PRESS SUPPRESS 5 925

ESTB 9 25 POST KIRK SHOOT

see trump lawfare

TRUMP TREASON NYT IRAN WAR 6 26

SEE HEGSETH 3 ~ CT ?

SEE BRENDAN CARR FCC

SEE LIBEL FUCKERY

SEE MALWARE SPYWARE ISRAEL 10 26

The US landed at 64th out of 180 countries on the latest version of the index, falling seven spots compared to last year. rsf apr

---

FOUR HEADERS:

SEE 1ST AMENDMENT nyt v sullivan 2025 pjt trump

// PPL LOSE CONST RTS

NO MERRI

see retaliation FASCISM

SEE BONDI 2

SEE CENSOR 3 CRM 4

SEE MEDIA CONSOLIDATION PLUTO- CORP BAD ACTOR --> FASCISM NEPO

SEE CORRUPT 3 KLEPTO

SEE DOJ 3 PPL LOSE 1ST AMEND

SEE BBC FIGHT DEFAM 8 26 SUBPOENA JARENKA

SEE CBS PARAMOUNT SKYDANCE ELLISON kirk shoot 9 25 FCC CARR late nite kimmel

DON LEMON ARREST NSPM7?! FALSE CLAIM CHANT

see DEFAM LACIVITA TRUMP LAWFARE

see hegseth dod 9 25 iran war 2 26

SEE AP BAN GULF AM

accidental overwrite 3.20?

SEE FOX GUTFELD

gingrich maga mike disd biden win gotcha looking fwd // jdv pre-emptive trash bias press before “answer” tough question SOP eg cruz

see sullivan v nyt libel tourism PPL LOSE 1ST AMEND

see brendan carr FCC ~ pbs npr cbs abc nbc

SEE HEGSETH DOD iran war 3 26 not fox?!

SEE DEFAM LEGAL SUPPRESSION LAWFAREcnn

neglect? over 200 attacks by cops BLM?

SEE BANNON TRUMP GOP MSNBC

see authoritarian fascism AUTOCRATIC BRKTHRU TRMS

NOTE ACCOUNTABILITY IS A EUPHEMISM FOR VIOLENCE EXECUTION SEE RETALIATION FASCISM

AHA NOTE PRESS SUPPRESS LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS bs ESSENTIal for earth2

===

-=-=

an 10 26

Trump faces new legal nightmare over White House press crackdown

-=-=-

-=-=

an 10 26

Political commentator and national security expert Marcy Wheeler pointed to three recent instances in which President Donald Trump has lashed out at the media and issued new threats.

Writing on Thursday, Wheeler pointed to a letter sent by new White House Counsel Will Scharf to Politico complaining about its owner. The letter was first reported by Marc Caputo.

Scharf alleged articles published between Oct. 14 and Oct. 17 were "demonstrably false and defamatory" and part of a conspiracy to "manufacture a narrative of dysfunction and infighting in the White House."

He went on to demand the stories be retracted and corrections be issued "or face the consequences."

Caputo’s report closed with a comment from one of Trump's aides about Politico's owner being a foreign-owned right-wing billionaire.

Steven Cheung

@StevenCheung47

Politico is a foreign-op designed to interfere in American politics and meddle in our elections with disinformation and misinformation.

Jason Miller

@JasonMiller

Oct 17

What happened to @politico? The notion that the WH Chief of Staff moonlights as a media booker is a lie - and a completely absurd lie at that.

XITTER

Wheeler thinks these attacks are all part of the White House paving the road toward inevitable excuses and finger-pointing that will come from an electoral bloodbath.

The three articles Scharf complained about cover internal power struggles between White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and some in the administration. The White House has issued some on-the-record denials about the reports.

Scharf cited three articles in which Politico reported a power struggle targeting Susie Wiles for which the White House issued some form of on-the-record denials.

One was an Oct. 15 report, “Trump’s ice maiden is under fire,” which appeared in "Playbook," Politico's morning newsletter. Trump called it "fake news." The second Playbook report revealed a "freakout" in the White House over Politico's previous story. According to the source there, Trump "blew up" about it, calling it "unbelievably stupid and false." The third was a report titled “Susie Wiles helped set up Fox interview ahead of press secretary’s exit." Politico has issued a correction about the last story. The report insinuates that ex-press secretary Katie Zacharia was set up in her interview with Sean Hannity. In fact, it was Zacharia who set up her own interview with the Fox host.

A correction on the report now reads: "CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report, including its headline, mischaracterized the role White House chief of staff Susie Wiles played in then-press secretary Katie Zacharia’s interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News. POLITICO’s follow-up reporting indicates she did not play a direct role in setting up the interview.

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles 'offered positive reinforcement' for Katie Zacharia to appear on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show last week, according to a senior White House official."

Wheeler, for her part, said Trump doesn't appear ready to use the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) laws he has been known to ignore. So, while Politico might be panicking about a legal fight, she doubts it will go further than pool access.

One of the White House's challenges has been finding the people leaking to the press. A previous story revealed that Wiles and FBI Director Kash Patel were trying to hunt down the person who leaked that a Qatari-gifted jet wasn't equipped to handle international travel close to Iran. Trump had to secretly hide in a food cart to sneak onto the older presidential plane. It was never known why that switch needed to be so clandestine or what the plane lacked.

The White House argued that it was a colossal breach of national security. It never found the leaker.

For Wheeler, the issue is that, to her, the White House counsel is attempting to suppress reports about making Wiles the scapegoat for the bloodbath.

"As the first cited article lays out (and cites four people who are getting calls from Trump about replacing Wiles; it should be noted that Trump always solicits advice from Hannity), Trump is testing whether to replace Wiles with people that include Stephen Miller, who (along with Boris Epshteyn) is reportedly close to Scharf," she wrote.

The second Politico report says Trump aide Natalie Harp, who typically surrounds Trump with news that keeps him happy and calm, printed the first one. That second report denied that Trump or anyone at the White House read the first report. But Scharf's letter made it clear that in fact they had.

How else would "Scharf have come to complain about it and the follow-up, you dummies? This threat from Scharf is, quite literally, a legal freak-out," asked Wheeler.

Wheeler thinks the leaker is likely someone like Miller and that it's part of his power play to score the chief of staff gig. In the mean time, the White House Counsel is doing "something legally and logically stupid to punish Politico for reporting what is really going on," she closed.

-=-=

yikes omg

rww -->

10 26

Hafiz Rashid @ The New Republic: FCC Threatens Broadcasters Over Polls Predicting Disaster for GOP

The Federal Communications Commission is ramping up Trump’s war on “fake polls” as it looks to be a bloodbath for Republicans this election.

-=-=

an 10 26

CNN ups the ante with major legal threat against Trump over press ban

-=-=

AN 1 026

'Screaming' judge rips the DOJ for defying order not to touch golf course

Trump DOJ caught using false claims in explosive court revelation

President Trump's Justice Department has admitted that a false allegation, involving former CNN anchor Don Lemon and another journalist, appeared in the federal court filings relating to its investigation of the anti-ICE protest.

The revelation comes as newly uncovered records show that federal investigators obtained warrants authorizing the use of sophisticated surveillance technology to track down Lemon's 21-year-old producer Jerome Richardson, even though Richardson was prepared to turn himself in.

According to Wired, the investigation followed a protest at a church in Minnesota that disrupted a service and drew national attention after Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort documented the incident.

Per the report, the federal authorities were looking to build a criminal case against people who were involved in the protest, including journalists who maintained they were there as journalists covering the event rather than as participants.

The contested allegation came in the affidavits in support of applications to track Richardson. The investigators claimed that the video showed Lemon, Fort, Richardson and others “chanting with agitators.”

But the prosecutors later admitted that Lemon and Fort had not been chanting.

As per Fort's lawyers, the government admitted that the false allegation appeared in at least 15 warrant affidavits.

The admission doesn't establish that the investigators knowingly submitted false information. It does, however, add another wrinkle to an investigation which has already been fraught with judicial pushback and disputes over the nature of the federal surveillance.

The warrants also show just how far the investigators were prepared to go in order to track down Richardson.

Federal judges in Minnesota and Pennsylvania have approved the use of cell site simulators, devices which mimic a cell tower to identify and locate a phone.

The tech can also harvest identifying information from devices of people in the vicinity who are not the subject of the investigation.

Investigators got the second warrant just two days before Richardson voluntarily turned himself in at a federal courthouse in Philadelphia.

Richardson had publicly stated that he expected to go into federal custody. He was released on bond that afternoon upon his surrender.

The records don't establish that the agents actually deployed the surveillance devices.

The investigation had already met with resistance from the courts.

A magistrate judge initially denied five of the eight arrest warrant applications. The government's request to have that decision overturned by the appeals court was also rejected, and the government has since withdrawn its request.

In the filing, the court's chief judge states that two of the people the government was targeting were journalists rather than protesters and finds no evidence of any criminal conduct on their part.

Prosecutors then secured a grand jury indictment.

The newly released records don't answer the question of why the investigators were seeking such intrusive surveillance or how the false allegation kept reappearing in the documents they submitted to federal judges.

-=-=

AN 10 26

A former George W. Bush administration official has pointed to a fatal flaw in President Donald Trump's Justice Department's latest investigation into five television networks that could end up in court, arguing that the White House may have already undermined its case.

William Kovacic, who was appointed by Bush as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission in 2008, told *_{The Washington Post}_* described the DOJ’s legal justification as "feeble."

Kovacic also pointed out how Trump’s public statements about the news organizations are a problem in themselves.

"This will be fatal to the case," Kovacic warned in reference to the president’s statements, which he says help the networks' argument that the investigation is politically motivated.

The Justice Department announced over the weekend that it was investigating ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC for possible antitrust violations.

The investigation comes after networks temporarily stopped sharing pooled White House video coverage in September. It was in response to Trump’s White House banning CNN, Politico and MS NOW from White House grounds and stripping the press passes from the journalists.

The administration is describing the move in solidarity with the banned networks as an illegal boycott that could violate federal antitrust law.

However, Kovacic doesn’t believe this argument will hold up in court. He wrote that the networks could use Trump’s repeated attacks on the networks as unfair and “fake news” as proof that the admin was punishing them for their coverage rather than for banning them for legitimate legal reasons.

Other legal experts also backed Kovacic’s assessment. Bill Baer, who oversaw antitrust enforcement under former President Barack Obama’s DOJ, said the investigation “looks like total retaliation.”

Clay Calvert, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, also called into question the White House’s legal argument, arguing that: “There’s no boycott over a business activity. It’s a decision not to give him the coverage. They don’t have to cover him in the first place.”

Antitrust expert Diana Moss of the Progressive Policy Institute made a similar argument to Calvet, noting that illegal group boycotts typically involve efforts to restrict competition.

After a federal judge ordered that the ban on networks should be permitted to receive access to the White House, the networks eventually resumed pooled coverage. However, the ban involving Air Force One pool assignments has continued.

The DOJ has defended its position by arguing the boycott was a coordinated effort involving commercial competitors and therefore could be violating the Sherman Act.

A court has yet to determine if the networks violated antitrust laws, and it remains to be seen how the investigation plays out.

In another legal battle, ABC has challenged the Federal Communications Commission review of its broadcast licenses, arguing that the administration is violating its First Amendment rights.

-=-=

AN 10 26

President Donald Trump is desperate for all-encompassing media attention, while simultaneously punishing the mainstream press for its negative coverage, a mix which, according to a new piece for The i Paper, is starting to blow up in his face.

In his latest column for the outlet on Sunday, veteran D.C. correspondent Simon Marks argued that "There is nothing Donald Trump enjoys more than firing fresh salvos in his battle against the mainstream media." Within the last few days, he added, Trump "has lit the touchpaper in his most aggressive effort yet to demolish" the traditions around how press outlets are permitted to cover the president, with this "pliant" Justice Department launching a probe into the five major news networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox News, for supposedly violating antitrust laws when they suspended press pool coverage. That move came in solidarity with three other outlets Trump banned from the White House over their negative coverage of his presidency.

As a result of that boycott by the typical press pool, Chinese President Xi Jinping's "lavish state visit to Washington received little in the way of trailing US television crews, forcing even Trump-friendly right-wing media to scramble to find usable footage." Trump also suffered an embarrassing coverage snafu when the opening ceremony for the White House helipad he commissioned was broadcast without sound, due to the lack of press pool equipment.

"It’s likely the probe into the networks’ possible breach of federal law will take time to advance," Marks explained. "They will challenge even the requirement for them to submit documents to the investigation, arguing that their communications are covered by free-speech protections enshrined in the U.S. Constitution."

He continued: "This creates a problem for the most media-hungry President the U.S. has ever had. Trump craves two things simultaneously: full coverage of his own attention-grabbing activities each day, but also the power to control the language and images used to describe his increasingly unpredictable administration."

White House officials, he added, are known to have scrambled in response to the press pool boycott, making "a series of urgent calls to lower-level broadcasters, in an effort to try to persuade them to join a new-look TV pool, with plans to include several outlets seen as loyal to Trump’s MAGA vision." At least one far-right network, Real America’s Voice TV, volunteered to share footage as part of that proposed initiative, but Marks argued that it was still "a far cry from the resources and expertise that the major networks have at their daily disposal."

"Trump wants publicity to be on him around the clock. But he also aches to punish the major broadcasters when they paint him in an unfavourable light, and to terminate the key role they play in disseminating unvarnished coverage of daily events," Marks concluded. "A fresh confrontation was inevitable, and Trump has now unleashed his Department of Justice Rottweilers in a seeming effort to spark one."

-=-=

10 26 RUHLE

LONGASS TIRADE ABOUT NYC COP STAB 7X NO WORD, ZM VISITED HIM?!

-=-=

'I’m so tired!' Trump DHS chief unravels as reporter asks about luxury jets

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin snapped at a reporter who asked a question he didn't like during a Friday press conference about another ICE agent-involved shooting in New York City.

Mullin delivered the statement after the incident as protestors and local lawmakers demand accountability. Mullin also struggled to get his facts straight, telling reporters at one point that the man shot by agents was "wanted for trafficking." In fact, one reporter explained, it was "traffic infractions." Mullin said he knew nothing about the man's case and pivoted to talk about Joe Biden instead.

At another point, Mullin said that they needed to take the man who broke a traffic law to a maximum-security facility, so they needed to remove him from the state. He wouldn't say where the man was. Mullin referred to the man as "the worst of the worst," and emphasized that he was "going after the worst of the worst" several times.

"They're going to try to make the gentleman they shot the worst human being you've ever heard of. But I want you to know that a father picking up his child was shot by a rogue agency controlled by Donald Trump," warned public advocate Jumaane Williams in a New York City press conference about the incident.

A reporter then asked him about the recent reports about the expensive luxury planes that were purchased under former Secretary Kristi Noem. The fleet of planes was painted as help for deportations, but photos of the planes showed two bedrooms, a stand-up bar, leather chairs, marble showers and other finery.

"This is what I hate about Fake News!" Mullin snapped.

*The New York Times* reported this week that the person who got the contract for the private planes was a big donor to Noem.

"You guys, you guys, when we're doing a press conference or something, you guys want to completely steer away when you realize that this isn't someone that you should be defending and you bring up something as ridiculous as that," Mullin ranted.

"I'm just — I'm just saying I'm not even going to entertain your question, because that's not what we're here for," Mullin claimed. "That's not — we're here for — if you want to add something that's detained to what we're having this press for, I'd be happy to do that. Okay? I'll take this last question because that wasn't even a question."

After the final question, he raged, "I'm so tired of it all of a sudden being controversial because it's a political talking point."

-=-=

MMA

Trump keeps demanding criminal punishment for reporting he dislikes — including about his crowd sizes

After 13 treason accusations and a demand for an investigation of pollsters, a new low in his war on the press

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 10/06/26

President Donald Trump keeps demanding that journalists face arrest and prosecution for reporting that displeases him, and his purported standards for criminal sanctions are developing in bizarre ways over the course of his second term.

His war on the free press hit a new low on Monday when the president declared that unnamed persons at The New York Times “should be arrested” for reporting there were “empty seats” at his rally in Ohio, when instead, he claimed, the arena was “full to the brim.”

It feels crazy to need to write this, but journalists should not be arrested because the president doesn’t like the way they report on the sizes of his crowds. Trump’s declaration that they should demonstrates yet again his abhorrence of the First Amendment and the basic principles of free speech on which this country was founded.

And Trump’s statement mixes absurdity with its menace — not least because the Times report he cited actually described the president’s appearance in Alabama on Friday, not the event in Ohio on Saturday.

The slipshod authoritarianism of Trump’s Times attack

The New York Times published an article about Trump’s October 2 campaign rally in Mobile under the headline “In Alabama, Trump Relives His Glory Days (This Time With Some Empty Seats).” The report by Times White House correspondent Shawn McCreesh termed Mobile “the birthplace of the MAGA rally,” and contrasted the turnout Trump received at an August 2015 event early in his first presidential run to the lackluster crowd that came to see him that night.

“These days, Mr. Trump is in political trouble, even with members of his famously loyal base,” McCreesh reported. “The indoor arena that he spoke at on Friday was a fraction of the size of the football stadium he once spoke in — security concerns are such that he rarely speaks in outdoor venues anymore — and still the place was not full. Some upper sections were almost completely empty.”

The article featured a photo showing empty seats as Trump addressed the crowd on Friday.

The president lashed out at the Times on Monday, quoting from and denouncing McCreesh’s article — and calling for arrests — while misrepresenting or mixing up which rally that article had detailed.

“The Ohio Arena was already full to the brim — And yet these people were still trying to get in,” Trump claimed in a Truth Social post. “The New York Times said, ‘There were empty seats’ when, in fact, there were none, and thousands of people had to be turned away. The New York Times, and many other Artificial Media Outlets, should be arrested for their dishonesty and disservice to our Country.”

“The Fake News New York Times ‘reported’ on my Great, PACKED Rally in Ohio that, ‘the place was not full. Some upper sections were almost completely empty,’” Trump wrote falsely in a second post. “In actuality, thousands of people were unable to get in. The Arena was totally MAXED OUT, including all upper sections.”

The president’s posts featured video and photos from in and outside the Ohio rally in an effort to disprove the Times report, which was about the Alabama rally. Notably, the Times article on the event in Ohio — authored by the Times’ Katie Rogers, who wrote she had been “covering Trump rallies, on and off, for almost a decade” — reported “several areas of an upper deck were empty by the time Mr. Trump finished speaking at a 4,500-capacity high school student activity center” and “attendees close to the stage were seated in neat rows” rather than the “old norm of standing room only.”

Trump positions what he claims are inaccurate statements about his rallies as part of a media conspiracy against the GOP. “My Rally crowds and enthusiasm are unbelievable!” he wrote on Tuesday. “Nobody has ever seen anything like it. We are flipping races all over the place. The Fake News knows it, but they don’t want to be truthful with their viewers. It’s all happening!”

Trump keeps demanding criminal punishment for reporting he dislikes

Trump and his administration have spent his second term engaged in a systematic assault on the free press, one that includes unhinged vitriol directed at journalists; lawsuits directed at news outlets that produce critical reporting; regulatory efforts to punish critical outlets and reward friendly media owners; cutting federal funding to some public media outlets and reducing the editorial independence of others, attempts to curtail the access of outlets that produce unfavorable reporting; and the use of the law enforcement apparatus against reporters.

Over the last two years, journalists have faced federal searches and seizures, investigations, and even arrest and prosecution over their reporting. Trump himself has routinely called for journalists to face such criminal punishment when they produce reporting he doesn’t like.

In April 2025, for instance, Trump called for an investigation into pollsters and the media outlets that employ them after surveys from the Times and Washington Post/ABC showed his actions were unpopular, alleging the outlets had been “looking for a negative result.”

“These people should be investigated for ELECTION FRAUD, and add in the FoxNews Pollster while you’re at it,” he wrote. “They are Negative Criminals who apologize to their subscribers and readers after I WIN ELECTIONS BIG, much bigger than their polls showed I would win, loose a lot of credibility, and then go on cheating and lying for the next cycle, only worse.”

Trump has also accused news outlets and journalists of treasonous or nearly treasonous action at least 13 times since December, with the frequency and vehemence of such declarations increasing over time.

He has specifically described as “treasonous” outlets including the Times that reported the Iran war has left Iran in a strengthened position; unnamed “SCUM” reporting that the war reduced U.S. munitions stockpiles to a critical level; and The Washington Post for reporting that he is displeased with the performance of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

-=-=

mma

9 26

The Justice Department sought last week to justify President Donald Trump’s decision to ban three news outlets from the White House by arguing that their reporters had jeopardized national security. But Trump’s own statements show what he actually wants from the press: servile propaganda that parrots what he and his political allies say about his administration.

“‘The United States has the BEST Employment Numbers in HISTORY,’” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform in the 7 a.m. hour Monday morning. Trump attributed the quote to “FoxNews,” then added: “The Fake News Media REFUSES to report this rather significant development, however!!!”

The president, who regularly posts in near-real time about Fox segments that strike his interest, was actually quoting a Fox Business chyron, which attributed the statement to Trump himself during a segment that aired roughly 30 minutes before the post. He went on to tout the “fantastic” performance of Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts during the segment, whose “topic” he said “was Fake Polls and how well the Republicans are going to do in the upcoming Midterms.” (Roberts, echoing Trump, called midterm election polling a “psyop” intended “to depress conservative turnout.”)

In reality, U.S. population growth ensures that every president can boast that more people are employed than ever before (as long as they avoid a recession) and hiring numbers are slack, while Trump’s own policies have triggered higher interest rates and inflation, and Fox’s own poll shows cataclysmic numbers for the president and his party.

Monday’s posts — while a perfect encapsulation of this phenomenon — were just the latest indications that Trump’s press ban has nothing to do with the administration’s stated pretext.

The White House press bans aren’t about ethics in journalism

Trump has feuded with the press for a decade, and in his second term has casually accused outlets of treason while surrounding himself with appointees eager to use state power to punish them. After the president’s September 18 announcement that he had banned CNN, MSNOW, and Politico from the White House due to “their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS,” DOJ tried to argue in court filings last Tuesday that the barred outlets had been stripped of access because they had been “trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security and other issues, and publishing sensitive or classified information.”

But the president’s own statements about the press since those filings reveal that his actual concerns have nothing to do with national security or the publication of classified information — he’s mad that news outlets are reporting things he thinks make him look bad and not covering things that make him look good.

On Thursday, for example, Trump griped that CNN and MSNOW had not covered “one of the Biggest and Most Beautiful Events to take place in many years,” the lavish welcome ceremony he threw at the White House for “the Highly Respected President of China, Xi Jinping, and his beautiful wife, Madam Peng.” The president added: “The event was magnificent — Actually made for Television but, because they’re Fake News, and because they knew how good it would be, they didn’t want credit to be given to ‘TRUMP,’ they refused to be there.”

On Saturday, Trump claimed that “Another Fake Story is that a very close friend of mine, a man I endorsed very early, Byron Donalds, is taking me off his website and Campaign materials.” He lashed out at USA Today, which broke the story on September 22 that Donalds’ campaign website had been revamped to deprioritize his relationship with Trump, and a string of other outlets for following up on it, saying, “This was a Fake Story, with no sources, and the only justification for it is they want to stop my ever upward momentum.”

Trump went on to link the story to his press ban, saying, “Fake News Media been doing this for years, I call them out, but they should really be called out by the Courts, and should not be allowed to enter the White House premises, or Press Room, because they are CORRUPT and DISHONEST!” But the story that the Donalds campaign had changed its website to remove references to Trump is true, and Donalds himself has acknowledged as much.

Later on Saturday, the president again lashed out at the “Fake News,” this time for allegedly not reporting about “our incredible results” with regard to the economy.

“If anyone else were President, this would be all the Media would talk about,” he said. “But because no one ever wants to give me credit, no one is talking about these Historic Numbers.”

“The FAKE NEWS and DUMOCRATS hate these reports, and these Record Setting Numbers,” he added. “They hate the TRUTH, and they hate the Great Success that our Country is having. Just look at the Numbers — THE BEST IN HISTORY.”

Comments like these expose the impossible task news outlets would face in trying to appease the president. Trump’s complaints are, at bottom, not actually about the disclosure of classified information, or the use of anonymous sources, or any other question of media ethics that could be plausibly applied in an even-handed fashion.

His actual concern is quite straightforward:

The president does not support free speech that is critical of him or his administration, he wants every outlet to mimic the treatment he receives from his most zealous supporters at Fox, and he has no regard for the First Amendment’s protections for journalists who violate that standard. Any attempt to reckon with his administration’s treatment of reporters that does not reckon with those facts is doomed.

Donald Trump is the greatest threat to our free speech rights

09/24/25 12:02 PM EDT

You can’t celebrate the First Amendment with Donald Trump

03/03/26 11:48 AM EST

Checking in on Trump’s war on the press since his White House Correspondents’ dinner speech

08/25/2

-=-=

an 9 26 // press suppr?

Trump official ices out financial media after getting triggered by coverage

-==

-=-=

mma

President Trump keeps casually accusing news outlets of treason

He’s accused journalists of almost or actually committing treason at least 13 times since last year

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 09/23/26

President Donald Trump, in a Truth Social post published shortly before midnight on Tuesday, declared reporters at news outlets that produce reporting critical of his administration as “treasonous.”

Trump, in his rambling and confused message, expressed dismay that CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and other unnamed “SLEAZEBAGS” had been present to cover his Tuesday appearance at the United Nations General Assembly after he banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House on Friday. He added of Collins: “She’s got a ‘TRUMP’ addiction, and so does CNN and MSDNC [MSNOW]. They’re all sick, treasonous, and demented!”

The post marked at least the third time this month, and the ninth time since March, that Trump had accused news outlets of “treasonous” reporting, according to a Media Matters review of his statements on social media and transcripts of his public events compiled by Roll Call’s Factba.se. The president also said news outlets had nearly or almost committed treason on four additional occasions during his second term, though since May he has transitioned to making outright accusations.

Treason is “the only crime expressly defined by the Constitution,” which limits such charges to “levying war” against the United States or “in adhering to [its] enemies, giving them aid and comfort,” and the Supreme Court has narrowly interpreted that definition. Trump has nonetheless declared that a slew of figures — from Democratic congressional leaders like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) to leakers within his administration to critics of AI to members of the group that filed suit to block his construction of a White House ballroom — have committed treason by defying his will.

But his frequent claims that news outlets are committing treason by publishing reports he doesn’t like are particularly worrisome and fit into a larger war on the press in which his administration has used state power to punish journalists for their work. The Justice Department, for example, argued in a Tuesday night court filing that the president’s banning of CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House is justified because the outlets’ reporting on stories related to the Iran war and the ballroom “have threatened national security.”

In December, Trump responded to reporting on his apparent physical decline by calling it “seditious, perhaps even treasonous, for The New York Times, and others, to consistently do FAKE reports in order to libel and demean ‘THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.’” That was the first example we found of the president linking reporting with treason since his return to the White House.

But Trump’s treason accusations really picked up after the war he launched against Iran on February 28 began to falter. Since then, Trump has accused CNN, MS NOW, ABC, NBC, The Washington Post, and The New York Times of treason, singling out CNN’s Collins and Times reporter David Sanger in particular. He has specifically described it as “treasonous” to report that the Iran war has left Iran in a strengthened position, that it has reduced U.S. munitions stockpiles to a critical level, and that he is displeased with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The best case scenario is that the president of the United States is an addled old man who is impotently lashing out at his critics as his administration collapses around him. Possible alternative explanations — that Trump is encouraging his pliant Justice Department appointees to actually file charges against reporters, or his followers to take matters into their own hands — are more sinister.

Here’s a list of examples of the president’s treason rhetoric.

