The State Doesn't Need H.R. 5300 to Take Your Passport
People are celebrating the superficial win of removing the passport part of H.R. 5300, but it is not a real victory. It just means the state will do it covertly or using other strategies.
There has been a recent uproar about proposed bill H.R. 5300 that emerged with Charlie Kirk’s killing as pretext and seeks to expand the well-established strategy of charging dissenters and civil society with “providing material support for terrorism” which we can anticipate will be self-servingly and broadly defined by the hostile state. One of the most chilling provisions in the bill (since amended) was to increase the state’s power to revoke passports from U.S. citizens. This comes alongside a simultaneous effort from Project 2025’s Heritage Foundation seeking to designate transpeople as terrorists with the label “nihilistic violent extremists,” not long after the Trump administration denied them passports matching their gender identity. The gender marker misalignment was stayed, but it is now being fast-tracked through the Supreme Court, which we should anticipate will permit it. The effort to lock the doors so that certain people cannot leave shows you that they want those people not to escape the fire they are setting inside the house. It also shows you who most desperately needs to escape, and how quickly.
Not allowing gender markers that match identity on passports has two very scary consequences:
1. The passport may not be accepted for travel including escape.
2. A mismatched photo and marker outs the person immediately. If they have to carry papers, they can be identified and targeted.
It is possible that some passports may still be accepted for travel, but it is a gamble that few people will be willing and able to make. Would you buy a $1,500 flight, or maybe sell all your possessions, on the off chance your passport makes it past T.S.A.? What would happen if you tried to travel and could not pass the passport off? This brings us to the second problem: The U.S. may detain you upon presentation of your passport or mark you for trying to leave.
In many countries where genocides have taken place, identity documents have played a major role. In Rwanda, for example, the way to know someone’s ethnicity was to look at their identification card that listed it or guess it from their name. This is why there is a scene in Hotel Rwanda where a genocidal military officer asks for the guest list. In Indonesia, requiring religious identity on ID cards concerns many because of the politicization of religion and related discrimination. Indonesian courts struck down the requirement to list religion on ID, but then reinstated it as the country lurched right under Prabowo (who I consider Indonesia’s Trump). Countries care especially much about putting identity and religion on documents, ensuring that the identity documents help clarify who belongs to a marginalized group like trans and nonbinary people, when they are preparing to persecute or kill everyone with the wrong label. Let us never forget pink triangles and the Star of David.
As for passport revocation, I expected as early as three years ago that the Trump regime would eventually use false charges against targeted populations, whistleblowers, and dissidents with the potential collateral benefit (for the state) of forbidding travel. Targets do not have to be guilty of any real crime because I expect they will make one up and falsify evidence or skip due process completely.
According to LegalClarity.org:
"An outstanding federal or state felony arrest warrant is a reason for [passport] denial. This includes warrants for fleeing across state lines to avoid prosecution or confinement. The existence of a warrant signals to the government that the individual is wanted by law enforcement, making them a flight risk."
The state can and presumably will manufacture false charges against anyone using anything they want.1 We now have an example of that happening with the attempt to classify transpeople and their allies as terrorists with the Heritage Foundation lobbying for the FBI to create a whole “terrorism” category for them. We already have examples of criminalization including casting transpeople as pedophiles, stoking fear against them, and criminalizing their allies such as doctors or supportive parents. Additionally, because of U.S. power and relationships, the vast majority of the countries in the world will extradite any felon to the U.S., meaning that felony charges could undermine targeted individuals’ safety and freedom even if they do leave the U.S. The crossing state lines part also means passport revocation would occur when someone commits a “crime” in one state and seeks refuge in a state where the same act is legal. I was particularly concerned when I saw this reporting by The Intercept, for example, as I fear for the woman mentioned and think she would deserve asylum not extradition.
So, if H.R. 5300 no longer gives the State Department the power to revoke passports, what does H.R. 5300 do? H.R. 5300 also includes other things such as an explicit “American exceptionalism in embassies” in terms of display of art and cultural events aligned with that toxic illusion, which will probably shift soft power to promoting fascism not liberal values around the world. H.R. 5300 prepares to end President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which is conceivably anti-LGBTQ+ and eugenicist given certain death from this stigmatized disease, and signals we need to worry about state neglect of HIV+ individuals creating situations potentially resembling this story. Importantly, echoing an international authoritarian strategy of cracking down on civil society using foreign influence laws, H.R. 5300 requires “new reports on malign foreign influence within the United Nations system” (not sure if this is the language in the bill, but it comes from this article) which signals intentions to find supposed malign foreign influence as a pretext to target and undermine the U.N. as it did recently and when the Biden Administration used alleged support for terrorism to defund UNHCR in Palestine.
The way I see it, lobbying like this to remove the passport piece from H.R. 5300 was a waste of time given the myriad of other simultaneous strategies and existing means the state has to accomplish the same goal. The fascists came out with something extreme and now made it more palatable so that it will pass without any diminished harmfulness. Supposed progressives, the gutted liberal class now repeating history by being as impotent as Germany’s was, will rejoice in their symbolic victory as though they did some real heroic thing when they actually swallowed another deadly pill towards the overdose Stefan Zweig (anti-fascist Austrian author who fled Nazi occupation) describes the suicide of a liberal society as. Instead of refusing the poison, they negotiated an equally deadly dose and will swallow it gratefully. The outcome will be the same, and that is what people need passports to prepare for.
I frequently cite this piece as an example of infantile self-delusion and deadly negligence on the part of experts telling people they do not need passports to prepare, and I rebuke all sources offering false hope and comforting illusions instead of informed consent at 11:59 P.M. Do not be one of those reprehensible fools, and stop celebrating. It is time to save lives.
The passport revocation can also be accomplished if you owe child support or taxes.