Last week, the U.S. State Department issued visa bans on two British citizens and three European citizens, including former European Commissioner Thierry Breton, calling them “radical activists” who “organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.”

The targeted visa ban sent European commentators into a frenzied, if futile, meltdown over the Christmas holiday. The denunciations eventually included strongly worded statements from European Council President António Costa, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, and a host of otherwise unremarkable European politicians and journalists, some of whom mused about what has long proved impossible: a common European security infrastructure decoupled from the United States.

Breton was the most prominent of the aggrieved Eurolosers who may no longer visit our shores. He is a former French telecommunications executive who, last August, threatened X with legal consequences if it broadcast an interview with President Trump, who was then running for his second term. Despite Breton’s protestations of “McCarthyism” in his weak online response to his visa ban, he has yet to deny that he abused his office in a way that could have constituted interference in an American presidential election.

Breton was also notable for bragging earlier this year about the European Commission’s role in overturning the 2024 presidential election in Romania, in which a national conservative candidate won. He threatened to annul in the same way any German election won by the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany Party. “We did it in Romania, and if necessary, we will have to do it in Germany as well,” he said in a January interview.

The two other Europeans, Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenburg, jointly led a German nonprofit called HateAid that claims to “strengthen democracy in digital space.” Their organization does this in part by using its status as a “trusted flagger,” that is, agents the EU authorizes to enforce the innocuously named “Digital Services Act” of 2022. The “services” in question can be fined up to 6 percent of their global revenue if found to violate EU law. In a spectacular debut earlier in December, X, an American company, was fined 120 million euros (US $141 million) for such infractions.

One of the British offenders, former Labour Party adviser Imran Ahmed, currently resides in the United States, where he runs the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), an entity originally established by UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney. The CCDH has called for the deplatforming of American critics of COVID-19 vaccines, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Documents leaked from Ahmed’s organization reportedly include calls to “kill Musk’s Twitter” and “trigger EU and UK regulatory action” punitively against American social media companies. In typical fashion, Ahmed’s immediate deportation was temporarily blocked by a U.S. judge, who will allow him to argue against the revocation of his green card in court.

The other unwanted Brit is Clare Melford, whose UK-based Global Disinformation Index claims to counter “hate speech” and “disinformation.” It does this, in part, by informing advertisers that media outlets GDI disfavors are unsuitable venues for showcasing their products. Qualifying for the list of the condemned appears to include critical inquiry into woke assertions of radical racial and gender theories or simply expressing conservative viewpoints. In 2022, all GDI’s “ten riskiest online news outlets” were center-right publications, including such U.S. outlets as the New York Post, Reason magazine, and the American Spectator. Under the Biden administration, Melford’s organization had received funds from the U.S. State Department. Now the same agency is stripping her of her travel visa.

A week after the visa bans, the State Department is holding firm as the Europeans have back down on their promises to take retaliatory action. Indeed, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte quashed the rhetoric on his side of the pond by saying that the visa bans are not grounds to rupture the Transatlantic Alliance. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meanwhile, has suggested he may be adding to the list of visa bans. All he needs to do to find more candidates to sanction is scroll through European X over the last few days. In his downtime before New Year’s, this exercise could be both productive and entertaining.