TRUMP has banned two Brits from US soil for trying to supress the free speech of US social media platforms.
Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) will be deported and Clare Melford, head of the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), will be stripped of her visa.
The State Department accused them of coercing American social media platforms into censoring viewpoints they oppose.
In a statement Secretary of State Marco Rubio said: “These radical activists and weaponized NGOs have advanced censorship crackdowns by foreign states – in each case targeting American speakers and American companies.”
The ban was also handed to Thierry Breton, former head of tech regulation at the European Commission.
Breton often butted heads with teach giants like Elon Musk when trying to get them to follow EU rules on content moderation.
Responding to the announcement, Breton slammed the ban as a “witch hunt”.
In a post on X he wrote: “To our American friends: Censorship isn’t where you think it is.”
The CCDH, a group set up by Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, has a charitable status in the US.
Set up in 2017, the organisation initially targeted online anti-Semitism.
Mr Ahmed works in the Washington office, but has clashed with some of the US president’s closest allies in the past.
In 2021 the CCDH released a list of 12 people it believed should have their accounts removed from social media for posting anti-vaccine content.
The list, dubbed the “Disinformation Dozen”, included Robert F Kennedy Jnr, the current Health Secretary.
Sarah Rogers, Under Secretary of State, posted on X: “WE’VE SANCTIONED: Imran Ahmed, key collaborator with the Biden administration’s effort to weaponise the government against U.S. citizens.”
She told The Telegraph: “These travel bans address what the Trump administration has opposed since day one: the extraterritorial censorship of Americans.”
According to the paper, the State Department accused Ms Melford’s company, GDI, of pocketing taxpayers money “to extort censorship and blacklisting of American speech and press”.
Also subject to bans were Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon of HateAid, a German organisation that the State Department said helped enforce the DSA.
And the State Department said it was ready to expand the list of those banned from the country.
The ban comes after building US opposition to the European Union’s landmark Digital Services Act (DSA).
Washington has claimed the legislation, which aims to crack down on hateful speech and misinformation, stifles free speech.
This comes just weeks after Trump signed the controversial National Security Strategy – which sharply criticised Europe’s “censorship”.
The report suggests the EU is obstructing US efforts to end the war in Ukraine – highlighting the widening rift between Washington and Brussels.
“For the first time since the end of the Second World War, the USA is no longer standing by the Europeans,” German lawmaker, Norbert Röttgen said.