Below is my column in The Hill on the move by the Trump Administration against five leading figures in the European censorship movement, including Thierry Breton, the former European Union commissioner responsible for digital policy. The United States is finally responding to what is an existential threat to American values. It is worth noting, as I discuss in my new book, Rage and the Republic, that the EU is not only exporting its censorship rules but threatening American companies that do not meet its environment, social and governance (ESG) policies. It is time for Congress to follow suit and get into this fight.
Here is the column:
“We are the free world now.” Those words from Raphael Glucksmann, a French socialist member of the European Parliament, captured the pearl-clutching outrage of Europeans after the Trump administration did what no prior administration has ever done — stand up to Europe to defend the freedom of speech.
This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio barred five figures closely associated with European censorship efforts from traveling to the U.S. This includes Thierry Breton, the former European Union commissioner responsible for digital policy.
In a post on X, Rubio declared that the U.S. “will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship” and will target “leading figures of the global censorship-industrial complex from entering the United States.”
Breton achieved infamy as one of the architects of the massive EU censorship system, which is now being globalized. Armed with the notorious Digital Services Act, Breton and others threatened American companies and officials that they would have to yield to European standards of free speech. After Breton learned that Musk was planning to interview Trump before the last presidential election, he even warned the X owner that he would be “monitored” and potentially subject to EU fines.
Socialist Glucksmann is now irate at “this scandalous sanction against Thierry Breton.”
“We are Europeans,” he declared. “We must defend our laws, our principles, our interests.” In other words, this is a war over whether Europe or the U.S. Constitution will dictate the scope of free speech for American companies and citizens.
Breton and his colleagues are finally being treated as what they are: a clear and present danger to the “indispensable right” that defines all Americans.
The EU has been enlisted by anti-free speech figures in the U.S. to force companies like X and Facebook to restore censorship of Americans. After Musk bought Twitter with a pledge to restore free-speech protections, Hillary Clinton called upon European officials to force him to censor under Europe’s Digital Services Act.
Nina Jankowicz, the former head of Biden’s infamous Disinformation Governance Board, appeared before the European Parliament. She called upon the 27 EU countries to fight against the U.S., which she described as a global threat.
The E.U. enthusiastically took up the challenge. This year, I spoke in Berlin at the World Forum, which boosted the slogan, “A New World Order with European Values.” Bill and Hillary Clinton and other Americans cheered on the European efforts.
The Digital Services Act bars speech that is viewed as “disinformation” or “incitement.” When it was passed over the condemnations of many of us in the free speech community, European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager celebrated by declaring that it is “not a slogan anymore — that what is illegal offline should also be seen and dealt with as illegal online. Now it is a real thing. Democracy’s back.”
It is indeed a “real thing.” In my forthcoming book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, I discuss the challenges facing our republic in the 21st century, including the EU and its transnational governance model. Many on the left are supporting the erosion of national laws and values in favor of standards set by global experts and elites.
This cadre of American enablers has been increasingly vocal in Europe. Notably, late-night ABC host Jimmy Kimmel delivered a Christmas Eve address in Great Britain denouncing the U.S. as a global threat. He declared that “from a fascism perspective, this has been a really great year. Tyranny is booming over here.”
It was crushingly ironic. Many of us have been writing for years about how free speech has been eviscerated in the United Kingdom, where people are being prosecuted for “toxic ideologies” and an ever-lengthening list of unacceptable political viewpoints.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett issued a warning this week about the collapse of free speech in the United Kingdom. Yet that is where a comedian, who is paid millions and attacks Trump and conservatives nightly, went to complain about the threat to free speech in the U.S.
Both Vice President JD Vance and Secretary Rubio have delivered major speeches warning the EU about its effort to export censorship systems, particularly targeting American citizens and companies. After years of encouragement and enabling from the Obama and Biden administrations, the U.S. government is finally in this fight.
That is why Europe is up in arms, denouncing the move to bar these officials as an attack on its own sovereignty. In other words, an effort to defend our own free speech values is a threat to the proclaimed “New World Order with European Values.”