September 22, 2026: CNN, MS NOW are “sick, treasonous, and demented!” [Truth Social]

Trump post

September 3, 2026: “For the treasonous SCUM that refuses to accurately report on our Military Operation in Iran…” [Truth Social]

...

-=-=

PRESS SUPPR AN 9 26

President Donald Trump recently banned three media outlets that he claims were unfairly critical of him — Politico, CNN and MS NOW — from covering him at the White House. Now it has been revealed that he openly admitted that he did so based on their viewpoints, in violation of the First Amendment.

"After MS NOW, CNN and Politico sued the Trump administration on Monday over the president banning their reporters from White House grounds, Trump’s communications team sent congressional Republicans talking points Monday night in defense of the president’s decision," reported MS NOW's Mychael Schnell on Tuesday. "According to the document obtained by MS NOW, the White House wants Republicans to argue that “no president has been more transparent or offered more of his time to the press” and that the First Amendment does not grant reporters access to the White House."

The talking points claimed that the reporters are not protected by the First Amendment to engage in "fabricating facts or reporting verifiable falsehoods from inside the White House complex is an intentional breach of professional decorum and it is severely disruptive to the mission and purpose of the White House.”

The First Amendment states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Despite claiming he has the legal authority to ban those media outlets, early signs from the courts suggest otherwise.

"A federal appeals court ruling Tuesday on demonstrators’ access to the steps of the Capitol could bode poorly for President Donald Trump’s attempt to ban three media organizations from the White House," Politico's Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein reported on Tuesday. "The majority opinion, written by Trump appointee Neomi Rao, concluded that the East Steps of the Capitol are a 'nonpublic forum' — just like most areas of the White House grounds, including the press facilities."

Politico continued, "While the government may impose restrictions on access to those nonpublic areas, the limits must be 'viewpoint neutral,' apply 'objective, workable standards' and not permit officials to exercise 'unbridled discretion over a forum’s use,' the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel concluded."

One of those networks may soon regain Trump's favor. After Trump's billionaire ally David Ellison officially purchased Warner Bros., which owns CNN, media watchdogs expressed alarm that Ellison would gut CNN of journalists who are critical of Trump and replace them with pro-Trump alternatives, much as Ellison did when he took over CBS News.

Trump himself has admitted that he wants Ellison to capture CNN for this reason, despite often denying his involvement in helping them take it over. Trump told CNN's Jake Tapper in July that "we're trying to have CNN go on a normal path." Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has similarly commented that he wants CNN to be taken over by the Ellisons so that the Trump administration will receive more flattering press coverage.

-=-=

-=-=-=

AN 7 26

New Don Lemon court filing alleges federal officer lied to the judgeral officer lied to the judgehttps://www.alternet.org/don-lemon-ice/

-=-=-=

AN 8 26

President Donald Trump's list of failures continues to grow, and as a new analysis from MS NOW argued, he has now resorted to seeking punishments for those who tell the truth about his unpopularity.

In a piece published Monday morning, Steven Benen, a longtime contributor to the network and producer for host Rachel Maddow, discussed Trump's recent demand that his FCC Chair, Brendan Carr, investigate NBC and anchor Kristin Welker after comments she made about him having a "mixed" endorsement record in the midterms so far. Trump accused this of being "purposeful inaccuracy" that ought to be investigated.

“How can anyone be allowed to say this, working for freely given Public Airwaves?” Trump posted to Truth Social on Friday. “Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment... The Press is a Disgrace to our Nation, and I hope that Chairman Brendan Carr, and the fine people of his Commission, will take this Threat to our Country very seriously.”

Benen called this demand from Trump "brazen nonsense," and highlighted how ridiculous the anger seemed given that Welker's comment only came "in passing during a live shot on NBC’s local D.C. affiliate." He further argued that the post from the president "reflects an inherently authoritarian worldview — one in which media professionals are supposed to fear federal investigations for telling the public the truth."

He also highlighted a follow-up post Trump made on Sunday, accusing the media of using "fake polls," which just so happen to be the ones in which his approval and popularity are faltering.

"The missive came five days after the Republican concocted a deeply weird conspiracy theory alleging that the national surveys conducted by major independent news organizations, universities and research institutions have been secretly being coordinated by Democratic officials, as part of a fiendish and undisclosed plot to make GOP voters feel discouraged," Benen detailed. "There are, according to the president’s same pitch, a series of undisclosed polls that paint an entirely different picture about public attitudes, but that we’re apparently not allowed to see for reasons Trump hasn’t explained."

He added later: "Time will tell whether Carr and his colleagues take the president’s directives seriously, but let’s not miss the forest for the trees: Confronted with data showing his broad unpopularity, Trump can either (a) change course; (b) accept the fact that his presidency lacks public support; or (c) pursue investigations into journalists and independent entities that have dared to present him with information he doesn’t want to see or hear. The fact that he’s choosing door No. 3 isn’t surprising, but it does offer a timely reminder about his twisted perspective."

AN 8 26

He also highlighted a follow-up post Trump made on Sunday, accusing the media of using "fake polls," which just so happen to be the ones in which his approval and popularity are faltering.

-=-=

rww 8 26

Lance Wallnau Praises Trump For Attacking Reporters

-=-=

mma

Checking in on Trump’s war on the press since his White House Correspondents’ dinner speech

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 08/25/26

One month ago, the White House Correspondents Association gathered for its annual “dinner that celebrates the First Amendment” with President Donald Trump.

Journalists assembled in Washington, D.C., sat impotently as the president delivered remarks that mixed empty platitudes about his “respect for your profession” with withering insults directed at individual reporters. The evening “was a public humiliation for the White House Correspondents’ Association” that “left the association looking naïve about its decision to invite the man who has spent years using both his personal and government means to wage war against the free press and its ability to report on his actions,” Status’ Jon Passantino wrote.

Trump’s behavior was extremely predictable given his long record of vitriolic attacks on journalists and news outlets — not to mention his administration’s frequent use of state power to try to cudgel them into line. And the president’s long war on free speech and the free press has continued without pause since he broke bread with reporters at the Waldorf Astoria on July 24.

Since then:

The Washington Post reported that Trump secretly left the old Air Force One jumbo jet on the tarmac in Turkey last month and used an alternate military transport to fly to Britain in response to an Iranian assassination threat, effectively turning into a “decoy” the plane that carried top aides — and the unwitting press corps. The WHCA subsequently asked the Trump administration to “work with us on a protocol for handling extraordinary security circumstances in the future.”

Disney and ABC sued the Federal Communications Commission, saying it violated the First Amendment with its pretextual and retaliatory decision to order an unprecedented early review of Disney’s eight ABC station licenses. The FCC’s move came the day after Trump, who has frequently called for networks to lose their stations over coverage he dislikes, demanded that Disney and ABC “immediately fire” Jimmy Kimmel over a joke the late night host told on his ABC show.

Trump’s personal lawyers threatened a $5 billion lawsuit against the Center for American Progress if the progressive think tank did not withdraw its report which found “no evidence that National Guard deployments have reduced violent crime.”

The Defense Department fired the editor in chief and publisher of Stars and Stripes, a newspaper that covers the U.S. military and is partially funded by the Pentagon but whose editorial independence is enshrined by statute. Erik Slavin, the editor in chief, said in a statement that according to the termination notice he received, “I am being fired for stating in a CBS interview that censorship of news for service members would constitute a red line.”

None of this seems likely to convince the WHCA to change course, and it’s unclear what if anything Trump could do to the press that would result in the rescission of his invitation for next year’s dinner.

The organization’s leadership has moved from an employee of one pro-Trump media oligarch to another, with Weijia Jiang, senior White House correspondent for David Ellison’s CBS News, succeeded by Jacqui Heinrich, White House correspondent for Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. And Heinrich told New York magazine earlier this month: “This dinner precedes President Trump. It will continue after President Trump. And we will invite the president no matter who the president is every year.”

“I thought it was valuable to have him taking part in a tradition that recognizes the importance of the free press,” Heinrich later added, without addressing who it might benefit or how. “And he’s already said he’s going to come next year. It’s going to be at the Hilton. If they want to complain about it, that’s fine, but it’s happening.”

You can’t celebrate the First Amendment with Donald Trump

03/03/26 11:48 AM EST

The White House Correspondents’ Association takes another futile crack at celebrating the First Amendment with Donald Trump

07/22/26 1:16 PM EDT

Donald Trump is the greatest threat to our free speech rights

09/24/25

-=-=

usn abe linc carrier 8 26

Journalists fired from Stars and Stripes say they were let go for "insubordination"

-=-=

AN 8 26

Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are among those that BBC is seeking to subpoena as part of its lawsuit from President Donald Trump, Politico reported on Friday.

Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation alleging that the broadcaster unfairly edited or presented remarks he made in his speech on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump argues that the BBC’s programming created a misleading impression that he directly encouraged violence and that it significantly damaged his reputation.

The BBC has defended its journalism, saying its reporting and documentary coverage were based on the public record and protected by free-expression principles. Unlike other media outlets sued by Trump, the BBC is refusing to settle, and it's moving forward with a defense, including seeking documents and interviews with Trump advisors.

According to the BBC's lawyers, the Trump family members “without question have personal knowledge” about the president's intentions when making the speech.

BBC lawyers explain that testimony collected by the House Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack found that Kushner, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. were present at the speech on the Ellipse. It was also reported that Kushner drafted a statement for Trump condemning the violence.

The subpoenas are asking for deposition testimony as well as documents, Politico said.

The BBC attempted to serve the subpoenas on Jared and Ivanka, but was blocked by the U.S. Secret Service.

Troy Epstein, lawyer for the Secret Service, claimed, “The United States Secret Service, as an agency of the United States Government, is not authorized to accept service of these subpoenas for these individuals, nor can we opine on how you all may best facilitate or effectuate service of these subpoenas."

The same thing happened earlier this year with Trump Jr. In a footnote for one of the court filings, a reference emphasized the word "prevented" when saying the Secret Service blocked the subpoena service.

"Ironically, the government complains about the subpoena to Mr. Trump Jr. even though the government itself – specifically, the U.S. Secret Service – has to date prevented Defendant from serving that subpoena on Mr. Trump Jr.," court documet filed in July said.

The Secret Service protects all of Trump's five adult children, as mandated by Department of Homeland Security regulations. It does not have the legal authority to interfere with subpoenas or any legal matters.

Trump sued the BBC in a South Florida court district.

-=-=

AN 7 26

President Donald Trump’s subpoenas of The New York Times has been widely criticized for potentially violating the First Amendment, to the point where the prosecutors trying to force out the publication’s sources on weaknesses with Trump’s Qatari-gifted jet have been threatened with losing their Bar license. Now a recent report reveals a judge presiding over that case has humiliated a prosecutor trying to win it.

“The Times swiftly moved to quash the subpoenas, arguing that they were issued in a bad faith effort to harass and intimidate the journalists,” reported Lawfare's Anna Bower on Tuesday. “What’s more, the newspaper contended that the government hadn't come close to meeting the standard set out in New York Times v. Gonzales, the Second Circuit precedent establishing that prosecutors seeking a reporter's confidential sources must show, among other things, that the information can't be obtained by other means.”

Bower added, “The Justice Department, in response, didn't ask the court to deny the motion outright. Instead, it asked the court to hold the subpoenas in abeyance for two weeks while it pursued additional investigative steps—steps that, the government suggested, might bear on the scope of the subpoenas and on whether the Gonzales factors could ultimately be satisfied.”

She then discussed Judge Arun Subramanian, who blasted the government for failing to rise to the Gonzales standards.

“Given that the government has asked to hold the subpoenas in abeyance while it pursues further investigative steps, is the government willing to just withdraw them?” Bowers asked U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Sean Buckley.

But Buckley said the government believes the ‘appropriate measure’ is to hold the subpoenas in abeyance while it takes unspecified additional investigative steps. In other words: the government wants to put enforcement of the subpoenas on pause rather than withdraw them entirely.

Subramanian then reportedly interjected, “[Let me] stop you right there. So the answer to my question is 'no'?” After some back and forth with Buckley, the government conceded it could not rise to that standard.

Subramanian then quoted from the Justice Department’s own filing, that to overcome the qualified reporter’s privilege recognized in Gonzales, the government must show that the information it wants is not obtainable from other sources.

"You agree, right?" the judge asked aloud. But Buckley had to acknowledge that Subramanian was correct, adding that he believed the steps have now been achieved even though they had not when the subpoenas were first issued.

“It’s the kind of admission that tends to end an argument before it starts, and Subramanian treats it that way,” Bowers reported. “‘Seems like you've got two options,’ he says to Buckley. ‘Either we can quash the subpoenas or you could withdraw the subpoenas.’”

The judge was similarly dismissive of the rest of the government's position because of its failure on that key question.

“Asked if he has anything to add, Buckley allows himself one small act of defiance: the government disputes any suggestion of bad faith, he says.

And that's where Buckley left it, Bowers reported.

-=-=-

-=-=-=

intercept

Seth Stern is the director of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation.

The House Ways and Means Committee last week carried out an attack on journalism that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. The committee subpoenaed BreakThrough News, a left-wing outlet with deep ties to the Party for Socialism and Liberation that is highly critical of the United States and Israel, along with two other nonprofits with similar ideologies, The People’s Forum and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

The subpoena deserves the same scrutiny as those issued to New York Times reporters over their reporting on security issues with President Donald Trump’s Qatari jet, which, after significant pushback in the courts of law and public opinion, the government withdrew Thursday — the same day BreakThrough announced its receipt of the legal orders.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, an attorney for BreakThrough, called the committee “a modern day HUAC,” the McCarthy-era committee on so-called “un-American” activities. Communists aren’t the only ones who should be concerned. As Chip Gibbons, policy director at Defending Rights & Dissent, put it: “Attacks on independent, alternative, or radical media have troubling history. It is always the I.F. Stones or the WikiLeaks who are first on the firing line.”

The Ways and Means Committee is claiming its investigation is a tax-related probe into more than $39 million that flowed from Neville Roy Singham, a U.S. citizen and tech financier based in Shanghai, to the groups, which it claims advance Chinese Communist Party-aligned interests. But we’ve seen that playbook before: Around the globe, financial probes have been used as pretexts to stifle journalism and dissent, and there’s every indication that this is the latest example.

BreakThrough News has been criticized for favorable coverage of China and other U.S. adversaries, which it indeed publishes. But favorable coverage of foreign adversaries — even in the form of propaganda — is protected by the Constitution. And BreakThrough’s leadership held those positions long before they had any alleged connection to Singham.

“ The First Amendment was specifically written to protect journalism that the government does not approve of.”

BreakThrough’s editor-in-chief, Ben Becker, had a common-sense observation: “The First Amendment was specifically written to protect journalism that the government does not approve of. Journalism approved by the government wouldn’t need protection,” he said. “That’s why so many of the country’s decisive free speech cases involved the abolitionist press, the radical labor press and the antiwar press. … But history looks back on these episodes for what they were — shameful violations of free speech — and that’s the same thing that’s happening here.”

Though the committee denies it is engaging in content-based retaliation in its most recent letter, past correspondence does little to refute Becker’s framing, citing no evidence of any kind of financial illegality and instead focusing on BreakThrough News’ critical coverage of ICE and Israel and criticizing its connections to the PSL, a lawfully organized domestic political party, which it says, “orchestrated the anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement riots in Los Angeles resulting in violence and dozens of arrests last June.”

My Freedom of the Press Foundation colleague Adam Rose, who also serves as press rights chair of the Los Angeles Press Club, found that last part particularly infuriating (PSL and its leadership have not been charged with any offenses relating to violence in LA). The government, Rose said, has “failed to investigate the documented wholesale violence by federal agents against press and protesters” in LA. “Maybe instead of a foreign state, our elected representatives should be more concerned about our own state violence against innocent civilians in our local streets.”

Criticizing Israel? Nonprofit Media Could Lose Tax-Exempt Status Without Due Process

There’s another problem with the probe of BreakThrough. Putting aside the subpoenas’ flimsy evidentiary backing, House subpoenas must carry a legislative purpose. Why would the committee need a fishing expedition into the finances of a few leftist nonprofits to decide whether legislative reforms are necessary? The committee’s letter claims to have already spotted the gap in nonprofit tax law they contend Singham is exploiting, and it cites plenty of public reporting on his network, so it’s unclear what other information its members need that could conceivably justify congressional action as extreme as subpoenaing news outlets. If the best argument they can come up with for their contemplated legislation is that three obscure organizations were funded by an American citizen living abroad, maybe they should find other fish to fry.

As Breakthrough’s chief correspondent Rania Khalek recently said, “I think this is really just about trying to bury us in legal proceedings until we’ve basically run out of money or stop reporting out of intimidation.

BreakThrough is far from the first victim of this censorial playbook. Rodrigo Duterte’s government in the Philippines, for example, filed a series of tax evasion cases against Rappler, the investigative outlet led by journalist Maria Ressa, due to its alleged acceptance of foreign investments (Ressa is a former board member of The Intercept). Advocates described the cases as part of a broader legal campaign designed to wear the outlet down. It took years and a change of administration before courts acquitted Ressa and Rappler. Authorities in Azerbaijan have also repeatedly brought pretextual financial charges including tax evasion against investigative journalism they sought to suppress.

There are also examples closer to home — not just from Red Scares decades ago, but in present-day Florida. A 2025 state law restricts nonprofits from accepting funds from broadly defined “foreign sources of concern” tied to countries like China, Russia, Cuba, and Iran, while a related “Honest Services Registry” asks charities to affirm they’re free of such foreign influence. A separate domestic terrorism law lets state officials designate organizations as terrorist groups — organizations like the Muslim civil rights group CAIR and the amorphous non-entity the government calls “antifa” have already received the designation.

Florida First Amendment Foundation executive director Bobby Block explained the agenda in an email: “Make people wonder whether joining an organization, donating to a cause, attending a protest or expressing an unpopular viewpoint could put them under a government microscope, and some will simply decide to remain silent. That’s the chilling effect the First Amendment is supposed to protect against.”

Combined with the administration’s crackdown on purported domestic terror outlined by National Security Presidential Memorandum 7; Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s bizarre memorandum claiming a Cuban conspiracy to spread communism stateside; and the countless other suppression of dissent we’ve seen from Trump allies, all of them predictably targeting speakers whose politics differ from the president’s — it’s not hard to spot the endgame.

Read our complete coverage

Chilling Dissent

BreakThrough isn’t the only news outlet recently swept into this broader crackdown. Earlier this month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents detained Grayzone journalist Max Blumenthal and seized two smartphones after he returned from reporting in Iran. Like BreakThrough, Grayzone is highly critical of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, and its detractors accuse it of being soft on U.S. adversaries. It’s the kind of outlet governments know they can harass without nearly the blowback that comes with subpoenaing the New York Times.

Crossing the U.S. Border? Here’s How to Protect Yourself

After Blumenthal sued, authorities let him pick up his phones, but he remains concerned about whether their content was searched or copied. Blumenthal said officers asked him to unlock his phones and when he refused, they told him they’d “hook them up to machines,” presumably to extract their contents. Blumenthal, of course, is far from the only reporter who has reported from Iran or who visited the country to cover Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s state funeral. But, to the best of our knowledge, he’s the only one who has had his phones searched and seized.

Whatever leeway the law affords border agents to conduct searches that would otherwise be unlawful cannot be abused to punish constitutionally protected speech because they dislike its content. The federal Privacy Protection Act of 1980 — which prohibits searches of journalists’ files absent probable cause to suspect criminality — contains no exception for border searches. It is likely not a coincidence that the attack on Blumenthal’s rights followed calls by the pro-Israel doxxing organization Canary Mission and MAGA influencer and Trump ally Laura Loomer for government retribution against Blumenthal based on his coverage.

Gibbons is right that attacks on press freedom historically start on the edges. Trump has arguably been an aberration, though. Although he certainly draws inspiration from outliers, taking legal theories that were laughed at the court on the local level and turning them into federal policy, his own strategy is generally to start big.

Kash Patel Is Using MAGA’s Favorite Tool to Muzzle the Free Press

Likely because he still mentally resides in a skyscraper in 1980s Manhattan, Trump is far more focused on outlets like the Times than on the independent press. He files SLAPP suits against mainstream journalists at a pace that would land anyone else on a restricted filers list; his Federal Communications Commission continues threatening the licenses of broadcasters who don’t kiss the ring emphatically enough for his liking; his Pentagon tried to extract loyalty pledges from the country’s most prominent outlets; and his Justice Department and FBI can’t seem to stop raiding and subpoenaing journalists no matter what the judiciary has to say.

These efforts have certainly had an incalculable chilling effect on the press, but they’ve largely fizzled in court. The prospect that the administration may have caught on to that pattern and shifted its focus to outlets with less mainstream support, less money, and fewer lawyers on retainer is an alarming one.

As Gibbons put it, “Those who are serious about press freedom cannot be selective in their solidarity.”

---

AN 7 26 5 NYT REPORTERS SERVED AT HOME ON AF 1 STORY?

CNN's Jake Tapper issued a strong fact-check after claims from President Donald Trump's secretary of defense alleged there were people leaking information from the department.

According to Secretary Pete Hegseth, leaks put their brave American soldiers in danger.

"I have delegated tasking authority to ⁠the [Department of Defense's] Office of ⁠General Counsel, empowering OGC to request and ⁠receive all information, records and support across the department concerning media leak investigations," Hegseth said ⁠in an X video.

Tapper responded with, "I know of one leak that put our brave pilots at risk!"

He posted a link to the full inspector general's report revealing that Hegseth used the Signal app to leak classified information to his family outside the Pentagon.

He specifically quoted the significant finding that "The Secretary sent nonpublic DOD information identifying the quantity and strike times of manned U.S. aircraft over hostile territory over an unapproved, unsecure network approximately 2 to 4 hours before the execution of those strikes. Using a personal cell phone to conduct official business and send nonpublic DOD information through Signal risks potential compromise of sensitive DoD information, which could cause harm to DOD personnel and mission objectives."

The full report also had screen captures of the secretary's message that outlined every detail about conditions and the mission ahead of the U.S. strike in Yemen against Houthi rebels.

Hegseth risked "endangering U.S. troops by using the Signal messaging app to share military plans before the first attack in Yemen," the IG ruled.

Tapper went on to cite the reports finding that "if this information had fallen into the hands of U.S. adversaries, Houthi forces might have been able to counter U.S. forces or reposition personnel and assets to avoid planned U.S. strikes…”

“Even though these events did not ultimately occur, the secretary’s actions created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots," Tapper added from the report.

"Some call them whistleblowers. When they’re alerting the public to government lies and malfeasance, for instance," Tapper later added.

---

6 26

Michael Luciano @ Mediaite: Trump Says He’s ‘Preparing Lawsuits Against ABC for False Reporting’

President Donald Trump said his administration is about to sue ABC over its reporting on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

RWW

---

an 7 26

A Republican politician was given a slap on the wrist for abusing her office to silence a critic of Charlie Kirk.

"[Alaska state] Rep. Sarah Vance — one of the state’s leading Christian Nationalist lawmakers — likely violated state ethics laws when she used her legislative office to threaten the Homer News over its coverage of a memorial she helped organize for Charlie Kirk," wrote The Alaska Current's Matt Acuña Buxton on Wednesday. "Her letter to Carpenter Media, sent on Alaska State Legislature letterhead, sparked a firestorm in local media last fall, with reporters and editors resigning after ownership gave in to Vance’s threat that 'the consequence will be financial as well as reputational' if they didn’t soften the story."

“Vance — who made headlines for, among other things, complaining that a hearing on Missing Murdered Indigenous Women didn’t include the experiences of white women — wrote the letter to corporate ownership, complaining about the Homer News and its local born-and-raised reporter for describing Kirk as espousing ‘often racist and controversial views,’” wrote Buxton on Wednesday.

Despite Vance using her Alaska State Legislature Letterhead to suppress the story, the House Select Committee on Legislative Ethics decided Vance should simply be warned not to do it again.

Vance has consistently complained that attempts to hold her accountable violate her First Amendment rights. Ironically, her letter seemed to have violated the reporter’s rights, as “the story not-so-mysteriously disappeared in the following days, replaced by a rewritten version that sanded off the uncomfortable edges of Kirk’s legacy, without the input or even notification of the local reporters and editors.”

Buxton added, “Dramatically changing a story without a reporter’s and an editor’s input is taboo on its own, let alone the fact that it was corporate ownership bowing to political pressure, and the resulting exodus continues to reverberate across Alaska’s media landscape.” He pointed out that the article did not mention Kirk’s promulgation of COVID-19 conspiracy theories, the racist great replacement theory and climate change misinformation.

“According to the ethics report, Vance didn’t meaningfully participate in the investigation, other than requesting that the complaint be dismissed,” Buxton wrote. “Still, just by looking at the letter, the ethics panel could see that, yes, the letterhead was used, and the committee determined that the contents of the letter fell into the realm of partisan political activity.”

Vance claims that she is the victim.

“The irony is not lost on me,” Vance said in a statement. “The committee contends that calling out partisan bias somehow constitutes partisan political activity. Nor is it lost on my constituents that Charlie Kirk paid the ultimate price for exercising his constitutional right to peaceful free speech, losing his life in an act of political violence. Now, in defending his memory and speaking openly about issues that matter to my community, I find my own speech being scrutinized through a process that many view as an attempt to silence dissent.”

Buxton observed that “Vance’s threats were just one example in a larger conservative cancel culture war over what they felt was unfair treatment of Kirk in the wake of his assassination. People lost their jobs, including a teacher-of-the-year finalist (costing the district $300,000), a university professor in Tennessee (costing the system $1.7 million) and a Florida biologist (ending in a $485,000 settlement). Merely quoting President Trump, for example, was enough to put an ex-cop behind bars for 37 days (netting him a $835,000 settlement).”

Even though prominent Democrats from former President Joe Biden and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) immediately denounced Kirk’s shooting, Republicans like President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Fox News commentator Jesse Watters blamed Democrats for the assassination and claimed they rejoiced in his death. This led to a wave of cancellations against individuals who said anything negative about Kirk in the aftermath of his death, and in turn organizations being required to compensate individuals whose rights were violated in the process.

For example, the Republican Oglethorpe County, GA paid $270,420 to high school English teacher Michelle Mickens and $17,080 to her attorney for accurately posting that Kirk had been a gun enthusiast after he was shot to death. It was determined that the district had violated her First Amendment rights.

---

MMA

Trump denounces “TREASONOUS” New York Times over Iran reporting

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 06/22/26

President Donald Trump, stymied by a war with Iran that seems destined to end with the United States in a weaker geopolitical position than before he launched it, turned his sights on an easier target over the weekend: The New York Times, whose journalists he baselessly accused of “TREASONOUS” reporting.

The immediate impetus for Trump’s outburst was Times reporter Neil MacFarquhar’s Sunday news analysis headlined “What Changed After Almost Four Months of War? Analysts Say Not Much.” MacFarquhar wrote that in light of the memo of understanding signed last week by the U.S. and Iran, “skeptics are expressing bafflement over what exactly has transformed” in the region given that “neither the war nor the agreement ended what U.S. and Israeli officials regard as the main threats emanating from Iran.” His analysis detailed how Iran’s regime, ballistic missiles, proxies, and nuclear stockpile have endured, while its government “is set to receive potentially substantial financial rewards” and now knows it has the ability to disrupt the global energy trade by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump denounced the story in a Sunday afternoon Truth Social post. He pointed to damage to Iran’s military and economy caused by the U.S. military and added: “the Hormuz Strait is OPEN, THE OIL IS GUSHING, and the U.S. Stock Market and Jobs are at record HIGHS. That’s what’s CHANGED, you corrupt and unethical cowards, and MORE!!!”

The president then moved on to accusing Times reporters of treason. “The way the Corrupt and Failing New York Times is covering stories on a very battered and beat up Iran, through FAKE & MADE UP ‘FACTS’ is, in my opinion, ‘TREASONOUS,’” he wrote in a subsequent post. “I will be adding all of their false and ridiculous reporting to my multi Billion Dollar lawsuit against them. They are Criminals!”

