Good morning.Christmas is the time of peace on earth and goodwill towards all men.But there is not much sign of that in US/UK relations this morning, where the Trump administration has just sanctioned two Britons, among others, for supposedly trying to suppress free speech in the US, and that has led to the Lib Dem leader Ed Davey engaging in a Twitter spat with a senior figure in the US state department.Let’s start with the sanctions.Yesterday Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, issued this statement saying:The State Department is taking decisive action against five individuals who have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.

These radical activists and weaponized NGOs have advanced censorship crackdowns by foreign states—in each case targeting American speakers and American companies.As such, I have determined that their entry, presence, or activities in the United States have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.The state department has sanctioned five Europeans.The list includes two Britons: Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, and Clare Melford, who runs the Global Disinformation Index.Ahmed used to work for the Labour party and he is close to Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff.

According to Politico’s London Playbook, Ahmed is based in Washington, where he has an American wife and child, and he now faces deportation,Politico also says Melford faces having her US visa revoked,Last night Sarah Rogers, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy at the state department, posted a thread on X defending the decision,She said the Trump administration was targeting the “censorship-NGO ecosystem”,Today, the United States issued SANCTIONS reinforcing the “red line” I invoked on @GBNEWS.

Namely: extraterritorial censorship of Americans.Today’s sanctions target the censorship-NGO ecosystem.These sanctions are visa-related.We aren’t invoking severe Magnitsky-style financial measures, but our message is clear: if you spend your career fomenting censorship of American speech, you’re unwelcome on American soil.She also took a swipe at the Liberal Democrats.

None of those sanctioned is a current UK or EU official—however, we know that foreign government officials are actively targeting the United States.This week, the UK’s Liberal Democrats claimed President Trump’s National Security Strategy amounts to “foreign interference” by a “hostile foreign state” because it correctly identifies mass migration and decaying national sovereignty as existential European security concerns.In fact, Davey did not say the national security strategy amounts to foreign interference in British politics because it is critical of mass migration.He said that because the document explicitly says US policy for Europe should prioritise, among other things, “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations”.In a direct response to Rogers on X last night, Davey made this point himself.

Donald Trump has made it his explicit policy to ‘cultivate resistance’ in the UK and elsewhere.So yes, I think that counts as foreign interference.I will be blogging until about 2pm.If there is time, I may even get round to covering something festive.We are closing this blog shortly but you can read the report here by my colleague, Kiran StaceyThe UK government said it is “fully committed to upholding the right to free speech”, after two campaigners working to prevent the spread of online hate and disinformation was barred from entering the US.

Chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) Imran Ahmed, who has links to senior Labour figures, and Clare Melford, head of the UK-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI), are among five Europeans affected.A UK government spokesperson said:The UK is fully committed to upholding the right to free speech.“While every country has the right to set its own visa rules, we support the laws and institutions which are working to keep the internet free from the most harmful content.“Social media platforms should not be used to disseminate child sex abuse material, incite hatred and violence, or spread fake information and videos for that purpose.”US secretary of state Marco Rubio had accused the five Europeans of leading “efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose”.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the European Union have accused Washington of “coercion and intimidation”, after the US imposed a visa ban on five prominent European figures who have been at heart of the campaign to introduce laws regulating American tech giants.The list includes Imran Ahmed, the British chief executive of the US-based Center for Countering Digital Hate, and another Briton, Clare Melford, who runs the Global Disinformation Index and who is based in the UK.While the EU and the French and German governments have condemned the US move, the UK government not yet issued a comment – although it is expected to issue a statement later.Keir Starmer has called on Britons to show kindness to struggling friends or family this Christmas, saying being in touch with those in need can make a big difference.Other party leaders have also issued Christmas messages.

(See 10.48am and 1.27pm.)Dan Milmo, the Guardian’s global technology editor, has written a good analysis of the significant of the US’s decision to impose visa restrictions on five European figures prominent in efforts to counter hate and disinformation online.Here is an extract.

Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator charged with overseeing the OSA [Online Safety Act], has not been affected by the visa bans announced on Christmas Eve, but there is an implicit threat in the air,One of those targeted by the move is the former European industry commissioner Thierry Breton, an architect of the DSA,The message is clear: watch out regulators,Trump allies have also targeted Imran Ahmed’s Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a US-UK organisation which campaigns against online hate speech,CCDH was the target of an Elon Musk lawsuit in 2023 but the claim was thrown out by a judge last year who said the legal challenge, which focused on allegations that CCDH accessed data on X illegally, was in fact “about punishing the defendants for their speech”.

In a post on X, Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist”, described CCDH as a “truly evil organization that just wants to destroy the first amendment under the guise of doing good!”The UK’s OSA remains a subject of White House ire.JD Vance, the US vice-president, has said free speech in the UK is “in retreat”.In July, Jim Jordan, a Republican congressman who has criticised the act, led a delegation of US politicians to discuss the legislation with the Labour government and Ofcom.And here is the full article.Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, has not spoken out yet about being sanctioned by the US state deparment.

(See 9.49am.) But if you want to hear him talking about disinformation and Elon Musk, he was interviewed on this topic last year in this episode of Ctrl Alt Deceit, a podcast examining threats to democratic institutions hosted by Nina Dos Santos, a former CNN journalist, and Owen Bennett-Jones, a former BBC foreign correspondent.Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has now released his Christmas video message.The US state department says it has imposed visa restrictions on Clare Melford, head of the Global Disinformation Index, because the GDI encouraged “censorship and blacklisting of American speech and press”.

(See 10.08am.) Melford is based in the UK, but it is understood that she had been planning a visit to her US office next year.In a report on this story this morning, the comment website UnHerd says that it has lost revenue because of the way it has been portrayed by GDI in information to advertisers.UnHerd, which is owned by Paul Marshall, who also owns the Spectator and a stake in GB News, is generally seen as rightwing, but it could also be described as contrarian and it does publish articles from leftwingers.

