Republican Senator Eric Schmitt has accused European governments of enforcing what he described as a sweeping censorship regime at home and attempting to export it to the United States, warning that American free speech is increasingly being affected by regulatory decisions made in Brussels, London, and other foreign capitals.
In a letter sent to Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah B. Rogers, published on X, Schmitt said, “European governments have imposed tyrannical censorship on their own citizens. Now, they’re trying to impose it on America.” In the letter, he urges the Trump administration to “sanction foreign actors—in the European Union and elsewhere—who aid and abet this censorship regime.”
European governments have imposed tyrannical censorship on their own citizens.
Now, they're trying to impose it on America.
Today, I'm asking the Trump Administration to sanction foreign actors—in the European Union and elsewhere—who aid and abet this censorship regime. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/q4iyEbf7mf
According to Schmitt, the past decade has seen a steady erosion of fundamental freedoms across Western countries, with European governments having “thrown their citizens in jail—sometimes for years at a time—for criticizing mass immigration, gender ideology, and various other parts of the left-wing program.”
He said European regulators are using their economic and regulatory power to extend their reach far beyond their borders, citing the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) as “the flagship model,” saying it “allows Brussels regulators to impose massive fines on any large platform that doesn’t comply with their diktats.”
As an example, Schmitt cited the recent fine imposed on X by the European Commission.
Schmitt stressed that the European Union is not the only actor pursuing such policies, but the UK is too, with its recently passed Online Safety Act, whose “stringent censorship rules apply to all services that are accessible in the UK, even if the company isn’t based there.”
Schmitt called for a more forceful response from Washington. “Now, it’s time to take further and more aggressive action to protect American speech and sovereignty,” he wrote. He pointed to Magnitsky sanctions as a key instrument against malign foreign actors by freezing their assets “ and banning them from entering the U.S.”
Schmitt also warned about the role of activist organizations in advancing what he described as a coordinated censorship agenda. “Left-wing activist NGOs like CCDH [Center for Countering Digital Hate] are malignant actors, and play a similar role to the left-wing anti-‘hate’ groups that have gone after X,” he wrote. According to Schmitt, such groups “have played a critical part in this global censorship enterprise, and should face the same consequences.”
Zolta Győri is a journalist at europeanconservative.com.
