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The Trump administration has been on a monthslong campaign railing against what it says are draconian censorship regulations in Europe that have not only stifled free speech, but have also served as another roadblock amid the artificial intelligence evolution.
“In Europe, thousands are being convicted for the crime of criticizing their own governments,” the State Department recently posted to X, accompanied by a graphic slamming Europe’s Digital Services Act (DSA). “This Orwellian message won’t fool the United States. Censorship is not freedom.”
The EU adopted the DSA in 2022 to regulate online platforms such as social networks, content-sharing platforms and app stores, and is intended to “prevent illegal and harmful activities online and the spread of disinformation.” The law has since faced opposition from the Trump administration amid its free speech promotion on the global stage.
The State Department’s X post follows a monthslong campaign of Trump officials lambasting Europe for its strict rules that limit free speech – most notably online and in the world of AI and evolving tech.
Fox News Digital spoke with Darren Beattie, acting under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, who explained that as the Trump administration takes a hatchet to restrictions and censorship – most notably online and left over from the Biden era – Europe has moved to intensify its censorship with laws such as DSA.
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Trump administration officials such as Secretary Rubio and VP Vance have slammed Europe over its free speech and tech restrictions. (Getty Images)
“As we are rolling back the censorship industry in the United States by actions like what the State Department did, what we did at the State Department killing the (Global Engagement Center), but it’s happening all across the administration,” he said. “What’s happening is Europe, the European Union and the UK are moving to pick up the slack. That is to say, as we’re pushing back the censorship regime domestically, it’s intensifying in Europe.”
The Global Engagement Center was an office established within the State Department during the Obama era that was plagued by accusations of censorship while positioning itself as focused on countering foreign propaganda and disinformation. The Trump administration State Department shuttered the office earlier in 2025.
Beattie added that the U.S. is not taking a “holier than thou” approach to the issue, noting that censorship loomed large throughout the U.S. under the Biden administration. He pointed to cases such as social media user Douglass Mackey, who was convicted in 2023 of conspiring to suppress voter turnout in 2016 after posting phony voting messages.
“We were, under Biden, moving in that direction in a very dangerous way,” he said. “The weaponization of government that occurred under Biden was severe.”
President Donald Trump delivered his highly anticipated AI speech at the end of July, unveiling his administration’s plan of action, which included protecting AI systems from bias. The White House Office of Science and Technology policy director Michael Kratsios previewed the plan to the media, which included warning that the U.S. will not go down the same technology path as Europe, citing its strict regulations on the tech.
President Donald Trump signed a trio of executive orders on July 23, 2025, related to AI, including one that bars the federal government from procuring artificial intelligence built with “woke” ideology. (Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press)
“The action plan calls for freeing American AI innovation from unnecessary bureaucratic red tape, ensuring all Americans reap the benefits of AI technologies and leveraging AI to drive new scientific breakthroughs,” he said.
“On deregulation, we cannot afford to go down Europe’s innovation-killing regulatory path. Federal agencies will now review their rules on the books and repeal those that hinder AI development and deployment across industries, from financial services and agriculture to health and transportation.”
The AI plan is focused on three pillars, one of which is centered on ensuring bias is not included in U.S. systems.
“The second is that we believe that AI systems should be free of ideological bias and not be designed to pursue socially engineered agendas,” AI and crypto czar David Sacks said in a press call July 23. “And so we have a number of proposals there on how to make sure that AI remains truth-seeking and trustworthy.”
Vice President JD Vance has been at the forefront of admin leaders lambasting Europe’s restrictions on AI and free speech, including the EU’s Digital Services Act.
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“The U.S. innovators of all sizes already know what it’s like to deal with onerous international rules,” Vance said at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris in February. “Many of our most productive tech companies are forced to deal with the EU’s Digital Services Act and the massive regulations it created about taking down content and policing so-called misinformation.”
Vice President JD Vance has been at the forefront of criticizing Europe over its free speech and tech regulations. (Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press)
“The AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety. It will be won by building – from reliable power plants to the manufacturing facilities that can produce the chips of the future,” he added.
Vance traveled to the Munich Security Conference days after his Paris address and delivered another fiery speech chastising Europe for employing “Soviet-style” tactics that chill free speech.
“To many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old, entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation,’ simply because they don’t like the idea that someone with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election,” he said in the address.
The speech set off criticisms in Europe and the U.S., including CBS host Margaret Brennan suggesting during an interview with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on “Face the Nation” in February that free speech had been “weaponized” to bring about the Holocaust in Nazi Germany.
The State Department, which is led by Secretary Marco Rubio, lambasted Europe’s “Orwellian” free speech restrictions. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Rubio launched a fierce defense of Vance while noting his concern that Europe hold the same values as the U.S., such as protecting free speech and democracy.
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“Why would our allies or anybody be irritated by free speech and by someone giving their opinion? We are, after all, democracies,” Rubio said. “The Munich Security Conference is largely a conference of democracies in which one of the things that we cherish and value is the ability to speak freely and provide your opinions. And so, I think if anyone’s angry about his words, they don’t have to agree with him, but to be angry about it, I think actually makes his point.”
“I think the valid points he’s making to Europe is: We are concerned that the true values that we share, the values that bind us together with Europe, are things like free speech and democracy and our shared history in winning two world wars,” Rubio added of Vance’s speech.
FCC chief Brendan Carr slammed Europe’s DSA law, saying its rules are not compatible with U.S. free speech traditions. (Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Federal Communication Commission chief Brendan Carr in March said the DSA’s monitoring of online content is incompatible with U.S. free speech.
“There’s a risk that (EU) regulatory regime imposes excessive rules with respect to free speech,” he told the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in March. “The censorship that is potentially coming down the pipe from the [Digital Services Act] is something that is incompatible with… our free speech tradition.”
The White House laid out at the end of July that among its top efforts while unleashing artificial intelligence – which it said will usher in the next “industrial revolution” – would be focusing on preserving free speech while also encouraging tech innovation through regulation cuts.
The White House said it would update its “Federal procurement guidelines to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias,” as well as remove “onerous Federal regulations that hinder AI development and deployment, and seek private sector input on rules to remove.”
Trump signed a trio of executive orders aimed at implementing his AI agenda, including one that bars the federal government from procuring artificial intelligence built with “woke” ideology.
“I will be signing an order banning the federal government from procuring AI technology that has been infused with partisan bias or ideological agendas, such as critical race theory, which is ridiculous. And from now on, the U.S. government will deal only with AI that pursues truth, fairness and strict impartiality,” he said.
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“We’re not going to go through the craziness that we’ve gone through for the last four years.… Now it’s not hanging around at all now. It’s actually very uncool, as somebody told me the other day, It’s so uncool to be woke.” he added.
Fox News Digital reached out to the EU’s press team for comment on the Trump administration’s ongoing crusade against European censorship, but did not immediately receive a reply.
