Farage warns Americans coming to U.K. could be arrested for speech like anti-transgender comedian's

Less than 48 hours after allegedly armed London police arrested a famous Irish comedian for criticizing gender ideology while in America four months earlier, the top Democrat on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee – several of whose members traveled to Europe this summer to examine its speech climate – insisted "there's no free speech crisis in Britain."

The airport arrest of Graham Linehan, who created the internationally beloved TV shows Father Ted and The IT Crowd, proved spectacularly bad timing for Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin and subordinate Democrats on the commmittee, overshadowing their efforts to redirect Wednesday's GOP-led hearing on European threats to global free speech against President Trump.

GOP witness and U.K. Reform Party leader Nigel Farage, whom Raskin dismissed as a "Donald Trump sycophant and wannabe" who praises Russian President Vladimir Putin, didn't take the bait either, entertaining the audience as he parried Democrats' attacks with a smile, at least until Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., refused to let Farage answer a string of accusations.

When Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., asked "the future prime minister" whether the Trump administration should be "just as strong and reciprocal" by requiring foreign leaders and companies to recognize First Amendment rights as a condition of U.S. entry and business, Farage deadpanned "the entire Labour Party" that rules the U.K. would be banned.

The closest Democrats got to acknowledging the merit of GOP attacks on the European Union's Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, and U.K.'s Online Safety Act, as a threat to American speech and business was Silicon Valley Rep. Zoe Lofgren calling the EU approach to internet issues "generally wrongheaded" but the threat from GOP states and Trump worse.

The Federal Trade Commission held up a major advertising merger until Omnicom and Interpublic agreed to run ads on X, "a government-ordered gift to Elon Musk," Lofgren said, scolding Republicans for their obsession with jurisdictions out of their control.

Top Democrat compares DOGE to Stalin

A sort of trench-warfare whataboutism dominated the hearing, with Chairman Jim Jordan, of Ohio, and fellow Republicans rattling off suppression of free speech by European and U.K. officials while Raskin and Democrats cited Trump's federal funding cuts, deportations and settlements with news media as forms of censorship and authoritarianism.

Former EU Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton, who allegedly refused to even submit testimony at the committee's request, tried to influence the 2024 election by "threatening an American running an American company" – Musk and X – with DSA enforcement ahead of a planned livestream with then-GOP nominee Trump, Jordan said.

On its third day in office, the Biden administration demanded X predecessor Twitter remove a tweet by now-Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for supposed COVID-19 misinformation, Jordan said. "Today's misinformation is tomorrow's truth," and the Biden administration was "zero for eight" on its COVID assertions.

Vice President JD Vance "whitewashed the world's leading autocratic regimes" when he denounced European censorship in Munich, and "the dictators of the world have got nothing to fear from this hearing," Raskin countered. He compared the Department of Government Efficiency to Joseph Stalin for probing federal employees' speech for anti-Trump bias. 

Republicans are vilifying Europe for "engaging in the kind of line-drawing exercises" typical of First Amendment analysis when it comes to the "epidemic of child pornography," defamation, online scams and "speech-inciting riots," Raskin said. He accused Farage of hypocrisy by ranting for an hour in their summer visit but cutting off Raskin after three minutes.

Comedian's arrest 'could happen to any American' arriving in London

"I'm delighted to reacquaint" with Raskin, Farage said to laughs. "We've kind of forgotten the Voltairian principles" of sacrificing one's own life to defend disfavored speech, and Europe owes Vance a debt of gratitude for starting a real debate on its censorship.

"Sometimes the road to hell is paved with those good intentions," Farage said, noting the U.K. Conservatives passed the OSA, which got Lucy Connolly imprisoned for 10 months for an "intemperate" but soon-deleted tweet about immigrants after one murdered three girls. (Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., emphasized she was convicted for "inciting racial hatred.")

Using five armed police to arrest Linehan is "a very big deal" in the largely gun-free U.K., Farage said. "He's not even a British citizen," showing "this could happen to any American" arriving at Heathrow Airport who is at odds with the government, such as tech executives.

Reminded that he attended the 2024 GOP convention where Trump was "coronated," Farage told Rep. Johnson, "He won, didn't he?" and praised the many Trump rallies he's attended as "optimistic, happy, wonderful, joyous" gatherings. 

Trump is a "very, very brave man" but not Farage's "mentor," he corrected Johnson. "You are indeed a leader of a fringe party," Johnson said, to which Farage responded with mock seriousness, "Oh, I'm a fringe alright." 

The Reform Party leader took exception and barely got in a sentence as Johnson called him a puppet of Musk. "Elon Musk is abusive about me virtually every single week, but it's a free country," Farage said. "Can I get a cup of coffee?" he asked Jordan as Johnson continually talked over his attempts to respond.

Global 'Brussels effect' hides in 'bland technocratic language'

Alliance Defending Freedom International legal counsel Lorcán Price, who met with the congressional delegation this summer, said he noticed a "genuine element of surprise and disbelief" among lawmakers when they learned the extent of European censorship.

ADFI clients include a Finnish member of Parliament in the fifth year of prosecution for tweeting a Bible verse and U.K. people arrested and prosecuted for "offering to have communal conversations with people" or silently praying near abortion clinics, he said. 

Price said a lawyer for a major American company just told him that German authorities are prosecuting a 14-year-old boy for a "mild online post" and have launched criminal proceedings against the company's U.S. employees for refusing to identify him.

The EU takes pride in the global "Brussels effect," which is creating a "digital curtain where once there was an iron curtain," Price said. European Court of Justice case law and DSA provisions make clear "everything is there to create a digital censorship-industrial complex," though "much of this is hidden in bland technocratic language."

'You don't know where to call balls and strikes' in EU

Democrats' lone witness, University of California Irvine law professor David Kaye, said he monitored global threats to free speech as a United Nations special rapporteur from 2014 to 2020 and believes the U.S. "now leads the charge to undermine freedom of speech and of the press" globally through Trump administration practices.

Trump's "decimation" of the Voice of America is the "tip of the iceberg" of U.S. censorship, while the DSA and OSA aren't "perfect" but they "respond to problems both sides of the aisle in Congress have found serious but have yet to address," Kaye said. "Neither established censorship regimes" but rather "empower users" against Big Tech.

Rep. Issa mocked Kaye's expertise when the professor said he didn't know of California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom's $787 million defamation suit against Fox News.

The First Amendment makes such litigation extremely difficult to win, in contrast to the unspecified expression that can be punished across the pond, Issa said. "You don't know where to call balls and strikes, you just simply have to pay the fines," he said.

Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Arizona, blasted the "amorphous and almost indefinable" content moderation regime in EU, which he portrayed as "regulate when you can't innovate," pointing to Europe's far lower growth in gross domestic product since 1998 compared to the U.S.

It's not one regulation but "the stacking effect" of several on top of each other that makes it so difficult for American companies to comply with EU directives, said App Association President Morgan Reed, whose group represents small and medium application developers. The EU approach is "the beatings will continue until morale improves."