Transcript: US House Judiciary Hearing on ‘Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation’

The United States House Judiciary Committee held a hearing Wednesday taking aim at European online safety laws, specifically the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act (OSA) and the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA). The session sparked partisan feuding over what counts as “censorship,” whether imposed by foreign governments or domestic platforms, and who gets to decide where the line is drawn.

The hearing was the latest effort in a broader conservative campaign to discredit foreign tech regulations and cast them as a threat to free speech and American sovereignty. Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and his allies argue that laws like the DSA enable government-directed censorship under the guise of safety and create regulatory spillover that unfairly targets US-based platforms. US President Donald Trump denounced foreign tech legislations in a post on his Truth Social platform as “designed to harm, or discriminate against, American Technology,” and warned of potential retaliatory tariffs if they aren’t rolled back.

Ahead of the hearing, a group of European scholars wrote to Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to clarify what they see as persistent misconceptions about the DSA. In their letter, they argued that the law was adopted to advance the expression rights of users by giving them procedural rights and more control regarding the moderation of their content by online platforms. EU officials, including Commissioner Henna Virkkunen, have insisted that the DSA is “content-agnostic” and does not grant Brussels the authority to regulate lawful speech, the letter noted.