Washington Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is expanding his free speech campaign internationally by focusing on European restrictions that he alleges are stifling conservatives globally, following years of looking into U.S. internet platform practices that he claims stifle conservatives.
This week, Jordan traveled to Europe, where he led a bipartisan group of members of the U.S. Congress to meet with Henna Virkkunen, the executive vice president for technical sovereignty, security, and democracy for the European Union, to address free speech issues.
In an interim assessment published last week, a committee from Jordan asserted that the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) is a worldwide censorship tool that jeopardizes free speech in the United States.
With severe penalties for non-compliance, DSA, which was enacted in 2022, mandates that major platforms take more aggressive action against unlawful content and misinformation. Critics contend it overrestricts expression, while EU authorities have justified it as essential to shield consumers from harmful information.
Following the discussion in Brussels, Jordan told reporters, “We are concerned about how the Digital Services Act will actually impact speech and the First Amendment in our country as well.” He stated that trade talks with Europe could bring up the issue.
According to U.S. Representative Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin, who chairs the Judiciary subcommittee that deals with antitrust matters, American businesses who violate EU regulations risk hefty fines and may decide not to do business in Europe as a result of the DSA.
According to Fitzgerald, America is ultimately the inventor. All Europe is doing is creating new rules to control the innovators. I don’t understand it at all.
Jordan’s group is also traveling to Ireland and the UK, where they intend to talk about their worries with the Online Safety Act, a British law that he said is comparable to the EU’s DSA.
Jordan’s committee used subpoenaed papers, including as internal correspondence and materials from a closed-door workshop between tech platforms and EU Commission employees in May 2025, to create its report.
According to the paper, those documents demonstrate how European censors try to suppress debate on issues like immigration and the environment by targeting fundamental political speech that is neither destructive nor unlawful.
Read more stories about Jim Jordan
-
Trump-backed cuts to public broadcasting and foreign aid pass both chambers of Congress
-
Harvard subpoenaed by Jim Jordan over Ivy League tuition practices
-
Jim Jordan leads GOP attack on judges blocking Trump orders
-
U.S. Supreme Court upholds ghost gun rule challenged by Ohio Republicans
The research claims that the censoring is mostly biased and targets political conservatives nearly exclusively. Even worse, European censorship may have an impact on what Americans can say and view online since European regulators expect platforms to comply with DSA censorship requirements by altering their worldwide content moderation procedures.
According to the research, among the threatened materials include satire, humor, and fundamental political speech that is protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
It claims that overzealous European bureaucrats who are given the authority by the DSA to enforce international censorship rules seriously jeopardize American free expression.
Jordan has utilized his subpoena authority to look into the content restrictions of key tech platforms since assuming the Judiciary Committee gavel. He has called executives from Meta, Google, and other businesses to testify regarding the purported repression of right-leaning opinions.
Previously, the Champaign County Republican has concentrated his monitoring efforts on domestic content moderation methods, specifically regarding the 2020 election and COVID-19 information. According to the reports his committee has issued, social media corporations and federal authorities conspired to censor conservative content, which the platforms have denied.
Stories by
Sabrina Eaton
-
Ohio s Jim Jordan sees no weaponization in Trump s actions; Democrats beg to differ
-
VP Vance to visit Ohio on Monday to promote Trump s tax legislation
-
Is it worth it? Sen. Jon Husted questions effectiveness of Greater Cleveland E-Check