The president, who frequently launches legally baseless defamation lawsuits targeting news outlets whose coverage displeases him, sued the Times and three of its reporters last year. In recent months, he has reportedly been privately “raging” over the contents of a forthcoming book by Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.

Trump frequently denounces reporters and threatens to bring down the power of the state against them because he has no regard for the First Amendment. His rage has been particularly acute since his Iran war began earlier this year: The president has railed against the press for its unwillingness to adopt his talking points in the manner of his loyal Fox News prime-time hosts, calling mainstream news outlets and reporters “almost treasonous” for purportedly lying about the effectiveness of the war effort because they are “rooting for Iran to win.” At the same time, Trump’s handpicked chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has leveraged his power to target Trump-critical speech and threatened reprisals against outlets that produce critical coverage of the war. [ABC AD THE VIEW]

But Trump’s denunciations of reporters go far beyond their coverage of war and peace. This weekend, he vaguely threatened ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl, suggesting that the reporter might be under federal investigation after he “was seen sticking his hand into the” Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, whose recently repainted bottom is deteriorating, “and trying to rip the rubber off of the surface.” And earlier this month, the president lashed out at CNN White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins during an event in the Oval Office, saying: “I never see a smile off her face. I see her standing there with hatred in her eyes, like she has hatred, because we had borders, because we have a strong military, because we cut our taxes, because we do things that everybody wanted, and then we win our election in a massive landslide.”

In related news, the rescheduled annual dinner for the White House Correspondents Association, which “celebrates the First Amendment” and will feature a speech by the president, is just a month away.

### You can’t celebrate the First Amendment with Donald Trump

03/03/26 11:48 AM EST

### Donald Trump is the greatest threat to our free speech rights

09/24/25 12:02 PM EDT

### The Trump administration demands American press propagandize his Iran war

03/16/26

---

maddow msf --> rsf yikes apr 30 jake johnson

## United States | RSF

After a century of gradual expansion of press rights in the United States, the country is experiencing a significant and prolonged decline in press freedom, with Donald Trump's return to the presidency greatly exacerbating the situation.

US Falls to Lowest-Ever Rank on Press Freedom Index as Trump Pours ‘Gasoline on the Fire’

“Trump and his administration have carried out a coordinated war on press freedom since the day he took office, and we will live with the consequences for years to come.”

Jake Johnson

Apr 30, 2026

IFrame Content

Reporters Without Borders warned Thursday that the United States is facing a “press freedom crisis” as President Donald Trump and his subordinates wage an aggressive assault on the media that has included threats of treason charges and imprisonment against journalists.

The Trump administration’s active disdain for press freedom has pushed the US to its lowest-ever rank on Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) World Press Freedom Index, which ranks countries based on numerous indicators including legal protections for journalists, reporter safety, and overall political hostility toward the press. The US landed at 64th out of 180 countries on the latest version of the index, falling seven spots compared to last year.

](https://www.commondreams.org/news/house-cuts-wic)

House GOP, With Help of 4 Dems, Votes to Take Food Aid From Millions of Women and Kids

“The US has experienced a steady decline in the RSF Index over the past decade, but President Trump is pouring gasoline on the fire,” said Clayton Weimers, executive director of RSF’s North America section. “Trump and his administration have carried out a coordinated war on press freedom since the day he took office, and we will live with the consequences for years to come.”

“The index shows that this decline is measurable and ongoing, but preventable,” Weimers added. “Our message is clear: Protect legal rights, ensure accountability for attacks on media professionals, and support independent media to restore American press freedom.”

RSF specifically cites Trump’s efforts to dismantle public broadcasters, weaponization of government agencies to punish media outlets and figures critical of his administration, and lawsuits against “disfavored outlets” as factors contributing to the erosion of press freedom in the US.

The index also points to rising violence against journalists during Trump’s second term in the White House. “According to the US Press Freedom Tracker,” RSF notes, “there were more than 170 attacks on journalists in 2025, nearly double the previous year, driven by an increase in violence against journalists while covering protests and law enforcement activity.”

The precipitous decline of press freedoms in the US comes in the context of growing attacks on and criminalization of journalism worldwide. For the first time in the 25-year history of RSF’s index, more than half of the world’s countries currently fall in the “difficult” or “very serious” categories for press freedoms.

The country that ranked last on the index for 2026 was Eritrea, a nation that is “sadly notorious for detaining journalists longer than any other country in the world,” said RSF.

Norway ranked first on this year’s index, with RSF praising the country’s “robust” legal safeguards for press freedom, “vibrant” media market, and “extensive editorial independence” for publishing companies.

Anne Bocandé, RSF’s editorial director, said that “current protection mechanisms” for journalism worldwide “are not strong enough” to withstand escalating attacks by “authoritarian states, complicit or incompetent political powers, predatory economic actors, and underregulated online platforms.”

“How much longer will we tolerate the suffocation of journalism, the systematic obstruction of reporters and the continued erosion of press freedom?” Bocandé asked. “The ball is in the court of democracies and their citizens. It is up to them to stand in the way of those who seek to silence the press. The spread of authoritarianism isn’t inevitable.”

---

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › World_Press_Freedom_Index

World Press Freedom Index - Wikipedia

The World Press Freedom Index (WPFI) is an annual ranking of 180 countries compiled and published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) since 2002 based upon the assessment of the non-governmental organization as well as surveys of professionals around the world, of the countries' press freedom records in the previous year. [2][3][4] It intends to reflect the degree of freedom that journalists ...

Common Dreams

https://www.commondreams.org › news › us-press-freedom-index

US Falls to Lowest-Ever Rank on Press Freedom Index as Trump Pours ...

Apr 30, 2026The Trump administration's active disdain for press freedom has pushed the US to its lowest-ever rank on Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) World Press Freedom Index, which ranks countries based on numerous indicators including legal protections for journalists, reporter safety, and overall political hostility toward the press.

factually.co

---

AN 5 26

In December, President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against the BBC, seeking the enormous sum of $5 billion under claims that the British news outlet selectively edited one of his speeches to give the impression that he was responsible for the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Now, Politico senior legal affairs reporter Josh Gerstein reports that a judge has dealt a massive blow to Trump’s case.

According to Gerstein, the Florida judge overseeing the case has refused a request by Trump’s legal team to have the magistrate judge overseeing the discovery portion of the case reassigned. The president’s lawyers had asked for a replacement for Judge Enjolique Lett, who had previously served as an attorney for Orbis, a company Trump sued in relation to the infamous Steele dossier, a controversial 2017 document that alleged a conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign.

The decision made by Judge Roy Altman asserts that the Trump legal team’s basis for the request was “unavailing,” rejecting the two arguments they put forth. They had questioned the mechanism for the assignment of Lett, which Altman rejected, saying the magistrate had been assigned based on workload and nothing else. They also questioned Lett’s ability to remain impartial considering her involvement with the Orbis lawsuit, but as Altman pointed out, the law states that judges can only recuse themselves from a case. “Accordingly,” wrote Altman, “we’ll leave any decision regarding Magistrate Judge Lett’s recusal to her sound judgment.”

Trump’s lawsuit stems from the assertion that the editing of a BBC piece was libelous. He claims that the news outlet intentionally edited a speech he delivered on January 6th, 2021, as the Capitol insurrection began, in a way that made it appear he had urged supporters to acts of violence.

The BBC lawsuit is the latest in a string of legal actions Trump has taken against news organizations. Some of these suits have been more successful than others, garnering Trump multimillion-dollar settlements from the likes of CBS and ABC. Another nearly half-billion dollar lawsuit against CNN was dismissed, and suits against the New York Times and Wall Street Journal are currently ongoing.

His latest legal blow comes on the heels of another setback in his case against the Wall Street Journal, in which a judge declared that Trump’s legal team could not use the process of discovery to search for evidence of their yet-unsupported claims. The judge, who had previously thrown the suit out for being "conclusory and without factual support,” has called the case “expensive yet groundless.”

---

5 26 an

Consultants for missing Republican lawmaker attack reporters asking questions - Alternet.org

:{---

---

MMA

As Trump accuses news outlets of “TREASON,” Fox models MAGA Iran coverage

Written by Matt Gertz

:{Published 05/13/26

While President Donald Trump accuses news outlets of committing “virtual TREASON” by producing reporting that suggests the United States is losing his war against Iran, the president’s loyal Fox News propagandists keep telling him that he’s doing a great job, saying he’s on the verge of victory, and suggesting he can fail only by backing down.

Ten weeks after U.S. and Israeli forces attacked Iran — and nine weeks after Trump demanded “unconditional surrender” of its leaders — Iran’s regime remains intact and in control of both its nuclear stockpile and the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial route for global trade whose closure has spiked domestic fuel prices. In The Atlantic, Brookings Institution senior fellow Robert Kagan wrote Sunday that Trump’s decisions have put the country on the brink of a “total defeat” whose consequences “can neither be repaired nor ignored,” and he noted that “any resolution other than America’s effective surrender holds enormous risks.”

With his war at a standstill and the Iranians rejecting his demands for a negotiated settlement, the president has repeatedly lashed out at the press for undermining the effort by producing “treasonous” reporting — an attack he resumed on Tuesday afternoon.

“When the Fake News says that the Iranian enemy is doing well, Militarily, against us, it’s virtual TREASON in that it is such a false, and even preposterous, statement,” he wrote on Truth Social. “They are aiding and abetting the enemy! All it does is give Iran false hope when none should exist. These are American cowards that are rooting against our Country."

Recent reporting suggests that Trump and his allies have been lying about how successful the war has been.

Minutes after he posted that remark, The New York Times published a report revealing that contrary to the Trump administration’s claims, classified intelligence analyses reveal that “Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers and underground facilities."

Earlier this month, The Washington Post determined that satellite imagery shows that “Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at U.S. military sites across the Middle East,” far more destruction than the administration has publicly acknowledged, while Reuters reported that U.S. intelligence indicates the war has not impacted Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon, one of Trump’s putative rationales for starting it. NOT COUNTED IN COST?

Meanwhile, NBC News reported that Trump abruptly canceled his “Project Freedom” plan to force the reopening of the Strait after Persian Gulf allies objected.

But on Fox this week, the hawkish sycophants who encouraged Trump to launch the war in the first place are still telling him he’s doing everything right.

Mark Levin: Trump’s war prevented a second holocaust and a nuclear attack on America

Mark Levin, the nasal-voiced Fox host and sometime presidential adviser whose program Trump has urged the public to watch, devoted a lengthy and increasingly loud monologue on Sunday’s broadcast to lavishing the president with praise for launching the war and averting a second holocaust.

Levin denounced the Iranian regime and the war’s critics, claiming the latter “hate America and Israel so much they'd rather tens of thousands more Iranians die horrible deaths than see our country defeat this homicidal regime” and “care not at all, not one whit, that they are not only giving aid and comfort to this horrific enemy, but they are encouraging this enemy to slaughter, to execute, to rape, to torture, and to do what homicidal regimes do, because they know the enemy, that these people are in the bag.”

After urging the U.S. to arm and organize a Kurdish resistance to the regime, Levin praised the president, saying that while “humanity allowed the Holocaust to occur,” Trump and his administration had put “this Iranian Nazi regime … on its back."

:{Video

Citation

From the May 10, 2026, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin

“The only president with the courage, the wisdom, the fortitude to confront this Nazi-like regime, this mass-murdering, nuclear-obsessed Islamist enemy, the world’s enemy, is Donald Trump,” he said. “And unlike other such circumstances around the world where genocide is taking place — and as a practical matter, we can’t get involved in all of them — in Iran, we have the opportunity to do something about it,” he continued, calling Iran “the biggest concentration camp in human history right now.”

Levin went on to host Fox contributor Newt Gingrich, who said the Iranian regime was “fully as evil as Adolf Hitler was or Joseph Stalin was” and the war was necessary to prevent Iran from deploying a nuclear weapon “in your neighborhood,” and Fox senior strategic analyst and retired Gen. Jack Keane, who urged the president to revive Project Freedom, “return to combat operations,” “put Kharg Island on the table,” and implement an intelligence operation to overturn the Iranian regime.

Sean Hannity: Iran’s leaders should “get out while they can”

Sean Hannity, the president’s chief mouthpiece at Fox, said on Monday’s show that Iran’s leaders are on the verge of fleeing the country.

:{Video

Citation

From the May 11, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity

After parroting Trump’s statement earlier that day that the U.S.-Iranian ceasefire is “on life support,” Hannity cited unspecified “reports tonight that Iran's very fractured fourth-tier leadership, they may be planning an exit to Russia and Vladimir Putin.”

“Now, if you recall, on this program before Epic Fury, there were reports the supreme leader, other leaders were planning a move, that they had planes with cash and currency on a tarmac ready to go,” he continued. “I said multiple times, my advice to all of them is to get out while they can. The supreme leader, all his top leadership, and then the next tier and pretty much the third tier, they're all dead. They should have listened to me then. My same advice applies here.”

Hannity then brought on Fox correspondent Kevin Corke for a report on the war, telling him, “I think they're just lashing out in utter complete paranoia, but this report that they might be planning an exit is intriguing to me.”

“Yeah, intriguing indeed,” Corke replied. “And I salute you. You are spot-on. You gave him great advice. Of course, they didn't listen and it could cost all of them.”

Hannity was off the air on Tuesday night as he traveled with the president on his state visit to China.

Fox & Friends: “Are we on the 5-yard line? Of course, but the president had to take this action.”

The co-hosts of Fox & Friends, Trump’s favorite morning show, have spent the week alternating between assuring their viewers that victory is at hand and pushing for risky escalations to the war.

Ainsley Earhart on Monday floated a military effort to seize Iran’s nuclear stockpile. “The question is do we go in and get the enriched uranium? … Do the Israelis do it? Do the Americans do it?” she asked.

Lawrence Jones casually responded that such a mission — which experts say would constitute an immensely complex and risky endeavor — could be a “joint operation,” before pivoting back to how successful the war has been.

He criticized retired Adm. William McRaven’s declaration the previous day that the U.S. is “not really that much better off” than it was before starting war with Iran. “There is no doubt in my mind, taking out the ayatollah, a lot of their leadership, has put us in a better position,” said Jones. “Are we on the 5-yard line? Of course, but the president had to take this action.” (If the metaphorical language seems confusing, consider that Jones is operating within a worldview where it’s unfathomable that we’re farther from the war’s endzone than 5 yards.)

:{Video

Citation

From the May 11, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

On Tuesday, the trio stressed how important launching the war had been and praised Trump for carrying it out.

In one segment, Jones said that “we’ve been dealing with this threat for 47 years,” criticized news coverage in the face of the “phenomenal” military operation, and concluded, “I'm glad that the president has the will to deal with this."

“Don't forget the purpose of this,” Earhardt chimed in. “It is to get the enriched uranium away from them because they are planning a nuclear -- they want to have a nuclear weapon. What would they do with that? Well, they yell in the streets, publicly, death to America and wipe Israel off the face of the map. That's their ideology. That's how they think."

“They are not thinking clearly like Americans do,” she added. “They hate us with a passion, with a vengeance. And they have the capability, possibly, of building this nuclear weapon. So the president — that was why the president decided to begin this conflict.”

Brian Kilmeade added that Iran causes “chaos in the region” before adding, “For those people who think the president is boxed in and frustrated, I’m telling you, he gets coolest under pressure. He does not feel it at all.”

---

5 13? 26 good YT dn

[

19:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71ex9pAe248)

Support our work: https://democracynow.org/donate/sm-desc-yt The new book Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign ...

YouTube · Democracy Now! · Mar 20, 2025

fedsoc heritage clairemonsters cottage industry

clarence 180 after bad press, joined by ----

---

dn 5 26 press suppress

WSJ Receives Subpoenas for Records of Journalists Reporting on Internal Discussions of Iran War | Democracy Now!

---

an 5 26

Trump explodes at 'lowlife' reporter in late-night rant after NYT exposes $13M bombshell - Alternet.org

---

5 26 press suppress kash

defam? 250 million$ rep damage; doj fbi leak investigation bkwards highly unusual

atl mo

---}:

---

05/01/2026 RWW

Kyle Mantyla

Zachary Leeman @ Mediaite: Trump Wildly Claims Seeking Congressional Approval for Iran War Is ‘Totally Unconstitutional’: ‘These Are Not Patriotic People That Are Asking’

President Donald Trump dismissed the idea of seeking congressional approval for his Iran war as “totally unconstitutional” on Friday, calling those asking for it unpatriotic.

Anthony Orrico @ HuffPost: Trump Rages At 'Seditious' New York Times In Unhinged Oval Office Rant

The president lashed out at the newspaper after it published a scathing op-ed on Thursday, criticizing the U.S. military's readiness for the war in Iran.

HUFFPO NO LNX

President Donald Trump went on a lengthy tirade against The New York Times on Thursday, accusing the newspaper of being “seditious” after its editorial board published a piece titled “The U.S. Military Was Losing Its Edge. After Iran, Everyone Knows It.”

During his rant, Trump continued to insist that Iranian forces had been “militarily decapitated” before accusing both the Times and CNN of reporting that Iran was winning the war.

“...And yet I read in The New York Times, I see it on that stupid CNN, which I only watch because you have to watch a little bit of the enemy,” Trump said. “So I watch it for a very short period. But you have to, you know, you have to be smart. And if you see CNN, you’d think they’re winning the war. If you read The New York Times, it’s actually seditious in my opinion. You read The New York Times, you actually think they’re winning the war.”

It’s unclear which specific CNN report the president was referencing. As for the Times piece, it, among other things, argued that Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz was the linchpin in the conflict thus far, and that the United States’ trillion-dollar military was “ineffective against cheaper, mass-produced weapons,” such as Iran’s vast drone supply.

“But the problem is bigger than any single commander-in-chief. The United States has left itself unprepared for modern war,” the Times wrote.

What the NYT didn’t do in its article was “conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States,” which is how seditious conspiracy is defined under 18 U.S. Code § 2384.

The last people convicted of seditious conspiracy in the U.S. were leaders of the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who stormed the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. Trump pardoned all those convicted in connection with the insurrection on his first day back in office.

---

mma

Angelo Carusone on MS NOW discusses the administration's attacks on free speech: "The process is the punishment here, and then the downstream effect is to chill and control speech" | Media Matters for America

5 26

===

just name calling deflection? see also ps 3

AN PP 5 26

Counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka is one of the most controversial figures in the Trump administration, a gate crasher in the buttoned-up world of national security.

In a field where quiet professionalism is revered, Gorka is loud and mercurial. With a booming, British-accented voice, he describes U.S. operations turning suspected terrorists into “red mist” and stacking bodies “like cordwood.” He wears a lanyard inscribed with “WWFY & WWKY,” referencing a line from President Donald Trump: “We will find you and we will kill you.”

It is a testament to the frenzy of Trump’s first year back in office that even the colorful Gorka had faded into the background as the nation reeled from a mass deportation campaign and sweeping cuts to federal agencies. That changed this February with the launch of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, which heightened the risk of retaliatory attacks on American citizens and interests around the world. Overnight, there was renewed interest in who leads White House counterterrorism efforts.

My editors and I decided it was time to break out the Gorka files. For six months, I had monitored Gorka’s public remarks for clues about the status of his long-promised national counterterrorism strategy and updates on deadly U.S. strikes in Africa and the Middle East. It had started as old-fashioned beat reporting; I cover counterterrorism, and he’s the senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council.

The trove of details I collected from months of Gorka’s public statements, along with interviews with more than two dozen current and former security officials, were woven into a ProPublica investigation published in April. It’s an in-depth look at Gorka and his role in the hollowed-out national security apparatus after a year of leadership turmoil and personnel loss as Trump shifted resources toward his immigration agenda.

ProPublica reached out to Gorka for comment in multiple ways. He never responded, instead lashing out at me via posts on X before the story published. He told his 1.8 million followers that I was anti-American and accused me of writing a “putrid piece of hackery.”

There went my hopes for a good-faith exchange. After discussion with my editors, ProPublica decided to note the insults in the story. It was another revealing layer to the combustible leader Trump had installed in a sensitive national security role. A former senior official noted the eruption was “Gorka being Gorka.”

Increasingly, journalists are pushing back against attacks on our credibility by “showing the work,” guiding readers through the reporting process to dispel myths and foster transparency. In that spirit, I wanted to take this opportunity to show how basic beat reporting — fact-checking the assertions of a powerful figure — led to a broader story about the state of the U.S. counterterrorism mission at a critical moment.

I’ve covered the post-9/11 counterterrorism apparatus for more than two decades, so Gorka was a familiar presence, an academic known mainly for a well-documented hostility toward Islam, which he has portrayed as inherently violent. Gorka has dismissed criticism of this portrayal as “absurd,” saying his focus is “the war inside Islam” between radicals and Western-aligned Muslim leaders. He also served as an adviser under the first Trump administration but was ousted after just seven months amid White House infighting.

At the time, dozens of lawmakers had demanded his resignation, and investigative outlets detailed links — which Gorka denies — to the Hungarian far right. After the bruising exit, Gorka waited patiently as the Republican Party swung harder right in the Biden era and eventually returned Trump to office.

Gorka was appointed White House counterterrorism czar — he called it his dream job — in a new era without the “adults in the room,” as some officials referred to the more moderate advisers around Trump in the first term. Privately, national security personnel expressed alarm that intelligence about threats was in the hands of an official who reportedly struggled to get security clearance in the first Trump administration.

To me, Gorka was a weather vane for the administration’s national security thinking: Would his “war on terror” mindset clash with the more isolationist “America First” camp that wanted no more forever wars? How would a vast security apparatus built for the Islamist militant threat reorient toward a new focus on far-left “antifa” militants and Latin American drug cartels newly designated as terrorist organizations?

I was especially interested in the status of a national counterterrorism strategy Gorka had been promising since taking office; such documents typically lay out an administration’s approach to fighting the most urgent threats. Though Gorka had described his plan as “imminent” and “on the cusp” of release, months ticked by without any sign of it.

To glean clues about the strategy, I made it my mission to watch every news appearance, read every interview and listen to every podcast featuring Gorka since December 2024, the month before he entered the White House. It took some digging — he rails against the mainstream news media and prefers to appear (largely unchallenged) on niche pro-Trump news outlets and at conservative think tanks.

I developed a nightly ritual. After dinner with my family, I’d hole up to listen to Gorka, hunting for the scraps of news buried in his over-the-top vocabulary and graphic storytelling. Alongside my note categories for “Trump Anecdotes” and “Militant Death Tolls” was one for “Big Words.” For example, the president calls Joe Biden “sleepy”; Gorka prefers “somnambulant.”

Weeks into the reporting, in February 2026, I realized Gorka’s speech had burrowed into my brain when I watched a silly video and thought, in his voice, “Preposterous!” It was time for a break.

I reread my notes from hours of listening sessions. I interviewed counterterrorism analysts and national security watchdog groups about Gorka and his remit. Veteran national security personnel added context and analysis. Just as my editors and I were discussing how to turn the findings into a story, the Iran war began and the spotlight on Gorka grew brighter.

Much of the material on air strikes and the dismantling of guardrails was first incorporated into astory I reported about the Pentagon moving away from more robust civilian protections, a reversal highlighted by a deadly U.S. attack on a girls’ school in Iran. Other reporting ended up in the story about Gorka’s phoenixlike return to the White House and what it says about the Trump counterterrorism doctrine.

Gorka didn’t respond to requests for comment beyond the hostile posts on X. When I asked the White House for comment, spokesperson Anna Kelly praised Gorka’s “incredible job” but sidestepped questions about his approach. “Anyone attempting to smear him and the President’s national security team is only revealing that they haven’t been paying attention for the past year,” Kelly wrote, “as anyone with eyes can see that our homeland is more secure than ever.”

As of writing, exactly two months into the Iran war, Gorka’s counterterrorism strategy has yet to appear.

---

an 4 26

President Donald Trump said that his administration is on the hunt for "a leaker," he said, who revealed that one person was rescued and another was still missing from a downed aircraft in Iran.

"And as you probably know, we didn't talk about the first one for an hour and then somebody leaked something, which we'll hopefully find that leaker. We're looking very hard to find that leaker and talked about, 'There's somebody missing.' They basically said that we have one and there's somebody missing," said Trump.

"A leaker leaked!" Trump exclaimed, noting that they revealed "national security" information.

According to Trump, his administration will put the journalists in jail if they don't turn over their source.

'Well, they [Iran] didn't know there was somebody missing until this leaker gave the information. So whoever it is, we think we'll be able to find it out because we're going to go to the media company that released it, and we're going to say 'national security,' give it up or go to jail," announced Trump. "And we know who and you know who we're talking about because some things you can't do because when they did that, all of a sudden the entire country of Iran knew that there was a pilot that was somewhere on their land that was fighting for his life."

"The person will go to jail if he doesn't say," added Trump.

Video footage from people on the ground in Iran was uploaded to social media showing the plane wreckage.

"Bit hard to follow Trump recounting of the rescue mission," foreign policy reporter Laura Rozen wrote on X. "Trump repeatedly talking about sand and contingencies."

"It's a F-15E, it is a two-person fighter jet. It doesn't take a leaker to realize there were two people to find," wrote "Task and Purpose" editor Nicholas Slayton on BlueSky.

Others wondered if Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth could be the leaker. The secretary was found to be sending classified information via Signal to his lawyer, wife, a group of Trump officials and a reporter who was also quietly on the chat.

Another suggested that Trump could have been the leaker because he "can't keep his mouth shut."

---

rww

03/30/2026

Kyle Mantyla

Kathryn Wilkens @ Mediaite: ‘Trump Is Winning’: FCC Chair Boasts He’s Remaking the Media by Pushing Out Left-Leaning Figures

During a Friday CPAC appearance, FCC Chair Brendan Carr bragged that he’s remaking the media by pushing out left-leaning figures, declaring, “[President Donald] Trump is winning.”

Patrick Marley @ The Washington Post: He took Pelosi’s lectern on Jan. 6. Now he’s running for office.

Adam Johnson has rarely voted and embraces his role as clown prince of Jan. 6. Floridians will decide whether a man who tried to upend democracy can help lead one.

Hafiz Rashid @ The New Republic: January 6 Rioters Pardoned by Trump Sue Over “Emotional Distress”

January 6 insurrectionists say police used excessive force while trying to stop them from storming the Capitol.

Jason Wilson @ The Guardian: College Republicans director made racist and sexist remarks on live streams

Review of Kai Schwemmer’s broadcasts undermines claim ‘process of growth’ had led him to abandon bigoted views.

Lydia O'Connor @ HuffPost: A Running List Of The Totally Real, Not At All Fake Awards Donald Trump Has Received

The president is the "undisputed champion of beautiful clean coal," and he has the trophy to prove it.

Amogh Dimri @ The Atlantic: Nick Fuentes’s Strategy is Working

Viral clips of the far-right white supremacist are growing his audience.

Ben Jacobs @ Slate: CPAC Now Has No Trump and No Swag

CPAC was never cool, but it was once exciting. In 2026 the conference was no longer a hotbed of insurgents against a Republican establishment, let alone a place where factions of conservatives maneuvered for dominance. It wasn’t even an out-and-out MAGA pep rally that celebrated the ascension of Trump. It didn’t have a clear function anymore. Instead, it just felt like an event held out of habit.

---

YIKES

AN 3 26

On Monday, March 23 in the case Villarreal v. Alaniz, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Laredo, Texas-based journalist Priscilla Villarreal — who believes she was wrongly arrested while doing her work. Villarreal argued that the arrest was a First Amendment violation, but most of the High Court's justices disagreed with her appeal and declined to take the case.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, however, offered a vehement dissent in the decision, agreeing with Villarreal (who goes by La Gordiloca online) that journalism was being treated like a crime.

