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🚨Breaking News: The Sec. Rubio and State Dept just REVOKED the visa of an Iraqi national on the FBI Terror Watchlist!🚨In March 2022, the Biden State Department rolled out the red carpet for a senior Iraqi official named Taif Sami Mohammed Al Shakarchi.Secretary of State Antony Blinken and First Lady Jill Biden personally presented her with an International Women of Courage Award.Blinken called her Iraq’s “Iron Woman.” He praised her for stopping bribes, exposing padded government payrolls, and standing up to corrupt officials despite threats against her life.This week, the FBI placed that same woman on its terrorism watchlist.On Friday, Secretary Marco Rubio’s State Department revoked her visa. She is out of the United States, and she is not coming back.What happened in between is a story the last administration would rather you never read.After the award, Mohammed went on to serve as Iraq’s finance minister until this July. She controlled the federal budget, government spending, and Baghdad’s financial dealings with the Kurdistan region. Then the wheels came off. Iraqi authorities implicated her in a possible corruption scheme.An Iraqi court summoned her and placed her on a judicial wanted list as investigators widened a probe into former senior officials. And now the FBI, our own top law enforcement agency, has added her name to its terror watchlist.Assistant Secretary of State Dylan Johnson put it plainly: “While the Biden State Department shamefully celebrated and awarded foreigners who threaten our nation, the Trump State Department revokes their visas and ensures these individuals are removed from our country.”Every American should ask a simple question. How does someone go from the State Department’s biggest stage to the FBI’s terror watchlist in four years?Either the Biden administration failed to vet her before handing her one of our nation’s most visible honors, or officials knew of the concerns and gave her the award anyway.Neither answer is acceptable.The award itself points to a deeper problem. The Biden State Department treated foreign policy like an awards show. Remember the ceremony where Mohammed was honored.Twelve women stood on stage.The press materials celebrated “gender equity” and “the empowerment of women and girls, in all their diversity.” Those are the categories that mattered to that administration. Conduct, character, and hard evidence came second. When a government judges people by categories instead of conduct, it ends up celebrating people it should be investigating.President Trump and Secretary Rubio are running the State Department a different way.A visa is a privilege the United States extends, and the United States can take it away. When the FBI flags a foreign national as a suspected terrorist, the right response is a revoked visa and a closed door.Johnson said it directly: under President Trump and Secretary Rubio, suspected terrorists will never be allowed to reside in the United States.Some in the press will call this harsh. Ask them a question in return. What is the compassionate case for letting someone on the FBI’s terror watchlist keep a visa to enter America? There is no such case. Protecting American families is the first duty of the federal government, and for four years that duty took a back seat to photo ops and press releases.There is a lesson here for every future administration. Courage awards and stage ceremonies do not vet anyone, and they do not protect a single American family. Vetting is slow, unglamorous work done by investigators, not by speechwriters.Character is revealed over time, and government’s job is to watch, verify, and act when the facts change. That is exactly what happened this week.The facts changed, and the Trump administration acted within days.Credit belongs where credit is due. Secretary Rubio’s team saw an FBI terror watchlist designation and moved within days, without hand-wringing and without months of interagency meetings while a flagged individual held a valid visa.The system worked because the people running it decided that American safety outranks diplomatic embarrassment.America’s honors should go to people who earn them, and America’s visas should go to people we can trust. For four years, Washington got both of those backwards. This week, both standards were enforced again. May it stay that way.