Europe’s Attack on Americans’ First Amendment Rights

While Greenland has become the biggest flashpoint in increasingly tense relations between Europe and the United States, the diplomatic tug-of-war over the world’s largest island is hardly the only evidence of the growing rift between the two pillars of Western Civilization. European governments’ attack on the First Amendment rights of American citizens is perhaps an even greater threat to the vitality of the U.S.-Euro alliance.

What was once a shared Western commitment to free speech and open expression is now fracturing as the European Union aggressively enforces its censorship laws not just for its own citizens but for Americans as well. The Biden administration allowed the E.U. to muzzle American citizens online with impunity. But the Trump administration is now strongly pushing back to prevent Americans’ First Amendment rights in cyberspace’s public square from being governed not by the Constitution but rather by European regulators.

That tension came into sharp focus last month when the European Commission imposed a first-ever sanction of $140 million against Elon Musk’s social media company X. The Commission alleged that X violated transparency rules related to its verification system and advertising disclosures. But the broader message was unmistakable: American speech platforms that resist Europe’s restrictive rules for online speech will now be punished.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded by announcing travel bans on five European individuals who had “led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.” This is no mere symbolic gesture, but rather a blunt warning to our allies that the United States will not tolerate strongarming American tech companies into actions that clearly violate the Constitution.

Among the sanctioned names was Thierry Breton, the European Union’s former internal market commissioner and the chief architect of the Digital Services Act (DSA), a sweeping 2022 law that empowers bureaucrats in Brussels to police online speech.

Under the DSA, large technology platforms face escalating fines—up to six percent of a company’s global annual revenue—if they fail to comply with E.U. content rules governing “hate speech,” “disinformation,” and other vaguely defined categories of prohibited expression. The DSA was never meant to remain confined to Europe, and its use as a global speech-chilling tool has been evident from the start.

In the lead-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Breton warned Musk that hosting a conversation with Donald Trump on X could constitute the “amplification of harmful content.” With X already under DSA investigation, Breton made clear that failure to “mitigate” the exchange could expose the platform to E.U. punishment. Musk refused, and the interview with Trump was streamed on X.

President Trump’s election victory left many architects of Biden’s “censorship-industrial complex” without influence, pushing them to seek new platforms abroad. The E.U. offered one, elevating figures such as Nina Jankowicz, the former head of Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board. Before the European Parliament last spring, Jankowicz encouraged lawmakers to wield the DSA against the United States, describing American citizens as a global threat.

Europe preferred not to fine X, E.U. spokesman Thomas Regnier told the media. Regnier also insisted that “our digital legislation has nothing to do with censorship… we adopt the final decision, not targeting anyone, not targeting any company, not targeting any jurisdiction.”

He offered the example of TikTok as further evidence. Like X, that platform faced censure but readily complied with the E.U.’s demands and avoided punishment. However, this only reinforces the Trump administration’s claim that the DSA functions as a censorship tool, as it is not surprising that a company effectively controlled by the Chinese government—hardly known for its commitment to free speech—quickly complied with Brussels’ online speech restrictions.

The implications of Europe’s attack on U.S. free speech extend far beyond mere corporate compliance, as the E.U. would suggest. By leveraging its market power, the European Commission knows that it is effectively exporting its censorship regime to the global internet. Last year, the E.U. fined Apple, Meta, and Google billions collectively under the Digital Markets Act and its competition laws for refusing to redesign search algorithms and user data-collection systems to comply with European information search standards.

The economic pressure to conform is overwhelming. As a result, decisions made in Brussels will increasingly shape what Americans can say, read, and share online.

This is not speculation. The DSA’s enforcement mechanisms explicitly encourage platforms to preemptively suppress content deemed “harmful” by European regulators. Those determinations are not tethered to constitutional protections for political speech. Instead, they reflect a European legal culture that prioritizes social harmony, bureaucratic discretion, and state-managed information flows over individual liberty.

What Europe labels as “hate speech” or “misinformation” often encompasses lawful political expression in the United States. Views on immigration, public health policy, election integrity, and cultural norms—topics at the heart of democratic debate—are routinely targeted for “moderation.” When American tech platforms comply, Americans lose their ability to speak freely in the digital public square.

The fine against X illustrates how this system works in practice. While framed as a technical enforcement action, it signals that platforms deviating from Europe’s restrictive speech codes will face crippling financial consequences. The rational inevitable response for most internet companies is not to fight but to overcorrect by removing more content, silencing more voices, and narrowing permissible debate.

That chilling effect is precisely what the First Amendment was designed to prevent. The Constitution does not merely protect speech from direct government censorship. It also safeguards the conditions necessary for open discourse – conditions now being eroded by foreign regulators wielding fines as a form of economic coercion to silence speech.

The United States cannot afford to be complacent. If American leaders fail to push back, Europe’s model will become the default for the global Internet.

Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has reportedly pressured the E.U. to roll back its digital rule book as part of ongoing trade negotiations. Trump should also challenge the DSA at the World Trade Organization to ensure Europe acknowledges that free speech is in our national interest and cannot be violated.

If talks stall and Europe refuses to budge, then Congress should make it illegal for American companies to cooperate with foreign governments in ways that restrict Americans’ speech rights online. This will force companies to choose which market to exist in, thereby depriving Europe of American tech innovation – a crucial economic lifeline for a continent that has failed to produce much of anything in the past several decades.

At stake is more than corporate autonomy or diplomatic friction. The question is whether Americans will retain the practical ability to exercise their First Amendment rights in an interconnected world. A free society cannot outsource its speech norms to foreign bureaucracies hostile to constitutional liberty.

To remain part of the free world, Europe must remember what free speech demands. America will not apologize for defending a shared heritage of liberty against those now working to dismantle it.

W.J. Lee has served in the White House, NASA, on multiple campaigns, and in nearly all levels of government.