Trump official allies with Europe's far right in attacks on migration and hate speech policies [View all]
Source: The Guardian
Wed 11 Feb 2026 07.00 EST
Last modified on Wed 11 Feb 2026 08.18 EST
As Donald Trump redoubled his war of words on the European Union and Nato in recent weeks, a senior state department official, Sarah B Rogers, was publicly attacking policies on hate speech and immigration by ostensible US allies, and promoting far-right parties abroad.
Rogers has arguably become the public face of the Trump administration’s growing hostility to European liberal democracies. Since assuming office in October, she has met with far-right European politicians, criticized prosecutions under longstanding hate speech laws, and boasted online of sanctions against critics of hate speech and disinformation on US big tech platforms.
Rogers is undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, a top-10 state department role that was created in 1999 to strengthen relationships between the US and foreign publics, as opposed to foreign governments and diplomats. Rogers, however, appears to be concerned with winning over a particular slice of foreign public opinion.
Her recent posts on Twitter/X have included a characterization of migrants in Germany as “barbarian rapist hordes”, a comment on Sweden apparently linking sexual violence to immigration policy ( “If your government cared about ‘women’s safety,’ it would have a different migration policy” ), and the recitation of the view that “advocates of unlimited third world immigration have long controlled a disproportionate share of official knowledge production”. The Guardian emailed Rogers a detailed request for comment on this reporting.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/11/sarah-b-rogers-trump-europe-far-right
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