In a newletter published by Slate on March 26, journalist Shirin Ali emphasizes that the High Court's Villarreal v. Alaniz decision and Sotomayor's dissent come at a time when journalism is under attack from the second Trump Administration.

"This week," Ali argues, "the Supreme Court effectively shielded the nation's law enforcement from consequences when it treats journalism as a crime. In rejecting an appeal in Villarreal v. Alaniz, the Court has allowed local officials in Texas to remain immune from prosecution for arresting a journalist who published information she received from a government official. This case presented a strikingly simple question: Does it violate a journalist's First Amendment rights if they are arrested for requesting and publishing information that a government employee willingly hands over?.... The case of Villarreal v. Alaniz has been ping-ponging through the courts since 2019, when it was first filed by Priscilla Villarreal….. Things took a sharp turn for her in 2017, when she was arrested at her home for allegedly violating section 39.06(c) of the Texas Penal Code."

Ali adds, "The obscure law bans a person from soliciting or receiving nonpublic information from a public servant by means of their office or employment with the intent to obtain a benefit."

The Slate reporter notes that although a judge dismissed the charges against Villareal and criticized the Texas law for being too vague, Villareal "fought back with a lawsuit demanding damages."

In her dissent, Sotomayor laid out her arguments in favor of Villareal's position.

The Barack Obama appointee wrote, "It should be obvious that this arrest violated the First Amendment….. By arresting Villarreal, rather than solely disciplining the employee for any wrongdoing, county officials took this 'everyday journalism' and transformed it 'into a crime.' This was a blatant First Amendment violation. No reasonable officer would have thought that he could have arrested Villarreal, consistent with the Constitution, for asking the questions she asked."

The High Court's March 23 decision, Ali argues, is especially bad in light of the Trump Administration's attacks on the First Amendment.

"As we collectively watch Trump's second presidency play out, when he has weaponized every tool at the executive's disposal to attack speech he does not like —Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson, late night host Jimmy Kimmel, and a slew of major national news organizations come to mind — the Supreme Court's lack of action threatens all Americans," Ali writes. "Journalists have a singular ability to hold the Trump Administration and local governments all across the country accountable, through shedding light on what they are doing and how they are wielding their power. Criminalizing this work without consequence doesn't just endanger those journalists; it threatens everyday Americans who rely on local and national reporting in nearly all aspects of their lives."

---

AN 3 26

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston, Jr. decided he’d had enough of one former Trump official’s libel suit against an ex-aide and stomped his suit into the ground for good.

It was former Kennedy Center chief Richard Grenell second go-around in trying to sue ex-Mike Pence aide Olivia Troye over her claim that Grenell, while a former Acting Director of National Intelligence and a former United States Ambassador, had tried to arrange for former vice president Pence “to attend a white supremacist event while he was on an overseas trip.”

Troye further claimed Grenell “hung out with Nazis during his time serving as the Ambassador to Germany.”

Grenell claimed personal and economic damages in his libel suit, but judge Alston pointed out that Troye’s accusation of Nazi connections did nothing to hinder his career after President Donald Trump entered office.

“Plaintiff acknowledges that, since these remarks were posted, he has: (received private equity opportunities overseas, been named the Presidential Envoy for Special Missions, been named the Interim Director of the Kennedy Center, and joined the Board of Directors at [Fox News’] Live Nation,” Alston pointed out.

Acknowledging this, the judge dismissed the suit “with prejudice,” which effectively cans any further attempt by Grenell to sue Troye over the same accusations.

Troye, for her part, has never retracted her claim of Grenell’s Nazi connections.

Left Hook host, Wjahat Ali called Grenell’s suit “frivolous ... lawfare” on Wednesday and said Grenell had obviously been inspired by his boss Donald Trump to intimidate all opposition with expensive court cases.

“Instead of bending the knee like corporate law firms and media outlets, Troye decided to fight her case — and she won!” said Ali.

“It's just really a way to make an example of an individual and say, if any of you other people speak out, this is coming your way,” Troye added on Ali’s show.

Troye said she caught similar intimidation from the administration when she criticized the appointment and subsequent confirmation of FBI director Kash Patel, who Troye openly complained was unfit for the job.

“Every time I went out and criticized Kash Patel and said he was unfit to become the FBI director, I got a letter, and … MS NOW got a letter threatening to sue them and me over the fact that I was merely saying what other people who have directly worked with Kash Patel were saying as well,” said Troye. “Yeah. It didn't stop me. I showed up at his confirmation hearing because I was, like, ‘all right, you're going to threaten me. I'm going to show up with a former judge and former FBI director.’ And we sat through that hearing together so that I could stare. Republican senators in the face and in the eyes and say, ‘you know exactly what this individual is.’

---

MMA // HEGS TRUMP

### Fox host Charles Payne: “One of the worst things for the market hasn't been the war, it's been the media's coverage of the war”

03/23/26

---

ban fotog bc po on pix

an 3 26

Military’s Stars and Stripes barred from Pentagon press update: reporter

Bruce Haring

---

PRESS SUPPRESS MMA

The Trump administration demands American press propagandize his Iran war

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 03/16/26

We are two weeks into President Donald Trump’s ill-conceived war of choice against Iran, and the president is already suggesting his administration should shut down news outlets for producing critical reports — or even consider treason charges based on spurious claims of collusion with America’s enemies.

Though U.S. and Israeli forces have successfully bombed a wide array of Iranian targets and assassinated its former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran has followed through with its strategic doctrine by closing the Strait of Hormuz, shutting down a major channel for the global energy and fertilizer trades.

As a result, Trump is begging/demanding foreign navies bail him out by sending ships to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, deploying additional troops and ships to the region for unknown reasons, lifting sanctions on Russia in hopes of lowering the price of oil, denying reports that a Pentagon investigation preliminarily found the U.S. military accidentally incinerated scores of Iranian schoolchildren with an errant missile — and railing against the American press for refusing to report that the war is going well.

Meanwhile, Trump’s hand-picked Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, is signaling to broadcast stations that they will face regulatory retribution if they don’t “correct course."

It’s all part of the authoritarian playbook Trump wields against news outlets that produce anything less than Fox News-style propaganda. The protections of the First Amendment ensure that those outlets could likely prevail in court — but fighting is expensive, and over the course of Trump’s second term so far, the corporate moguls who control them have proven unnervingly unwilling to do so.

### Trump rails against press, demands government retribution

Last week, former Fox News host Megyn Kelly bemoaned that the network’s coverage is offering lockstep support for Trump’s Iranian “excursion.”

“Now it's, you cheerlead the war, support the military industrial complex, or … you're a loser,” she said on her podcast. “It's infuriating because we're talking about life and death. We're talking about American life or death. And this is a dereliction of duty.”

As Kelly suggests, when Trump turns his television to Fox, he is getting unhinged validation of his efforts. But the president is not satisfied with that. He wants every American news outlet producing the same Fox-style war propaganda.

Trump used what he baselessly described as “an intentionally misleading headline by the Fake News Media” to denounce the press in a Saturday morning Truth Social post.

“The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal (in particular), and other Lowlife 'Papers’ and Media actually want us to lose the War,” he wrote. “Their terrible reporting is the exact opposite of the actual facts! They are truly sick and demented people that have no idea the damage they cause the United States of America.”

In another post on Sunday evening, the president baselessly claimed that Iran had been “working in close coordination with the Fake News Media” to promote a fake, AI-generated video depicting a U.S. ship burning in the Persian Gulf.

“The story was knowingly FAKE and, in a certain way, you can say that those Media Outlets that generated it should be brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information!” Trump posted. “The fact is, Iran is being decimated, and the only battles they ‘win’ are those that they create through AI, and are distributed by Corrupt Media Outlets.”

(In reality, responsible news outlets have been debunking that video, not distributing it, according to CNN’s Brian Stelter.)

“It's pretty criminal because our media companies, who have no credibility whatsoever, are putting out information that they know is false, and it's a very dangerous thing for the country,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One later that night, “I think they could be in serious jeopardy."

Trump’s weekend anti-press binge followed coverage complaints from Pete Hegseth, the former Fox & Friends weekend host who now heads the Pentagon, who used a press conference on Friday morning to gripe extensively about the banners he has seen on TV news coverage.

Yet some in this crew, in the press, just can't stop. Allow me to make a few suggestions. People look up at the TV and they see banners, they see headlines. I used to be in that business. And I know that everything is written intentionally.

For example, a banner or a headline: “Mideast war intensifies,” splashing on the screen the last couple of days, alongside visuals of civilian or energy targets that Iran has hit, because that's what they do. What should the banner read instead?

How about, ‘Iran increasingly desperate,’ because they are. They know it and so do you, if it can be admitted.

Hegseth posited that an “actual patriotic press” would produce such coverage. He also decried a CNN report detailing how the Trump administration “failed to fully account for the potential consequences” of Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz. “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better,” he commented, referencing a Trump ally’s effort to take over CNN’s parent company with the help of the administration.

### With Carr, a cause for alarm

It is disturbing enough that the president of the United States is a deranged authoritarian who responds to a faltering war by ranting about its coverage. But what makes it worse is that his administration is filled with apparatchicks eager to carry out his demands for retribution.

Carr, who was reportedly with the president at his Mar-A-Lago club over the weekend, responded to Trump’s initial post complaining about journalists who “actually want us to lose the War” by threatening the licenses of broadcast stations that produce critical coverage.

“Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions - also known as the fake news - have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” Carr wrote. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not."

Carr was nonspecific about how broadcasters could avoid reprisal (and Trump had lashed out at newspapers, not broadcast networks, in his post), but he’s a hack who is typically willing to carry Trump’s water no matter how absurd the underlying complaint may be.

Trump signaled his approval for Carr’s threats in his Sunday evening “TREASON” post, writing, “I am so thrilled to see Brendan Carr, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), looking at the licenses of some of these Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic ‘News’ Organizations."

Stelter, in an extensive report drawing on comments from First Amendment lawyers, notes that Carr “has very little power to follow through” and that television stations, if they are willing to fight such attempted reprisals in court, “are not at serious risk of being banned."

“Any government action against a licensee would cause a protracted legal battle, even more so given the current media-bashing climate, because a station would likely cite Trump’s retributive streak and mount a First Amendment case,” Stelter wrote.

There is a strong argument that stations would be victorious if they fought Carr’s attempts to strip their licenses. But there were also strong arguments that ABC News and CBS News would be victorious if they fought the lawsuits Trump filed over their coverage in 2024. The problem was that rather than going to court on behalf of a free press, Disney and Paramount, their parent companies, decided it was in the interest of their broader business holdings to fold.

The advantage Trump and Carr have in their fight to cudgel the press into line is that it can be very expensive to fight the federal government on behalf of the First Amendment — and what the last year shows is that many people who own or control news outlets don’t care enough about such principles to do it. And Disney and Paramount had much deeper pockets to pay lawyers than an individual local broadcast news station does. Even Sinclair Broadcast Network, which owns or operates nearly 200 stations across the country, has a market cap of around $1 billion, compared to roughly $175 billion for Disney.

If Carr threatens the licenses of Sinclair stations, are its pro-Trump owners really going to go to the mat for the free press rather than using his complaints as an opportunity to push coverage even further to the right?

It’s also worth taking seriously Trump’s threats of treason charges against news outlets. The Justice Department is now staffed by loyalists like former Fox host Jeanine Pirro who are willing to follow through on his demands for political prosecutions. Those efforts keep failing — but they raise the cost of dissent and thus chill free speech.

And that’s what the president wants, as Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt made clear when she channeled him on Monday morning.

“The president has said enough with this coverage from other networks that are not telling you the truth, that are so negative about what’s going on,” she said. “This is a pro-America fight, and every network needs to get on board with that."

And if they aren’t, there will be consequences.

---

an 3 26

Brendan Carr, the Donald Trump-appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), is threatening retaliation against broadcasters who offer negative coverage of U.S. war operations against Iran. After Carr threatened to take away their broadcast licenses, President Trump applauded him on his Truth Social platform — writing that he was "thrilled" that Carr was "looking at the licenses" of some "Highly Unpatriotic 'News' Organizations."

But Robert Francis Prevost, AKA Pope Leo the 14th, has very different viewpoint.

In a Monday, March 16 post on X, formerly Twitter, the Catholic Church's first American pope urged journalists to cover the Iran war honestly and not sugar-coat its harsh realities.

Pope Leo tweeted, "In the dramatic circumstances of war, information must guard against the risk of turning into propaganda. It is every journalist's duty to verify the news, so as not to become a megaphone for power. They must show the suffering that war always brings to populations, which entails showing the face of war and recounting it through the eyes of victims."

Journalist John Harwood noted the Pope's candor, tweeting, "The Pope calling out Trump's authoritarianism."

Patrick Strother, CEO of Strothers Communications Group, posted, "This is the 33rd conflict the US has started or participated in during my life. Propaganda played a vital role in selling these wars, but they didn't even bother with the Iran invasion, so journalists have a golden opportunity to change some minds about the ever increasing futility of murdering 'enemies.'"

---

AN 3 26

President Donald Trump has lost his appeal in his libel lawsuit against the cable news outlet CNN.

The appeal went before the full panel of judges at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Alabama, Georgia and Florida cases. Trump had specifically asked for the decision be en banc, meaning the full panel would rule on it. The reason may have been that many judges were appointed by Trump himself to the appeals court. Still, the verdict was unanimous, Politico legal reporter Josh Gerstein posted on X.

Trump filed the lawsuit in 2022 as a private citizen after the network used the term "Big Lie" to refer to false claims about fraud around the 2020 election.

The case was thrown out first in 2023 by one of Trump's own appointed district court judges. Trump appealed to the 11th Circuit, where the case was thrown out again. Trump's lawyers then requested that the full panel reconsider, and he was denied there, too.

The one-page response makes it clear that not only did Trump lose the first judge in the district court, but he also lost six of the 12 Trump-appointed judges on the court of appeals.

"The Petition for Rehearing En Banc is DENIED, no judge in regular active service on the Court having requested that the Court be polled on rehearing en banc," the court said.

It's unclear whether Trump will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to silence the use of the phrase "Big Lie" on television, but he has been known to take his lawsuits all the way to top. Justice Clarence Thomas is the Supreme Court Circuit Justice responsible for overseeing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. It means Thomas could review the case and decide whether or not the high court should rule on the matter.

The one major barrier, however, is that Thomas has been "decisive" in First Amendment expression cases, the Free Speech Center said. However, when it comes to the press, Thomas has been a long-time critic of the 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan, which set a higher bar for public figures to claim libel. Both he and Trump agree on the issue.

Trump has sued the Wall Street Journal and owner Rupert Murdoch personally, the New York Times/Penguin Random House, the BBC, The Des Moines Register, the Pulitizer Prize Board, writer Bob Woodward and his publisher Simon and Schuster, as well as his case against CNN.

---

mma

March 2, 2026, edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom

JENNIFER GRIFFIN (CORRESPONDENT): I was in the Pentagon briefing this morning, but we were not called on for a question. We had assigned seats and Fox News was put in the back row. And there was no outside-cuts camera allowed to show who was asking the questions. The Pentagon wanted to control all of that.

These are the questions I would have asked if called on: Why was this an imminent threat? Oman's foreign minister said there was progress in nuclear talks. Was there any evidence that Iran was planning a preemptive strike? U.S. officials now say that was not the case. Do you know where the highly enriched uranium is? That is the question Sec. Hegseth did not want to answer last summer after claiming Iran's nuclear program had been obliterated in Operation Midnight Hammer. The secretary said this war is not about regime change, even though the president called on the Iranians to rise up and remove the regime.

My follow-up would have been how are unarmed Iranian civilians expected to overthrow Iran's security forces? And is this success if the same regime stays in place after this war ends? One question that was shouted at the end and left unanswered: How do you keep this from becoming an insurgency?

...

GRIFFIN: Sec. Hegseth would not rule out having U.S. troops on the ground in Iran but said it would not be 200,000 troops like in Iraq. The secretary said the four U.S. troops killed yesterday took a direct hit to the tactical operations center they were manning and took offense when reporters asked him to articulate why the American people are sending their men and women to war and if he is concerned about it spiraling into a longer war.

The Reliable Sources newsletter had more information about the Pentagon press briefing, with CNN's Brian Stelter writing, “Hegseth only answered questions from his chosen outlets. I'm told he had a pre-selected list of questioners, and all the reporters were in assigned seats, so he knew who to call on”:

The Pentagon has severely restricted access to information in the past year. You'll recall that Pete Hegseth credentialed a MAGA media “press corps” last fall after traditional news outlets rejected new press pass rules that media lawyers said criminalized routine reporting. The MAGA crew does relatively little reporting, so most coverage of the US military is now happening from outside the Pentagon's five walls.

Journalists from traditional outlets were allowed to attend this morning's press conference with Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine. But Hegseth only answered questions from his chosen outlets. I'm told he had a pre-selected list of questioners, and all the reporters were in assigned seats, so he knew who to call on.

---

omfg

no mention of don lemon?

You can’t celebrate the First Amendment with Donald Trump

Written by Matt Gertz

:{:{Published 03/03/26}:

The White House Correspondents Association has decided that now is the time to link arms with President Donald Trump. After Trump claimed Monday night on Truth Social that the group had “asked me, very nicely, to be the Honoree” at the annual White House Correspondent’s Dinner, its president, CBS News White House correspondent Weijia Jiang, confirmed in a press release that he had accepted its invitation.*

The White House Correspondent’s Dinner — an annual event in which D.C.’s top journalists rub elbows with the people they cover and an odd array of celebrities — is, at its best, an unseemly affair excused by the conceit, as Jiang put it in her press release, that it is “a dinner that celebrates the First Amendment.” Under past administrations, there was a benefit to have the president attend the event and give a speech in which he would inevitably pay tribute to the freedom of the press.

But as a matter of principle, you can either have a dinner that celebrates the First Amendment or you can have a dinner that features Donald Trump. You can’t have both because the president holds the freedom of the press in contempt and is using the administration to hammer reporters into compliance with his whims — and everyone knows it.

Trump’s White House violated the First Amendment by punishing the AP. The president kicked off his second term by barring Associated Press reporters from the White House press pool and other events because the AP continued referring to the “Gulf of Mexico” instead of adopting Trump’s new “Gulf of America” moniker. When a Trump-appointed judge ordered the AP’s access restored on the grounds that this violated the First Amendment, the White House sidestepped the ruling by eliminating the press pool’s dedicated slot for wire service reporters.

The Pentagon replaced its press corps with Trumpist propagandists. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News propagandist, has overseen the replacement of credible reporters with MAGA shills. After handing the workspaces of national news outlets to right-wing publications and barring unescorted reporters from much of the building, in September the department rolled out stringent new reporting guidelines that nearly every member of the established press corps refused to sign on the grounds that it would make them “stenographers parroting press releases.” They were subsequently replaced by far-right outlets and influencers willing to accept those terms.

At Trump’s behest, the Justice Department targets journalists. Trump ranted about the “fake news” during a March 2025 speech at DOJ headquarters, instructing its employees to “watch for” their “totally illegal” behavior. Attorney General Pam Bondi subsequently rescinded the previous administration’s restrictions protecting journalists from prosecutorial scrutiny. Several journalists, including former CNN host Don Lemon, were arrested in January and charged with federal crimes in connection with their filming of a protest inside a Minnesota church. The same month, the FBI conducted an unprecedented search of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s home, seizing her devices as part of a leak investigation.

Trump has also suggested that Bondi could prosecute critical reporters for “hate speech” on the grounds that “you treat me so unfairly, it’s hate,” and said media pollsters whose surveys show he is unpopular “should be investigated for ELECTION FRAUD.”

The FCC crackdown on free speech. Trump has frequently called for the Federal Communications Commission to rescind the broadcast licenses of ABC, CBS, and NBC in retaliation for coverage he finds unfavorable. While taking those networks off the air is not actually within the FCC’s power, its Trumpy chairman, Brendan Carr, is leveraging its authority to cudgel them into line, leading to the censoring of Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert.

An authoritarian plan for America’s media. Trump emulates the authoritarian policies of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who dismantled his country’s independent news media by steering critical outlets into the hands of his cronies. CBS News, the social media platform TikTok, and Paramount’s movie studios have already come under the thumb of the pro-Trump billionaires Larry and David Ellison — and CNN, along with HBO and Warner’s movie business, could soon follow after Trump’s threats of regulatory retribution influenced their sale.

Trump’s endless lawsuits over journalism he doesn’t like.ABC News and CBS News faced lawsuits from Trump they could have won over coverage he didn’t like, but after Trump’s reelection, their parent companies capitulated and settled them. Trump is currently suing The New York Times and several of its reporters for $15 billion over its coverage of his businesses; The Wall Street Journal, two of its reporters, several related entities, and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, for $10 billion over coverage of Trump’s relationship with notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein; and The Des Moines Register and its pollster, J. Ann Selzer, for publishing poll results that showed Trump trailing in Iowa in October 2024.

Trump is also currently suing the Pulitzer Prize Board for defamation over its 2018 award to the Times and the Post for their reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The WHCA’s Jiang should probably consult with the group’s lawyers before announcing the “awards honoring excellent journalism” she said would be given at the event — if the “wrong” honoree wins, the president attending the dinner to celebrate the First Amendment may respond with a lawsuit.

Trump is well aware that the media establishment is capitulating to his will.

“You know at some point, they give up,” he said of media owners in an interview last year with The Atlantic. “At some point they say, No más, no más.”

Now it’s the WHCA’s turn to surrender.

*Notably, Jiang did not address Trump’s assertion that he would be the dinner’s “Honoree.” That's almost certainly a lie designed to humiliate the press — Trump loves grinding them into the dirt, which is what we should expect from the forthcoming event.

---

// BOEBERT HILLARY PIX?

MMA

Right-wing media figures are getting briefed on the Iran war before Congress

Benny Johnson and Brian Kilmeade appear to have more information than just about any elected representative

Written by John Knefel

Research contributions from Sophie Lawton

Published 03/02/26

A defining feature of President Donald Trump’s second term is its symbiotic relationship with media allies, both at traditional right-wing outlets like Fox News and among the newer cohort of MAGA podcasters and online influencers — in some cases, these figures know more about Trump’s upcoming policy decisions than members of Congress. That dynamic was fully on display in the lead-up to the unprovoked bombing campaign the United States and Israel launched against Iran on February 28.

Prior to Trump’s initiation of the war, MAGA streamer Benny Johnson and Newsmax host Greg Kelly appeared to have insider information about when the first round of strikes would occur. Beyond them, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade and contributor Jack Keane claimed to have been involved in high-level briefings on the campaign.

Johnson, who was fired by Buzzfeed for plagiarism in 2014 and later disciplined by the Independent Journal Review for publishing false information, appears to have had unusually close access to officials in the Trump administration responsible for the decision to go to war.

On February 21, Johnson told his audience, “We are going to war with Iran. … I've been asking — I think that the cake's been baked.” It was unclear at the time whether he had inside information or was speculating, as he later added, referring to the publicly reported military build up, “the maps don't lie, OK? It’s happening.”

Johnson returned to the subject on February 27, just hours before the U.S.-Israeli campaign began. He began his show saying he’d just been “on the phone with top-level — let’s just say very high-level administration officials — moments ago to discuss what the plan is” for attacking Iran. Later in the same episode, Johnson claimed that he’d been talking with someone who is at the “top, top level of the administration, and we were yelling at each other — not yelling, but having polite conversation — about, like, what’s about to pop off in the Mid East.”

Ultimately, Johnson told his audience, “This is not a drill. It is actually happening,” adding: “I think in the next 24 hours we are going to see the world change. It may be the next 24 minutes, we're not exactly certain."

Newsmax host Kelly was even more precise. “A very well-informed person told me” the attack on Iran will happen Friday “after Wall Street closes,” Kelly said February 26.

By contrast, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who sits on both the Senate committees on intelligence and on foreign relations, told reporters on February 28 that he was “learning like you are as the news unfolds exactly what's happening." The Trump administration reportedly briefed some congressional staff the following day, with a full briefing to Congress scheduled for March 3.

Johnson and Kelly weren’t the only right-wing media figures enjoying extraordinary access to high-level information. Over at Fox, Kilmeade — a weekday Fox & Friends host who came in to cover a weekend shift — said on March 1 that he “was fortunate enough to be in a briefing with high-ranking Trump officials” a day earlier.

The same morning, Keane offered more granular detail, implying a high degree of insider information. “The [Persian] Gulf states are adequately defending themselves,” said Keane, a retired general and former Army vice chief of staff. “Three of them are preparing for combat, offensive operations. One has already started and two others are about to get going. I'm not going to talk about who they are, but that is being coordinated with Adm. Cooper and Central Command. These will be coordinated, selected targets, and they will contribute to the offensive nature of what’s taken place."

Keane’s comments on Fox the next day suggested he’d been provided with high-level briefings that everything is going smoothly. “The military has got a plan here that I have been privy to understand and it is very comprehensive,” Keane said. “And we're going to stick with that plan until the conditions of these military objectives are met. So far, the plan is exceeding all expectations."

The access to White House war plans that Johnson, Kelly, Kilmeade, and Keane appear to have is even more noteworthy given that the Pentagon tightly controlled its first press briefing of the war on March 2 — having already largely replaced the traditional Pentagon press corps with a series of lackeys, grifters, conspiracists, and cranks. According to CNN’s Brian Stelter, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — formerly of Fox News — “only answered questions from his chosen outlets” and had a “pre-selected list of questioners.” Those approved outlets didn’t include Hegseth’s former employer, whose correspondent was relegated to the back row and not called on for a question.

All administrations leak and try to manage public opinion through press operations. But the alignment of messaging and interests between the Trump White House and its media allies is unlike anything the United States has seen in recent memory. Sometimes that looks like providing right-wing influencers with embeds alongside Trump’s deportation agents; other times it looks like inviting MAGA media trolls to the White House to discuss antifa. Now, it looks like some of the most slavish voices in right-wing media are getting better information more quickly than members of Congress as the United States and Israel unleash yet more destruction in the Middle East.

---

an 2 26

The Trump administration's accusation against former CNN journalist Don Lemon appeared to be contradicted in a newly released piece of video, according to a Friday report from the Washington Post, casting significant doubt on the rationale given for his the charges brought against him.

Last month, Lemon, along with Twin Cities-based reporter Georgia Fort and several others, was arrested by federal officers in connection with his presence at a protest that took place at a St. Paul church weeks prior. Lemon and Fortasserted that they were present for the event as journalists covering it, but the federal indictment against them claims that they were "agitators" along with the rest of the protesters, who "entered the Church in a coordinated takeover-style attack."

The indictment did not characterize Lemon and Fort as reporters, aside from mentions of Lemon engaging in a livestream for his online show and Fort conducting an interview. They and the rest of the protesters are charged with conspiring to deprive congregants of their religious rights and of interfering with access to a place of worship. The DOJ alleged that they "oppressed, threatened, and intimidated" church attendees "by physically occupying most of the main aisle and rows of chairs near the front of the Church, engaging in menacing and threatening behavior."

"Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done," Lemon's attorney, Abbe Lowell, said following his arrest.

On Friday, the Washington Post reported on footage of the protest from a Black Lives Matter livestream and a livestream conducted by Fort. At no point in the footage, the outlet explained, did Lemon appear to behave in a manner consistent with the allegations against him.

"Alive stream from Black Lives Matter Minnesota captures Lemon standing at the back of the sanctuary when the protest begins about two minutes later," the report detailed. "He soon moves forward to where the demonstrators are gathered and can be heard on his feed narrating the events for his audience. Fort’s live stream shows protesters chanting anti-ICE slogans and in some cases confronting parishioners... Lemon remains toward the front of the church — sometimes off to the side and sometimes near the main aisle — for roughly 16 minutes. "

The report continued: "For less than half of that time, he is off-camera but his feed remains live with audio from his microphone. His feed drops out entirely on several occasions for a few seconds at a time. The videos and audio reviewed by The Post contain no indication Lemon threatened church congregants or chanted or yelled."