In his report today for UnHerd, James Billot explains:The [US] move comes amid mounting controversy over the GDI’s activities, particularly its treatment of media outlets including UnHerd,In January 2024, the GDI confirmed in an email that it had placed UnHerd on a so-called “dynamic exclusion list”, citing articles by writers including Kathleen Stock, Julie Bindel and Debbie Hayton as examples of problematic content,The organisation equated “gender-critical” views with disinformation, despite such beliefs being protected under UK law,The GDI’s rating resulted in UnHerd receiving just 2% to 6% of the advertising revenue normally expected for an outlet of its size,Freddie Sayers, UnHerd’s editor-in-chief, explained this in more detail in a video last year.

The Global Disinformation Index, which is run by Clare Melford, one of the two Britons on the list of five Europeans facing US visa restrictions because of their work to stop online disinformation and hate (see 9.28am), has described the US state department’s decision as “immoral, unlawful and un-American”.In a reponse, a GDI spokesperson said:The visa sanctions … are an authoritarian attack on free speech and an egregious act of government censorship.The Trump Administration is, once again, using the full weight of the federal government to intimidate, censor, and silence voices they disagree with.Their actions today are immoral, unlawful, and un-American.

And, it must be said, deeply ironic.Only the bullies and petty fascists of the Trump administration could miss the irony of decrying “speech suppression” while using state power to silence critics engaging in protected speech.GDI exists so that the public can understand and evaluate the information they find online.We fight speech with more speech.If only the federal government were brave enough to do the same.

This is what Sarah Rogers, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy at the US state department, said last night on her social media thread about why the two German HateAid campaigners (see 12.28pm) were facing visa restrictions.WE’VE SANCTIONED: Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, the leader and founder of HateAid, a German organization founded after the 2017 German federal elections to counter conservative groups.HateAid is an official “trusted flagger” (a censor) under the EU’s anti-speech Digital Services Act (DSA) and routinely demands access to propriety social media platform data to help it censor more.Hodenberg cited threat of “disinformation” from “right-wing extremists” online in upcoming U.

S.and EU elections when circulating a petition for the DSA to become more strongly enforced to allow data access for “researchers”.WE’VE SANCTIONED: Josephine Ballon, co-leader of HateAid, who flags disfavored speech throughout Europe under the Digital Services Act.In addition to her running an official “trusted flagger” body under the DSA, she serves on Germany’s Advisory Council of the Digital Services Coordinator (DSC), which directly advises Germany’s DSC on the application and enforcement of the DSA.In February 2025, Ballon spoke before an American audience in a notable 60 Minutes interview, outlining her position on censorship succinctly: “Free speech needs boundaries.

” In October 2024, she vowed to stop the “emotionalization of debates” by “regulating platforms”.The German government has also criticised the US decision to impose visa restrictions on five Europeans over their stance on hate speech.There are two Germans on the list: Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon, who are co-leaders of HateAid, a German group that tries to counter “hate, violence and systematic disinformation” online.In a statement, the German justice ministry said the two activists had the government’s “support and solidarity” and the visa bans on them were unacceptable.It went on:Anyone who describes this as censorship is misrepresenting our constitutional system.

The rules by which we want to live in the digital space in Germany and in Europe are not decided in Washington.We have not had any response yet from the UK government over the US decision to sanction five Europeans over their stance on hate speech.(See 9.28am.)But Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has condemned the decision.

He issued this statement this morning,France condemns the visa restriction measures taken by the United States against Thierry Breton and four other European figures,These measures amount to intimidation and coercion aimed at undermining European digital sovereignty,The European Union’s digital regulations were adopted following a democratic and sovereign process by the European Parliament and the Council,They apply within Europe to ensure fair competition among platforms, without targeting any third country, and to ensure that what is illegal offline is also illegal online.

The rules governing the European Union’s digital space are not meant to be determined outside Europe.Together with the European Commission and our European partners, we will continue to defend our digital sovereignty and our regulatory autonomy.Unlike UK party leaders (see 10.48am), and the king, I don’t have a Christmas message for the nation.But I do have one for readers, which is to say: thank you very much for reading, and for taking an interest (journalism does not work without an audience); thank you for your comments, and suggestions, and even your criticisms (at least, some of them) – our reporting is better as a result of the feedback we get; and thank you in particular if you support us financially, because the Guardian doesn’t have a paywall and we can only make our stories available to everyone because enough readers believe we are providing a public good.

Merry Christmas to you all and Happy New Year.In her tweet about why Imran Ahmed is being sanctioned (see 9.49am), Sarah Rogers said that one problem was that the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which Ahmed runs, reportedly wants to bring down Elon Musk’s X.She was referring to this report published by the Disinformation Chronicle, a website that says it specialises in reporting on scientific disinformation.Last night Paul Thacker, one of the reporters who wrote that story, posted a message on X welcoming the news that Ahmed might have to leave the US.

Another person who might feel vindicated by the state department’s decision is Paul Holden, the investigative journalist who recently published The Fraud, a serious, meticulous hatchet job, based on a mass trove of leaked information, examining the way Morgan McSweeney, who is now the PM’s chief of staff, and Keir Starmer went to war with the Corbynites and took control of the Labour party.Holden writes in some detail about how Ahmed and McSweeney worked together and he suggests that Ahmed’s work at the CCDH could eventually damage relations between the Trump and Starmer administrations.He says:Ahmed and the CCDH would migrate to the US after the spectre of Corbynism had been vanquished.From this new perch, they began targeting populist politicians, including Robert F.Kennedy Jnr