Live tracker · updated September 19, 2026
A foreign regulator can threaten Americans with ruinous fines and imprisonment for speech on American soil — and, as of September 14, no American court can review that conduct on the merits. Congress can fix it. The GRANITE Act is the bill written to do exactly that.
On September 14, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed 4chan’s constitutional challenge to UK Ofcom’s enforcement of the UK Online Safety Act — not on the merits, but on foreign sovereign immunity. The court expressly declined to decide whether Ofcom violated Americans’ First Amendment rights, and pointed to Congress as the only body that can change the result. This section tracks the fix Congress is being asked to enact: the GRANITE Act (H.R.10174) and the HOMEFRONT Act (H.R.10309), plus the state-level shield laws already moving in Wyoming, New Hampshire, and West Virginia.
Featured bill Coalition supports H.R. 10174 · 119th Congress
The Guaranteeing Rights Against Novel International Tyranny and Extortion Act, introduced by Rep. Michael Rulli (R-OH) on August 27, 2026, is the first federal foreign-censorship shield bill in American history. It says something narrow and fundamentally American: foreign governments may govern their own jurisdictions, but American courts will not become the enforcement arm of foreign speech codes that violate the First Amendment.
Rep. Thomas Massie, a House Judiciary member, signed on October 15. One name is a start, not a hearing. The single most useful thing a constituent can do this month is ask their Representative to join him on H.R. 10174.
01 · The shield
Prohibits any American court from recognizing or enforcing a foreign judgment, fine, order, or demand that gives effect to a foreign censorship law. Ofcom’s £520,000 fine on a U.S. platform would have no legal force on American soil.
02 · The sword
Lets a U.S. person who is targeted or purportedly served with such a measure go to federal court and obtain a declaration that it is unenforceable — and amends the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act so the foreign government cannot dodge the case by invoking immunity. That is the exact door the D.C. court said was closed in 4chan v. Ofcom.
03 · The definitions
Defines a “foreign censorship law” as one that restricts or penalizes expression, targets speech by content, viewpoint, or speaker, or compels disclosure likely to chill it — and that would conflict with the First Amendment if recognized here. Administrative demands and regulatory threats are covered, not merely court orders.
Restore the First’s founder has written about how lawful American speech can be drawn into foreign proceedings in which the speaker is neither a party nor a witness. The coalition does not presume to say how H.R. 10174 would apply to any pending matter. Its relevance is the structural point: American speech now crosses borders instantly, and the First Amendment does not automatically travel with it.
GRANITE would, for the first time at the federal level, create a forum in which the targeted American can answer foreign pressure under American law. That is why the coalition added it to its supported bills on the day it was introduced, and why it sits at the top of this section.
BREAKING: Preston Byrne’s GRANITE Act Goes Federal — Sayer Ji, Aug 28, 2026 ↗Bill facts from Congress.gov (checked September 19, 2026) and the introduced text. Architecture summary follows Byrne’s analysis and Sayer Ji’s report. This is a discussion of introduced legislation, not legal advice; the coalition does not represent any party to 4chan v. Ofcom.
The second vector
The GRANITE and HOMEFRONT Acts answer one problem: a foreign regulator reaching across the water to punish American speech. There is a second route, and neither bill touches it. Organizations rooted in the United Kingdom have paid U.S. lobbyists, registered as foreign agents, and taken federal money while promoting British-model online-safety, age-verification, and “design code” laws in state capitols and in Congress. The records below are not allegations. They are the filings these groups and their lobbyists signed under penalty of perjury, and the government’s own spending ledger.
