Freedom.gov Champions Online Speech Abroad While DHS Targets Critics
The Trump administration’s foreign policy rhetoric collides with its growing use of administrative subpoenas against online critics.
“Digital freedom is a priority for the State Department,” a department spokesperson told Reuters last week in reference to a new online initiative.
That project takes the form of an online portal called “freedom.gov,” designed to help Europeans access content restricted under laws like the European Union’s Digital Services Act or Britain’s Online Safety Act.
The message is unambiguous: Europe is suppressing speech, and America is here to help.
While the administration is correct that Europe’s regulatory approach risks turning platforms into speech police and censorship of online speech is becoming a serious problem, this new State Department initiative raises a crucial question: if digital freedom is a priority of this administration, what exactly is its Department of Homeland Security (DHS) doing?
Take the example of Jon, a 67-year-old retiree who lives in Philadelphia, profiled in the Washington Post. Jon, a naturalized U.S. citizen who moved to Pennsylvania in the late 1980s, sought citizenship because of the freedoms protected by the U.S. Constitution.
But those very freedoms were challenged last October. After reading an investigation in the Post about a DHS lawyer who was trying to deport an Afghan refugee, Jon found the attorney’s email through the Florida Bar Association’s website and sent him a four-sentence email urging him to reconsider, expressing concerns that the refugee would be killed by the Taliban if deported.
Five hours later, Jon received a message from Google that his account had been subpoenaed by Homeland Security. Three weeks later, federal agents in sports coats appeared at his door. They flashed their badges, showed him the email he sent, and asked how he found the DHS lawyer’s email address. After conjecturing that the prosecutor might have felt threatened by his email, they left.
In the same country that is building freedom.gov, federal agents came to the door of a retiree over an email.
Simultaneously, DHS has been issuing administrative subpoenas to platforms like Google, Meta, Reddit, and Discord, demanding the identities of users behind anonymous accounts that criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or tracked the locations of immigration agents. These subpoenas require no judicial approval; a mid-level DHS official can issue one without public disclosure or meaningful oversight.
The scale of DHS’s use of these subpoenas is not speculative. Both Google and Meta received a record number of subpoenas during the first half of 2025, as Trump began his second term. Google alone reported receiving 28,622 subpoenas — a 15 percent increase over the previous six months.
The cases that have surfaced publicly sketch the boundaries of who the administration considers a target. In March, DHS issued two subpoenas seeking information on a Columbia University student it wanted to deport for participating in pro-Palestinian protests. In July, it demanded broad employment records from Harvard University. In September, it subpoenaed Meta to unmask anonymous Instagram accounts that had posted about ICE raids in Los Angeles. That same month, it sought the identity behind a Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Instagram account called Montco Community Watch, which posted bilingual alerts about local immigration enforcement.
When groups like the ACLU challenge these subpoenas in court, DHS withdraws them before a judge can rule. This means the tool survives precisely because it is never tested. “The pressure is on the end user, the private individual, to go to court,” the ACLU’s Steve Loney told the New York Times. For most people, that pressure is sufficient to chill their speech.
American programs to promote free expression abroad have a long history, and not an unworthy one. The United States has funded dissident radio, supported independent journalists, and built circumvention tools for people living under genuinely authoritarian governments.
What makes freedom.gov difficult to reconcile is that some of the tactics it criticizes abroad resemble tools being used at home. Germany has raided homes before dawn over Facebook posts, fined citizens for sharing misattributed quotes, and prosecuted a man for posting a link to a protest mural. A politician filed a police report after someone called him “such a p*nis” online; four officers arrived at the poster’s door at 6 a.m. to confiscate electronics.
These cases represent a genuine departure from liberal norms, and the Trump administration is right that these laws deserve scrutiny. But pairing a digital freedom initiative with the expansive domestic use of administrative subpoenas targeting anonymous political speech raises serious concerns.
These tactics precisely describe what freedom.gov purports to oppose. The right to criticize one’s government is a core American principle — and it should promote that ideal consistently at home and abroad.
Justin Hayes is the Director of Communications at The Future of Free Speech and the Managing Editor of The Bedrock Principle.