In reality, I do not like travel bans. I prefer that these figures come to this country and face free-speech advocates. Yet despite our calls for Congress to get into this fight, it has done nothing due to opposition from Democratic members. We cannot wait as the EU weaponizes and globalizes censorship.
Glucksmann is right about one thing. This is a fight over who today can be rightfully called the “free world.” In the U.S., we continue to cling to the quaint notion that the free world should be based on … well, freedom.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of the forthcoming “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution” on the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.
Real Americans love their country.
104-year-old World War II Army veteran SSGT Dominick Critelli performed the National Anthem on saxophone at NHL game Outstanding!
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
In other news….
Nicaragua bans entry of Bibles, books, newspapers, cameras
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2025/12/23/latam-nicaragua-ban-Bibles-books-newspapers/4221766513103/
Meanwhile Communist dictator Vladimir Putin, Venezuelan Marxist Nicolas Maduro, Nicaraguan 80 year Marxist Daniel Ortega and others gathered to sing “We Are the World”.
Hilarious! 😂 thank you Estovir
You MAGA morons have remarkably elastic beliefs regarding the concept of free speech.
Not so long ago you were screaming that FOREIGNERS in this country who espoused support for Palestine should be arrested and deported for exercising their speech. You were adamant that FOREIGNERS do not have the same free speech rights as Americans while in this country.
Now, the EU is simply saying that FOREIGNERS, meaning Americans, should be regulated as to their speech in Europe. They are simply demanding that FOREIGN social media companies should be prohibited from spreading misinformation and disinformation in their countries.
So on the one hand you MAGA morons are demanding that FOREIGNERS in the US should be silenced, while simultaneously demanding that YOUR voices be heard in foreign countries because you have a right to free speech.
The very definition of hypocrisy !!!!!!
ANON MORON!!! SAME CRAP EVERYDAY!!
Anon calls Trump support MAGA morons, I am guessing Anon is watching what’s going on with Minnesota. Tim Walz just let a bunch of Obamaites steal billions of tax dollars and fund a terrorist organization in Somalia. Bill Clinton has now been exposed for the sexual deviant we already knew he is. Now I ask you, who are the morons ?
A clearer way to describe it is the solipsist’s double-standard — rules for thee but not for me. Free speech for those who think like me, not for our opponents. A borderless internet that spreads my viewpoint without restriction, and keeping out foreign influence I don’t like. Problem is there’s no unifying principle, it’s a moral code which cannot resolve conflict, only intensify it.
Perhaps the most effective response if for all Americans to boycott Europe–NO TOURIST TRAVEL. After all, it is too dangerous for U.S. citizens to travel to Europe since their slightest speech might trigger arrest.
Europe built the greatest civilization and culture the world has ever seen, including the likes of Shakespeare, Mozart, Bach, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Leonardo, Newton, Pascal, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and many, many others. Paintings, classical music, literature, art, philosophy, science – all to levels the world had never seen.
That all took around 500 years to construct. Then, in a mere three decades from 1914-1945, Europe destroyed it all. Europe committed civilizational suicide. What we have now is just the downstream effects of such destruction. Although we broke away from the old Europe in 1776, it is nonetheless painful to see, as the Europe prior to 1914 was our foundational source of values and spiritual enlightenment. Sadly, it has gone dark.
This is exaggerated grievance-spouting, based upon some European nations going too far with naive idealism.
It’s already undergoing a correction. Denmark stopped its mindless immigration policy 15 years ago. Italy is working hard to turn that ship around.
It’s not much different than the naive idealism of the Barack Obama Administration — which the US seems to have survived. Europe will just take a bit longer to adapt.
Anon at 3:54
Are you familiar with the concept of hypocrisy ????
ICE in this country rounded up scores of FOREIGNERS in this country who dared to make known their support for Palestine.
ICE refused entry to this country for people who had posts critical of Trump on their social media accounts.
So much for the right to free speech !!!!
You’re not serious, right? Perhaps you don’t know, but ICE arrests people who are in this country illegally, many of whom are hardened criminals on top of having committed a crime to come in or stay in the US. That has literally zero to do with the topic of this article or the other anonymous’s comment. Does anybody not know these basic facts? It appears you don’t.
