Finnish parliamentarian Päivi Räsänen and Irish comedian Graham Linehan will address the US Congress about concerns over threats to free speech on Wednesday.

Räsänen’s case has become one of Europe’s most prominent examples of the criminalisation of speech, after she was prosecuted over a period of six years for tweeting a Bible verse in 2019. She’s currently awaiting a verdict from the Supreme Court of Finland after facing a criminal trial in October 2025.

Graham Linehan was arrested for comments he made about gender on the social media site X in September 2025. Scotland Yard subsequently dropped the investigation, but Linehan accused the police of trying to silence gender-critical voices.

The hearing at the US House Judiciary Committee session in Washington DC is titled “Europe’s Threat to Speech and Innovation: Part II”. It’s set to examine how European speech laws and censorship regimes are impacting free expression, innovation, and democratic debate, and how this may influence expression in the United States.

Alliance Defending Freedom's international legal expert Lorcán Price will offer testimony on the UK’s Online Safety Act and the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which he believes restricts free speech in the digital age.

The three will warn lawmakers of Europe’s expanding speech restrictions, including criminal prosecutions for peaceful expression. They believe these restrictions pose serious threats to fundamental freedoms and risk being exported beyond Europe to the United States.