US Congress holds hearing on EU censorship: As it happened

Under the DSA, a statement like “we need to take our country back” would be considered illegal hate speech, Price tells Rep. Russell Fry. Price thinks there’s a connection between Spain legalizing half a million illegal immigrants last week, then announcing a major crackdown on online speech.

“We’re seeing…a desperate attempt to hold together the civic discourse by using censorship and threats,” he says.

“There’s just a huge bubbling sense of frustration that could lead to some sort of societal collapse,” Linehan predicts.

Rep. Harriet Hageman agrees, adding that “the first act of a tyrant is to strip you of your right to speak, because they know that their policies and ideas cannot withstand scrutiny.”

“I think that we are seeing that repeatedly in England, in Spain, in France, in other countries.”

Price thinks that “the story of the next couple of decades will be watching Europe descend into a series of crises – demographic, economic and so on”

“It’s going to be a real tragedy, and the only solution they have is ‘don’t talk about it’.”

“Ultimately they want to ban your belief in scripture…they want to ban your ability to believe in the Bible and make it socially unacceptable to do so,” Rep. Brad Knott tells Rasanen. 

“I find it grossly offensive that the resources of the state are going after wonderful people like you while crime of every sort has increased over the last number of years in your home country,” he continues. “That’s disgusting.”

Price believes that the EU is going after X “because X has decided to have the most possible free speech.”

Linehan adds that the EU’s “silencing of alternative voices” has left citizens with no means of debating issues like immigration. He warns that riots – like those on the streets of Dublin in late 2024 after a migrant stabbed multiple children – will only become more common as censorship is increased.

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The US has accused the EU of censorship: Here’s how the bloc’s consensus machine works 

The Judiciary Committee’s report revealed that the EU has been coercing tech platforms into silencing a wide range of legal speech for more than a decade. Long before the DSA came into effect, platform executives were threatened with future legal action if they refused to sign up for the European Commission’s “hate speech” and “disinformation” codes of practice.

Once signed up, they were pressured to demote, remove, and ban “anti-migrant,” “populist,” and “anti-elite” content, and to censor content critical of Covid-19 restrictions and the bloc’s proxy war in Ukraine.

Read RT’s coverage of the report here, and discover how the EU used these censorship tools to purge dissent and rig an election in Romania, all while accusing Russia of doing the meddling.

Rep. Chuy Garcia dismisses the hearing as a “sham,” and “an effort to distract from the brutal assault on First Amendment rights by the Trump administration and its lackeys in Congress”

"The greatest threat to free speech and dissent is the Republican party today,” he declares, before – like all of his Democrat colleagues before him – complaining about ICE.

US Vice President JD Vance called out the EU censorship machine at last year’s Munich Security Conference, accusing “EU Commission commissars” of waging a war on free speech.

“The administration was shining a light on the nature of the problem,” Price says, adding that “this is going to get worse. You have people being arrested for praying silently in the UK, people being prosecuted for posting Bible verses, making jokes.”

Texas Rep. Troy Nehls brings the discussion back to the EU, but he’s got an issue with other regulations – namely the bloc’s corporate sustainability laws. These “nothing short of a full-blown assault on American sovereignty and energy independence.” 

The mandates force Texas oil and gas companies to comply with environmental treaties never agreed to in order to supply Europe with liquefied natural gas, he explains. 

Price agrees that these EU regulations are part of a wider effort by Brussels “to make the world in its image.”

Mayell has become the star witness of the hearing, as Democrats and Republicans go back and forth about whether protesters in Minnesota are exercising their Constitutional rights, or obstructing law enforcement agents. 

“The feeling in Minnesota is one of disruption,” Mayell says, after multiple rounds of questioning without any mention of the EU.