Published yesterday on the website of the U.S. Congress, buried in a $47.3 billion appropriations bill, is the opening salvo in the United States’ counteroffensive against foreign censors.
In that bill, Section 7069 of H.R. 8595, which was introduced in the House Appropriations Committee on Thursday, 4/30 and passed out of Committee the same day, we find a prohibition on making any of the “funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act, or prior Acts making appropriations for national security, Department of State, and related programs” available for the purpose of suppressing lawful speech in the United States.
This is not some minor appropriations provision. The State Department played a key role, under the Biden Administration, in censoring American citizens online. State Department agencies like the Global Engagement Center (GEC) provided grants to organizations like the Global Disinformation Index to blacklist U.S. media outlets and defund them by denying them access to advertising revenue; funded foreign entities like the University of Cambridge to target U.S. political narratives online; funded efforts to redirect Americans searching for right-wing political content; and worked in conjunction with, or pressured, websites like LinkedIn to censor domestic political content.
(The U.S. Department of State’s HQ, the Harry S Truman Building.)
These revelations, quite correctly, have infuriated congressional Republicans, who have spent several years — even before President Trump’s election — trying to obtain information about these efforts. Now, in unified control of the federal government, they appear poised to do something about it.
Hence Section 7069. Section 7069 is an appropriations measure, meaning that it tells the State Department that there are some types of programming on which it cannot spend money – and, as labor-time costs money, as a condition of federal funding, there are things that the State Department and its employees cannot do.
Sec. 7069. (a) Prohibition.—None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act, or prior Acts making appropriations for national security, Department of State, and related programs, may be made available, directly or indirectly, to carry out any activity the purpose of which is to—
Sec. 7069(a)(1):“deplatform, deboost, demonetize, suppress, or otherwise penalize what in the United States would constitute lawful online speech, a lawful news outlet, or lawful social media account activity;”
This is a general bar on the State Department providing funding to do any of these things. In practice, this would mean that an organization like, for example, the University of Cambridge, if it received U.S. State Department funding to promote Internet censorship as it has done in the past, would not be able to accept funds, or not be eligible for the disbursement of funds, that, directly or indirectly, sought to do any of the above or advocate for any of the above where that activity is lawful in the United States.
This means that State Department funding would likely be unavailable for organizations like the Global Disinformation Index, the Change the Terms Coalition, or similar. Or their funders, to the extent that there is a possibility of indirect funds flow from a funder down to the recipient – see “directly or indirectly” in 7069(a). It would not, however, foreclose the possibility of funding flowing to organizations like the Internet Watch Foundation or NCMEC, provided that IWF or NCMEC confined their advocacy to unlawful material and did not seek to branch out to the suppression of lawful American speech.
Sec. 7069(a)(2): “induce, encourage, coordinate with, or assist any social media company or online platform or intermediary to adopt or enforce any policy or practice that could be expected to deplatform, deboost, demonetize, suppress or otherwise penalize what in the United States would constitute lawful online speech from any news entity or social media account;”
This would target pressure groups that seek to use government money to advocate for the adoptions of policies, codes of practice, or other corporate rules that have as their object or effect the suppression of lawful speech in the United States “from any news agency or social media account,” which reference would include both media companies and individuals.
Sec. 7069(a)(3): induce, encourage, coordinate with, or assist any foreign government, regulator, policymaker, judicial officer, administrative body, supranational body, or international organization to adopt, interpret, or enforce any law, regulation, order, mechanism, or other measure that could be expected to deplatform, deboost, demonetize, suppress, or otherwise penalize what in the United States would constitute lawful online speech from any news entity or social media account;
Republican members of Congress have directly accused the Biden Administration of attempting to pressure AI and social media companies “to censor new models, [fund] the development of AI-powered censorship tools, and [collaborate] with censori[al] foreign nations on AI regulations,” among other things. Former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has publicly urged the European Union to “push the [EU] Digital Services Act across the line” – presumably knowing full well that the EU DSA imposes requirements that, in the United States, would be unconstitutional.