Turley wants Europe to allow Russian propaganda to seep into its media.
Turley wants you to stop the b.s. and write something a little more intelligent and truthful.
Nonsense! There are people going to JAIL when posting that the deaths from the COVID shot are real and that masks don’t work!
They go to jail in England for silent prayers about abortion, but only if they’re against it, not if they pray for more abortions.
Treaty on European Union (1992), European Economic Community (1957), European Atomic Energy Community (1957), European Coal and Steel Community (1951) all these were precursors to what we see today from divided and diverse State entities.
H.G. Wells ‘The Open Conspiracy’,
“… when the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy, there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people … will hate the new world order, be rendered unhappy by the frustration of their passions and ambitions through its advent and will die protesting against it. When we attempt to evaluate its promise, we have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents, many of them quite gallant and graceful-looking people.” I do believe H.G. Wells was a Socialist much like Orwell.
Hate to use Wikipedia but quoting the first paragraph under the search [New World Order]:
“The New World Order (NWO) is a term often used in conspiracy theories which hypothesize a secretly emerging totalitarian world government. The common theme in conspiracy theories about a New World Order is that a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian one-world government—which will replace sovereign nation-states—and an all-encompassing propaganda whose ideology hails the establishment of the New World Order as the culmination of history’s progress. Many influential historical and contemporary figures have therefore been alleged to be part of a cabal that operates through numerous front organizations to orchestrate significant political and financial events, including taking advantage of systemic crises or even causing them in order to push through controversial policies at both national and international levels, as steps in an ongoing plot to achieve world domination.” There are many citations within the paragraph.
Orson Welles “when people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society.”
I used this quote as a reminder that there are Man’s laws and there are much superior laws of Nature or in some parlance God’s Law.
We are experiencing this in America; just grandeur the magnificence of the leftist’s sanctuary cities, and their coddling and protecting the lawless.
Jonathan, I was kicked out of Barns and Nobel, whom I have spent 1K$ in over the last 50 years, exercising free speech, when purchasing a glass of lemonade. Startled by the extremely ugly clerk with her metal horns coming out of her nose: ” You’re ugly!”
I walked toward the books to seek what I came in for.
Manager demanded leave.
I left while I retorted, “my kin E Gerry authorized the Bill of Rights, this is America not Nazi=Tory land. Manager is UK EVIL. Has no right to be on the land of Pilgrims Pride.
Is a very traumatic to me at 75! pegpullen@ptoton.me
Time for the Frogs to fire up the ‘Widow’ again and to lop some leaders head’s off.
. The picture of uncle Sam taking it easy and prosperity is up in smoke.
Give free speech to a pack of liars and thieves and they’ll use it to lie and rob. Free speech has its good and bad sides. In itself free speech isn’t good or bad but when it’s used it identifies the person.
Carpe diem…
^^^ The old idea of is god good or bad holds true, too. If you’re a good person then God is good and if you’re a criminal God either doesn’t exist or he’s his alternate self as Satan.
80% of these people have no laws at all. Give a murderer freedom and he’ll murder.
The EU is forcing reality upon people waiting for generations die to kill history. They follow Satan. Satan is their god.
Currently, within a twenty year period the US is without moral authority, PT. Freedom of speech gave us Hustler mag and Lil Wayne and Tammy Faye Baker, the God of punishment.
Quite hopeless Barry and your world must be destroyed. That’s envy, Barry. You didn’t care.
Carpe diem
@ThierryBreton 3:53 PM – Dec 23, 2025 “Is McCarthy’s witch hunt back?” …. This from a verifiable techno-FEUDALIST, whose aims are to crush the middle class and control the vassals.
“It’s been a rough year for the politician, but at least he has his millions of dollars to ease the pain. [Seventy]-year-old Thierry Breton has taken the No. 1 spot on People With Money’s top 10 highest-paid politicians for 2025 with an estimated $58 million in combined earnings….The French politician-business man has an estimated net worth of $185 million. He owes his fortune to smart stock investments, substantial property holdings, lucrative endorsement deals with CoverGirl cosmetics.” https://en.mediamass.net/people/thierry-breton/highest-paid.html
Thierry wants to be the plantation boss.
