UK citizens flock to Trump's free speech portal

Max Thompson, Campaigns Officer

1 June 2026

At the start of the year, it was revealed that the US State Department was setting up a free speech portal — a website that would allow British and European citizens to bypass onerous and censorious online safety regimes, in a landmark moment in the transatlantic row over censorship.

The Trump administration has been highly critical of the state of free speech in both the UK and the EU, particularly in relation to the EU's Digital Services Act and the UK's Online Safety Act. Senior figures within the administration have voiced concerns that these laws are harming US tech businesses and posing a direct threat to the First Amendment rights of US citizens.

The freedom.gov website has been described by Sarah Rogers — US Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Donald Trump's free speech tsar — as a "censorship circumvention project". Rogers has said that British citizens are flocking to it more than any other nationality, because they are living under a government "hostile to freedom of speech".

The VPN-like website is still in development but has a landing page that reads: "Freedom is coming. Information is power. Reclaim your human right to free expression. Get ready." It is illustrated with an image of Paul Revere, the American revolutionary, riding a galloping horse.

Speaking at an event held at the Hudson Institute, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, Sarah Rogers said that "the clear majority of visitors to that landing page are Brits".

Rogers added: "It's no coincidence. America, our roots are in Britain, the roots of our common law are in Britain. We have more in common with these people than divides us. Just because government and key sectors of civil society are hostile to freedom of speech doesn't mean the people are."

The Online Safety Act, passed under the last government but implemented by Sir Keir Starmer's administration, has been the focal point of much of President Trump's concern about the state of free speech in the UK. Under the legislation, social media companies are required to comply with guidelines set out by the Act's regulator, Ofcom. Should any platform fail to comply, it could face fines of up to £18 million or 10 per cent of annual turnover.

The Trump administration's national security strategy revealed our closest ally's interest in "cultivating resistance" in European politics, pinpointing mass migration and "censorship of free speech" as forces that would lead to "civilisational erasure".

The 33-page document, published in December, read: "American diplomacy should continue to stand up for genuine democracy, freedom of expression, and unapologetic celebrations of European nations' individual character and history. America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism."

Rogers has said that she is interested in working with the Free Speech Union, the leading free speech campaign group in the UK, which has 45,000 members.

She went on to say: "I think it is America's role to advance receptivity among European publics to certain ideas: ideas like 'mass migration disrupts societies'; ideas like 'Europe should take a stronger hand in its own defence'; ideas like 'the government should focus on policing the streets, not the tweets'. It's not just populist far-right parties — so-called 'far-right parties', I think these parties actually have views that are pretty mainstream in some instances — that have come around to those concerns."

The comments came at the same time as eleven commentators were barred from entering the UK ahead of the Unite the Kingdom rally. The Prime Minister described these figures — all of whom had criticised mass migration — as "far-right agitators" who were "not conducive to the public good". Several were US citizens.

It comes to something when the UK's closest ally feels it necessary to create a website for British citizens to bypass Orwellian and censorious online safety restrictions.

Read more in The Times.