(a)(3) makes the obligations of the U.S. government with respect to taxpayer money abundantly clear: State Department funding cannot be used to encourage foreign governments to suppress American speech online through the back door, when the State Department is constitutionally barred from doing it via the front door.
Sec. 7069(a)(4): “induce, encourage, coordinate with, fund, or support any person or entity in the online advertising or monetization ecosystem to cut off, reduce, redirect, or otherwise interfere with advertising, sponsorship, payment, or other revenue on the basis of lawful online speech, news production, editorial viewpoint, political viewpoint, or social media activity;”
Google AdWords, PayPal, banks – State is not lawfully able to pressure these organizations to deplatform people on the basis of lawful online speech.
Sec. 7069(a)(5): “fund, participate in, coordinate with, or support any ‘platform accountability’, ‘information integrity’, ‘brand safety’, ‘disinformation’, ‘misinformation’, ‘hate speech’, ‘trust and safety’, ‘media literacy’, ‘digital literacy’ or similar program or initiative if the purpose or foreseeable effect is to impose legal, regulatory, financial, reputational, commercial, or political costs on a United States-based technology company, United States-based social media platform, United States-based online intermediary, or United States-based digital publisher for carrying speech protected from governmental abridgment by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States;”
Pretty simple: covers the universe of euphemisms for “censorship” and “propaganda” and bars State from funding it if the funding would target United States targets engaged in the lawful exercise of their First Amendment rights. I note that this would not prevent the U.S. from engaging in these efforts elsewhere – which is fine, in my view, because the State Department is supposed to serve the American people, and not censor them.
Sec. 7069(a)(6): “support, fund, facilitate, coordinate with, or assist any entity in supporting, drafting, promoting, defending, implementing, interpreting, enforcing, or operationalizing any foreign law, regulation, code, judicial or administrative structure, or enforcement mechanism that imposes costs on a United States-based technology company or United States-based social media platform for hosting speech that would be protected from government action under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; or”
The Ofcom Clause. This is not a federal GRANITE Act. What this language does, however, is cover the full range of activities engaged in by a foreign censorship regulator – including both judicial and administrative penalty aspects – and bars the State Department from assisting those efforts in any way, shape, or form.
For those of you not as steeped in counter-censorship law practice as I am, rest assured that this language is not symbolic. It is operative and its inclusion in this bill is well-considered, essential and proper.
This would likely preclude the State Department from assisting in the handling of letters rogatory from a foreign state seeking to censor an American citizen. It would likely not affect the MLAT procedure or Hague service, as the central authority for those processes is the Office of Justice Assistance over at the DOJ and this is not a DOJ funding bill.
Similar language to this bill in a DOJ appropriations bill, or alternatively a federal GRANITE Act, would prohibit the DOJ from cooperating with foreign censorship demands. This has been a problem in the past with my client Gab, roughly between 2017 and 2025, with German attempts to enforce that country’s proto-Online Safety Act, the “Network Enforcement Act” which is also referred to by practitioners as the “NetzDG” after its full compound-noun German name, the Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz. German notices under the MLAT ceased being a problem after we notified relevant officials that the MLAT procedure was being abused by the Germans in this way.
It now appears that the DOJ is no longer willing to retransmit German censorship demands under the NetzDG, as the Germans, in recent correspondence, have had to resort to the rather embarrassing choice of serving their enforcement notices by air mail. Air mail is not a valid method of international service in the United States, as the German Ministry of Justice is doubtlessly aware.
More recently (two weeks ago), French attempts to abuse the MLAT procedure have also been rebuffed by the DOJ (in the case of the French, targeting X rather than Gab). These refusals to cooperate are, for the moment, a discretionary decision by the Department. A federal GRANITE Act would require the DOJ to refuse cooperation in cases like this.
Sec. 7069(a)(7): “create, disseminate, share, or operationalize any blacklist or similar designation system that is used, or is reasonably likely to be used, to support an activity prohibited under paragraphs (1) through (6).”
Pretty self-explanatory.
Then Section 7069(c) requires the State Department to audit and report which funding programs violate these rules, and what steps it will take to come into compliance.
