Carlos Barria/Pool via AP
The Trump administration announced sanctions on Tuesday against several British and European figures accused of engaging in the “extraterritorial censorship of Americans.”
“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,” announced Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a statement. “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.”
Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Sarah B. Rogers, detailed the sanctions and their targets in her own statement on Tuesday:
Today, the United States issued SANCTIONS reinforcing the ‘red line’ I invoked on @GBNEWS. Namely: extraterritorial censorship of Americans.
Today’s sanctions target the censorship-NGO ecosystem.
These sanctions are visa-related. We aren’t invoking severe Magnitsky-style financial measures, but our message is clear: if you spend your career fomenting censorship of American speech, you’re unwelcome on American soil.
Our targets are foreign, but you’ll notice that some collaborated with U.S. bureaucrats on Murthy-style speech suppression. Don’t worry: we’re pursuing transparency, truth, and reconciliation at the @StateDept, too.
Rogers went on to release the list of those targeted, including a former European Commission official who got into a public spat with Elon Musk after he threatened to fine Musk’s platform X:
WE’VE SANCTIONED: Thierry Breton, a mastermind of the Digital Services Act. In August 2024, while serving as European Commissioner for Internal Markets and Digital Services, he published a letter using the DSA to threaten @elonmusk ahead of his livestream interview with President Trump. Before the interview, Breton ominously reminded Musk of @X’s legal obligations and ongoing “formal proceedings” for alleged noncompliance with “illegal content” and “disinformation” requirements under the DSA.
WE’VE SANCTIONED: Imran Ahmed, key collaborator with the Biden Administration’s effort to weaponize the government against U.S. citizens. Ahmed’s group, Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), created the infamous “disinformation dozen” report, which called for platforms to deplatform twelve American “anti-vaxxers”, including now-HHS Secretary @SecKennedy. Leaked documents from CCDH show the organization listed “kill Musk’s Twitter” and “trigger EU and UK regulatory action” as priorities. The organization supports the UK’s Online Safety Act and EU’s Digital Services Act to expand censorship in Europe and around the world.
WE’VE SANCTIONED: Clare Melford. She leads Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a UK-based organization that monitors websites for “hate speech” and “disinformation”. If you question Canadian blood libels about residential schools, you’re engaging in “hate speech” according to Melford and GDI. This NGO used @StateDept taxpayer money to exhort censorship and blacklisting of American speech and press. They also joined the deleterious EU Code of Practice on Disinformation.
WE’VE SANCTIONED: Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, the leader and founder of HateAid, a German organization founded after the 2017 German federal elections to counter conservative groups. HateAid is an official “trusted flagger” (a censor) under the EU’s anti-speech Digital Services Act (DSA) and routinely demands access to propriety social media platform data to help it censor more. Hodenberg cited threat of “disinformation” from “right-wing extremists” online in upcoming U.S. and EU elections when circulating a petition for the DSA to become more strongly enforced to allow data access for “researchers”.
WE’VE SANCTIONED: Josephine Ballon, co-leader of HateAid, who flags disfavored speech throughout Europe under the Digital Services Act. In addition to her running an official “trusted flagger” body under the DSA, she serves on Germany’s Advisory Council of the Digital Services Coordinator (DSC), which directly advises Germany’s DSC on the application and enforcement of the DSA. In February 2025, Ballon spoke before an American audience in a notable 60 Minutes interview, outlining her position on censorship succinctly: “Free speech needs boundaries.” In October 2024, she vowed to stop the “emotionalization of debates” by “regulating platforms”.
Rogers concluded, “None of those sanctioned is a current UK or EU official—however, we know that foreign government officials are actively targeting the United States. This week, the UK’s Liberal Democrats claimed President Trump’s National Security Strategy amounts to ‘foreign interference’ by a ‘hostile foreign state’ because it correctly identifies mass migration and decaying national sovereignty as existential European security concerns.”