| Organization | Record | What it shows | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5Rights FoundationLondon. Founded and chaired by Baroness Beeban Kidron, a crossbench member of the House of Lords. | FARA Registration No. 7427Registrant: CapConn, LLC d/b/a Capitol Connection, Sacramento | Paid $50,000 (five $10,000 payments, June–October 2022) for “lobbying California legislative officials and executive branch officials in support of AB 2273,” the California Age-Appropriate Design Code, modeled on the UK code of the same name. Engagement ran May 1 to September 30, 2022. The bill was signed September 15, 2022. The FARA registration was received June 27, 2024, twenty-one months later, and terminated the same day. On the form’s control questions the registrant answered “No” to supervision, direction, control, financing, or subsidy by any foreign government, party, or principal; Item 12, asking who owns and controls the foreign principal, reads “N/A.” | Registration statement · Exhibits A–B · All documents · AB 2273 signing |
| Center for Countering Digital Hate, Inc.U.S. 501(c)(3), est. 2021. Shares a CEO and board members with CCDH Ltd (UK, est. 2018). | Lobbying Disclosure Act, 2021–22Registrant: Lot Sixteen LLC | $50,000 in reported lobbying income across Q3 2021, Q4 2021, and Q1 2022 (terminated). Stated issues: “Section 230 reform,” “preventing the spread of misinformation and hate speech online,” and “preventing misinformation online regarding COVID 19 vaccinations.” This is the same period in which CCDH’s “Disinformation Dozen” report was being cited by the White House and by platforms. | Registration · Q3 2021 · Q4 2021 · Q1 2022 |
| Center for Countering Digital Hate, Inc. | Lobbying Disclosure Act, 2026In-house registration, Q1 2026 | CCDH registered to lobby Congress directly in the first quarter of 2026 on “reform to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, Sunset Section 230 Act, Defiance Act, the AI LEAD Act.” Reported Q1 expenses: $5,698.31. The organization that named twelve Americans in 2021 now lobbies, in its own name, on the law that governs what platforms may be sued for leaving up. | Registration · Q1 2026 report |
| Reset Tech ActionU.S. 501(c)(4) affiliate of Reset Tech, which describes a single global board. Reset Tech GmbH (Berlin) shares an EU Digital Services Act monitoring award with ISD. | Lobbying Disclosure Act, 2024–26Registrants: Corbin Strategies, Epplin Strategic Planning, Center Road Solutions, EFB Advocacy | Four firms reported roughly $1.3 million in fees from Reset Tech Action between Q1 2024 and Q3 2026 (coalition tally of Senate filings: $1,368,000; a portion may be subcontract pass-through between two of the firms). Stated purpose in most filings: “Advocate for passage of the Kids Online Safety Act” (S. 1409, later S. 1748), with later filings adding “device-level security” and “whistleblower protection.” | All filings (Senate LDA database) · Registration, Feb 2024 |
| Institute for Strategic DialogueLondon think tank with a U.S. affiliate (ISD-US). Named GreenMedInfo and other sites in its 2020 Covid-19 report. | USAspending.gov27 federal awards, FY2017–2026 | $11.16 million obligated by the U.S. government: State Department $6.78M, Homeland Security $2.38M, Justice $2.0M. Most of it funds the Strong Cities Network and countering-violent-extremism programs; a smaller set of awards is explicitly about online information, including $66,293 in 2020 “to monitor online information operations” and $422,408 in 2021–23 for “young people’s online and offline initiatives.” ISD separately holds UK and EU government contracts, including a share of a €4.86M EU consortium award for Digital Services Act compliance monitoring. | USAspending: ISD · USAspending: ISD-US · UK and EU contract records compiled by Effort |
The two federal disclosure regimes were built for different actors. The Lobbying Disclosure Act covers paid lobbying of Congress and federal agencies and names the client, not the client’s owners. The Foreign Agents Registration Act covers anyone acting at the direction of a “foreign principal,” including a foreign nonprofit, and it is the only federal regime that reaches state lobbying. That is why 5Rights’ Sacramento lobbyist, not its client, appears in the FARA record; and why a U.S.-incorporated affiliate that files under the LDA never has to say who sits on its board abroad. In October 2024, America First Legal asked the Justice Department to examine whether CCDH’s U.S. arm should be registered under FARA, citing shared leadership with the UK entity. The Department has announced no action. CCDH’s own 2026 court filings describe CCDH as “a 501(c)(3) non-profit, non-governmental organization with no parents, subsidiaries, or affiliates” (amicus disclosure, Patterson v. Meta). Both things can be literally true. That is the gap.
California’s AB 2273, the bill 5Rights paid to pass, has been under a First Amendment injunction since September 2023. In August 2024 the Ninth Circuit held that its central requirement, that platforms assess and mitigate the risk of children encountering “harmful or potentially harmful” content, is likely to violate the First Amendment on its face. On March 12, 2026 the same court narrowed the injunction to two provisions it found unconstitutionally vague and sent the rest back for a fuller record; the law’s fate is still open. The Supreme Court, meanwhile, upheld Texas’s age-verification law for pornographic sites in June 2025 (Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, 6–3), holding that “adults have no First Amendment right to avoid age verification” for material obscene to minors. The constitutional line, then, is narrower than either side claims: states may gate sexual content, but a general duty to police lawful speech for “harm” has not survived review. And since McIntyre v. Ohio (1995), the right to speak and read anonymously has been part of the First Amendment itself.