Other provisions of H.R. 8595
Section 7024 of the Bill prohibits use of federal funds to “(1)characterize United States independent news media companies as creators of disinformation, misinformation, or malinformation; (2) advocate to, or act to, censor, filter, or remove content from a United States entity on social media platforms; or (3) take any action designed to influence consumer or advertising behavior toward United States media companies or social network platforms.”
Federal funds may be used, however, “to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation, and for related purposes,” but only where they are “for the purpose of countering such efforts by foreign state and non-state actors abroad.” In other words, federal taxpayer dollars allocated by this bill may not be used to interfere with the American marketplace of ideas.
The Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill
Additionally, the committee markup of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill occurred on April 30th. Sections 221 and 573 of that bill, which has not yet been introduced (and thus does not yet have a bill number), state:
SEC. 221. None of the funds made available by this Act or any other Act shall be used, or transferred to another Federal agency, board, or commission to be used, to staff or operate the Foreign Influence Task Force for the purpose of monitoring or labeling constitutionally protected speech by a United States person as misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation.
and
SEC. 573. None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be made used to—
(1) classify or facilitate the classification of any communications by a United States person as misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation; or
(2) partner with or fund nonprofit or other organizations that pressure or recommend private companies to censor lawful and constitutionally protected speech of United States persons, including recommending the censoring or removal of content on social media platforms.
Key takeaways:
- NGOs concerned with the censorship of lawful American speech are going to have a very hard time getting their hands on U.S. federal government funding.
- The absence of extensive State Department-style appropriations language that is applicable to patch the MLAT or Hague service loopholes over at the DOJ is suggestive, but not conclusive, that Congress, if it is planning to deal with this problem, may be planning to deal with it in a standalone bill rather than as an appropriations bill, as in e.g. a federal equivalent to the GRANITE Act.
- It also suggests that the United States’ long-promised counter-censorship rollout supporting the President’s Executive Order 14149 is going to occur across multiple legislative provisions rather than in a single bill.
Preliminary conclusions
My read: in aggregate, this is pretty great.
This is the first salvo – well, really first two salvos – in the American federal legislative response to foreign censorship. Given how uncompromising this language is about solving the censorship problem in the State Department’s domain, I predict it will not be the last such legislative salvo we see in coming months.
Many of my readers will have read a lot about the GRANITE Act shield law proposals currently working their way through state legislatures on these pages and my X feed in the past.
What these appropriations bills are not, is a federal GRANITE Act. They do not provide American companies and citizens with a tool to strike back when a foreign censor targets them. H.R. 8595 is, and the Commerce etc. bill when numbered will be, however, a very useful, and ultimately the first, systemically significant contributions to the federal legislative counteroffensive against foreign censorship of Americans. These measures are historically significant, and are among of the most unapologetically anti-censorship legislative initiatives since the First Amendment itself.
Suffice it to say I am looking forward to eventually seeing what the House Judiciary Committee has been cooking up all year!
The GRANITE Act proposal we offered for Wyoming is not the only solution to foreign censorship, nor is it a complete one; GRANITE is designed to stop one, very specific, problem: the use of legal and administrative process to enforce foreign censorship laws on an extraterritorial basis.
These bills, by contrast, target funding for entities that attempt to procure censorship of American citizens on an informal or private basis – and not by banning censorship advocacy (as this would be, at least vis-a-vis Americans or those undertaking these activities in the United States, unconstitutional), but by cutting off federal funding, directly or indirectly, for censorship advocacy and pressure campaigns. If these NGOs taking federal funding want to try to censor Americans, they’re going to have to figure out how to pay for it themselves. That is a lot harder than figuring out how to pay for it with grants awarded during the Biden Administration.
If enacted, Section 7069 would constitute a highly successful strike against the amorphous corporate and non-profit blob known as the “censorship-industrial complex.” This is a constellation of organizations that perform a broad range of functions to suppress speech, often in conjunction with European censorship regulators. Their activities range from providing censors with targeting information, to conducting public advocacy and influence and propaganda operations in favor of censorship, both at home and abroad.
If this provision survives, those organizations will be forced to make a choice if they want access to American State Department money: side with the First Amendment and get funding, or side with the censors and lose it.