Social media platform X is such a threat to European elites that the European Commission will continue levying crippling fines until the company is forced to “bend the knee at the altar of censorship”, a judiciary committee of the US House of Representatives has heard.
Irish barrister Lorcán Price told the committee on Wednesday the Irish media regulator, Coimisiún na Meán, was co-operating with EU authorities.
Republican politicians on the committee – which is focused on “Europe’s threat to American speech and innovation” – believe statutes governing tech platforms such as the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and the UK’s Online Safety Act “threaten Americans’ right to speak freely online in the United States”.
Price told the committee X had been fined €120 million “for a series of technical breaches of the Digital Services Act”.
In a submission to the committee, Price – who is legal counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom International, based in Strasbourg – said X was at the centre of a pincer movement involving both the European Commission and Coimisiún na Meán.
He said the Digital Services Act “threatens sovereignty, the fundamental right to speech, and the ongoing commercial viability of any company that commits itself to free and open expression”.
“This is only the beginning of a series of actions co-ordinated across jurisdictions designed to single out, target and eviscerate a company for maximising freedom of expression for its users. In doing so, X builds a successful model for others to follow. However, the European Commission’s actions show that it will not tolerate a free speech platform operating in the European market.
“Rather, the EU wants to transform successful American companies into a free speech Stasi, making those businesses the censorship enforcers for the ruling elite of Europe – a group increasingly afraid of their own people speaking their minds. The fact that the commission has chosen to make an example of X through a regulatory pincer movement involving the Irish authorities and the commission itself shows a determined and co-ordinated effort to force the US company to bend the knee at the altar of censorship.”
Price said that as X is established in Ireland, it may appeal to the Irish courts for judicial review of the actions of the domestic regulator, but not of the European Commission, “as the DSA prohibits EU member state courts from contradicting the commission”.
“Instead, appeals must go to the Court of Justice for the European Union, a complex and expensive proposition that generally takes at least one-to-two years to reach a decision. This is the only route now open to X to challenge the commission’s recent enforcement decisions,” he added.
House Judiciary Committee chairman, Jim Jordan, a Republican, said the European Commission was trying to censor speech and meddle in elections worldwide.
Meanwhile, Fr Ted writer Graham Linehan told the congressional hearing in Washington that US authorities should put pressure on the Irish Government to open a debate on provisions of the Gender Recognition Act introduced in Ireland in 2015.
Addressing the judiciary committee, he said this legislation had been “quietly passed while Irish people were celebrating their vote for marriage equality”.
The legislation allowed for recognition of a change of gender and provided for gender recognition certificates.
Linehan added there had been no public consultation or any referendum about the legislation. He said no women’s rights organisations had been asked for their views.
The writer urged the US to “put pressure on the Irish Government to reopen the conversation it never had”.
“The public did not know what they were signing up for. They do now. The consequences are visible across Irish life: men in women’s prisons, men in women’s sport, children taught lies in their schools. Ireland is the country of my birth. Its women and girls deserve the debate they were denied.”
Linehan was arrested in the UK on suspicion of inciting violence in a string of posts on X in September, 2025 – an incident which drew a backlash from some quarters in the United States, where it was seen as a free-speech issue. He was cleared of harassing a teenage trans activist at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in September but convicted of damaging their phone.
In 2024, he announced he was planning to move to Arizona. It was reported that he was still living there late last year amid coverage of the trial.