The European Union now constantly violates fundamental Western rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion and claims the power to ban speech across the globe, European witnesses testified to the U.S. Congress Wednesday morning.
“European laws [are] now being exported by the European Union. … American speech is already being affected,” testified Lorcán Price, an Irish lawyer for Alliance Defending Freedom International.
Under “hate speech” policies that Europe is applying across the world, “Speech that is lawful today can become criminalized tomorrow. This should concern every person that values freedom,” testified Finnish Member of Parliament Päivi Räsänen. Irish comedian Graham Linehan also testified before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. In September 2025, Linehan was arrested at Heathrow Airport by British authorities for criticizing transgender policies. Because of that arrest, he testified, “I became the target of a series of harassment campaigns that cost me my career, my marriage, and eventually drove me from my homeland.”
These Republican witnesses testified alongside Democrat witness Deepinder Singh Mayell, the leader of Minnesota’s branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. Democrats on the committee focused on blasting federal immigration enforcement and insisting that attacking and harassing law enforcement is protected “free speech.” Mayell refused to answer when Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, asked if illegal alien child rapists and murderers should be deported.
Linehan and Price pointed out that forbidding citizens from freely discussing their ideas not only violates historic Western rights, but also foments civil unrest. When people can’t talk about their frustrations or work them out through fair and honest elections, they are more likely to resort to violence, the witnesses noted.
Global Surveillance and Speech Repression
The House Judiciary Committee recently released two reports about the European speech dragnet affecting Americans, one in July 2025 and another Tuesday. Tuesday’s report finds vast European Union censorship affects factually accurate American speech, interferes in elections across Europe, and “disproportionately targets conservatives.” These findings indicate that the hub for Western speech repression online has shifted from the United States under the Biden presidency to the European Union.
During the Biden administration, numerous investigations, such as Missouri v. Biden litigation, uncovered that federal officials pressured massive communications monopolies, including Facebook, Google, Instagram, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter), to erase accurate information and conservative ideas, rigging elections and civil society for Democrats. These mass-censorship efforts, nominally run through federally funded “private” organizations, ended up rigging the algorithms and now artificial intelligence that control what Americans and people the world over are allowed to know.
After President Trump won a second term, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg publicly confirmed to podcast star Joe Rogan that the censorship was real and significant. While U.S. officials under Trump policies no longer engage in a mass internet suppression campaign, the Biden administration’s manipulation of the internet continues to choke online speech worldwide.
So do European Union regulations that affect the same global speech monopolies the Biden administration targeted. That transnational entity increased internet censorship in February 2024 with the implementation of the Digital Services Act (DSA). Under the guise of preventing “disinformation,” the DSA bans Christian and conservative ideas, not just in Europe, but across any large social media platforms that operate in Europe, such as Google and Facebook.
Using Global Companies to Interfere in American Elections
Similar to Communist China, the European Union presumes to extend its “hate speech” laws across the globe under the label “disinformation.” In its first enforcement action under the DSA, the EU fined X, a U.S. company, 120 million euros for allowing free speech on its cross-borders platforms. The action is under litigation. Last week, the EU announced another investigation into X over AI-generated abuse images. Every large platform is used to share abuse images, but so far only X is being investigated by the EU in relation to such images
Under the DSA, Tuesday’s House Judiciary report says, the EU demands that global social media monopolies blacklist URLs, ban keywords, show users leftist messaging they do not want to see, and display “kindness reminders.” The report shows the EU also censors Americans’ speech about the Ukraine war, election irregularities, support for populist candidates in the United States and Europe, climate change, migration, to shield non-white people and non-Christians from criticism, and critiques of LGBT theology, labeling wrongthink on these issues “disinformation” and “hate speech.”
The DSA uses a similar system to what the Biden administration deployed against Americans: Nonprofits and other organizations “flag” speech to authorities for investigation, including automated, algorithmic flagging and speech suppression. This means the DSA effectively automates the mass repression of Christian and conservative speech, which is also taking place across Europe in individual police and court cases such as Räsänen’s.
7 Years of Prosecution for Tweeting a Bible Verse
Räsänen is awaiting a verdict from Finland’s Supreme Court after a criminal trial in October. Because of her Christian beliefs, Räsänen has been under investigation and prosecution in Finland for nearly seven years. She was first interrogated by police for approximately 13 hours over three days after she posted a Bible verse on X to critique Finland’s state church for publicly supporting a sexual perversion parade.
The police investigation found a Christian theology booklet Räsänen, a medical doctor and wife of a pastor, had written in 2004 called “Male and Female He Created Them.” Finland’s top prosecutor charged Räsänen for her X post quoting the Bible and for writing the booklet under “hate speech” laws that categorize Christian teachings about sex as terrorism. Prosecutors also charged Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola for publishing the theological booklet.
“This case has never been only about us,” Räsänen testified to Congress today. “It is about whether peaceful expression of deeply held beliefs can be treated as a criminal act in today’s Europe. … It is about whether it is illegal to say what you believe.”
As The Federalist reported in October, “The Helsinki prosecutor earlier asked courts to wipe the internet of all Räsänen’s media appearances and writings that mention the physical, psychological, and theological differences between men and women, but later narrowed that sweeping demand to specific writings and audio clips.” Two Finnish lower courts fully acquitted Räsänen and Pohjola, but prosecutors appealed up to recent North Atlantic Treaty Organization member’s Supreme Court, which has not yet issued its verdict in the case.
Like the rest of Europe, Finland receives enormous military and other subsidies from the United States. This means the United States is deploying sensitive and precious resources to protect countries that are expanding the systematic mass repression of not just their own citizens but also of Americans, poisoning today’s West against its own values and traditions and inviting civilizational collapse.
Rising Tide of Punishments for Non-Leftist Speech
Europe is becoming an epicenter of speech and anti-Christian repression. England arrests an average of 30 people a day for social media posts and even reposts that criticize identity politics. That’s 12,000 per year, thousands more than Russia prosecutes under its speech restrictions.
Under the previous U.S. presidential administration, Americans were also imprisoned for speech crimes. Perhaps the most notable examples were Douglass Mackey, who was imprisoned for joking about Hillary Clinton on X, and numerous pro-life demonstrators imprisoned under the likely unconstitutional FACE Act. Mackey’s conviction was thrown out on appeal for lack of evidence, and he is considering suing the U.S. Justice Department for wrongful prosecution.
The Federalist has been a prominent and early target of both Biden administration and foreign censorship efforts that are attempting to replicate the “great firewall” or “internet iron curtain” in Communist China. In 2023, The Federalist, the state of Texas, and The Daily Wire sued the U.S. State Department for funding censorship initiatives that specifically targeted The Federalist.
The Federalist has also been a specific target of European censorship coordinating with communications monopolies that include Google. The same foreign entity that targeted The Federalist informed Biden White House censorship efforts and is behind global leftist efforts to “kill Musk’s Twitter.”
