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[### Trump Brings Putin's Booted Propaganda Goon Back to U.S.
The Daily Beast
https://www.thedailybeast.com › trump-brings-putins-bo...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-brings-putins-booted-propaganda-goon-lauren-chen-back-to-us/)
6 hours ago — ... State Department senior adviser Joe Rittenhouse. She credited Rittenhouse with “moving mountains to ensure we were able to return in time ...Read more
...Last week, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio barred five European campaigners and watchdog leaders from entering the country under a new “free speech” visa policy.
It also raises questions about Trump’s friendly behavior toward Russia and its president Vladimir Putin. Even in the past month, Trump—who in 2022 called Putin a “genius”—has described Putin as being “very generous” about Ukraine’s future in a call they had about the war there, prompting visible disbelief from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Trump Gets Beauty Salon Owner to Decide Who to Ban From U.S.EYEBROW RAISING
Trump’s State Department has increasingly been populated with loyalists in roles that control who gets a visa and who gets turned away. Rittenhouse, for instance, is a former actor who became a Trump presidential campaign worker. Over Christmas, it also emerged that Trump had elevated Project 2025 contributor Mora Namdar to run the consular bureau overseeing visa approvals and revocations.
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President Donald Trump has installed an attorney and part-time beauty salon owner to decide which foreigners are allowed to enter the United States.
The State Department announced that Mora Namdar has been promoted from her post working on U.S foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa to become assistant secretary for consular affairs, overseeing everything from passport issuance to visa approvals and revocations.
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Namdar, who is the daughter of Iranian immigrants, previously did the job on an interim basis during Trump’s first term in 2020.
Mora Namdar, center, photographed with her beauty salon team in 2017.Facebook
Namdar owns a mini-chain of beauty salons called Bam in her native Texas, with locations in the West Village in her hometown of Dallas, as well as in Fort Worth and Plano.
The original salon, she told Voyage Dallas magazine, was intended to be “gorgeous, sophisticated, and evoke dreams of a Parisian heaven in Dallas,” with a 20-foot flower wall, and grew out of her friends asking her to do their makeup at their weddings. “It dawned on me that there is a need for a gorgeous place that treats the styling of women like a form of art,” she said, while she told DMagazine in 2017 that it was “fun and cheeky.” Blowouts start at $45 and professional make-up sessions at $55.
Mora Namdar appeared on Good Morning Texas on WFAA 88 ABC in 2016 to promote her salon.Facebook
The chain has diversified into hair extensions, starting at $325, events, off-site events, including running lash and braid bars for $100-a-person and home visits.
Namdar combined owning the salon with running a one-woman law firm. On Christmas Day, she announced the firm was no longer active.
She was also one of the contributors to the notorious Project 2025, which has heavily influenced Trump’s second term, writing a section about the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), according to the Columbia Journalism Review.
In it, Namdar accused USAGM—the federal umbrella for U.S.-funded broadcasters including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe—of serious mismanagement, “espionage-related security risks,” and of using “anti-U.S. talking points to parrot America’s adversaries’ propaganda,” while calling for it to be reformed or closed altogether.
Mora Namdar at the attorney’s office she owns.Instagram
Namdar’s Senate confirmation earlier this month now puts a politically connected operator with media experience in charge of a bureau that can effectively decide who gets to enter the United States—and who gets turned away.
In prepared testimony for her October Senate hearing, she framed visa adjudications as critical to national security, saying she concurred with Rubio’s assessment that if someone “undermine[s] our foreign policy, [then] consular officers have the authority to revoke their visa.”
Mora Namdar’s official government photo from 2020.State Department
Namdar’s record inside government has already drawn scrutiny. Several outlets have reported that her interim leadership in the State Department’s Near Eastern affairs bureau this year triggered internal concerns about management and morale.
She will now be leading moves by the administration to ban people entering the U.S. including actions against citizens of various European countries who the president, 79, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, 54, announced on Wednesday had been barred from entering the U.S. for what it described as “egregious” censorship of “American viewpoints” on social media platforms, promising more would likely follow.