At one point in the footage reviewed, Lemon can be heard saying, "I’m not part of the group; I’m just here photographing. I’m a journalist." Later on, he holds the door for people leaving the church, asking some for interviews. When one man declines the request, Lemon said, "Okay, thank you, I appreciate it." The two continue a heated back-and-forth after the man claimed to support the deportation operation in the Twin Cities area, with Lemon accusing him of not listening to facts and the man countering that Lemon was posing as a journalist. While tense, the Post noted that Lemon at no point prevented the man from exiting the building, as the indictment said.

“There is clearly no physical obstruction of that exit,” Judy Appelbaum, who worked as a lead congressional staffer involved in drafting the 1994 law that Lemon was charged under, explained to the Post. “And I don’t see any use of force, nor any threat of force.”

---

an 2 26

President Donald Trump, in what appeared to be an attempt to pressure two major cable news networks, warned against booking two prominent former officials from his first administration.

Trump targeted CNN and MS NOW — formerly MSNBC, which he called “MSDNC” — while denouncing attorney Ty Cobb, a former member of the White House legal team who reported directly to the president, and former Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor.

The president called Cobb “one of the Worst Lawyers in Washington, D.C.,” and a “WHACKJOB, who I hardly knew,” and said Taylor is “another major Loser … who I have no idea who he is.”

He charged that both “make livings talking about me like they know me well.”

“So, when you watch these two guys on Television, which, fortunately, doesn’t happen often because there’s very little audience at either CNN or MSDNC,” he wrote, “remember, they know nothing about me — Just two DOPES trying to make a ‘buck’ by pretending to know something about someone who turned out to be very famous.”

Trump already was the president when they served in his administration.

“These two Networks are forewarned not to put them on the air again, because they have no knowledge or credibility with respect to anything have [sic] to do with DONALD J. TRUMP.”

Discover moreDiversity inclusion trainingRepublican Party newsLGBTQ rights updates

Last month, Cobb “claimed President Trump is experiencing a ‘significant decline’ in his mental faculties,” according to The Hill.

“I think the dementia and the cognitive decline are, you know, palpable, as do many experts, including many physicians,” Cobb said.

Trump’s social media post came just about the same time that he or someone with access to his social media account deleted what many, including several prominent Republicans, denounced as a racist meme that depicted former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.

---

MMA

After calling for Don Lemon’s arrest, right-wing media are now celebrating it

Written by Reed McMaster & Ben Van Bloem

Published 02/02/26

Right-wing media figures called for Don Lemon's arrest, claiming he needed to be “next to fall” and made an “example out of” after he and fellow independent journalist Georgia Fort covered a January 18 protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement at a Minnesota church. After they were arrested on January 30, right-wing media figures celebrated, calling it “a wonderful thing to happen” and stating that it was time for Lemon to “feel some trauma.”

Don Lemon was arrested by federal agents after reporting on a protest at a Minnesota church

- Lemon and Fort documented protesters in Minnesota who disrupted a church service on January 18 after hearing reports that a pastor at the church was an ICE official. Lemon and Fort have now been indicted by a grand jury and were arrested by FBI and Homeland Security agents on January 30. The BBC reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi accused them of participating in a “coordinated attack” with the protesters against the church. BBC, [1/30/26]

- Lemon and Fort have both stated that they attended the protest as journalists there to document the event, not as protesters themselves. In a video recorded at the scene on January 18, Lemon stated, “I’m just here photographing, I’m not part of the group. … I’m a journalist.” CNN reported that Fort “made the same points in a Facebook Live stream when federal agents arrived at her home early Friday morning. ‘This is all stemming from the fact that I filmed a protest as a member of the media,’ Fort said before she surrendered to agents” CNN, [1/30/26]

- Before the arrests, right-wing figures accused Lemon of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act and floated charging him under an 1871 law against the Ku Klux Klan. Conservative media personalities Benny Johnson and Will Chamberlain accused Lemon of violating the FACE Act, which criminThe Independent, [1/19/26alizes impeding a person's access to abortion clinics and places of worship. In an interview with Johnson, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon “floated the possibility of invoking the Enforcement Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act,” to charge Lemon. ; U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, accessed 1/30/26; HuffPost, 1/20/26]

- Multiple press freedom groups and Lemon's former employer CNN condemned the arrest, accusing the administration of violating his First Amendment rights. CNN wrote, “The FBl’s arrest of our former CNN colleague Don Lemon raises profoundly concerning questions about press freedom and the First Amendment.” The network further stated, “The First Amendment in the United States protects journalists who bear witness to news and events as they unfold, ensuring they can report freely in the public interest, and the DOJ’s attempts to violate those rights is unacceptable.” CNN, [1/30/26]

## Right-wing media called for Lemon’s arrest after the January 18 church protest

- Daily Wire podcaster Matt Walsh praised the arrests of protesters, declaring, “Don Lemon needs to be the next to fall” and “everybody who stormed that church needs to be arrested.” Walsh said, “And so, this is hopefully just the beginning. And as we know, Don Lemon needs to be the next to fall. And I mean, everybody who stormed the church needs to be arrested. And we’re moving in that direction now, which is great.” The Daily Wire, *The Matt Walsh show*, [1/22/26]

- Streamer Zach Hoyt, known as Asmongold, said he would be “so happy” if Lemon was put “in jail under the Ku Klux Klan Act.” Hoyt celebrated “The Klan Act? Bro, Don Lemon is gonna get charged with the Klan Act. … Absolute fucking cinema. Bro, if they put him in jail under the Ku Klux Klan Act, that's going to be impressive. I'll be so happy.” Twitch, *Zachrawr*, [1/20/26]

- Fox host Emily Compagno listed off “a whole host of things” she'd charge Lemon with, including child endangerment. Compagno said, “If I were the federal prosecutor, I would charge, yes, the FACE Act, I would charge civil rights, I would charge conspiracy, I would charge obstruction of free exercise of religion, I would charge federal trespass, harassment, a whole host of things — and on the state level, child endangerment, too.” She complained, “What if they were armed? Try that in my church. This is sickening to me. And then to have Don Lemon try to mealymouth his way out of it, you know what? If he continues that charade I would charge him with lying to a federal officer.” Fox News, *Outnumbered*, [1/20/26]

- On Sean Hannity’s radio show, Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett fantasized that Lemon “could be prosecuted as a willing participant” in the protest.Jarrett claimed that the FACE Act “fits like a glove,” adding, “On top of that, I would throw in trespass, disorderly conduct, [and] disturbing a religious meeting, which are normally state crimes. Look, Don Lemon could be prosecuted as a willing participant. He committed trespass, he appears, as you and I discussed last night, to have embedded himself in the mob. He knew full well what they intended to do — commit those crimes I’ve described.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [1/20/26]

- Speaking about Lemon and the church protesters with podcaster Tim Pool, white nationalist Nick Fuentes argued, “I think you got to crush them. You got to make an example out of them.” Fuentes said, “What's funny is what happens with the right, they just get the book thrown at them. There's no defense. Ashli Babbitt, was there a big discussion in the national press about was that justified? Was that overkill? No. Absolutely not. But the left knows they get away with literally murder and every other thing. So I think you got to crush them. You got to make an example out of them. And then the next time, people think twice and say I don't know. Should we storm the church? We might go to jail like those other people.” Rumble, *TimcastIRL*, [1/20/26]

- OnThe Benny Show, Walsh called to prosecute Lemon with “every possible crime that you can charge him with legally” after he covered the church protest. Walsh argued, “Find every possible crime that you can charge him with legally. And there's a bunch. It's not just one. Find every crime you can charge him with. Charge him with every single one down to the letter and then give him the maximum possible sentence for every single one.” YouTube, *The Benny Show*, [1/22/26]

- An op-ed in The Christian Post argued that Lemon and other protesters should be charged under the FACE Act. Op-ed contributor Daniel Schmid wrote, “Don Lemon and his Marxist mob stormed a Temple of the Most High God, and they ought to be prosecuted for it. Anything less would leave the Republic bewildered as to which face of the Department of Justice may be true.” The Christian Post, [1/22/26]

- Appearing on Hannity’s radio show again, Jarrett said Lemon should have been charged with a “hate crime” against white people. Jarrett argued churchgoers “were taunted because of their race, which qualifies as a hate crime.” Premiere Radio Network, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [1/30/26]

## Right-wing media celebrated and defended Lemon’s arrest on January 30 as “pretty unimpeachable”

- Podcaster Megyn Kelly celebrated the arrest and claimed it was time for Lemon “to feel some trauma.” She stated, “Now it's time for you to feel some trauma. And we don't feel sorry for you because unlike those poor parishioners you actually did bring this upon yourself.” SiriusXM, *The Megyn Kelly Show*, [1/30/26]

- On Instagram, The Daily Wire celebrated Lemon’s arrest by posting a video of the character Carlton fromThe Fresh Prince of Bel-Airdancing. The video’s caption said, “Actual footage of what happened in my brain when I woke up to the news that don lemon was arrested.” The Daily Wire, [1/30/26; Instagram, 1/30/26]

- The Daily Wire's Michael Knowles called Lemon's arrest “a wonderful thing to happen” and claimed it's “good for society.” He stated, “This is, without any qualification, a wonderful thing to happen. It is good for society, it is good for law and order, it's even good for Don Lemon because the guy is clearly very messed up.” SiriusXM, *The Megyn Kelly Show*, [1/30/26]

- Benny Johnson celebrated his show’s advocacy for Lemon’s arrest, claiming, “We were the Grand Central Station for arrest Don Lemon.” Johnson stated that he was “proud to have been part of the telling of the truth on this story, to keep the heat up on Don Lemon.” YouTube, *The Benny Show*, [1/30/26]

- Conspiracy theorist Sherri Tenpenny celebrated the arrest of Lemon on Telegram and called for more arrests. She wrote, “Don't you love how good news always comes on a Friday? Minutes ago, I saw this! Former CNN anchor Don Lemon has been arrested, a Justice Department official familiar with the situation said on Friday. Lemon livestreamed a demonstration that interrupted a church service in St. Paul, Minnesota, earlier this month that protested President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown in the area. Yes! Let's keep going. We have a LONG list of people we'd like to see taken into custody!” Telegram, [1/30/26; Media Matters, 7/19/23]

- Fox host Jesse Watters called the protesters “Lemon’s mob” and argued that he “wasn’t an independent journalist. He was on their team.” Watters said, “Parents were grabbing their children and fleeing for safety. Lemon's mob was menacing families and calling them Nazis. He was encouraging and supporting the reprehensible behavior, and at one point thanked the ringleader. Lemon wasn't an independent journalist. He was on their team.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [1/30/26]

- Fox host Charles Hurt argued that because it was a “grand jury that did indict him,” the indictment is “pretty unimpeachable.” On Fox & Friends, Hurt said, “Of course if it was a grand jury that did indict him, that's pretty unimpeachable.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [1/30/26]

January 30, 2026, edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show

GREGG JARRETT (GUEST): The racist overtones are conspicuous for all to see and hear on those videotapes. And then, you know, Don Lemon later appeared on a podcast, and he doubled down on it. He called the members of the church entitled white supremacists as if that somehow justifies an attack on them. You know, it's not just a despicable remark, but it tells me that they were taunted because of their race, which qualifies as a hate crime. I would have charged him with that.

---

AN 2 26

In 2022, President Donald Trump sued the Pulitzer Prize Board members, but that is now coming back to haunt him.

Law&Crime reported Monday that the board members' legal counsel is subpoenaing the full, unredacted copy of former special counsel Robert Mueller's report to verify claims Trump made were "defamatory."

Trump has filed several demands for depositions from board members in Okeechobee County, Florida, but the defendantsformally sought the report as well as "all documents and communications exchanged between" Trump and Mueller's team.

The request "includes but is not limited to […] any negotiation" with Mueller about Trump's records or his "answers to written questions," the 2016 hack of the DNC by Russians, and the WikiLeaks dump that followed, information on the Trump Tower Moscow project, Trump Jr.'s 2016 Trump Tower meeting, and more, quoted Law&Crime.

According to Trump, the Pulitzer board is responsible for reports by the New York Times and the Washington Post, which won awards for their 2017 coverage of the Russia scandal that the president still disputes. Trump continues to demand that the paper's prizes be rescinded, even nine years later.

Since the Pulitzer Prize is the "pinnacle of American journalistic achievement," Trump claimed that the award "carries very important connotations," and comments from board members "damaged" his "reputation, profession, and business." They allegedly "wrongfully imply criminal" and "un-American conduct" by Trump around what he calls the "Russia Collusion Hoax."

"The Pulitzer Prize Board has an established, formal process by which complaints against winning entries are carefully reviewed," the board told Trump when he first filed the lawsuit.

The board said that it commissioned "two independent reviews of the work submitted by those organizations to our National Reporting competition. Both reviews were conducted by individuals with no connection to the institutions whose work was under examination, nor any connection to each other. The separate reviews converged in their conclusions: that no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes."

The Mueller report, made public, never alleges collusion between Trump and Russia. Instead, it highlights "numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign." So, the members requested access to that full, unredacted report.

---

OMG

AN 1 26 2026

Trump fires off post accusing Fox News of 'criminal offense' over plummeting poll numbers

Donald Trump on Monday renewed his attack on polling operations as his approval ratings continue to plummet, this time even roping in conservative stalwarts like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.

Throughout his second term, the president has consistently argued that stories and poll results that paint him in an overtly negative light are "fake." While this has been a common tactic over the course of his entire political career, more recently, he has started claiming that these stories and polls should be criminal acts, a move that would violate the Constitution's protections for freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

In his Truth Social post from Monday, he reiterated these assertions and argued that his false claim that he won the 2020 election proves the current polling wrong.

"Fake and Fraudulent Polling should be, virtually, a criminal offense," Trump's post read. "As an example, all of the Anti Trump Media that covered me during the 2020 Election showed Polls that were knowingly wrong. They knew what they were doing, trying to influence the Election, but I won in a Landslide, including winning the Popular Vote, all 7 of the 7 Swing States, the Electoral College was a route [sic], and 2,750 Counties to 525."

He continued: "You can’t do much better than that, and yet if people examined The Failing New York Times, ABC Fake News, NBC Fake News, CBS Fake News, Low Ratings CNN, or the now defunct MSDNC, Polls were all fraudulent, and bore nothing even close to the final results. Something has to be done about Fraudulent Polling. Even the Polls of FoxNews and The Wall Street Journal have been, over the years, terrible! There are great Pollsters that called the Election right, but the Media does not want to use them in any way, shape, or form. Isn’t it sad what has happened to American Journalism, but I am going to do everything possible to keep this Polling SCAM from moving forward!"

Despite Trump's claim in the post, the left-leaning news network MSNBC is not defunct, but recently rebranded as MS NOW.

While conservative outlets like Fox News have generally been known to publish more flattering polls of Trump, his sagging popularity has proven too much for these polls to overcome. In November, a survey from the network found the president's approval was at its lowest point on record.

Trump's latest round of grievance over negative polling appears to have been brought on by the most recent poll from the New York Times and Sienna College, which found that approval rating was down to 40 percent, a three-point drop since their last poll. It also found that over two-thirds of respondents felt the country was not better off than it was a year ago, while a little over half said that Trump's policies were actively making life less affordable, the latter representing the biggest issue on voters' minds heading into the 2026 midterms.

Lashing out against the results, Trump added the poll to his defamation lawsuit against the Times. In September, a judge tossed out the original suit for being too long and taking too many pages to get to its actual allegations, accusing the administration of using the filing as a platform lob more abusive language at the paper. Trump's legal team refiled the following month.

---

AN 1 26

A Reagan-appointed judge just shot a warning flare up into the night

:{:{Thom Hartmann January 21, 2026}:

Nebraska mom Jamie Bonkiewicz filmed her interaction with Secret Service agents and police who came to her door because of a tweet.

“The Secret Service came to my door today because of a tweet. No threats. No violence. Just words. That’s where we are now.”

Meanwhile, the Justice Department is going after multiple Democratic members of the House and Senate, the governors of two states, the mayor of Minneapolis, and any Republican who speaks against Trump or his lickspittles:

Jerome Powell, Lisa Cook, Mark Kelly, Elissa Slotkin, Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, Chrissy Houlahan, Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, Chris Christie, Jack Smith, Christopher Krebs, James Comey, Letitia James, John Bolton, Tim Walz, Jacob Frey, Miles Taylor…

Are we really losing our fundamental freedoms under Donald Trump?

Back in 1994, I was invited by a parents group in Singapore to speak about education and ADHD; my book on the topic had just made the cover of TIME magazine. I flew in, they put me up in the city/state’s fanciest hotel, and late the following afternoon I gave my speech. When, during the Q&A afterward, somebody asked me how best to institute the public school reforms I’d suggested, I said words to the effect of, “Get politically active, get your politicians involved, as they control and fund the schools.”

The room went completely quiet, which I thought odd, but then the conversation moved on and I didn’t think about it again until a few hours later when I arrived back at the hotel. My room had been ransacked. The bed was askew, drawers emptied, my suitcase all over the floor, even my toiletry kit spread across the bathroom floor.

When I called down to the hotel’s switchboard to let them know what had happened, the manager came up to my room and carefully told me that the police had visited my room while I was out.

“You must have done or said something suspicious,” he told me. That’s when I remembered the eerie silence in response to my suggestion that people get politically active.

America isn’t Singapore. Yet.

Or Russia, where even standing in the street with a blank sign will get you prison time. Yet.

Or Hungary, where posting on Facebook against Viktor Orbán will get you thrown into jail. Yet.

But we’re sure as hell moving in that direction.

Retired professor Barbara Wien stood outside Stephen Miller’s home passing out “No Nazis in NOVA” [North Virginia] fliers with his picture and the slogan, “Wanted for crimes against humanity.” Three weeks later, she was visited by agents of the FBI, the Secret Service, and a Virginia state policeman, because Miller’s podcaster wife had reportedly called them.

In addition to intimidating Wien, they had a search warrant signed by a judge and took her phone. The New York Times notes:

“The activist … has not been charged with any crime, though the Virginia State Police still have her phone. The investigation remains active, leaving it unclear whether law enforcement has since gathered additional evidence.”

Her lawyer told the Times about his client and the activists who’d been distributing similar flyers in town:

“They were speaking truth to power, and that is really at the core of our Constitution. It’s a principle and a right that our country was founded on.”

True, but the Trump regime doesn’t care about the law.

Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson had been reporting on Trump’s corruption and reorganization of our government, so FBI agents showed up at her home and took her phone, her laptop, and her sports watch, which had a record of everywhere she’d visited for the past few weeks. They were apparently looking for the names and locations of the federal employees she may have interviewed. As theTimes reported:

“It is exceedingly rare, even in investigations of classified disclosures, for federal agents to search a reporter’s home. A 1980 law generally bars search warrants for reporters’ work materials, unless the reporters themselves are suspected of committing a crime related to the materials.”

True, but the Trump regime doesn’t care about the law.

Meanwhile, a Reagan-appointed federal judge in Boston just said out loud what millions of Americans are feeling in their gut. U.S. District Judge William G. Young, hardly a lefty firebrand, looked at the evidence in front of him and concluded that the Trump administration is using the machinery of the state to punish speech it doesn’t like.

“I find it breathtaking,” Young said, that he was forced to conclude that “high-level officers of our government — cabinet secretaries — [were] conspiring to infringe the First Amendment rights of people with such rights here in the United States.”

Young was presiding over a case involving the arrest and threatened deportation of non-citizen college students and scholars who spoke out on Palestine. What troubled him wasn’t just the individual cases, but the pattern. The brown-nosers around Trump, he said (without using that word), appeared to be deliberately chilling dissent by turning immigration enforcement into a political weapon.

“The record in this case convinces me,” Young said, “that these high officials — and I include the president of the United States — have a fearful view of freedom. A view that defines the freedom here in the United States by who’s excluded.”

In other words, free speech for those who agree with Trump, Miller, Vance, Noem, et al, but fear, harassment, and punishment for those who don’t.

Then Young went farther, in a way judges almost never do. He openly described Trump’s governing style as authoritarian:

“It’s fairly clear that this president believes, as an authoritarian, that when he speaks, everyone — everyone in Article II — is going to toe the line absolutely.”

When a Reagan judge with impeccable conservative credentials and four decades on the bench is sounding alarms about authoritarianism and the collapse of First Amendment norms, it’s not partisan noise. It’s a warning flare shot up into the night.

But, of course, the Trump regime doesn’t care about norms or the Constitution. And if what’s going on isn’t clear enough, Stephen Miller posted last night about Minneapolis:

“Local and state police have been ordered to stand down and surrender.”

I spent decades doing international relief work in some of the worst places on the planet. I’ve had government soldiers threaten my life, police put automatic weapons in my face, and government ministers on three continents solicit bribes from me and my organization.

I’ve met with political prisoners and families whose members were murdered by the state for simply having the wrong political view. I’ve held children as they stopped breathing from starvation and had an aid worker shot to death in front of me.

This is the road to third-world-style-governance that our corrupt felon of a president has put America on. He justifies the execution of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, sets his rabid mobs on judges who don’t rule the way he wants, intimidates reporters and sues news outlets to shut them up, and is now threatening to deploy the full force of the federal government to silence dissent, criminalize protest, and punish individual speech he finds inconvenient.

He’s destroying our European alliance to the benefit of his friend and mentor Vladimir Putin, writing to the Norwegian Prime Minister as if Trump alone can determine American foreign policy like some sort of emperor or America’s mad king:

“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace…”

He’s dragging this country step by step toward the sort of strongman state like the ones I used to work in, where loyalty matters more than the law and fear crowds out personal freedom. He’s overseeing a rapid and radical transformation of America from a democratic republic into a strongman oligarchy where billionaires like him, Elon Musk, the 13 billionaires in his cabinet, and the 140 billionaires who supported him in 2024 run the show.

He’s turned America into an oligarchy, in other words. Rich people buy pardons, corporations buy regulations and subsidies they want, and average people are screwed, particularly if they complain too loudly.

But history teaches us that oligarchies are unstable systems of government.

They typically either collapse from their own internal rot (as happened here in 1932 when the Republican Great Depression brought down the oligarchs of the Roaring Twenties) or get overthrown by their own people (as happened here in the 1860s when the fascist Confederate system that had taken over the Old South was destroyed by the Civil War).

And when oligarchies don’t collapse or get overthrown, they morph into tyranny; usually that happens within a single generation.

That’s what happened in Russia. It went from the chaos of the 1990s oligarchy to Putin’s authoritarian state in less than 20 years. It’s also what happened in Hungary, where Viktor Orbán took a newly-liberated democracy and turned it into an authoritarian state in less than a decade. It’s also what’s happening right now in Turkey, the Philippines, Brazil, India, and multiple other countries around the world.

Tyranny doesn’t typically pop up fully formed and all at once. It comes incrementally, moving step by inexorable step, until it hits a tipping point where it can no longer be stopped. Even days before that tipping point is reached, most people still think the system will correct itself, that once everyone figures out what’s happening, things will go back to normal.

They’re almost always wrong.

America is now in that dangerous zone between oligarchy and tyranny. Because of the corrupt Supreme Court Citizens United decision and its 1978 parent Bellotti, our nation’s oligarchs have controlled our politics for a solid 40 years.

They own the media, have captured the courts, and have bought most of Congress. The question for today is whether they’ll be satisfied with their comfortable oligarchy or whether they’ll join Trump and the GOP’s push for America’s final transition to outright dictatorship.

Steve Bannon told us what the goal was: “Deconstruct the administrative state.” That’s tyrant-speak for dismantling the institutions that might dare or have the ability to constrain oligarchic power.

As a result, we’re in a race against time and the window for successful action is narrowing. Every week that the Trump regime isn’t seriously challenged in the states, courts, the press, or at the ballot box, America’s oligarchs tighten their grip. Every election they buy makes the next election easier to purchase. Every judge they install makes the next judge easier to intimidate or buy off.

This isn’t alarmism: it’s the historical pattern, repeated across dozens of countries and thousands of years. I’ve seen it, repeatedly, with my own eyes.

Oligarchies either collapse or they become tyrannies; there’s no third option.

Thus, the only real question now is whether enough of us will recognize what’s happening while there’s still time to stop it. Republics like ours die — like Russia and Hungary did — when ordinary people convince themselves that the warning signs aren’t real. At least until the knock on the door comes for them.

And then, of course, it’s too late…

---}:

---

AN 1 26

The Washington Post* reported, and *The New York Timesconfirmed Wednesday,that a Post reporter was raided by the FBI in search of classified materials.

Semafor's Max Tani posted on X that "a Washington Post spokesperson confirmed to me that the paper is reviewing and monitoring the situation."

Post reporter Hannah Natanson was at her Virginia home when federal agents arrived and searched her home and devices. It's part of an investigation into "Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system administrator in Maryland who has a top secret security clearance and has been accused of accessing and taking home classified intelligence reports that were found in his lunchbox and his basement," the report said, citing an FBI affidavit.

Natanson has covered some of the most "high-profile and sensitive coverage" from President Donald Trump's first year in office, the report explained.

The FBI reportedly took a phone and a Garmin watch.

The raid was "signed off on at highest levels of the Justice Department," said Punchbowl News'John Bresnahan on X.

*Read the full report here.

---

AN 12 25

Donald Trump's efforts to sue the Pulitzer Prize board over defamation claims took a turn for the president last week, according to a new report from Law & Crime, after the board demanded extensive documents in discovery pertaining to everything from his psychological history to his prescription medication use.

Trump first sued the board back in 2022over a statement the board released defending prizes it awarded in 2018 to the New York Timesand theWashington Postreporting related to collusion between his first presidential campaign and the Russian government, after Trump demanded that the prizes be rescinded. The board's statement explained that "two independent reviews" of the reports awarded in 2018 showed that no aspects of them were refuted by special counsel Robert Mueller's Russian collusion findings, despite Trump's claims.

In claiming defamation from this statement, Trump's lawsuit nevertheless called the Russia connection a "now-debunked theory," and alleged that he suffered reputational harm and damages from it.

As of Thursday, the case had reached the discovery phase, with the Pulitzer board submitting a 12-page filing with a "litany of broad discovery demands" for Trump's legal team. In addition to demanding more typical documents pertaining to Trump's various lawsuits and claims about the political impact of the Pulitzer Prizes, the board also requested a wide range of documents detailing much more personal and intimate details.

This includes "all" of the president's tax returns dating from 2015 to now, so as to show any potential financial harm caused by the Pulitzer board's actions. It also requested health records and prescription histories to demonstrate proof of Trump's claims of mental and physical anguish.

"To the extent You seek damages for any physical ailment or mental or emotional injury arising from Counts I-IV of Your Complaint, all Documents (whether held by You or by third parties under Your control or who could produce them at your direction) concerning Your medical and/or psychological health from January 1, 2015, to present, including any prescription medications you have been prescribed or have taken," the filing explained. "For the avoidance of doubt, this includes all Documents Concerning Your annual physical examination. To the extent you do not seek such damages in this action, please confirm so in writing."

Per the filing, Trump's legal team could potentially avoid providing some of these sensitive materials by deciding not to pursue damages specifically for the alleged harms they pertain to.

The board's filing also leaves open the possibility for Trump's team to claim that certain materials are privileged and cannot be provided, though it will have to explain why.

"With respect to your responses to the following Requests, if any information is withheld because of a claim of privilege, state the basis for your claim of privilege with respect to such information and the specific ground(s) on which the claim of privilege rests," the filing noted.

---

trump lawfare press suppress

court VENUE SHOPPING AILEEN CANNON

an 12 25

Donald Trump is suing the BBC for defamation over a Panorama documentary from October 2024, but according to an analysis of the suit's claims by Britain's The i Paper, the "audacious" effort could be undone by a "massive presumption" the lawsuit has yet to prove.

