Desperate to Distract from Trump and Noem’s Assault on Americans’ Rights and Freedoms, Republicans Hold Re-Run Hearing on European Laws

Washington, D.C. (February 4, 2026)— Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, led Judiciary Committee Democrats in slamming Committee Republicans’ refusal to confront the Trump Administration’s escalating attacks on Americans’ constitutionally protected rights and freedoms. Judiciary Republicans instead held their thirdhearing on European laws that attempt to address the proliferation of child pornography, scams, and other dangerous content online. Not a single official from Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—which has orchestrated heavily-armed intimidation campaigns against U.S. citizens in cities all over the country under the guise of “immigration enforcement”—has yet been brought before the Committee, which has oversight jurisdiction over DHS.

The contrast in priorities was clear. Democrats invited Deepinder Mayell, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, to discuss the government’s lawless onslaught on our First Amendment rights. Committee Republicans imported three witnesses from Europe to examine largely theoretical threats to Americans’ free speech from abroad. Republicans’ witness panel included Dr. Päivi Räsänen, Member of Finnish Parliament; Lorcan Price, Advocacy Coordinator, Alliance Defending Freedom International; and Graham Linehan, Irish writer and comedian.

Republicans are desperate to distract from masked government agents killing Americans in cold blood for exercising their First Amendment rights. They simply have no answer for the threat that the Trump Administration poses to our basic freedoms.

• Ranking Member Raskin said: “This is an emergency today, what’s taking place in our own country. These are not normal times. There are sweeping, blatant and violent attacks on the freedom of expression taking place right now right here in America—not in Brussels, not in Geneva, not in a seminar room at Oxford.”
   
• Rep. Pramila Jayapal said: “We have a five-alarm fire here on the First Amendment rights in the United States. And even your Republican witnesses have said that this is the model. You wish you had it right, Mr. Price? And yet this Committee is spending no time at all on actually looking at that.” 
   
• Rep. Jerry Nadler said: “Mr. Chairman, masked federal agents are wreaking havoc in our streets and killing our citizens. The Trump Administration has launched a brutal and reckless campaign to strike fear in immigrant communities, conducting warrantless raids, pulling elderly people from their homes without judicial warrants, tearing children away from their parents, and taking the lives of American citizens who are exercising their First Amendment rights to protest and to shine a light on the horrors unfolding in their communities. It’s no wonder the Republican Majority wants to change the subject and to distract from its utter failure to perform oversight over the Trump Administration’s lawless and deadly policies.” 
   
• Rep. Jared Moskowitz said: “If you want to know how things are going on in America, I mean, just look at my colleagues. I mean, they want to talk about Europe because things are going so well here.” 

Republicans are failing Americans by refusing to conduct even basic oversight of the Trump Administration.

• Ranking Member Raskin said: “It’s been more than one month since 3,000 federal agents descended on Minneapolis, outnumbering the entire local police force 3-1. It’s been four weeks since they shot and killed Renée Good. It’s been ten days since Alex Pretti was executed in broad daylight by ICE agents whose salaries we pay and who got a $50,000 sign-on bonus and were promised ample overtime pay and whose ranks almost certainly include pardoned January 6 insurrectionists, Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who now may have gone from beating the daylights out of our police officers to beating the daylights out of our citizens. But in all that time, how many Administration witnesses has the Majority called to address these gross violations of our Bill of Rights? Not one.”
   
• Rep. Hank Johnson said: “Why is it that this Committee is wasting time because of a $125 million assessment against Elon Musk by Great Britain for violating its rules? [...] This Committee is wasting its time trying to protect Elon Musk from $125 million when we have our First Amendment that is under attack in this country.”
   
• Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon said: “Why isn’t Republican leadership of this Committee and Congress hauling the Department of Homeland Security and Kristi Noem before this Committee? Why aren’t they conducting an investigation into the killing of American citizens and the use of excessive force by ICE and CPB? Why aren’t they doing their jobs to demand accountability? Americans are outraged. I don’t understand why my Republican colleagues are not. Instead, they’re trying to deflect attention and tell us that Europe poses the biggest threat to Americans rights. It’s insulting because it is really clear that right now, the most serious threat to American civil rights and civil liberties is coming from our own government.” 

If Republicans care about protecting our rights, they must confront the truth that federal agents are trampling our constitutional rights.

• Ranking Member Raskin asked Republican witness Lorcan Price: “Would you agree with me that nobody should be shot or killed by their government for exercising their freedom of expression?” Price affirmed: “Absolutely. People shouldn’t be killed.” Ranking Member Raskin continued: “But how about reporting on the activities of government officials? Do you think that the public has the right to take notes to video, record, and then to publicly disseminate information about what our police officers, ICE agents or government officials are doing? Is that part of the freedom of expression?” Price replied: “I think people have the right to share information online.” 
   
• Rep. Becca Balint said: “I’ve spent time both in Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and I’ve spent time in Chicago, and what we are seeing on the ground is absolutely terrifying. You have members of the clergy being pepper balled in the head while they are peacefully praying and protesting in front of immigration facilities. You have members of the press being arrested, other members of the press being roughed up even after they are identifying themselves as members of the press. You have election offices being raided. You have Americans’ First Amendment, Second Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights being eroded. You have citizens being arrested. And even before the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, we had documented over 170 American citizens who had been arrested and detained by ICE and Border Patrol, and it’s gotten worse since then.” 
   
• Rep. Lucy McBath said: “When protesters are literally being shot in the street as they exercise their First Amendment rights, gunned down while peacefully protesting heightened enforcement operations, targeted raids that break up families, and the oppression of their communities by agents of their own federal government. I know for a fact that these situations are what we should be talking about, not Europe, our own. We should be focusing on the government agencies here at home that are impeding the constitutional rights of our citizens from the First Amendment to the Fourteenth Amendment. Due process rights right here in America are being violated.” 
   
• Rep. Deborah Ross said: “We’re seeing this Administration send masked, roving paramilitary forces to cities whose leaders have stood up to the President. We’re seeing these agents use the excuse of immigration enforcement to execute American citizens in the street for exercising their freedom of speech and their freedom of assembly.”
   
• Rep. Chuy Garcia asked: “Mr. Mayell, can you talk about what you take away from the things that have mobilized people in Minneapolis, like we haven't seen anywhere else in the country? What's at the heart of it?” Mr. Mayell explained: “What I can say is that the people of Minnesota have been disrupted, are shocked, are in a state of grief. They are opposing what they're seeing as unlawful, unconstitutional, un-American activity on their streets. [...] This is not normal law enforcement. This is not normal, what is happening in Minnesota. And it should alarm everybody.”