US bans former EU Commissioner and others over social media rules

The Trump administration has issued travel bans that prohibit five European tech researchers, including one former EU Commissioner, from entering the United States. “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,” said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

That official is Thierry Breton, the former European Commissioner for Internal Markets and Digital Services, who Sarah Rogers called the “mastermind” of the Digital Services Act. Rogers, the Under Secretary of State, said Breton threatened Elon Musk about ongoing formal proceedings for X’s noncompliance with “illegal content” and “disinformation” under the DSA just before his meeting with President Trump. The administration has also banned Imran Ahmed from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), who apparently called for American anti-vaxxers to be deplatformed. One of those people is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who’s now the US Secretary of Health.

Clare Melford from the UK-based Global Disinformation Index has also been banned. Her group monitors online platforms for hate speech. Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon from German organization HateAid, have been banned, as well. HateAid flags hate speech online for the EU under DSA rules.

As The New York Times notes, these travel bans emphasize the administration’s close relationship with internet and tech companies, which would benefit from having DSA rules loosened or abolished. The Global Disinformation Index called the travel bans “an authoritarian attack on free speech and an egregious act of government censorship.” Meanwhile, von Hodenberg and Ballon said the bans mark a new escalation. “The US government is clearly questioning European sovereignty,” they said.