The Trump administration gave Americans a Christmas present by taking decisive action to protect free speech from foreign censors.
On Dec. 23, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that almost half a dozen foreign leaders would be banned from entering the United States due to their roles in crushing Americans’ free speech online. The announcement comes amid an ongoing struggle between European nations and the Trump administration over Big Tech companies’ censorship policies. Three of the reported names on the list are individuals or organizations repeatedly exposed by the Media Research Center.
“For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose,” Rubio wrote. The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship.”
Rubio added that the State Department “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.” He recently warned in a press conference that anti-free speech officials could even try to arrest Americans, citing the European Union’s new $140 million fine of U.S. tech company X.
A State Department press release stated that five individuals will have new visa restrictions for their censorship efforts, but did not provide names. Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act authorizes the Secretary of State to bar foreigners from entering the United States if they present a threat, the State Department noted.
The Associated Press reported that the individuals are Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, leaders of German HateAid, Clare Melford, head of the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) and former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton.
MRC has for years highlighted the extreme bias and anti-free speech pressure from Ahmed and CCDH. In July 2021, then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki used a CCDH report, the “Disinformation Dozen,” to pressure tech companies for increased COVID-19 censorship. CCDH also put MRC among its climate “Toxic Ten” in a 2022 report. Later, in 2024, CCDH published a report trying to strong-arm YouTube into agreeing it should “demonetize” and “de-amplify” non-climate alarmist content.
Like Ahmed’s CCDH, GDI has long been infamous for its connections to government censorship campaigns. In 2023, the Biden State Department defended its government funding for GDI, despite the fact that the organization displayed extreme bias in blacklisting right-leaning websites. MRC highlighted GDI’s grants in its 57 Biden censorship initiatives report (initiative #11). MRC and its Free Speech Alliance also called on Congress to block funding to GDI. In January, Rubio announced that the State Department would be defunding censorship initiatives, which included GDI.
MRC and other outlets also reported on Breton after he tried to demand that X censor owner Elon Musk’s interview of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump during the 2024 election cycle if any of their conversation supposedly fell under content considered hateful or illegal in the EU. Breton issued a veiled threat of fines if he deemed the interview not compliant with the Digital Services Act.
Free speech is under attack! Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