Trump's legal team accused the documentary Trump: A Second Chance?of “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the 2024 presidential race by way of a “false, defamatory, deceptive, inflammatory and malicious depiction" of him. The BBC previously conceded that the president's main sticking point with the film — an edited version of his Jan. 6, 2021, speech at The Ellipse in Washington D.C. that made it seem like he directly told the crowd to "fight like hell" ahead of the Capitol Riots — was the result of an "error of judgment" by the production and offered him an apology.

The network did, however, argue that there were no grounds for claiming defamation due to the documentary. Trump disagreed and is now seeking $10 billion in damages, or roughly £7.5 billion.

In an analysis of the legal filing, The i Paper's Simon Marks noted that Trump's suit is lacking one crucial piece of evidence at the heart of its argument: proof that any actual person changed their vote after watching the Panorama film.

"The lawsuit notably fails to identify a single viewer of the documentary in Florida who might have been misled or aggrieved by its content," Marks explained. "Instead, it relies on a massive presumption that someone, somewhere in the state, must have seen it, speaking of 'the immense likelihood that citizens of Florida accessed the Documentary before the BBC had it removed.'"

Marks also noted that the suit attempted to paint "the BBC as a broadcasting powerhouse in the sunshine state of Florida" in order to justify its claims.

Trump is suing the network in a Florida court, with his and the BBC's legal teams having gone back and forth over whether or not there is legal standing for this venue. Trump's side argued that since the BBC News website is available in Florida, the case could be brought in the state. The network pushed back, claiming that the Panorama documentary was not available in the US due to geoblocking. Trump's side countered that the film was available on the BritBox streaming platform, and could potentially have been viewed by Florida residents using a virtual private network (VPN) service.

"Trump’s legal team will be aware that Grand National-style hurdles lie ahead for the US President before any trial gets underway," Marks wrote. "The lawsuit’s failure to identify a Florida viewer who either complained about the documentary in the immediate aftermath of its transmission or changed their vote as a result of seeing the film could prove to be the complaint’s Achilles heel. Further, the US Constitution’s First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech applies to all the speakers interviewed in the documentary, and past evidence suggests that Florida judges may not be impressed by the lawsuit’s grandiose claims..."

Marks further noted that a prior Trump defamation suit against the*New York Times*, to the tune of $15 billion, was tossed out by a Florida judge.

---

[### I Asked the Pentagon About Pete Hegseth's Mentor. Then ...

Mother Jones

https://www.motherjones.com › politics › 2025/12 › eri...](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/12/eric-geressy-goodreads-pentagon-dod-pete-hegseth-jack-posobiec-threat/)

4 days ago — Six weeks ago, Jack Posobiec asked me to comment on whether I have a “creepy fetish for Asian women.” That was one of several false and wildly ...See more

Six weeks ago, Jack Posobiec asked me to comment on whether I have a “creepy fetish for Asian women.”

That was one of several false and wildly personal allegations that the far-right pundit and newly minted member of the Pentagon press corps said that he planned to include in “a story that I’m writing about you.”

I immediately understood his October 28 email to be a threat, though it was not made explicit. The day before, I had sent the Pentagon press office a series of questions concerning Eric Geressy, a senior Pentagon adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Geressy, who served with Hegseth during a tour in Iraq in the mid-2000s, is part of the Pentagon effort to instill a “warrior ethos” within the US military. He now leads a team reviewing the role of women in the armed forces.

Calling Geressy “my toughest critic and my best mentor,” Hegseth in March presented him with the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest award for valor, for Geressy’s conduct following an ambush in Baghdad in 2007.

Posobiec’s email arrived the day after my inquiries…This was either an incredible coincidence or a deliberate message: Publish your article and get smeared.

I had discovered that Geressy’s email address was linked to a public Goodreads page with a “currently reading” list that included various books featuring stories about “Asian wife sharing.” These pornographic works, with titles such as “Asian Wife Went With Her Dad’s Friend: A Cuckold Story,” appeared on the list alongside two books by Hegseth and a handful of military histories. They contain detailed descriptions of cuckolding, group sex, and scenes involving “ladyboys”—a term used to refer to Thai transgender women. The page, active since 2021, was taken down the day after I contacted the Pentagon and Geressy about it.

I also asked about a 1997 domestic violence allegation against Geressy, about his dating habits, and past relationships with foreign women. [chinese national?]I inquired if the Pentagon had assessed those relationships as part of Geressy’s security clearance process, and, more broadly, if his personal life might create concerns about his susceptibility to foreign influence operations.

The Pentagon repeatedly asked for more time to address those questions. Eventually chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell responded, in part: “Geressy has served for 38 years in the government, has been vetted numerous times by the relevant agencies, and has never posed a security risk or engaged in improper behavior as this piece tries to suggest. Mother Jones has stooped to a new low with this shoddy hit piece and should be ashamed of itself.”

Posobiec’s email arrived the day after my initial inquiries. The false claims he asked about, particularly the Asian fetish thing, seemed to mirror my questions. Posobiec, who in 2016 promoted the bogus Pizzagate conspiracy theory, gave me a deadline, 5 p.m. on October 29, that was the same as the one I had given the Pentagon press office. A Pentagon spokesperson and Posobiec both denied coordination. Geressy declined to comment. But considering the questions, timing, and Posobiec’s links to Defense Department officials, the situation seemed clear. This was either an incredible coincidence or a deliberate message: Publish your article and get smeared.

Posobiec’s email claimed I have “a history of objectifying women,” and that I had engaged in some kind of misconduct. The email also included questions about my marriage.

Posobiec’s questions suggested one of his “two sources” may have been a real woman with whom I did have a brief relationship nearly a decade ago. Contrary to the email’s depiction, that relationship was perfectly amicable at the time. But it was part of some personal messiness, especially around the end of my first marriage, that is embarrassing.

My first instinct was to laugh this off. Who cares what the Pizzagate guy writes? But getting lied about by someone with 3 million X followers is not that funny. Comet Ping Pong never housed a Democratic pedophilia ring in its basement. But that didn’t make it less dangerous when the restaurant was targeted by QAnon crazies, including a guy who fired an AR-15 into a room that had just been full of kids.

I have done reporting that angered other well-known figures on the right—Roger Stone, Miles Guo, Steve Bannon—and that drew some doxxing and half-assed personal attacks from their allies. But I am not famous. Who cares about me?

The threatened audience for the smear, clearly, was my peers—and my wife. It seemed meant to scare me into spiking my own story. That is not journalism, but an attack on journalism.

This apparent threat became more explicit as the possible publication date we had given the Pentagon approached. In tweets, Posobiec asked his followers if he should publish a story about mistreatment of women by a “DC-area liberal reporter.” After our possible publication date passed, though, he went quiet.

That left my editors and me with a problem. Here was what we believed to be an attempt to strong-arm Mother Jones, and perhaps an expansion of the administration’s war on the press. This was news. But the development also complicated an already tricky story. And if we delayed publication, or decided the story was not important enough to run, we risked leaving the impression that we, and I, had been intimidated into silence.

We knew that we would not drop the article because of Posobiec’s ploy, nor rush into running it before we were ready. Instead, we did what reporters are supposed to do when confronted with a journalism dilemma: more journalism.

My emails to the Pentagon and Geressy were part of an effort to check the information we had gathered. We wanted their side of the story. My questions went largely unanswered, but I kept asking. I talked to more people. And I worked to verify the information we had.

We had linked the Goodreads account to Geressy based on various pieces of identifying information, including an email address he had used. The account was listed under the username Eric J—Geressy’s middle name is Joseph. At one point, the page noted that Eric J lived in a specific Florida town, which matched Geressy’s known residence. Also, some of the non-erotic books displayed on the account were seemingly of interest to him; they included books, like Hegseth’s The War on Warriors, that mention Geressy’s military service. These titles appeared on the page between 2021 and July of this year.

Screenshot of the Goodreads page linked to Geressy’s email address. The page was deleted after we asked him and the Pentagon about it.

The same email address was also linked to other apps, including Yelp and MyFitnessPal, that appeared to be Geressy’s, along with a MySpace page that includes what looks like a photograph of him.

Geressy declined to comment, and did not confirm he had a Goodreads account. In theory that made it possible, if highly unlikely, that someone could have used his email account, obtained through a hack or other means, to set up the Goodreads account. So we tried to rule out that possibility.

I spoke to Nathaniel Fried, the CEO of OSINT Industries. That’s a British organization whose platform matches personal information such as emails and phone numbers to online accounts; we had relied on this platform to connect Geressy’s email address to the Goodreads account. Fried said that while OSINT can’t tell you for sure who signed up, “it’s 100 percent that that email has an account.” In other words, either Geressy or someone using his email and personal information created the account.

I also asked Amazon, which owns Goodreads, about the account. After much back and forth, the company said it did not currently have a record of an account linked to Geressy, or the email address he appears to have used. But they also said that they do not retain identifying information for deleted Goodreads accounts. Since the account linked to Geressy had been deleted weeks before, right after I reached out to the Pentagon and Geressy for comment, this statement gave us little new information. Overall, Amazon’s carefully parsed response did nothing to refute the connection.

“It’s all about whether you are susceptible to a foreign service getting any leverage against you. It may not be disqualifying, but it should be looked at.”

Still, none of that fully bore on the main consideration. That is, whether personal reading tastes, past relationships, or apparent dating habits are worth reporting on. After extensive discussion, we decided that in this case, they are.

For one thing, former national security officials told us that for Pentagon personnel in particular, relationships with foreign partners are a major concern.

Geressy lived in 2016 with a woman who evidence suggests may be a Chinese national. That woman started a limited liability company during that time with a name that references Chinese investment. It was registered at Geressy’s home address, then dissolved a few months later. (I am omitting some specifics to avoid including identifying information.) The Pentagon said that Geressy has never been deemed a security risk. But it did not provide verifiable answers to questions about whether that relationship and company were examined as part of Geressy’s security clearance review. Neither did Geressy.

Geressy has had what appears to be a stormy personal life that has included three marriages. In 1997, a jury acquitted him of a domestic violence charge after an accusation by his then-wife, according to court records.

Email addresses Geressy used, and other identifying information, including his first name and biographical information, also appeared in three data breaches, between 2011 and 2016, of adult websites geared toward finding sexual partners, according to databases that include the hacked data. Those sites are Fling, AdultFriendFinder, which then called itself “the World’s Largest Sex & Swinger Community,” and Ashley Madison, which billed itself as “the most famous name in infidelity.”

The presence of Geressy’s email and other information in these data breaches does not confirm he used these sites, according to cyber researchers.

But as John Sipher, a former senior CIA officer, told Mother Jones, in normal circumstances, a government official who might be involved with such websites and who had romantic relationships with foreigners would draw scrutiny. “It’s all about whether you are susceptible to a foreign service getting any leverage against you,” Sipher said. “It may not be disqualifying, but it should be looked at.”

And there is a second point. Geressy is a top official in a Defense Department that has booted trans people from the military based on President Trump’s executive order that argues that “adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.” Geressy is not responsible for trans policy, but he is part of a Pentagon leadership that concerns itself with subordinates’ private lives.

Trump’s Pentagon wants reporters to be not just docile recipients of the administration’s preferred narratives but active propagandists. That is a direct attack on the free press. It is also an insidious danger.

In The War on Warriors, one of the books on the Goodreads page linked to Geressy, Hegesth cited his mentor to support the position that women should not serve in combat roles. “From my perspective,” Hegseth quoted Geressy as saying, circa 2007, “overwhelmingly most females want nothing to do with combat arms.” According to Hegseth, Geressy had argued that the Army had unfairly awarded medals to some women who had served in combat. “If SGM Geressy was a transvestite—or gay, or black, or a woman,” Hegseth wrote, “he would have three Distinguished Service Crosses and be on the front of a Wheaties box.”

The Pentagon is already beset by scandals in which top officials, most notably Hegseth himself, have been accused of conduct that falls short of the standards it demands of other Defense Department officials and service members. Critics have argued that for lower-ranking personnel, actions like Hegseth sharing military plans outside of approved channels, or the adultery he during confirmation hearings, would result in firing. The racy selections on the Goodreads account linked to Geressy’s email may be comparatively minor. But that a public page listing such titles existed until we flagged it adds to the impression that the department’s leadership is not only hypocritical, but inept.

Hegseth has reacted furiously to reporting on some of his missteps. He has raged over coverage of his sharing of plans for bombing targets in Yemen with a Signal group that included the editor of the Atlantic. (The department’s inspector general reported that Hegseth’s actions could have put US troops at risk.) He fired aides accused of leaking news of a plan to give Elon Musk a top-secret briefing on US war plans versus China. Posobiec’s email came as the Pentagon took an increasingly hostile stance toward the media.

Kingsley Wilson, a former conservative influencer who is the department’s press secretary, told me that she did not speak to Posobiec about my story and did not believe Parnell did either. Posobiec also denied coordinating with the Pentagon. Geressy did not respond to a question about it.

But it came amid broader pushback to our reporting. “This is a garbage story made up of false allegations, decades-old claims that proved untrue, and disgusting innuendo aimed at smearing a man who was awarded the Army’s second-highest military honor for extraordinary heroism in combat,” Parnell said.

That response is consistent with the combative press relations posture of the second Trump administration. Shortly before, when a reporter asked the White House press secretary to identify who had suggested Trump meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest, she responded: “Your mom did.”

Similar truculence drives the Defense Department’s recent decision to force outlets that assign reporters to the Pentagon to agree to a policy that bars reporters from revealing news the department does not authorize. Most news organizations refused. (The New York Times recently sued the Pentagon, arguing that the policy violates the First Amendment.) Posobiec is among a group of pro-Trump influencers who accepted the restrictive terms. The result is that the new press corps the Pentagon grants access to is largely composed of far-right activists.

The Pentagon press shop maintains close ties to its newly constituted press corps. Wilson, the department’s press secretary, occasionally appears on a program Posobiec hosts. In an October episode, she thanked him for agreeing to the department’s restrictions. “Now we get to have incredible journalists like yourself who are going to be here in the Pentagon reporting on what the Department of War is doing every single day,” she said.

On Wednesday night, after weeks of silence, I heard from Posobiec again. He said he was “finalizing my story,” and wanted to know if me, my wife, “or your in-laws” wished to comment. His message arrived an hour and forty minutes after I wrote to Geressy, posing some last questions and telling him I was “finalizing this story.”

Trump’s Pentagon wants reporters to be not just docile recipients of the administration’s preferred narratives but active propagandists. That is a direct attack on the free press. It is also an insidious danger. It threatens to make us bad at our jobs. It can be harder work to treat people whom we cover critically like complete human beings, people who deserve empathy and a real chance to explain themselves. If the department yanks credentials for tough reporting, if a press secretary just attacks a story without engaging with questions, and if inquiries draw personal attacks, why give spokespeople, or the officials they work for, any opportunity to respond at all?

The answer, I think, is that in journalism, like everywhere else, we should treat people the way we want to be treated. This story, with its weird personal twist, drove home that necessity. By proposing to smear me, Posobiec inadvertently provided a reminder of how responsible reporters ought to act.

I have worked to be fair—and honest. This attempt won’t appease the Pentagon or the people who threatened me. And the choice here, between appearing to be coerced into silence or maybe getting slandered, lacks an option that doesn’t feel shitty.

But what I can control are the standards I aim for. Those are ultimately up to me. But they reflect the values of Mother Jones, and the influence of other journalists, one of whom is my wife. She makes the judgment I’ll live with.

[### The Brand-New Pentagon Press Corps Is Gaga for Hegseth

The Intercept

https://theintercept.com › 2025/12/13 › hegseth-new-pe...](https://theintercept.com/2025/12/13/hegseth-new-pentagon-press-reporters/)

2 days ago — After nearly all legacy news organizations declined to sign on to Hegseth's rules, the new Pentagon press corps is all his cheerleaders.

[### Hegseth team invites far-right activist Jack Posobiec on ...

The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com › ... › Military](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/13/pete-hegseth-jack-posobiec/)

Feb 13, 2025 — Trump administration officials at the Pentagon invited a far-right activist, Jack Posobiec, to participate in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's first trip ...See more

---

RWW

12/12/2025

Kyle Mantyla

David Badash @ The New Civil Rights Movement: ‘Positively Authoritarian’: White House Tweets and Deletes ‘Naughty List’ of Journalists

The White House appears to have tweeted then deleted a “Naughty List” of journalists, including top news reporters and outlets, in an act that is being described as “positively authoritarian” by one legal expert.

REF

The White House appears to have tweeted then deleted a “Naughty List” of journalists, including top news reporters and outlets, in an act that is being described as “positively authoritarian” by one legal expert.

The video was posted to X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, and the White House’s own website, which reads: “MEDIA OFFENDERS ON THE NAUGHTY LIST,” and “Video unavailable. This video has been removed by the uploader.”

A Google search of the White House’s page shows a video thumbnail consistent with the videos captured by several social media influencers.

The video includes a Santa Claus chortling “ho ho ho,” and unrolling a scroll titled “Naughty List” that includes MS NOW reporters Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian, CNN’s Jake Tapper, and reporters from CBS News, Axios, and The Bulwark as well. The background music is “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.”

The video closes with the message, “Better luck next year,” then the screen reads:

The White House

President Donald J. Trump

An AI generated trending page on X reads: “The 34-second clip, posted Thursday evening, showed photos of journalists pinned to a wall alongside names like The New York Times and The Washington Post. It disappeared from the official account within hours amid backlash comparing it to authoritarian blacklists. Supporters laughed it off as holiday humor, while the White House site already tracks similar outlets in an ‘Offender Hall of Shame’ for alleged bias. The episode highlighted ongoing tensions over media coverage during the Trump administration.”

“This is a blacklist,” wrote social media influencer The Maine Wonk, saying the video was “quickly deleted…after getting serious backlash.”

“This isn’t a joke. It’s a blacklist,” warned another influencer, Brian Allen. “Authoritarians always start by mocking the press… then labeling them… then listing them. We’re now on step two. History has seen this movie before and it never ends well.”

The Bulwark’s Tim Miller offered “Huge congrats” to one of the outlet’s reporters who appeared on the list, Adrian Carrasquillo, and commented, “(ooh we are really quaking in our boots on that one nerds).”

Justin Kanew’s The Tennessee Holler called it a list “showing who is doing their jobs.”

Professor of Law, MSNOW legal analyst, and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance commented on the video, writing, “How positively…authoritarian.”

XIT

Brian Allen

@allenanalysis

🚨 The White House just posted a government-branded “Naughty List” naming individual reporters and news outlets.

This isn’t a joke. It’s a blacklist.

Authoritarians always start by mocking the press… then labeling them… then listing them.

We’re now on step two.

History has Show more

https://x.com/allenanalysis/status/1999272957474959671?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1999272957474959671%7Ctwgr%5Ed62079f0dae4b584c74e723278095c30f7acd321%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com%2F2025%2F12%2Fpositively-authoritarian-white-house-tweets-and-deletes-naughty-list-of-journalists%2F

:{:{🎄 Naughty List 🎄MS NOW: • Carol Leonnig • Ken Dilanian}:

NEW YORK POST: • Caitlin McCormack (name appears in image, but not known as a NY Post journalist)

CNN: • Jake TapperCBS NEWS: •

Bilal Rahman (unverified name — no known CBS journalist by this spelling)

AXIOS: • Zachary Basu • Russell Contreras}:

THE BULWARK: • Adrian Carrasquillo

// raw

An ex-Trump official is sounding the alarm after the White House published – and quickly removed – a video of Santa Claus holding a “Naughty List” featuring the names of journalists and news outlets.

On Thursday, the White House website published a video of what it described as “media offenders on the naughty list,” though the video appears to have been removed as of Friday. Re-uploaded on social media, the video depicts Santa Claus laughing while unveiling a “Naughty List” of journalists and media outlets, and is set to Michael Bublé’s rendition of $_{Santa Claus Is Coming To Town}_$ .”

Miles Taylor, a former Homeland Security senior official under both the Trump and Bush administrations, likened the video to the early days of Nazi Germany and its attack on journalists deemed to be enemies of the state, and warned that when it came to Trump’s attack on the press, “more will follow.”

ALSO READ:These betrayals are splitting MAGA from Trump — and making him more dangerous than ever

“The [Nazi] regime published lists of ‘un-German’ writers and journalists, accusing them of poisoning the nation’s soul. News outlets were threatened with closure and then later shut down,” Taylor wrote Friday on his Substack, Defiance News.

“Here we are. The White House is on a similar path. That’s not exaggeration or heedless historical comparison, meant to accuse Trump of being a ‘Nazi’ to score political points. The man who is our current president – and the people around him – have a stated and demonstrated desire to subvert the free press in this country.”

Trump has long railed against the media as being the “enemy of the people,” going back to his 2016 presidential bid. Only recently, however, has Trump escalated his attack on the press by suing media outlets, threatening to revoke broadcasting licenses, and stripping reporters of their White House credentials. And now, he’s directly named and shamed journalists, the first step, Taylor argued, would only escalate if not opposed.

“A president who publishes a blacklist of reporters is not making a silly Christmas ‘joke,’” Taylor wrote. “He’s testing how far he can go, preparing to crack down, and seeing how many people will smile while he does it.”

---

[### Russell Contreras

Axios

https://www.axios.com › authors › rcontreras](https://www.axios.com/authors/rcontreras)

Russell Contreras is the Justice and Race reporter at Axios covering the policies and agencies at the heart of the administration of justice.

Missing: vlacklist ‎naughty ‎zachery

[### Russell Contreras, a justice and race reporter with Axios, says ...

Facebook · NewsNation

20+ reactions · 3 months ago](https://www.facebook.com/NewsNationNow/videos/trump-admin-moving-the-goalposts-with-mexico-reporter-newsnation-now/2001751117242830/)

[

4:18](https://www.facebook.com/NewsNationNow/videos/trump-admin-moving-the-goalposts-with-mexico-reporter-newsnation-now/2001751117242830/)

Russell Contreras, a justice and race reporter with Axios, says the Trump administration keeps changing its mind on how it wants Mexico to ...

---}:

AN 12 25

On Sunday, President Donald Trump declared that he will “be involved” in the federal government’s decision on whether to allow the streaming service Netflix to buy mass media and entertainment conglomerate Warner Brothers Discovery. On Monday, Paramount Skydance, another mass media and entertainment conglomerate, announced a hostile takeover bid for WBD — with news soon following that Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s private equity firm is part of the Paramount offer.

“Paramount is telling WBD shareholders that it has a smoother path to regulatory approval than does Netflix, and Kushner’s involvement only strengthens that case,” Axios reported. “Paramount is led by David Ellison, whose billionaire father Larry is a major supporter of President Trump.”

Axios added that Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, “was not mentioned in Paramount’s press release on Monday morning about its $108 billion bid, nor were participating sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar.”

Fortune reported that “Affinity and the other outside financing partners have agreed to forgo any governance rights, which Paramount said means the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States would have no jurisdiction over the transaction.”

But Axios’ Sarah Fischer wrote on social media: “Ask yourself, why would anyone want to put money into an investment of this caliber and have no governance rights or board seats?”

“Essentially,” she added, “people want to have control/access/political power behind the scenes.”

“Reality is,” Fischer explained, this hostile takeover is a good explanation “of how capitalism/democracy can be exploited for political gain,” with “Paramount essentially betting our open system incentivizes shareholders to take [the] best financial deal even if it means giving soft power” to three sovereign wealth funds, the President, and his son-in-law.

Critics are blasting Kushner’s and Trump’s involvement.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) remarked, “Donald Trump said he’ll ‘be involved in’ deciding if Netflix can buy Warner Bros. Is that an open invite for CEOs to curry favor with Trump in exchange for merger approvals? It should be an independent decision by the Department of Justice based on the law and facts.”

Award-winning journalist Sophia A. Nelson, responding to trump’s remarks, observed: “This is ridiculous. Corrupt. And NOT what a President gets involved in.”

Professor, investor, and marketing executive Adam Cochran wrote: “Trump is talking about him personally being involved in deciding the fate of the Netflix-Warner Brothers deal, and how it’s ‘bad.’ Meanwhile his son-in-law is financing the competing offer. There has truly never been a more corrupt administration in US history!”

Alexander Vindman, former Director of European Affairs for the United States National Security Council (NSC), wrote: “F– NO to another corrupt Trump deal. Nepobaby, Jared’s, involvement would deliver CNN to MAGA.”

NewsNation’s Kurt Bardella, a communications advisor and media relations consultant, asked: “Alexa, what is a ‘conflict-of-interest’?”

---

MMA

The year the media oligarchs bowed to Trump

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 12/03/25

We warned last year that Donald Trump’s second term as president would turbo-charge the political right’s burgeoning media-intimidation complex. Republican officials and right-wing billionaires were already trying to secure their political agenda by using their wealth, lawfare, and government power to silence journalists. And Trump, we wrote, using his authoritarian strategies, would force media moguls to choose between the journalistic integrity of the news outlets they oversee and their broader business interests, with the fate of the free press in the balance.

Twelve months later, it is clear that many of these corporate media owners have made their choice: They are damaging celebrated news outlets like CBS and The Washington Post out of some combination of personal preference and political expedience. While journalists at their outlets are still producing important stories that reveal the corruption and malfeasance of the Trump administration, it’s anyone’s guess how long they will be permitted to do so.

Trump has spent the last decade at war with the press. He has no regard for free speech, treats all dissent as inherently illegitimate, and uses every available tool to curtail critical journalism. The president’s years of anti-media diatribes have achieved their goal of destroying the credibility of potentially damaging reporting among his supporters, and in his second term, he has backed up those verbal attacks with a flurry of actions.

He and his administration have supplemented or even replaced members of the traditional press corps in favor of MAGA influencers and Trumpist outlets; defunded public media outlets in the U.S. and sought to dismantle them abroad; sued reporters and news outlets for publishing content he dislikes; and terminated rules protecting journalists from prosecutorial scrutiny, while targeting them with retaliatory immigration enforcement.

But Trump’s most unnerving assaults on the press involve his administration's use of state power as leverage against oligarchs who control broadcast and cable news operations and major newspapers. For billionaire owners or top executives at massive multimedia companies, news outlets typically represent a tiny fraction of their overall business interests. And those broader holdings create potential vulnerabilities — like regulatory scrutiny of mergers, federal contracting, and criminal investigations — that an authoritarian president can manipulate to encourage media moguls to cudgel their news outlets into line.

Trump’s strategies resemble those of Victor Orban, the Hungarian autocrat many on the American right take as a model, who has dismantled his country’s independent press and forced the sales of outlets to his allies. Trump's desired result is a cowed journalist corps that will produce Fox News-style propaganda venerating his successes and covering up his corruption and failures.

America’s media oligarchs often resisted Trump’s corrupt abuses of power in his first term, either enduring his attacks without constraining their news outlets or beating his administration in federal court. But in his second term, while some media organizations (including Media Matters) have fought to protect the First Amendment against Trump and his administration, certain wealthy magnates have chosen the path of cowardice, submission, and collaboration.

David and Larry Ellison

David Ellison is the son of Larry Ellison, the Oracle co-founder who is one of the richest men alive and a close friend and ally to Trump. The younger Ellison took control of CBS News in July after the Federal Communications Commission approved his Skydance Media’s purchase of CBS parent company Paramount. Trump-appointed FCC Chair Brendan Carr acted only after Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle an absurd lawsuit Trump filed over CBS News’ editing of an October interview with then-Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris — and after he secured pledges from Skydance to push the network’s coverage to the right.