It is quite amusing to see you MAGA morons with your fake outrage about so called censorship in Europe.
You seem to think that we Europeans are being oppressed by a rabidly authoritarian government intent on suppressing our rights. But this is far from reality, just like the rest of the bizarre beliefs of your cult.
In Europe, 80% of people believe that disinformation, especially online, is a national security risk, and that the government should actively intervene against false and manipulative information. We support the Digital Services Act by a ratio of 4 to 1.
Only 20% perceive the DSA as a threat to freedom of speech or a form of censorship.
50% of Europeans believe U.S. criticism is motivated by a desire to protect the commercial interests of large American tech companies, and nothing more than that.
So you see, we Europeans are perfectly happy with the Digital Services Act, and we quite correctly perceive the fake outrage in the US as a blatant attempt to interfere in our affairs, and protect the financial interests of the American mega-tech companies that we despise.
We would be quite happy to see the likes of Elon Musk’s X cesspool completely eliminated in Europe.
So, you speak for ALL “we Europeans,” do you? You’re ALL perfectly happy with your Digital Services Act, you say?
* First of all, what gall to speak for an entire continent with an extremely one-sided and histrionic opinion, no less.
* Secondly, your vassal-brain holds exactly the kind of mush needed to return Europe to feudalism and the worship of scoundrel overlords.
Beat me to it.
French, German and Spanish participants to a YouGov survey called for stricter EU enforcements of digital regulations and consider Big Tech more powerful than the EU.
The majority of French, Spanish, and German citizens want stricter EU enforcement of Big Tech, according to a new YouGov survey.
Almost two-thirds in France (63%), 59% in Germany, and 49% in Spain said EU enforcement of laws addressing Big Tech’s influence and power is too relaxed, when asked to choose between too relaxed, too strict, or about right.
Only 7% of respondents in France, 8% in Germany, and 9% in Spain felt the enforcement was too strict.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/07/03/europeans-want-tougher-eu-enforcement-of-big-tech-poll
“Statistics: the mathematical theory of ignorance.” Morris Kline — Bet that numerical diatribe felt good,
but the self-serving numbers, managed by a self-serving governmental body like the EU, can never be trusted, as there is no deeper science behind the surveying when populations can be hand picked and stacked.
Another extenuating factor, widely disregarded, is the influx of non-indigenous peoples whose religious codes/dogmas call for the censorship of everything from speech, to sexual orientation, to dress. Hold your horses on them-there-numbers, eager-beaver.
“If your experiment needs statistics, you OUGHT to have done a better experiment” — Ernest Rutherford, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1908; often called “the father of nuclear physics,” contemporary/collaborator of Hans Geiger, Niels Bohr, and H.G.J. Moseley (chemistry, radioactivity, nuclear physics).
You MAGA morons are entirely missing the point.
Europeans do not regard this as a free speech issue.
The issue is regulation of foreign Big Tech companies who are providing a platform for foreign adversarial countries to unduly undermine the political stability of the EU.
Europeans simply want the detestable Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg to follow the sovereign laws of the EU. The US has absolutely no right to impose its law on the EU. If Musk and Zuckerberg want to do business in the EU, then they must follow EU law, NOT United States law.
The intervention by the Trump administration in sanctioning EU officials is not about free speech. It is about trying to force the EU to allow Big Tech to operate with impunity for purely commercial and financial reasons, NOT free speech.
The attempt to frame it as a free speech issue is a red herring to bait you MAGA morons into this fake outrage, which Turley is deliberately stoking.
Where was your outrage when Tik Tok was threatened with being banned ???
Where was your outrage when Trump forced Tik Tok to be sold to a US company ???
Tik Tok was a foreign owned social media company operating in the US. The objection was that they were gathering personal data on US citizens and unduly attempting to influence the political opinions of Americans.
This is EXACTLY what the EU is concerned about with regard to X and Facebook. Just like the US, the EU does not like FOREIGN social media behaving in ways that they find objectionable. They have every right to try to regulate them.