When reached for comment, the State Department’s Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott told the Daily Beast, “What a shameful, pathetic, and quite frankly sexist way to describe her career. Assistant Secretary Mora Namdar is an accomplished lawyer, business owner, and government official. Americans can be proud that patriotic public servants like her are stepping forward to serve our country and advance our national interests.”
Trump repeatedly sought to distance himself from Project 2025 during the campaign. But by year’s end, PBS reported that outside trackers estimate the administration has implemented roughly half the agenda’s goals, with “personnel is policy” hires—like Namdar, and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Brendan Carr—singled out as a key mechanism.
The FCC is the independent regulator that oversees broadcast licensing, telecom, and a growing share of the government’s fights over media power and “viewpoint” disputes.
Donald Trump and Brendan Carr pictured chatting in November 2024.Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Trump Pours Water on His FCC Attack Dog’s PlottingLEAD BALLOON
Carr, 46, authored Project 2025’s FCC chapter, which argues the agency should take a more aggressive posture toward “Big Tech” and what he calls a “censorship cartel,” while pairing that culture-war agenda with an explicit push to roll back swaths of existing telecom regulation.
Since taking the job, Carr has moved in ways that critics say align with those priorities—steps that have triggered Senate blowback and warnings from former FCC leaders about speech-chilling politicization.
The Daily Beast has also contacted Namdar for comment.
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Washington
By —
Fatima Hussein, Associated Press
U.S. bars five Europeans it says pressured tech firms to censor American viewpoints online
:{Politics Dec 24, 2025
WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department announced Tuesday it was barring five Europeans it accused of leading efforts to pressure U.S. tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints.
The Europeans, characterized by Secretary of State Marco Rubio as "radical" activists and "weaponized" nongovernmental organizations, fell afoul of a new visa policy announced in May to restrict the entry of foreigners deemed responsible for censorship of protected speech in the United States.
"For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose," Rubio posted on X. "The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship."
The five Europeans were identified by Sarah Rogers, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, in a series of posts on social media. They include the leaders of organizations that address digital hate and a former European Union commissioner who clashed with tech billionaire Elon Musk over broadcasting an online interview with Donald Trump.
Rubio's statement said they advanced foreign government censorship campaigns against Americans and U.S. companies, which he said created "potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences" for the U.S.
The action to bar them from the U.S. is part of a Trump administration campaign against foreign influence over online speech, using immigration law rather than platform regulations or sanctions.
The five Europeans named by Rogers are: Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate; Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, leaders of HateAid, a German organization; Clare Melford, who runs the Global Disinformation Index; and former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, who was responsible for digital affairs.
Rogers in her post on X called Breton, a French business executive and former finance minister, the "mastermind" behind the EU's Digital Services Act, which imposes a set of strict requirements designed to keep internet users safe online. This includes flagging harmful or illegal content like hate speech.
She referred to Breton warning Musk of a possible "amplification of harmful content" by broadcasting his livestream interview with Trump in August 2024 when he was running for president.
Breton responded Tuesday on X by noting that all 27 EU members voted for the Digital Services Act in 2022. "To our American friends: 'Censorship isn't where you think it is,'" he wrote.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said France condemns the visa restrictions on Breton and the four others. Also posting on X, he said the DSA was adopted to ensure that "what is illegal offline is also illegal online." He said it "has absolutely no extraterritorial reach and in no way concerns the United States."
A statement from Ballon and von Hodenberg, the co-CEOs of HateAid, called the move, "an act of repression by a government that is increasingly disregarding the rule of law and trying to silence its critics by any means necessary."
Most Europeans are covered by the Visa Waiver Program, which means they don't necessarily need visas to come into the country. They do, however, need to complete an online application prior to arrival under a system run by the Department of Homeland Security, so it is possible that at least some of these five people have been flagged to DHS, a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss details not publicly released.
Other visa restriction policies were announced this year, along with bans targeting foreign visitors from certain African and Middle Eastern countries and the Palestinian Authority. Visitors from some countries could be required to post a financial bond when applying for a visa.
Associated Press Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.
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