Ellison followed through on his promise. The new ownership appointed “anti-woke” champion Bari Weiss as CBS News’ editor-in-chief and Kenneth Weinstein, a Trump-supporting right-wing think tanker, as its ombudsman. An October wave of layoffs hit nearly 100 CBS News employees, gutting the network’s teams focused on climate change and race and culture. Trump certainly seems happy with the changes — in a November 2 interview that marked his first appearance on the network since 2020, he praised Weiss as a “great new leader” and “great person” and described David Ellison’s takeover of CBS News as “the greatest thing that’s happened in a long time to a free and open and good press.”

With the CBS News takeover as proof of concept, Ellison and his father are each making moves to seize additional media outlets and move them in a Trumpy direction.

David Ellison is trying to buy Warner Bros. Discovery — and the administration is reportedly signaling that other bidders will face grueling oversight from federal regulators. “Trump wants WBD in the Ellisons’ hands, and insiders say it’s because he wants favorable coverage from its CNN news channel,” wrote the New York Post.

Larry Ellison has even reportedly “engaged in a dialogue” with the White House “about possibly axing some of the CNN hosts whom Donald Trump is said to loathe, including Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar,” if the sale were to go through.

The Trump White House is also trying to broker a deal in which the social media giant TikTok, a news source for one-fifth of American adults and 43% of those under 30, would be sold to a coalition including companies controlled by Larry Ellison as well as fellow pro-Trump magnate Marc Andreessen.

### Jeff Bezos

Bezos owns The Washington Post, but his massive fortune comes from founding Amazon, the online retailing and web service giant, and he also owns the space technology company Blue Origin. During Trump’s first term, Bezos bore numerous potshots at what Trump termed the “Amazon Washington Post,” as well as his administration’s apparent retaliation against Amazon’s operations. But Bezos signaled that things would be different in a second term even before Trump’s election when he barred the Post’s editorial board from endorsing in the 2024 contest, blocking the publication of its piece supporting Harris.

The decision began a deterioration of Bezos’ relationship with the Post, accelerated further by his February demand that the paper’s Opinion section advocate without exception for “personal liberties and free markets.” Opinion editor David Shipley resigned rather than execute that pivot; his replacement, Adam O’Neal, an undistinguished reporter and editor previously at The Economist and The Wall Street Journal, has overseen buyouts and layoffs of the section’s veterans (my wife Alyssa Rosenberg, the section’s former letters and community editor, was among those who took the buyout) and hired several conservative writers, leading one of the paper’s right-wing columnists to boast, “We’re now a conservative opinion page.” The dramatic changes seem to have blown a hole in the Post’s subscriber numbers, with NPR’s David Folkenflik estimating “a net loss of a couple hundred thousand subscribers” at the end of February. With revenue plummeting thanks to Bezos’ decisions and the owner unwilling to eat the losses, more layoffs are reportedly on the way.

But defanging the Post — and finding a way to put money in the Trump family’s pockets — seems to be working out well for Bezos. His rewards include plum seats for Trump’s swearing-in, federal contracts for Blue Origin and Amazon Web Services, and the president publicly applauding him for “trying to do a real job with The Washington Post, and that wasn’t happening before.”

### Patrick Soon-Shiong

Like Bezos, Los Angeles Times owner Soon-Shiong has other business interests that left him vulnerable to Trump’s retaliation; he made his fortune in the biotech industry, and his medical patents and products are subject to federal oversight. Whether due to fear of retribution or a shift in his own political views, Soon-Shiong stepped up his oversight of the Times last year, beginning with the cancellation of a planned endorsement of Harris.

He subsequently shilled for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation as secretary of health and human services; announced a remaking of the editorial board, beginning with the addition of pro-Trump CNN commentator Scott Jennings; killed an editorial that criticized Trump’s Cabinet picks; announced the addition of an AI-powered “bias meter” to the paper’s opinion pieces, which was pulled after it downplayed the Ku Klux Klan; floated a conservative version of The View featuring right-wing actor Rob Schneider; launched “LA Times Studios,” a multimedia studio featuring influencers reading AI-generated scripts; sat for interviews with right-wing commentators including Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly; and put forward an ill-starred initial public offering plan which led The Hollywood Reporter to ask, “Does Patrick Soon-Shiong Want to Turn the L.A. Times Into a MAHA Memestock?”

As with Bezos’ actions at the Post, Soon-Shiong’s changes to the Times have resulted in plummeting circulation, an exodus of talent, and the diminishment of the paper’s influence. But his medical patents are still getting approved by the federal government.

### Bob Iger

Iger, who as the CEO of Disney oversees its subsidiary ABC, was at the center of two of the most craven media moves since Trump’s reelection.

First, his December 2024 decision to sign off on a $15 million “blood sacrifice to Trump,” settling a defamation lawsuit that ABC News’ lawyers thought they would win, only looks worse over time. The capitulation made clear to ABC staff that Iger would not support them in a stand-off with the president and set a precedent that media companies and other major corporations would knuckle under to his demands.

Second, after Carr threatened Disney and ABC’s affiliates with FCC retribution if they failed to “take actions” against Jimmy Kimmel over one of his monologues in September, Iger folded by suspending Kimmel’s show within hours. Carr’s threats made a mockery of the First Amendment — but Iger wasn’t willing to fight to uphold those rights in court. Iger relented and returned Kimmel to the airwaves only after an outcry by Hollywood talent and a spike in Disney+ cancellations.

What did Iger’s cowardice bring ABC? When ABC News chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce dared to ask Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a question about his role in the brutal murder of the U.S.-based dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi during a joint Oval Office appearance with Trump, the president became enraged, lashing out at the journalist and calling her outlet “fake news” and “one of the worst in the business.”

“I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and it’s so wrong,” he later added, threatening to shut down a U.S. news outlet for producing reporting he doesn’t like in front of a foreign dictator who represses his own country’s media.

“And we have a great commissioner, a chairman, who should look at that," he added.

---

icn 12 25

How China Silences Environmental Reporters Beyond Its Borders

BY KATIE SURMA

Journalists who report on the harms caused by China’s overseas infrastructure buildout in Africa face intimidation, surveillance and police pressure.

---

11 25

Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (.gov)

Ranking Member Shaheen Condemns Kari Lake’s Assault on U.S. Supported Independent Media in Hungary

“As President Trump welcomes Orbán to the White House, Kari Lake is seeking to erode the press freedom that remains in Hungary by claiming to...

2 weeks ago

KJZZ

Under oath, Kari Lake refuses to concede Arizona Senate, governor race losses

Under oath, Kari Lake refuses to concede Arizona Senate, governor race losses ... Kari Lake speaking with attendees at a meeting of the Arizona...

Sep 26, 2025

PBS

WATCH: Trump adviser Kari Lake testifies in hearing on U.S. agency that runs Voice of America

Kari Lake, the former Arizona newscaster turned Republican politician, testified that the U.S. Agency for Global Media is “rotten to the core”...

Jun 25, 2025

---

intercept 11 25

Federal prosecutors have filed a new indictment in response to a July 4 noise demonstration outside the Prairieland ICE detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, during which a police officer was shot.

There are numerous problems with the indictment, but perhaps the most glaring is its inclusion of charges against a Dallas artist who wasn’t even at the protest. Daniel “Des” Sanchez is accused of transporting a box that contained “Antifa materials” after the incident, supposedly to conceal evidence against his wife, Maricela Rueda, who was there.

But the boxed materials aren’t Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs, or whatever MAGA officials claim “Antifa” uses to wage its imaginary war on America. As prosecutors laid out in the July criminal complaint that led to the indictment, they were zines and pamphlets. Some contain controversial ideas — one was titled “Insurrectionary Anarchy” — but they’re fully constitutionally protected free speech. The case demonstrates the administration’s intensifying efforts to criminalize left-wing activists after Donald Trump announced in September that he was designating “Antifa” as a “major terrorist organization” — a legal designation that doesn’t exist for domestic groups — following the killing of Charlie Kirk.

Sanchez was first indicted in October on charges of “corruptly concealing a document or record” as a standalone case, but the new indictment merges his charges with those against the other defendants, likely in hopes of burying the First Amendment problems with the case against him under prosecutors’ claims about the alleged shooting.

It’s an escalation of a familiar tactic. In 2023, Georgia prosecutors listed “zine” distribution as part of the conspiracy charges against 61 Stop Cop City protesters in a sprawling RICO indictment that didn’t bother to explain how each individual defendant was involved in any actual crime. I wrote back then about my concern that this wasn’t just sloppy overreach, but also ablueprint for censorship. Those fears have now been validated by Sanchez’s prosecution solely for possessing similar literature.

Photos of the zines Daniel Sanchez is charged with “corruptly concealing.” Photo: U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas

There have been other warnings that cops and prosecutors think they’ve found a constitutional loophole — if you can’t punish reporting it, punish transporting it. Los Angeles journalist Maya Lau is suing the LA County Sheriff’s Department for secretly investigating her for conspiracy, theft of government property, unlawful access of a computer, burglary, and receiving stolen property. According to her attorneys, her only offense was reporting on a list of deputies with histories of misconduct for the Los Angeles Times.

If you can’t punish reporting it, punish transporting it.

It’s also reminiscent of the Biden administration’s case against right-wing outlet Project Veritas for possessing and transporting Ashley Biden’s diary, which the organization bought from a Florida woman later convicted of stealing and selling it. The Constitution protects the right to publish materials stolen by others — a right that would be meaningless if they couldn’t possess the materials in the first place.

Despite the collapses of theCop City prosecution and the Lau investigation — and its own dismissal of the Project Veritas case — the Trump administration has followed those dangerous examples, characterizing lawful activism and ideologies as terrorist conspiracies (a strategy Trump allies also floated during this first term) to seize the power to prosecute pamphlet possession anytime they use the magic word “Antifa.”

That’s a chilling combination for any journalist, activist, or individual who criticizes Trump. National security reporters have long dealt with the specter of prosecution under the archaic Espionage Act for merely obtaining government secrets from sources, particularly after the Biden administration extracted a guilty plea from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. But the rest of the press — and everyone else, for that matter — understood that merely possessing written materials, no matter what they said, is not a crime.

Guilt by Literature

At what point does a literary collection or newspaper subscription become prosecutorial evidence under the Trump administration’s logic? Essentially, whenever it’s convenient. The vagueness is a feature, not a bug. When people don’t know which political materials might later be deemed evidence of criminality, the safest course is to avoid engaging with controversial ideas altogether.

The slippery slope from anarchist zines to conventional journalism isn’t hypothetical, and we’re already sliding fast. Journalist Mario Guevara can tell you that from El Salvador, where he was deported in a clear case of retaliation for livestreaming a No Kings protest. So can Tufts doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, as she awaits deportation proceedings for co-writing an opinion piece critical of Israel’s wars that the administration considers evidence of support for terrorism.

At least two journalists lawfully in the U.S. — Ya’akub Ira Vijandre and Sami Hamdi — were nabbed by ICE just last month. The case against is partially based on his criticism of prosecutorial overreach in the Holy Land Five case and his liking social media posts that quote Quranic verses, raising the question of how far away we are from someone being indicted for transporting a Quran or a news article critical of the war on terror.

“Antifa” Protesters Charged With Terrorism for Constitutionally Protected Activity](https://theintercept.com/2025/10/17/antifa-ice-protesters-terrorism-texas-prairieland/)

Sanchez’s case is prosecutorial overreach stacked on more prosecutorial overreach. The National Lawyers Guild criticizedprosecutors’ tenuous dot-connecting to justify holding 18 defendants responsible for one gunshot wound. Some defendants were also charged with supporting terrorism due to their alleged association with “Antifa.” Anarchist zines were cited as evidence against them, too.

Sanchez was charged following a search that ICE proclaimed on social media turned up “literal insurrectionist propaganda” he had allegedly transported from his home to an apartment, noting that “insurrectionary anarchism is regarded as the most serious form of domestic (non-jihadi) terrorist threat.” The tweet also said that Sanchez is a green card holder granted legal status through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The indictment claims Sanchez was transporting those materials to conceal them because they incriminated his wife. But how can possession of literature incriminate anyone, let alone someone who isn’t even accused of anything but being present when someone else allegedly fired a gun? Zines aren’t contraband; it’s not illegal to be an anarchist or read about anarchism. I don’t know why Sanchez allegedly moved the box of documents, but if it was because he (apparently correctly) feared prosecutors would try to use them against his wife, that’s a commentary on prosecutors’ lawlessness, not Sanchez’s.

Violent rhetoric is subject to punishment only when it constitutes a “true threat” of imminent violence. Even then, the speaker is held responsible, not anyone merely in possession of their words.

Government prosecutors haven’t alleged the “Antifa materials” contained any “true threats,” or any other category of speech that falls outside the protection of the First Amendment. Nor did they allege that the materials were used to plan the alleged actions of protesters on July 4 (although they did allege that the materials were “anti-government” and “anti-Trump”).

We don’t need a constitutional right to publish (or possess) only what the government likes.

Even the aforementioned “Insurrectionary Anarchy: Organizing for Attack” zine, despite its hyperbolic title, reads like a think piece, not a how-to manual. It advocates for tactics like rent strikes and squatting, not shooting police officers. Critically, it has nothing to do with whether Sanchez’s wife committed crimes on July 4.

Being guilty of possessing literature is a concept fundamentally incompatible with a free society. We don’t need a constitutional right to publish (or possess) only what the government likes, and the “anti-government” literature in Sanchez’s box of zines is exactly what the First Amendment protects. With history and leaders like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán as a guide, we also know it’s highly unlikely that Trump’s censorship crusade will stop with a few radical pamphlets.

The Framers Loved Zines

There’s an irony in a supposedly conservative administration treating anti-government pamphlets as evidence of criminality. Many of the publications the Constitution’s framers had in mind when they authored the First Amendment’s press freedom clause bore far more resemblance to Sanchez’s box of zines than to the output of today’s mainstream news media.

Revolutionary-era America was awash in highly opinionated, politically radical literature. Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” was designed to inspire revolution against the established government. Newspapers like the Boston Gazette printed inflammatory writings by Samuel Adams and others urging the colonies to prepare for war after the Coercive Acts. The Declaration of Independence itself recognized the right of the people to rise up. It did not assume the revolution of the time would be the last one.

One might call it “literal insurrectionist propaganda” — and some of it was probably transported in boxes.

The framers enshrined press freedom not because they imagined today’s professionally trained journalists maintaining careful neutrality. They protected it because they understood firsthand the need for journalists and writers who believed their government had become tyrannical to espouse revolution.

For all their many faults, the framers were confident enough in their ideas that they were willing to let them be tested. If the government’s conduct didn’t call for radical opposition, then radical ideas wouldn’t catch on. It sure looks like the current administration doesn’t want to make that bet.

---

an 11 25

An Associated Press (AP) lawsuit against the Trump administration has revealed a curious White House position on press access, theNew York Times reports.

The White House banned the Associated Press (AP) from accessing certain areas — including the Oval Office and Air Force One — due to the AP's refusal to use "Gulf of America" instead of "Gulf of Mexico" based on an executive order from President Donald Trump.

The AP has been barred from covering specific events because it acknowledges the president's executive order but will continue to use the original name in its reporting. The AP claims the ban violates the First Amendment.

"Arguments in that case are set to continue on Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit," theTimes writes. "At stake is whether the president is entitled to curate the crew of reporters who cover official events in the Oval Office. Can he boot those whose work he doesn’t like?"

Something curious, they write, has been discovered as this case ramps up: The administration has restored front line access to "AP photographers, even as it often excludes AP’s reporters from press pool events."

Evan Vucci, the chief Washington photographer for the AP tells the Times, "For me, I’m back to normal, completely. It’s like nothing happened, and it’s completely different for the print side of things.”

"The administration’s forked policy has the appearance of illogic. Why make a fuss of stiff-arming the AP only to welcome its photographers back into the fold?" the Times asks.

Experts say this "contradictory approach" is par for Trump's course, and note he "is eager to energize his MAGA base by bashing the work of mainstream journalists while keeping them close enough to carry his message to the world and perhaps take a memorable photo or two of him in action."

Susan Mulcahy, a former New York Post reporter, says this is how he operates, explaining, "He will trash a press person when he doesn’t get what he wants, but he’s never going to totally throw out an important press organization. He’s not. He needs them. That’s his oxygen.”

The AP's top lawyer Karen Kaiser says the press pool "demotion" remains a serious problem.

"The government should not be permitted to pick its coverage based on what it likes or doesn’t like. These principles transcend any administration, any news organization and any journalist," Kaiser says.

Traditionally, it's the AP photographer who is first to enter rooms where events are taking place, theTimes explains, and the organization had two slots in the press room — one for a reporter and the other the photographer — until the "Gulf of America" situation.

"We didn’t have any inkling that we were a target or would be retaliated against,” AP''s executive editor Julie Pace says.

In April, a U.S. District Court judge ruled in the AP’s favor and issued a preliminary injunction rescinding the access denial, explains the Times. The Trump administration then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals, which put enforcement of that injunction on pause two months later.

During the legal maneuverings, the White House has "maintained its bifurcated access standards for AP photographers and reporters," the Times notes.

"AP officials said they had not received an explanation about the policy, and the White House did not provide a specific rationale in response to questions from The New York Times," they write, adding that "Trump has made it clear he likes seeing himself in AP photography."

The AP's Vucci was the one who took the now-infamous fist pump photo of the president following his assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Marc Fisher, Trump biographer and a former Washington Post reporter, says Trump and his aides “view the photographers as less dangerous and less antagonistic than reporters.”

“To him, a great news photo, a great magazine cover, is more important than a great podcast appearance, just because he is and will always be an artifact of the ’50s and ’60s," Fisher says.

Meanwhile, reporters await the court's decision on their fate inside the press pool.

Zeke Miller, former AP chief White House correspondent turned deputy Washington bureau chief says, "We ask to join the pool pretty much every day or before every event. We ask to join the trips. Most often we’re told the pool is full, but others are getting in.”

---

zeteo 11 25

How would you react if you heard that a journalist visiting another country was arrested just hours after criticizing that country’s leader and foreign policy? Perhaps you would think that the journalist was visiting some authoritarian or tyrannical country, right?

Well, that was not the case last month, when British Muslim journalist Sami Hamdi was arrested by ICE agents at the San Francisco International Airport, after far-right influencers Laura Loomer and Amy Mekelburg went on an Islamophobic social media campaign against Hamdi. He was in the US on a visa and had come to speak at scheduled events but detained without much explanation and held for two weeks.

---

Baier, Bartiromo pass on MBS criticism, score seats to his gala

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 11/19/25 MMA

Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier and Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo, who scored invitations for Tuesday night’s lavish White House banquet honoring Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, both passed on criticizing President Donald Trump for his pathetic excuse-making about Crown Prince Mohammed ordering the brutal murder of the U.S.-based dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Khashoggi was an outspoken critic of the crown prince who wrote columns for The Washington Post criticizing his native Saudi Arabia’s repressive regime from his self-imposed exile in Virginia, London, and Istanbul. In October 2018, he was reportedly lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, killed by Saudi operatives, and dismembered with a bone saw, generating an international scandal stoked further by the CIA’s subsequent determination that Crown Prince Mohammed ordered his assassination. Fox, meanwhile, spent the weeks after Khashoggi’s murder running cover for both Trump and Crown Prince Mohammed.

Trump, who has a fundamentally transactional view of U.S. foreign policy, an affinity for brutal dictators, and a tendency to dehumanize journalists, offered little interest in Khashoggi’s fate at the time. And he became enraged on Tuesday afternoon when ABC News chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce dared to ask the crown prince a question about Khashoggi’s murder during their joint Oval Office appearance.

The president interrupted Bruce, calling her outlet “fake news” and “one of the worst in the business.” He then said of Khashoggi: “You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial — a lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn't like him, things happen, but he [the crown prince] knew nothing about it. And we can leave it at that. You don't have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.” Crown Prince Mohammed, for his part, said Khashoggi’s murder was “a huge mistake and we're doing our best that this doesn't happen again.”

When Bruce asked Trump a question later in the press conference about the Jeffrey Epstein files, the president blew up again, criticizing her “attitude” and complaining that she had asked Crown Prince Mohammed, “a man who is highly respected,” “a horrible insubordinate and just a terrible question.” In a depressing commentary on the current state of U.S. press freedom, he then suggested that federal regulators should strip ABC’s broadcasting license “because your news is so fake and it's so wrong.”

Trump’s repeated defenses of a foreign tyrant’s murder of a U.S.-based journalist — and his suggestion from the White House that his administration should destroy an outlet for asking “insubordinate” questions about it — drew immediate attention from news outlets and harsh criticism from many journalists.

But Baier had nothing to say about it when he discussed the press conference with Fox anchor Martha MacCallum on The Story that afternoon. Instead, sounding like a Trump spokesperson, he touted the “massive” scale of impending “deals” between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, and commented that Trump, “in his defense of all things MBS, realizes that that relationship is crucial to his thought about the way forward in the Middle East.” He added that Crown Prince Mohammed’s response on Khashoggi was the same as what Baier described as the “solid answer” the crown prince had given Baier in a previous interview.

Video

Citation

From the November 18, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Story

Baier did not directly address Trump’s outburst during Special Report that night, though correspondent David Spunt mentioned it during a packaged report, and John Roberts, who subbed in as anchor while Baier was in Washington, D.C., to attend the banquet, brought it up with the panel.

Bartiromo, for her part, did not mention the Khashoggi exchanges herself on her show Wednesday (a correspondent ran a brief headline read on it during the program, but Bartiromo did not comment on it). Instead, she touted Trump’s role in securing what she termed Crown Prince Mohammed’s “massive investment into America.”

Bartiromo is a total Trump shill, while Baier’s overhyped reputation serves to conceal his usefulness to the administration. But both have done enough for the president to garner what Trump suggested on Tuesday was a very exclusive seat at the gala honoring the crown prince.

“We could have sold the big ballroom out three times in honor of this gentleman,” Trump said at the end of their joint appearance. “So, I made a lot of enemies because I have a lot of people that are invited tonight or are unable to come because of the size constraint.”

“This would be a perfect night to have that ballroom open,” he added. “If we had that open, we'd have a lot of people very happy. Right now, we have a lot of unhappy people because they all want to be with us tonight to honor this great man.”

You don’t get a ticket to such an event by offering “insubordinate” comments about the “great man” who the U.S. intelligence community says set in motion the vicious murder of a critical journalist.

Jamal Khashoggi and the bloody bill for Trump's anti-press rhetoric

10/12/18 12:13 PM EDT

### Fox News downplays Khashoggi's murder: “Saudi Arabia is one of the safest places to be a journalist in the world”

10/20/18 2:20 PM EDT

### Bret Baier touts CBS News’ move toward “more balance” and “coverage that’s fair”

10/24/25

---

---}:

an 11 25

An appeals court upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss President Donald Trump's years-old $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN, deeming it "unpersuasive" and "meritless," reports *The New Republic*.

Trump sued the cable news network in 2022, for using the term “the Big Lie” in its coverage of "Trump’s debunked claims of sweeping election fraud that supposedly robbed him of a second term in the White House in 2020," The New Republic writes.

“Trump has not adequately alleged the falsity of CNN’s statements. Therefore, he has failed to state a defamation claim,” wrote 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Judges Adalberto Jordan, Kevin Newsom, and Elizabeth L. Branch in an eight-page filing.

“Trump’s other arguments are likewise meritless," the judges wrote.

Trump nominated both Newsom and Branch, as well as District Judge Raag Singhal, who first dismissed the case in July.

Trump also accused CNN of using “the Big Lie” to create a “false and incendiary association” between him and "Adolf Hitler, who originally coined the term in Mein Kampf," The New Republicexplains, "But the lower court ruled that “bad rhetoric is not defamation when it does not include false statements of fact.”

The panel of appeals court judges ruled that Trump’s argument was “unpersuasive,” because the term “Big Lie” did not "constitute a statement of fact," they report.

“This assumption is untenable,” the judges wrote, adding that "Trump’s argument hinges on the fact that his own interpretation of his conduct — i.e., that he was exercising a constitutional right to identify his concerns with the integrity of elections — is true and that CNN’s interpretation — i.e., that Trump was peddling his ‘Big Lie’ — is false. However, his conduct is susceptible to multiple subjective interpretations, including CNN’s."

This is the latest in a series of failed lawsuits Trump has issued against media companies reporting on his lies, including a $15 billion defamation suitagainst The New York Times that was dismissed in September.

“We have held that, by using ‘Big Lie’ to describe Trump, CNN was not publishing a false statement of fact. Therefore, whether CNN used ‘Big Lie’ one time or many is irrelevant to the question of falsity,” the judges said.

---

Trump's failed nominee sues Politico for $150M over defamation in harassment claim

by ELAINE MALLON | The National News Desk

Tue, October 28, 2025 at 10:03 AM

WASHINGTON (TNND) — Paul Ingrassia, PresidentDonald Trump's failed pick to lead the Office of Special Counsel, filed a $150 million lawsuit against Politico and reporter Daniel Lippman over an article which rehashed a retracted sexual harassment complaint filed against him.

On Monday evening, Ingrassia shared a press release announcing the lawsuit on social media. His lawyer Edward Andrew Paltzik named the October 9 article "Key Trump nominee accused of sexual harassment" written by Lippman as defaming the 31-year-old lawyer, who currently serves as Trump's liaison to theDepartment of Homeland Security.

"Paul has never sexually harassed anyone — full stop," Paltzik wrote.

"This is a historic first step on Paul's road to complete vindication. Although the last two weeks have been extraordinary difficult for Paul and his family, he has displayed incredible composure under fire, even as he faced challenges including the derailment of his nomination and death threats."

IFrame Content

Ingrassia withdrew his nomination last week, following the publication of a separate Politico article on October 20, which revealed alleged texts sent from Ingrassia in a group chat. In one of the messages, Ingrassia allegedly wrote that he had a "Nazi streak," allegedly called for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Juneteenth, Kwanzaa, and Black History Month to be "eviscerated," and allegedly wrote that one could "Never trust a chinaman or Indian." Politico did not share the full context of the nature of the conversation that these alleged messages were sent.

“Looks like these texts could be manipulated or are being provided with material context omitted. However, arguendo, even if the texts are authentic, they clearly read as self-deprecating and satirical humor making fun of the fact that liberals outlandishly and routinely call MAGA supporters ‘Nazis,’” Ingrassia's lawyer wrote in a statement to Politico.

Ingrassia nor Paltzik have verified that these text messages were real.

“In this age of AI, authentication of allegedly leaked messages, which could be outright falsehoods, doctored, or manipulated, or lacking critical context, is extremely difficult,” Paltzik continuned. “What is certain, though, is that there are individuals who cloak themselves in anonymity while executing their underhanded personal agendas to harm Mr. Ingrassia at all costs. We do not concede the authenticity of any of these purported messages.”

After the article detailing Ingrassia's alleged text exchange was published, Senator Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said he hoped that the White House would withdraw its nomination of Ingrassia, saying that he didn't have the votes to be confirmed.

The National News Desk reached out to POLITICO and Daniel Lippman for comment.

---

EDITOR HEART ATTACK?

REF -->

TOPEKA — Two years after police staged a chilling raid on the Marion County Record, the newspaper’s owner-editor remains committed to the hard-hitting journalism that made him a target.

And he wants his ongoing lawsuit against the city and county to hurt.

Eric Meyer appeared on the Kansas Reflector podcast to talk about how things have changed since the Aug. 11, 2023, raid, when police stormed the newsroom under the false pretense that a reporter had committed identity theft by looking up a driving record in a public online database. They took computers and reporters’ personal cellphones, acting outside the scope of a search warrant that was issued in disregard for the U.S. Constitution and state and federal laws that protect journalists.

AN 11 25

TOPEKA — The county involved in a small-town Kansas newspaper raid in 2023 will pay a cumulative $3 million to three journalists and a city councilor.

In two of the four agreements, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office also crafted a statement admitting regret.

