House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) on Friday told Breitbart News that the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (UK) are acting “exactly” like the Biden administration in pushing big tech platforms to censor free speech.
Jordan spoke to Breitbart News as he is traveling back to the United States after leading a bipartisan delegation to Europe this past week. Initial reports stated that he has grave concerns about what the UK and EU are doing to stifle free expression across the European Continent and the British Isles.
The House Judiciary Committee chairman detailed in a lengthy thread how the UK tried to “censor criticism” of immigration “during large-scale riots in August 2024.” The Ohio congressman wrote that UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Technology Secretary Peter Kyle “tried to censor people who called out the UK’s two-tier justice system for what it was.”
The UK Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT) said in a statement it would make “no apologies” for flagging allegedly harmful content.
Jordan, in his interview with Breitbart News, described the government’s actions as a “direct attack on free speech” and said it has a “chilling effect” on free speech.
The Ohio congressman said that this week’s delegation to the UK and EU has “not in any way alleviated our concerns. In fact, I think they’ve sort of strengthened our concern about free speech and the impact on Americans’ First Amendment liberties.”
Jordan said he believes the UK and EU pressuring tech platforms to censor free expression is similar to how the Biden administration successfully pressured Meta and other tech platforms to censor free speech.
The Biden administration sought to pressure big tech platforms into censoring videos from Tucker Carlson, information about the coronavirus pandemic, and even books for children or for parents that were “critical of big pharma.”
“That is the story that needs to be told,” Jordan said, adding:
We saw this in the Biden administration a few years ago. We did our investigation last Congress. I think that the culmination of the investigation was when we got a letter from Mr. Zuckerberg to the Committee, which said the Biden administration pressured us to censor. We did it. We’re sorry. We’re not going to do it again. And, they’ve subsequently changed policies there.
Zuckerberg, in August 2024, right before the presidential election, admitted in a letter to Jordan and the Judiciary Committee that the Biden administration pressured Facebook to censor coronavirus-related content in 2021, including “satire.” He expressed regret for not being more outspoken about the government’s actions.
Now those same companies are coming to us and saying, here’s what’s happening in Europe, on First Amendment grounds, and here’s what they’re doing to our business.”
He said his discoveries from the trip would be passed on to the White House and the Trump administration.
Jordan added that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the EU’s Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Acts are “attacks on American companies.”
Jordan also warned of the threats posed to free speech by Britain’s Online Safety Act, which was passed in 2023 but came into full effect last week and allows for UK broadcasting authority Ofcom to impose fines of up to £18 million or ten per cent of a social media platform’s global revenue. While pitched to the public as merely an attempt to safeguard children from pornography or other extreme content, critics have noted that it has already resulted in restrictions being placed on political content, such as footage of anti-mass migration protests.
In a recent post, X Global Government Affairs wrote that the bill’s “laudable intentions are at risk of being overshadowed by the breadth of its regulatory reach. Without a more balanced, collaborative approach, free speech will suffer.”
Preston Byrne, managing partner at the tech law firm Byrne & Storm, told Politico that “multiple” American websites had instructed him to sue the UK’s telecoms regulator Ofcom over free speech concerns.
“We will also be seeking a declaratory judgment from a federal court that confirms, in writing, the indisputably correct legal position that the Online Safety Act is null and void in the United States. With any luck, this should clear up the question for the hundreds of thousands of American companies that Ofcom hasn’t targeted yet, but planned to target until our clients bravely stood in their way,” he explained.
“The new rules require tech firms to tackle criminal content and prevent children from seeing defined types of material that’s harmful to them. There is no requirement on them to restrict legal content for adult users. In fact, they must carefully consider how they protect users’ rights to freedom of expression while keeping people safe,” Ofcom said in a written statement on Friday.
Jordan noted that the EU’s Digital Services Act works to attack free speech.
The Judiciary Committee said the committee will respond to this issue with legislation such as the No Censors on Our Shores Act and more congressional oversight. The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), would make non-U.S. nationals, including foreign government officials, who were involved in conduct in violation of the First Amendment, inadmissible to the country and deportable.
Jordan said that, even though the UK may face its issues with the Online Safety Act, there is a changing undercurrent.
He noted that GB News has overtaken the BBC as Britain’s most-watched news channel for the first time.
Cheering GB News, he said, “They’re willing to talk about the immigration issue in the UK, and they’re willing to talk about it in talking about and they’ve been talking about the censorship issue, and it’s funny, they’re now the number one news program in the month of July.”
“Go figure,” he retorted.
Noting that the Judiciary Committee has for years focused on oversight over government censors, he said, “I think it’s a testimony to the hard work of our committee, our staff and our members, that not only do we feel like things have changed dramatically in the United States in the proper way, where people are respecting First Amendment free speech rights. But, hopefully, we can have an impact on Europe and how it impacts Americans as well.”
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3
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