Both bills are about enforcement: they stop American courts from giving effect to foreign censorship orders and open a federal forum for the targeted American. Neither addresses a foreign organization that persuades a state legislature to adopt the foreign rule as domestic law. The remedies there are older and duller: enforce FARA as written, including its state-lobbying reach; require state lobbying registers to flag foreign principals, which they generally do not; and hold every “kids code” to the First Amendment scrutiny courts have applied to California’s. The coalition will add specific legislative asks on this page as they are drafted.
Lobbying is lawful and protected; registration is the point, not the activity. Protecting children online is a legitimate aim, and coalition partners hold differing views on age verification; the coalition’s position here is limited to anonymity, disclosure, and the First Amendment. The coalition does not claim these five organizations coordinate with one another, or with any government, beyond what their own filings show. The 5Rights lobbyist’s late registration is a disclosed fact; whether it was a violation is for the Justice Department, not this page, to say. And the records above are limited to U.S. public filings. They say nothing about any proceeding anywhere else.
Lead: “The UK’s War on Anonymity Has Come to America,” Effort, August 10, 2026. Every figure above was independently re-pulled by the coalition from the cited primary record on October 12, 2026: the FARA eFile document archive and bulk registrant data; the Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act database (REST API, client-name query); and the USAspending.gov award search (contracts and financial assistance, FY2015–2026). Where our tally differs from Effort’s, ours is shown. Corrections: coalition@restorethe1st.com.
Explore the section
01 · The cases
The D.C. District Court dismissed the constitutional challenge on foreign sovereign immunity grounds yesterday. Byrne & Storm say the fines are “void in the United States,” but that Americans still have no forum to challenge foreign censorship threats on their own soil. The court identified Congress as the only fix.
Read the case tracker →02 · The bills
Federal: the GRANITE Act (H.R. 10174, Rulli, R-OH — the featured bill above) and the HOMEFRONT Act (H.R. 10309, Davidson, R-OH, with four Republican cosponsors). State: Wyoming HB 70 (passed the House 46–12 in Feb 2026), NH GRANITE Act, WV SB 923, ALEC model. Every bill’s architecture, sponsor, status, and coalition position.
See the bill matrix →03 · The explainer
The UK Online Safety Act 2023 gives Ofcom authority to fine platforms up to 10% of global revenue and to seek criminal penalties against executives. Ofcom now claims that authority extends to any platform accessible from the UK — including U.S.-based platforms operating on U.S. soil. Here is the mechanism, in plain English.
Read the explainer →04 · The money
CCDH’s funding is largely disclosed, and that is how we know about it: 41 distinct organisations across the United States, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, each named in a public record — a Form 990, a Charity Commission filing, or the funder’s own grants database. The page also lists what could not be substantiated, including seven trusts widely reported as CCDH funders whose Charity Commission entries are mergers into a donor-advised fund, not grants.
See the funder directory →05 · Take action
Both bills sit in House Judiciary. Neither has a hearing, and GRANITE has one cosponsor, Rep. Thomas Massie. One call to your Representative asking them to cosponsor H.R. 10174 — and a second on HOMEFRONT — is the highest-leverage action a constituent can take this month. Script, contact tool, and target list below.
Take action →What this section does not claim
Viewpoint-neutral. The First Amendment protects speech regardless of platform, publisher, or content. 4chan is neither the plaintiff most coalitions would pick nor the coalition’s partner. But the constitutional question the court left open — whether a foreign regulator may threaten Americans with fines and imprisonment on American soil for constitutionally protected speech — is upstream of any particular platform. If the answer is yes for one platform, it is yes for every American who speaks online.
Not against international cooperation. This section does not oppose treaty-based cooperation between the United States and its allies on lawful cross-border enforcement. It documents that Ofcom is asserting authority that no treaty grants, on American soil, over conduct that American law protects.
Not partisan. The federal bills are Republican-sponsored today. The Wyoming and New Hampshire state efforts have drawn bipartisan support. The underlying question — whether foreign regulators may reach American speech — is upstream of partisan alignment, and the coalition treats it as such.
Not against Britain. The free-speech tradition this section defends is an English inheritance. The colonists claimed “the rights of Englishmen” before they claimed independence, and the shield bills above answer a question Parliament first raised in 1766, when the Declaratory Act asserted power over the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.” The shared history, and five principles both shores can sign, are at Across the Water.
