Following the revocation of President Donald Trump's sweeping foreign tariff plan, the violent deployment of ICE agents around the country, and amid the shocking release of the Epstein Files, the Trump administration is reportedly also waging a war on what it sees as international content censorship.
"Information is power. Reclaim your human right to free expression. Get ready," the current homepage of freedom.gov reads, adorned with a small animated Paul Revere animation. A venture of the U.S. State Department, exclusively reported by Reuters, the new government site is rumored to be the landing page for any content that is currently blocked by foreign powers, a way to bypass strict content laws across Europe, Brazil, and even Russia.
Notably, the European Union has a much more severe stance on extremist propaganda, including white supremacist and neo-Nazi content. Many countries have cracked down harder on such topics as they face a rise in right-wing political parties. The EU also tightly regulates terrorist propaganda and "harmful disinformation" on social media platforms — X owner Elon Musk has previously aligned himself with far-right parties across the region.
The project is run by Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers, who has repeatedly met with right-wing movement leaders abroad, and the domain has been linked to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) under the Department of Homeland Security, the Guardian reported.
Previously, the State Department funded the Internet Freedom project, which supported anti-censorship initiatives around the globe. The Trump Administration has shrunk the project's funding and recently pulled the country from the global Freedom Online Coalition.
"It feels mostly performative," a former U.S. official told the Guardian under anonymity. "It reads more like a combative policy declaration. [U.S. government] disagreements with the EU on free speech are nothing new as a matter of policy. But a portal of this kind takes it a step further, declaring publicly that the USG is concerned with freedom of expression even among our allies in Europe."
Insiders say the website was supposed to debut at the Munich Security Conference, but was allegedly delayed due to legal and foreign policy concerns, Reuters reported. A source told the publication that the department also discussed adding a VPN function that would route all user traffic through the U.S., presumably to get around location-specific bans in certain countries. That same source said that the webpage would not track user activity.
A State Department spokesperson denied the claims by insiders, adding that the U.S. government "does not have a censorship-circumvention program specific to Europe." The source clarified: "Digital freedom is a priority for the State Department, however, and that includes the proliferation of privacy and censorship-circumvention technologies like VPNs."
Despite alleged concerns, the site remains active. And, as its homepage promises, "freedom is coming."
