By a Staff Correspondent | February 22, 2026
The Trump administration is building a government-run website — freedom.gov — that would allow British and European internet users to bypass content restrictions imposed under EU and UK law, accessing material their own governments have deemed unlawful. The portal, still under construction as of this week, represents one of the most provocative shots fired yet in a rapidly escalating transatlantic war over who controls the internet — and who decides what you are allowed to see.
When journalists looked up freedom.gov this week, they found a sparse landing page: a small animation of Paul Revere on horseback, the words “fly, eagle, fly”, and a stark message beneath — “Information is power. Reclaim your human right to free expression. Get Ready.” Below that, a log-in form. The domain was registered on 12 January 2026, according to the federal registry get.gov, and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is listed as the associated organisation — though most fields in the site’s registration are marked “REDACTED FOR PRIVACY.”
Three sources familiar with the plan told Reuters that the site is intended to allow people in Europe and beyond to access content banned by their governments. The project is being led by Sarah Rogers, the US Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy, and was originally planned for launch at last week’s Munich Security Conference, but the launch was delayed for reasons that have not been disclosed.
The most technically significant — and legally contentious — element of the plan is its proposed built-in Virtual Private Network (VPN). According to one source cited by Reuters, officials discussed including functionality that would make a user’s internet traffic appear to originate in the United States, effectively routing British and European users through American servers to bypass their domestic content rules. Crucially, sources say that user activity on the site will not be tracked.
If implemented, the US State Department would become, in effect, a state-sponsored VPN provider — the first of its kind offered by any major Western government. Commercial VPNs already allow individuals to do something similar, but a tool issued and run by Washington carries an entirely different weight: it would represent a formal declaration by the United States government that European and British internet law is illegitimate, and that Americans have both the right and the responsibility to help citizens circumvent it.
A State Department spokesperson sought to soften the framing, telling Reuters: “Digital freedom is a priority for the State Department, however, and that includes the proliferation of privacy and censorship-circumvention technologies like VPNs.” The spokesperson also denied that the programme was specifically targeted at Europe and insisted that no legal concerns had been raised internally — a claim contradicted by two sources who told Reuters that State Department lawyers had flagged concerns about the plan.
Who Is Behind It?
Under Secretary Rogers, a vocal advocate for the administration’s position on EU content regulation, has visited more than half a dozen European countries since taking office last October, meeting with representatives of right-wing groups she says are being “oppressed” by European content rules.
Also reported to be involved is Edward Coristine, a former member of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), who now works with the National Design Studio — a Trump initiative set up to modernise and redesign US government websites. The studio has previously contributed to projects including Trump Accounts and TrumpRx.
The US administration has made clear that its frustration extends beyond the EU to the United Kingdom. The UK’s Online Safety Act has been specifically criticised by US officials as a vehicle for censorship of conservative voices.
For British users, the implications of freedom.gov are significant. If the portal launches with functional VPN capabilities, UK residents could theoretically use it to access content that Ofcom has required platforms to restrict or remove — from political content to material that falls foul of UK hate speech legislation. The question of whether using a US government portal to circumvent UK law would itself be legal under British law has not been publicly addressed by the Home Office or Ofcom.
In December 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced visa bans on five prominent Europeans — including former EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton — accusing them of being “leading figures of the global censorship-industrial complex” who had led “organised efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose.” The EU strongly condemned the bans as “intimidation and coercion” aimed at undermining European digital sovereignty, and France’s President Emmanuel Macron accused Washington of targeting people for exercising the “fundamental right” to freedom of expression.
Breton himself, speaking on French television after the visa ban, was characteristically blunt: “We don’t need any lessons about manipulation and fake news on social networks.” On X, he asked whether “McCarthy’s witch hunt” had returned, noting that the DSA was passed by 90% of the European Parliament and unanimously by all 27 EU member states. “To our American friends,” he wrote, “censorship isn’t where you think it is.”
Kenneth Propp, a former State Department official who worked on European digital regulation and is now at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, described freedom.gov as “a direct shot” at European law. “It would be perceived in Europe as a US effort to frustrate national law provisions,” he said.
The Munich launch that didn’t happen suggests freedom.gov is not yet ready — or that the legal and diplomatic concerns being raised inside the State Department are giving officials pause. But the project’s existence has already achieved something: it has put European and British regulators on notice that Washington intends to actively contest their authority over the internet, not merely complain about it.
For the UK government, the dilemma is acute. Relations with Washington are already under strain. Now Downing Street must decide whether to formally object to a US government tool designed to let British citizens bypass British law — and risk a row with an administration it desperately needs onside — or to stay silent and watch freedom.gov launch without challenge.
Either way, the era in which European and British internet law could be enforced without geopolitical consequence appears to be over.
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