The Trump administration will \u200cfund efforts to promote free speech within Western countries allied with Washington, a senior State Department official said \u200don Monday during a visit to Europe focused on pushing back against European regulations that US officials have branded censorship.<\/p>\n
US officials have forcefully opposed online rules such as the EU\u2019s Digital Services Act and Britain\u2019s Online Safety Act, which Washington says stifle free speech, and in particular criticism of immigration policies, while imposing \u2060burdensome requirements on US tech companies. Advocates argue these rules combat hateful speech, misinformation and disinformation online.<\/p>\n
Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers, who has emerged as a lead figure in this push, will discuss freedom of speech and digital freedom with officials and others on her trip to Dublin, Budapest, Warsaw and Munich, the State Department said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne way my office is going to \u200doperate differently is we\u2019re going to be very forthright and transparent about everything we do,\u201d Rogers said during a panel discussion in Budapest, Hungary \u200don Monday, emphasising that her role carries the power to direct US funding through grants.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to promote free speech in Western allied democracies, and … that\u2019s what my grant making is going to be doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
A \u200cFinancial Times report last week cited sources with knowledge of the matter saying Rogers had discussed a plan to fund think tanks and charities aligned with US President Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d policies with members of the far-right \u200dReform UK Party<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration will \u200cfund efforts to promote free speech within Western countries allied with Washington, a senior…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,28351,10495,26017,1076,5335,1644,9174,2496,3,13389,214373,180195,4121,644,21,19,22,20,25,24,52074,66496],"class_list":["post-459092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-budapest","tag-digital-services-act","tag-dublin","tag-europe","tag-european-union","tag-financial-times","tag-hungary","tag-munich","tag-news","tag-online-safety-act","tag-reform-uk-party","tag-sarah-rogers","tag-state-department","tag-trump-administration","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-viktor-orban","tag-warsaw"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}