- The launch scheduled for last week was delayed.
- The portal team includes former DOGE member Coristine.
- Officials discussed including a VPN feature.
The US State Department is developing an online portal that will allow people in Europe and elsewhere to view content banned by their governments, including alleged hate speech and terrorist propaganda, a move Washington sees as a way to counter censorship, three sources familiar with the plan said.
The site will be hosted on “freedom.gov,” sources said. One source said officials had discussed including a virtual private network feature to make a user’s traffic appear to originate in the US, adding that user activity on the site will not be tracked.
Spearheaded by Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers, the project was expected to be unveiled at last week’s Munich Security Conference but was delayed, the sources said.
Reuters could not determine why the launch did not occur, but some State Department officials, including lawyers, have expressed concerns about the plan, two of the sources said, without detailing the concerns.
The project could further strain ties between the Trump administration and traditional U.S. allies in Europe, already exacerbated by trade disputes, Russia’s war in Ukraine and President Donald Trump’s attempt to assert his control over Greenland.
The portal could also put Washington in the unfamiliar position of appearing to encourage citizens to disobey local laws.
In a statement to Reuters, a State Department spokesperson said the US government does not have a censorship circumvention program specifically for Europe, but added: “However, digital freedom is a priority for the State Department, and that includes the proliferation of privacy and censorship circumvention technologies such as VPNs.”
The spokesman denied any announcement had been delayed and said it was inaccurate that State Department lawyers had raised concerns.
The Trump administration has made free speech, particularly what it sees as the suppression of conservative voices online, a focus of its foreign policy, including in Europe and Brazil.
The European approach to freedom of expression differs from that of the United States, where the Constitution protects virtually all expression. The European Union’s limits arose from efforts to combat any resurgence of extremist propaganda that fueled Nazism, including its defamation of Jews, foreigners and minorities.
U.S. officials have denounced EU policies that they say are stifling right-wing politicians, including in Romania, Germany and France, and have claimed that rules such as the EU Digital Services Act and Britain’s Online Safety Act limit free speech.
The EU delegation in Washington, which acts as an embassy for the 27-nation bloc, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the US plan.
In rules that fall most heavily on social media sites and large platforms such as Facebook and Meta’s
Frictions with European regulators
The State Department’s Rogers has become an outspoken defender of the Trump administration’s position on EU content policies. He has visited more than half a dozen European countries since taking office in October and met with representatives of right-wing groups that the administration says are being oppressed. The department did not make Rogers available for an interview.
In a National Security Strategy released in December, the Trump administration warned that Europe faced a “civilizational erasure” due to its immigration policies. He said the United States would prioritize “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.”
EU regulators periodically require US-based sites to remove content and may impose bans as a measure of last resort. X, owned by Trump ally Elon Musk, was fined €120 million in December for non-compliance.
Germany, for example, in 2024 issued 482 removal orders for material it considered supported or incited terrorism and forced providers to remove 16,771 content.
Similarly, in 2024 Meta’s supervisory board ordered the removal of posts from a Polish political party that used racial slurs and described migrants as rapists, a category of content that EU law treats as illegal hate speech.
Kenneth Propp, a former State Department official who worked on European digital regulations and now works at the Atlantic Council’s European Center, called the U.S. plan “a direct shot” at European rules and laws, and said freedom.gov “would be perceived in Europe as a U.S. effort to thwart provisions of national laws.”
Also involved in the US portal effort is Edward Coristine, a former member of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which cuts jobs, two sources said. Coristine works with the National Design Studio, created by Trump to beautify government websites. Reuters was unable to reach Coristine for comment.
It was unclear what benefits the US government portal would offer users that are not available on commercial VPNs.
The freedom.gov web address was registered on January 12, according to the get.gov federal registry. On Wednesday, the site had no content but displayed the National Design Studio logo, the words “fly, eagle, fly” and a login form.
Before Trump’s second term, the US government helped fund commercial VPNs and other tools as part of efforts to “promote democracy globally” and help users access free information in China, Iran, Russia, Belarus, Cuba, Myanmar and other countries.
