Preston Byrne

This page collects, in one place and in chronological order, an essentially complete public record of the campaign, beginning in 2025, of a handful of free speech lawyers to (1) fight foreign censors’ attempts to extraterritorially enforce foreign censorship laws in the United States, and (2) to convince Congress of the necessity of enacting a foreign censorship shield law.

This page exists so that journalists, congressional staff, lawyers, and researchers don’t have to reconstruct the chronology themselves. Every date below is the original publication date. I will keep this page updated as events develop.

Reminder: What is a GRANITE Act?

A GRANITE Act would shield Americans from attempts by foreign governments to censor them online.

As the term is commonly used in free speech law circles, a “GRANITE Act” does three essential things:

  1. The shield: it confirms, in statute, the existing judge-made position on non-enforcement of foreign censorship orders, demands, and judgments under First Amendment doctrine;
  2. The sword: if a federal bill, it creates a private right of action, of some type, that can be brought against a foreign censor (this requirement is optional for state bills, as federal supremacy issues that crop up here have proven tricky in the past); and
  3. The definitions: it defines “foreign censorship law” and the type of foreign censorship action which engages the shield and, where applicable, the sword in such a way as to address and deter the actual censorship modalities employed by foreign censorship agencies, which are frequently conducted by administrative fiat rather than by judicially-supervised due process.

There are at least eight different public versions of introduced or introduction-ready bills incorporating various parts of the GRANITE Act architecture in circulation as of today. In order of their production:

  • February 2026: The Wyoming GRANITE Act 2026, HB 70, the first-ever GRANITE bill, which I co-authored with Colin Crossman and Daniel Singh, a sword & shield state bill with extensive federal savings language, introduced in February 2026. It passed the Wyoming House of Representatives 46-12 later that month before stalling in the Senate in the short budget session;
  • February 2026: The West Virginia GRANITE Act, a sword & shield state bill, introduced in the West Virginia Senate mere days after Wyoming’s bill, in the short 2026 WV session but did not advance;
  • March 2026: The Wyoming GRANITE Act (2027 reintroduction), a shield-only state bill which passed out of committee by a bipartisan vote on September 29th, 2026 and is headed to introduction in 2027;
  • July 2026: The ALEC GRANITE Act, a model bill spearheaded by Rep. Daniel Singh adopted by ALEC as a model national policy in July 2026;
  • August 2026: The Rulli GRANITE Act, HR 10174, a federal sword & shield bill, the first federal GRANITE bill, filed on August 27th;
  • September 2026: The New Hampshire GRANITE Act, filed for numbering on September 1st;
  • September 2026: The Davidson HOMEFRONT Act, HR 10309, the second federal bill implementing the GRANITE sword + shield architecture and the first to do so that includes damages language. (Full bill text.)
  • September 2026: the Senate companion to H.R. 10174, The GRANITE Act, S. 5478, is introduced by Senator Mike Lee.

The history of how this happened follows below.

I. Origins: The Problem (June – October 2025)

The GRANITE Act began as an answer to a new problem: foreign regulators were purporting to have the authority to dictate to American websites, and American citizens, what American speech those websites carried.

American targets of these unlawful demands, however, have no effective remedy available under existing U.S. law – either because (a) there is no recognizable cause of action or (b) sovereign immunity presents an obstacle.

II. The Proposal (October 18, 2025)

  • October 18, 2025 — The GRANITE Act: How Congress Can Strike Back Against Foreign Censors. The original post. A model statute, free-drafted on this blog, proposing a two-part structure: a shield (non-recognition of foreign censorship judgments, in the tradition of the SPEECH Act) and a sword (a private right of action, with statutory damages, for any attempt, successful or not, to censor the protected speech of Americans).
  • Everything that follows flows from this post.

III. The States: Proof of Concept (November 2025 – Present)

IV. The Federal Track (December 2025 – Present)

V. The UK’s Censorship Export Model Falters, But The Threats Continue (May 2026-Present)

VI. The Evidence That Federal Reforms Are Needed (October 2025 – Present)

The GRANITE Act is not an abstract law reform proposal drafted as a theoretical response to a theoretical problem.

The GRANITE Act was drafted as a specific, targeted response to ten years of foreign censorship attempts, as I encountered them in practice, and as evidenced in live federal litigation. Over the course of the last 12 months, I have documented the most recent of these attempts, from the UK’s Ofcom, for public review and transparency in the “Ofcom Files” series and related posts:

To date, in eight years of attempts, no foreign regulator has collected a penny from any client of this firm, and none has attempted to domesticate a foreign censorship judgment in a United States court, although many of these censors – in particular the UK’s Ofcom – has claimed to have the power to do so.

The GRANITE Act, federally, would answer this question by confirming that foreign censors have no such power.

VII. Free Speech Reforms in the United Kingdom

Through the Adam Smith Institute, I have worked with British colleagues on designing law reform proposals, and offering constructive commentary on the proposals of others, with the objective of restoring the ancient liberty of free expression and securing its enactment as a positive right in the United Kingdom.

The principal output of this effort was the Adam Smith Institute’s Freedom of Speech Bill 2026, a six-year project on which I was lead author.

VIII. Selected Commentary and Interviews

Last updated: September 23, 2026. This page will be updated as the federal process develops.