In fact, they should follow the example of the US with regard to Tik Tok and force Musk and Zuckerberg to sell out to a European country.
If it is good enough for the US, then it should be good enough for the EU.
You are confusing the the EU’s DSA (which Turley is writing about) with the EU’s DMA (regarding crackdown on Big Tech). Try to read a little more carefully.
While there may be a conflation, hold onto that idea because its instructive: one type or facet of the issue can naturally, endemically, be present, bleed into (or color) the other. Do you see that? There can be no doubt that what the EU is doing is not merely the control of Big Tech companies—that facade merely masks the tip of a far greater and more dangerous issue that has roots in far more than just “the unduly undermining of the EU’s political stability,” i.e., the RUSSIAN boogey-man, the Orange-Man, the Elon, and now the Zuckerberg, who was once well-loved for his “commercial” Zucker Bucks and voting Zucker Boxes (private funding of election offices, circa 2020)….
Reading between the lines, translating, comprehensive insight, is as important as “reading words carefully.” It’s also important to identify resident and extenuating factors, when countries like Britain are meting out their “sovereign laws,” arresting people for merely speaking opinions, on those big tech platforms that you say “operate with impunity for commercial and financial reasons.”—Why don’t you put that strict accusation on the filthy-rich Thierry Breton and his EU cohorts?
You’re being shortsighted, not only with your statistics, but with your definitions and the wider picture. Then again, how can you be fair? You’re not really an American. And it’s not “outrage” going on here—it’s common sense.
What a load of nonsensical, irrelevant gobbledegook !!!
Why are you ranting incoherently about Russia, Zucker Bucks and the wealth of EU officials ???
The issue is very, very simple.
Europeans do not like FOREIGN social media companies operating in Europe in ways in which the vast MAJORITY find objectionable. The EU wants to regulate how these FOREIGN companies operate in their territory, and they have every right to do so. The EU has the support of the majority of Europeans.
They are simply demanding that these FOREIGN companies follow EU law.
The fact that you and the MAGA mob don’t like this, is completely and utterly irrelevant.
The Trump administration found the activities of TikTok to be objectionable and antithetical to US law, and tried to shut them down, then forced them to sell to a US company.
What would be the MAGA reaction if China had demanded that TikTok be allowed to operate here with no regulation ???
There is no difference between what Trump did to TikTok and what the EU is doing with X and Facebook.
who are you responding to, Anon at 3:45 or Anon at 3:28, which looks more like what you meant
Responding to Dianna Bec, the MAGA moron
Anon 5:38pm – Your adolescent-level comment explains a lot – grow up.
Tik tok is quite dangerous . It rearranges thought patterns in viewers. It’s the most sophisticated form of brainwashing there is. It reconstructs brain activity. Tik talk…
Anon 3:28PM – Your rage and hysterics are indicative of Advanced-Stage TDS. This platform isn’t the best place to vent that type of unhinged anger. See your therapist.
Ah, your true colors – “We support the Digital Services Act by a ratio of 4 to 1”. So, you are from Europe and promoting the state as the arbiter of real, which I would posit is why the ration (if even real, which I doubt) is due to blocking opposing views. Europeans reliving “let them eat cake” will be more than a meme.
>”In Europe, 80% of people believe that disinformation, especially online, is a national security risk, and that the government should actively intervene against false and manipulative information.”
Hogwash. You’ve got that all backwards .. . it’s the thief of Kiev and his U.S./Nato high financiers (especially Starmer, Macron and Merz) who are the national/EU security risk and drop disinformation like pig turds in a hog lot,
*I wouldn’t count on Trump’s America coming to your rescue any time soon .. .
Re: dgsnowden says: December 29, 2025
Was in Shanghai in 2010 for the Worlds Expo, They were advanced then (on par with San Jose California) – The U.S. will not catch up (to political, everything is to political in the US). But it is important to note that Rural China is not as advanced (although not far behind).
Brilliant YouTube Link – Thnx
Did the folks in China convince you to spell the word “too” with only a single ‘o’?
Yes they did 2
ANON MORON!!