considered as complicit in the anti-free speech behavior.
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
Alexandre de Moraes, the letter spells it out, is “acting as a totalitarian dictator.” Strong words, to say the least – yet the group of US lawmakers describe Moraes as having a history of curbing free speech – not least at home, in what the letter says are Brazil’s conservative figures and groups, including opposition politicians and journalists.
But this is also yet another chapter in the Moraes vs. X saga. The letter states that X has been “unjustly targeted” when Moraes recently ordered it blocked in Brazil on what the US lawmakers see as questionable legal grounds.
The letter makes a point of the global significance of Brazil – arguably Latin America’s most impactful country, and, “one of the world’s largest democracies.”
Such actions, the letter’s authors argue, are ultimately a threat to the US national security, in terms of making sure that visitors (at least, high profile ones, it seems) to the US “do not actively seek to undermine democratic processes or institutions.”
Such actions, they continue, have the effect of creating a dangerous precedent for the West as a whole.
By introducing measures like visa denial and revoking against those believed to be compromising the democratic status of Brazil, the US lawmakers hope to “keep it that way.”
One of the letter’s signatories, Congresswoman and Western Hemisphere Subcommittee Chairwoman Maria Elvira Salazar, just this week, along with Congressman Darrell Issa, introduced legislation that would prevent foreign officials whose policies and actions are found to be violating the First Amendment from entering the US.
We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.
Once again, Moraes is given as an example of why such measures (“No Censors on our Shores Act”) are necessary.
“Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes is the vanguard of an international assault on freedom of speech against American citizens like Elon Musk,” Salazar stated on her website.
Still – writing to the current White House, while introducing legislation called, “No Censors on our Shores” – may, at this point, look quite naive.
