The State Department sanctioned five European figures in the “global censorship-industrial complex” on Tuesday, barring them from entering the United States.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the move is in response to European “ideologues” who have sought to clamp down on Americans’ free speech. He added that the list could be expanded to other European leaders if they continue their censorship actions.
“For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship,” Rubio said. “Today, @StateDept will take steps to bar leading figures of the global censorship-industrial complex from entering the United States. We stand ready and willing to expand this list if others do not reverse course.”
The sanctions do not include financial penalties, but the five individuals targeted have had their U.S. visas denied. They are European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton, a Frenchman; Imran Ahmed, a British chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate; British businesswoman Clare Melford, who leads the Global Disinformation Index; and Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, who both lead the German group HateAid.
Breton helped create the European Commission’s Digital Services Act, which establishes regulations requiring social media companies to prevent what the European Union deems illegal content and misinformation. The Digital Services Act was recently used to punish Elon Musk’s X, a move condemned by the Trump administration.
Ahmed’s Center for Countering Digital Hate has been accused of colluding with the Biden administration and social media companies to censor Americans, especially during the COVID pandemic. The Biden administration referred to the British nonprofit’s “disinformation dozen” list, which called out 12 accounts on Facebook that it accused of producing 65% of anti-vaccine “misinformation” on the platform, The New York Times reported. One of those 12 accounts belonged to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary, according to Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers.
The Global Disinformation Index, led by Melford, was funded through a program used by the Biden administration to target “misinformation” until Rubio shuttered it earlier this year. It placed American media outlets on a “Dynamic Exclusion List” that was distributed to advertisers and named mainstream publications like the New York Post, Reason Magazine, The Daily Wire, and the Federalist as “risky,” The Daily Wire previously reported. The Daily Wire has an active lawsuit against the State Department, alleging that it suppressed conservative media outlets on social media under former President Joe Biden.
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Ballon and Hodenberg’s HateAid is considered a “trusted” censor under the Digital Services Act and has routinely targeted Right-wing voices, according to the State Department. Earlier this year, Ballon was interviewed on “60 Minutes” and said, “Free speech needs boundaries … Without boundaries, a very small group of people can rely on endless freedom to say anything that they want, while everyone else is scared and intimidated.”
French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the United States over the travel bans, saying, “These measures amount to intimidation and coercion aimed at undermining European digital sovereignty.”
Trump and Rubio have recently called out Europe over its social media censorship and its targeting of American social media companies. Rubio told The Daily Wire last week that he is “concerned” that “freedom of expression” is “eroding” in Europe.
“Are we going to live in a world where some American puts up a social media post and then gets to some airport somewhere and is arrested? We’re also concerned about the impact that some of their policies are having on our social media platforms,” he said.
Trump, meanwhile, issued a warning to Europe after the European Commission fined X earlier this month.
“Look, Europe has to be very careful,” Trump said. “They’re doing a lot of things. … Europe is going in some bad directions. It’s very bad for the people.”
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