“The Sheriff’s Office wishes to express its sincere regrets to Eric and Joan Meyer and Ruth and Ronald Herbel for its participation in the drafting and execution of the Marion Police Department’s search warrants on their homes and the Marion County Record. This likely would not have happened if established law had been reviewed and applied prior to the execution of the warrants,” the statement reads.

Marion County’s board of commissioners approved agreements Monday with Eric Meyer, the owner and editor of the Marion County Record, and Ruth Herbel, the Marion city councilor whose home was raided in tandem with the newspaper office, and two other journalists. The agreements coincide with consent judgments expected to be submitted in their federal cases against the county.

The county was a secondary player in the raids, in Meyer’s eyes, but the agreements could play a part in the paper’s ongoing cases against the city.

“Everybody involved in this is 100% convinced we are going to go to trial with the city,” Meyer said. “This will make that easier in some regard.”

The county’s agreements with Deb Gruver and Phyllis Zorn, local journalists whose lives were upended by the raids, are more akin to settlements and don’t include admissions of regret.

The county agreed to pay Meyer $1.5 million, Herbel $650,000, Zorn $600,000, and Gruver $250,000, according to copies of the agreements obtained by Kansas Reflector.

Insurance covers most of those funds, but the county must pay Meyer $50,000.

In another lawsuit against former Marion police chief Gideon Cody, who is also facing criminal charges, Gruver settled earlier this year for $235,000.

According to Meyer, Zorn has retired from her position at the Marion County Record, effective immediately.

Monday’s deals settle the county’s obligations within four federal lawsuits against the city of Marion and Marion County governments and officials in the wake of the raids. Five cases were consolidated into a single federal lawsuit, and the four agreements give the county and the sheriff’s office immunity from any future legal action related to the Aug. 11, 2023, searches and seizures at the Marion County Record, Meyer’s home and Herbel’s home.

The county agreed to make available Marion County Sheriff Jeff Soyez, Detective Aaron Christner, and Undersheriff Larry Starkey for official interviews, which could be used in other legal disputes. Previously, the cases were stalled, preventing interviews from taking place.

Claims against the city of Marion, its police department and other officials, including former Mayor David Mayfield and former police chief Gideon Cody, are not involved in the agreements.

---

no lnx

Top Trump Campaign Aide Sues The Daily Beast for Defamation

The lawsuit accuses the news site of knowingly publishing false information about how much Chris LaCivita, a Trump campaign manager, was paid by the campaign.

The New York Times}:

Katie RobertsonDavid Enrich

By Katie Robertson and David Enrich

March 24, 2025

One of President Trump’s former campaign managers, Chris LaCivita, on Monday filed a defamation lawsuit against The Daily Beast over its reporting on how much he was paid by the campaign.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, accuses The Daily Beast of creating “the false impression that Mr. LaCivita was personally profiting excessively from his work on the campaign and that he was prioritizing personal gain over the campaign’s success.”

It centers on an article published Oct. 15, 2024, with the headline: “Trump In Cash Crisis-As Campaign Chief’s $22m Pay Revealed.” The article was written by Michael Isikoff, a freelance journalist, who was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

The article stated that Mr. LaCivita, a manager of Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign, had negotiated a series of contracts and was paid millions of dollars over two years from the campaign. The allegations were repeated in several follow-up articles and discussed on a Daily Beast podcast.

According to the complaint, Mr. LaCivita’s lawyers on Nov. 5 demanded a correction and a retraction, saying public records from the Federal Election Commission conflicted with statements in the article.

The Daily Beast corrected its article a few days after the demand by changing the amount to $19.2 million from $22 million and clarified that the funds went to Mr. LaCivita’s consulting firm rather than to him personally. The headline was modified, and an editor’s note was appended to the article.

After Mr. LaCivita’s lawyers demanded further retractions in January, The Daily Beast removed a podcast episode titled “How Has Trump’s Campaign Manager Made $22 MILLION?” from its platforms.

Mark Geragos, a lawyer for Mr. LaCivita, said The Daily Beast “should have investigated and followed the money before publishing lies in order to get clicks and push their political agenda.”

The Daily Beast said in a statement that the outlet stood by its reporting on Mr. LaCivita.

“His lawsuit is meritless and a transparent attempt to intimidate The Beast and silence the independent press,” the statement said. “The Beast will defend itself vigorously and looks forward to following the money to confirm where every penny flowed in LaCivita’s L.L.C.”

The lawsuit is the latest recent instance of defamation and other legal actions that Mr. Trump and his allies have filed against news outlets and journalists whose coverage they claim was misleading or inaccurate.

Mr. Trump, for example, has outstanding lawsuits against CBS News, The Des Moines Register, CNN and the group that awards the Pulitzer Prizes. Mr. Trump’s advisers have also repeatedly threatened or filed such lawsuits. As recently as Friday, Elon Musk warned that one was “inbound” after a former congressman criticized him on television.

The legal actions and threats have coincided with efforts by the Trump administration to constrain mainstream news organizations. The White House has restricted The Associated Press’s access to the president. The Federal Communications Commission is investigating broadcasters. And Mr. Trump and allies like Mr. Musk have railed against news outlets and individual journalists, including by falsely claiming that they are government propaganda outfits.

To win defamation lawsuits, public figures like Mr. Trump and Mr. LaCivita must prove that defendants knew that what they were writing was false or acted with reckless disregard for its accuracy. That high bar was erected in a series of Supreme Court precedents that Mr. Trump and his allies are pushing to overturn.

Katie Robertson covers the media industry for The Times. Email: katie.robertson@nytimes.com

David Enrich is the business investigations editor for The Times. His coverage has focused on law and business as well as the banking industry. He has reported on corporate law firms, the First Amendment and libel law, which is the topic of his latest book “Murder the Truth."

:{:{A version of this article appears in print on March 26, 2025, Section B, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Daily Beast Defamed Him, Ex-Trump Aide Says in Lawsuit.}:

See more on: 2024 Elections: News, Polls and Analysis, U.S. Politics, Daily Beast, The, Federal Election Commission, Donald Trump

---

omg

an 10 25

Republican Party officials are now using their “connections” to the Trump administration to threaten journalists into dropping critical coverage.

That’s what Doug Bock Clark, a reporter for ProPublica, recently discovered as he worked on a feature-length story on the rise of Paul Newby, the Republican chief justice of North Carolina’s Supreme Court, who has become one of the most quietly influential jurists in the nation.

The piece published Thursday examines how Newby, a born-again Christian who was elected to the bench in 2004, believes he was called by God to exact what he calls “biblical justice.”

Over the past two decades, Clark wrote that Newby has “turned his perch atop North Carolina’s Supreme Court into an instrument of political power” and “driven changes that have reverberated well beyond the borders of his state.”

Newby’s most significant contribution has been the landmark decision that legalized partisan gerrymandering in North Carolina, a state that had long had some of the strongest laws in the country against partisan redistricting.

IFrame Content

The change led the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature to draw up wildly slanted maps that netted the GOP an additional six seats in the US House of Representatives in 2024, handing the party a national trifecta at the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term, which has allowed him to wield extraordinary power almost totally free of oversight from Congress.

It’s just one of the ways, Clark said, that “Newby has provided a blueprint for conservatives to seize most of the nation’s state supreme courts, which have increasingly become the final word on abortion rights, LGBTQ+ rights and voting rights.”

The report drew from more than 70 interviews with those who know Newby professionally and personally. But he was unable to get in contact with Newby himself.

“I reached out to Newby multiple times during the course of my reporting and was even escorted out of a judicial conference while trying to interview him,” Clark wrote on social media. “The court’s communications director and media team also didn’t respond to detailed questions.”

When Clark attempted to contact Newby’s daughter for comment, he instead received an ominous message from that aforementioned communications director, Matt Mercer.

Mercer ranted that ProPublicawas waging a “jihad” against “NC Republicans,” which would “not be met with dignifying any comments whatsoever.”

He continued: “I’m sure you’re aware of our connections with the Trump administration, and I’m sure they would be interested in this matter. I would stronglysuggest dropping this story.”

As Clark pointed out, “He bolded and underlined ‘strongly,’ in case we missed his point.”

After the story, which made note of Mercer’s threat, was published, Mercer then doubled down on social media, urging Trump to “feed ProPublica to the USAID wood chipper,” referencing the president’s near-total stripping of funds from the foreign aid agency.

Trump has issued an executive order slashing federal funds for media organizations supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, like NPR and PBS, in response to critical coverage of his administration. But it’s not entirely clear how he would actually go about doing such a thing to ProPublica,which does not receive government dollars but instead subsists on private grants and donations.

At any rate, Mercer’s messages were widely perceived as a not-so-veiled attempt to coerce ProPublica into ceasing its inquiries.

Travis Fain, a freelance reporter who previously worked for Raleigh’s NBC News affiliate, WRAL, expressed disbelief at Mercer’s belligerence on social media: “Well, there you go,” he said. “The North Carolina Republican Party officially threatens journalists now.”

Wiley Nickel, the former Democratic US House representative for North Carolina’s 13th District, lamented that it was “not normal” for a party official to “threaten ProPublica with retaliation from Trump” for writing a profile about another GOP official.

Despite the threats, Clark says “ProPublica persisted” with the story that Mercer “warned [it] not to tell.”

“I’m always amazed when grown-ups with jobs say things like this to journalists,” said Jessica Huseman, a former ProPublica reporter. “Like, do you think that’s gonna do anything but make us more eager to publish the story?”

:{:{---}:

---

omg

an 10 25

Republican Party officials are now using their “connections” to the Trump administration to threaten journalists into dropping critical coverage.

The piece published Thursday examines how Newby, a born-again Christian who was elected to the bench in 2004, believes he was called by God to exact what he calls “biblical justice.”

IFrame Content

The report drew from more than 70 interviews with those who know Newby professionally and personally. But he was unable to get in contact with Newby himself.

When Clark attempted to contact Newby’s daughter for comment, he instead received an ominous message from that aforementioned communications director, Matt Mercer.

Mercer ranted that ProPublicawas waging a “jihad” against “NC Republicans,” which would “not be met with dignifying any comments whatsoever.”

As Clark pointed out, “He bolded and underlined ‘strongly,’ in case we missed his point.”

At any rate, Mercer’s messages were widely perceived as a not-so-veiled attempt to coerce ProPublica into ceasing its inquiries.

Despite the threats, Clark says “ProPublica persisted” with the story that Mercer “warned [it] not to tell.”

:{:{---}:

---

### On MSNBC's The Weeknight, Angelo Carusone highlights that what Brendan Carr is doing at the FCC was “forecasted and telegraphed” in Project 2025

09/22/25 mma

---

an 9 25

National Security Leaders for America, a bipartisan organization comprising former senior military, diplomatic and intelligence officials, has strongly condemned the Pentagon’s recent directive imposing restrictions on journalists. Thenew policymandates that journalists sign a pledge agreeing not to report any information — even if unclassified — unless it has been authorized by a Pentagon official, under the threat of losing their press credentials.

In a statement releasedto the press Monday, the organization's president and founder, Rear Admiral Mike Smith (Ret.) said: “Demanding journalists adhere across the board to state edicts about what may — or may not — be reported to the public does not project strength. To the contrary, it betrays unsettling insecurities about the legality and effectiveness of Pentagon actions, plans and priorities."

“Our membership includes many former senior Department of Defense political appointees, as well as general and flag officers; we know how frustrating it can be when plans get out before they’re ready. We know how crucial it is to protect classified information and material, especially when its release could put sources and methods at risk. But the idea that only state sanctioned information is all that can ever be reported to the public flies in the face of the crucial role journalism plays in ensuring our armed forces are accountable to the American people," Smith added.

Rear Admiral Tom Jurkowsky (Ret.), former Chief of Navy Information, said: “Journalists at the Pentagon play a critical role, and Secretary Hegseth is being shortsighted in demanding journalists make this pledge. The public has a right and a responsibility to understand what the military is doing in their name, and that is not possible without an aggressive, sometimes adversarial press.”

The statement from the organization called for a "healthy relationship between the fourth state and Pentagon officials," which it said was "essential to communicating critical information about American national security to the public and has, in rare circumstances, uncovered unacceptable activities that might have otherwise remained hidden." The group asserted that "unprecedented disregard for the Constitution, absent any national security considerations, undermines law, good order and effectiveness."

IFrame Content

Several journalists' groups and press freedom organization have sounded the alarm over the recent policy.

The Society of Professional Journalists called it “alarming” and said the move “reeks of prior restraint — the most egregious violation of press freedom under the First Amendment.”

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press pointed out ambiguous language in the policy: what counts as “authorized information,” what is “a security or safety risk,” which areas in the Pentagon are covered, etc. The organization warned that such vagueness can lead reporters to self‐censor rather than risk losing access.

Some groups are explicitly calling for the Pentagon to rescind the policy. Others are saying the implementation should at least be paused until the vague terms are clarified and possibly narrowed to avoid overreach.

Meanwhile on Sunday, President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter whether the Pentagon should decide what reporters can report. “No, I don’t think so," he replied.

He added, “Nothing stops reporters.”

Trump's statements appear to express disagreement with the Pentagon policy, but there is no public indication he has ordered it rescinded or formally intervened.

Last week, Trump escalated his rhetoric against media outlets he accused of bias, suggesting that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should revoke the broadcast licenses of networks that provide "negative" coverage.

This comment came a day after ABC suspended "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" following remarks by late-night host Jimmy Kimmel about conservative activist Charlie Kirk's murder.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, had earlier hinted that ABC's broadcast license could be at risk if the network did not take action against Kimmel.

But on Monday, Disney announced that Kimmel would returnto the air on Tuesday, six days after the suspension, citing internal discussions and business considerations. The decision to reinstate the show followed public backlash, including boycotts and protests, and concerns over press freedom and censorship.

===

--> FASCISM

an 9 25

In an article for Salonpublished Sunday, the outlet’s executive editor, Andrew O’Hehir, argues that Americans have been given a harsh reminder: Democracy isn’t guaranteed, and beyond merely consenting to be governed, citizens must take an active role to defend it.

He warned that many of the formal institutions, especially the U.S. Constitution, are showing signs of decay, undermined “from within” by what he sees as encroaching authoritarianism.

O'Hehir writes that the confrontation over late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s show is presented not as just a media squabble, but a test case.

"Jimmy Kimmel’s cancellation is a test case, designed to measure the breadth and power of the accelerating authoritarian coup now underway in America," he said.

Late-night comedy and other cultural institutions become battlegrounds, in part because they sit at the intersection of public opinion, dissent, and broad reach, he noted.

IFrame Content

O’Hehir added that large media companies, many now under oligarchic ownership or dominated by finance capital and big tech, are becoming more reliant on those in power.

"The MAGA assault on late-night comedy — which is doubly vulnerable, as both a fading cultural institution and the veritable definition of First Amendment-protected speech — represents a kind of pincer movement, bringing together multiple overlapping fascist tendencies," he wrote.

"On one hand, we see the consolidation of mainstream media companies, now increasingly under the oligarchic control of Big Tech and finance capital, and increasingly dependent on the corrupt Trump regime to approve their corrupt cartel-building mergers and acquisitions. On the other, we see the regime’s undisguised campaign to restrict and punish dissent, and to redefine 'free speech' as a conditional benefit conferred only on its most loyal grovelers and forelock-tuggers, and subject to revocation at any time.

He cited Sinclair and Nexstar as examples of companies that pushed against Kimmel, seemingly aligning with Trump-friendly narratives.

The editor argued that many of the pillars of democracy — courts, civil service, justice departments, regulatory agencies — are weakened, co-opted, or acting as enforcers of the regime rather than checks upon it.

"The Supreme Court has given Trump free rein, the FBI and Justice Department have become his enforcers, the civil service has been co-opted and subverted, the public health agencies have been conquered by moonbats and Republican state legislatures are doing their best to rig the midterm elections. As [Bill] Curry puts it, leaders at white-shoe law firms, elite universities and major foundations have repeatedly surrendered without a shot, revealing themselves as 'traitors, cowards, rank opportunists or simply inept.'"

---

mma

Jimmy Kimmel and the MAGA strong-arming of American media

Written by Matt Gertz

:{:{Published 09/18/25}:

As with so many of the Trump administration’s excesses, a simple recitation of the events leading to Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension sounds like something out of dystopian fiction. ABC’s Wednesday night announcement that it was putting Jimmy Kimmel Live! on indefinite hiatus in the face of White House threats is the latest sign that U.S. media are increasingly coming under the control of President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement.

Trump had been targeting Kimmel and ABC for months. In the wake of frequent administration critic Stephen Colbert’s July announcement that his late-night show was ending, the president gloated that Kimmel would be “NEXT to go.” Last month, Trump argued that the Federal Communications Commission should revoke the licenses of ABC stations because it broadcasts too many “BAD STORIES” about him and provides “unfair coverage of Republicans.” And on Monday morning, he threatened ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl, saying that Attorney General Pam Bondi might target him and his network for purportedly airing anti-Trump “hate speech.”

Kimmel inaccurately suggested during his Monday night monologue that the alleged killer of Turning Points USA founder Charlie Kirk was part of “the MAGA gang.” Under ordinary circumstances, such a statement could result in a correction and apology. But Kimmel’s remarks occurred in an environment in which Trump and his administration are eager to punish political speech they dislike.

Brendan Carr, the FCC’s Trumpy chair, wielded Kimmel’s monologue as a cudgel against his network during a Tuesday appearance on right-wing influencer Benny Johnson’s show. Carr accused Kimmel of “an intentional effort to mislead the American people” and threatened Disney and ABC’s affiliates with regulatory retribution in response, saying: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

He specifically suggested that affiliate networks should tell Disney that they would not run Kimmel’s show “until you straighten this out” and insinuated that they could face “license revocation from the FCC” if they did not.

Carr’s threats appear to be a clear violation of the First Amendment — but that matters only if Disney and the affiliate networks are willing to fight to uphold those rights in court.

Instead, Nexstar Media Group, which needs FCC approval for its proposed purchase of the stations owned by media company Tegna, said its affiliates would immediately preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! Shortly after, Disney announced that it was putting the show on hiatus. And Sinclair Broadcasting Group, owned by the pro-Trump Smith family, said it would not return Kimmel’s show to its airwaves until ABC committed to “appropriate steps” and called for the late-night host to make a “meaningful personal donation” to Kirk's right-wing political group.

Carr subsequently joined Fox News’ Sean Hannity to take a curtain call and praise Nexstar and Sinclair for following his dictates.

It’s worth pointing out that neither Johnson nor Hannity could operate under Carr’s stated standard — but they had no objections to his statements because they understand that his actual goal is enforcing MAGA political correctness norms by which they already abide.

This capitulation is only the latest sign of increasing MAGA control over the free press

Trump has long benefited from a massive parallel right-wing ecosystem, from Fox News to talk radio to a host of MAGA streamers and influencers. But since Trump won election last fall, more and more of the corporate titans who control the U.S. media have come under his thumb.

When Trump attempted similar extortion tactics during his first term, the heads of media companies and owners of news outlets were willing to fight him in court. But since his election in November, executives at companies like Disney have proved far more willing to bend to his will.

Other news outlets either are owned by businessmen who have become more Trump-friendly (perhaps due to fears of retribution), like The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, or have been taken over by businessmen with close ties to the president, like CBS News’ new Trump approved-owner David Ellison. More such consolidation is under way, with Ellison seeking to take over CNN and the Trump White House effectively nullifying the law as it tries to broker a deal in which TikTok would be sold to a coalition including companies controlled by his father, Larry Ellison, and fellow pro-Trump magnate Marc Andreessen.

Reporters at those outlets can and have continued to do vital reporting about the Trump administration under those circumstances. But they do so with knowledge that their ultimate bosses will not stand behind them in a pinch.

Other potential corporate targets like Comcast, which Trump has previously threatened over the coverage of NBC and MSNBC, have not yet faced the same level of retaliatory scrutiny. But their day will inevitably come, particularly after Trump and Carr saw how quickly Disney folded in the face of their Kimmel attack.

The New York Times is among the few major news outlets that has no choice but to stand up for its output and a free press because its ownership does not have other substantial business interests. But Trump is targeting them in a different way — this week, he launched a $15 billion defamation lawsuit over reporting that questioned his business acumen.

And in a sign that even regime-aligned owners will face punishment for critical reporting, Trump filed a lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and its corporate parent’s chairman, Fox founder Rupert Murdoch, seeking $10 billion in damages over the paper’s coverage of his ties to disgraced financier and deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump’s endgame is clear. He wants to ensure that media outlets don’t produce coverage that criticizes him or his administration, but instead convey an endless stream of propaganda about his accomplishments.

He wants every outlet to be Fox News. And at this rate, he may get it.

### Trump calls for FCC retribution against “FAKE NEWS” ABC and NBC — while touting the “great man” who “just bought CBS”

08/25/25 12:40 PM EDT

### Donald Trump’s authoritarian playbook to crush the free press in a second term

10/29/24 9:09 AM EDT

### How CBS News’ Trumpy new ombudsman fits into the right's anti-media campaign

09/09/25

---

AN 9 25

History’s path is never linear. But its turns can be very sharp.

It is rare to be able to identify the moment when we can say “this is the point at which everything changed”.

So have we reached the point where we can say the United States is in a constitutional crisis? Has American democracy failed? Has the US descended into authoritarianism?

If the answers to those questions weren’t clear already, they are now.

Yes. It is happening. Right now.

Not because of one incident, but a series of moments and choices, events within familiar historical structures, that are pushing the US over the edge.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk, and the choices made by the administration in its aftermath, is one such moment. It was immediately clear the Trump administration would use Kirk’s murder as a pretext for accelerating its authoritarian project, weaponising it to destroy opponents, both real and imagined.

In a video address from the Oval Office, Trump blamed the “radical left” and promised a crackdown on “organizations” that “contributed” to the crime. His vice president, JD Vance,, effectively making it a tool of state-sponsored media. VID]

On that show, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller promised “we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks”.

In the MAGA-verse, terms such as “radical left”, “networks” and “organisations” are code for any form of opposition or dissent – including the Democratic Party and traditional media. It is worth noting here that “radical left” is now shifting to terms as broad as “left-leaning”, progressive or, even more subversive, liberal.

The Trump administration is promising to go after the fundraising architecture of its opposition, broadly defined. And it will. It is already using the agencies of the federal government – including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service – to threaten, punish and obliterate those who oppose it.

And the moments keep coming. On Wednesday, Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, appeared on another far-right podcast. Carr – a Project 2025 contributor – suggested that broadcasters running the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show were risking “the possibility of fines or licensed revocation from the FCC” due to Kimmel’s comments about Kirk’s death.

That night, ABC announced that Kimmel’s show would be suspended indefinitely.

Kimmel’s moment follows Stephen Colbert’s. It follows another moment earlier in the week, when Trump berated senior Australian Broadcasting Commission journalist John Lyons, aggressively telling him he was “hurting” Australia and that he would tell the Australian prime minster as much. The ABC has since been barred from Trump’s UK press conference, ostensibly for “logistical reasons”.

In the firehose of these moments, it can be difficult to see them in context. But they are all connected – part of a deliberate, carefully planned program to destroy anyone or anything that opposes or even questions Republican orthodoxy as defined by Trump.

The Kirk moment, the Kimmel moment, and all the rest, must be understood in that broader framework. This week, too, the Trump administration announced it was deploying the National Guard into Memphis, Tennessee. It will likely also send the National Guard into Chicago, as it has long been threatening. It has already despatched the National Guard into Los Angeles and Washington DC.

Trump and his cronies are openly musing about other “Democrat cities”. The point is to sow fear and suppress dissent. It is working.

This month, in the aftermath of a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, Trump promised to end mail-in voting. The Trump-aligned Supreme Court is poised to gut a key provision of the Voting Rights Act intended to prevent racial discrimination. The mid-term elections are still over a year away.

Incredibly, we are only eight months into the second Trump administration. But the moments will keep coming, and the speed at which they arrive will likely accelerate.

Taken together, they paint a very grim picture for the future of US democracy, constrained though it already is. The widespread, coordinated suppression of dissent – and the extended chilling effect that suppression has – are ripping apart the fabric of American political life.

It is here. It is happening. History is being made before our eyes.

This is a monumental change. For the United States. For the world.

Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, *RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

---

NEWSWEEK 9 25

ABC has pulled Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show off the air after comments the comedian made about the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk, and following pressure from the network's affiliates as well as the nation's TV regulator.

"Jimmy Kimmel Live will be preempted indefinitely," a spokesperson for the Disney-owned broadcaster said in a statement shared with various news outlets on Wednesday.

The move has drawn praise from allies and supporters of President Donald Trump, but sparked condemnation from Democratic lawmakers and free expression advocates.

The context of Kimmel's cancellation has led to allegations that business interests—particularly those concerning a delicate merger approval process involving the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and ABC affiliate Nexstar—may have played a role.

Taken together, some have interpreted this as a form of indirect censorship of the political Left by the Trump administration. Similar concerns were raised following the recent cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

"First Colbert, now Kimmel. Last-minute settlements, secret side deals, multi-billion dollar mergers pending Donald Trump's approval," said Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren. "Trump silencing free speech stifles our democracy."

Newsweek has contacted ABC, Nexstar and the FCC via email for comment.

Why It Matters

In the wake of Kirk's killing, the Trump administration has taken a series of actions critics believe undermine longstanding commitments to free speech in the U.S.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has warned foreign nationals celebrating his death online to "prepare to be deported," Vice President JD Vance has encouraged people to report those who do so to their employers, and Attorney General Pam Bondi has come under fire for urging a crackdown on "hate speech"—a move many believe clashes with First Amendment protections.

Russian State TV Floats Theory Trump Planned Charlie Kirk's Killing

### Brendan Carr's 'Censorship' Remarks Resurface After Jimmy Kimmel Suspension

### Donald Trump Praises George Orwell Amid Free Speech Crackdown Concerns

### Donald Trump Reacts to Jimmy Kimmel Live! ABC Suspension

The administration of President Joe Biden faced similar criticism and accusations of censorship over the pressure it placed on social media companies to remove accounts and posts relating to the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election that were considered misinformation. In June 2024, the Supreme Court rejected cases claiming that these amounted to an unconstitutional violation of free speech.

Why Was Jimmy Kimmel Taken Off the Air?

During his Monday night monologue, Kimmel made remarks about Kirk's death and its aftermath, suggesting that Trump supporters were attempting to capitalize on the murder and distance themselves from the alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson.

"We hit some new lows over the weekend, with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it," Kimmel said.

Kimmel also mocked President Trump's seemingly uninvolved response to a reporter's question on Kirk's death.

In an interview with conservative podcaster Benny Johnson on Wednesday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump ally and appointee, called Kimmel's comments "some of the sickest conduct possible," and said that there could be "a path forward for suspension over this."

"This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney," he added. "We can do this the easy way or the hard way."

Carr also urged other media companies and local broadcasters to "push back" and stop airing the show.

:{:{FCC Chairman Brendan Carr testifies before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government at the Rayburn House Office Building on May 21, 2025 in Washington, DC.}:

Following Carr's interview, Nexstar Media Group, the owner of several ABC affiliate stations, announced that it would stop airing the show "for the foreseeable future" over Kimmel's remarks.

"Nexstar strongly objects to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk and will replace the show with other programming in its ABC-affiliated markets," the statement read.

This sequence of events has raised questions about the extent to which this decision was guided by financial motivations rather than genuine outrage over Kimmel's comments.

Nexstar, one of the biggest station owners in the U.S, is currently attempting to complete a merger with fellow TV giant Tegna. The nature of the merger—valued at $6.2 billion—requires the approval of the FCC, and for it to loosen longstanding ownership regulations. These include federal laws barring a single entity from owning TV stations that together reach over 39 percent of American households, and guidelines on the total number of stations that can be owned in a single market.

Sinclair, ABC's largest affiliate group, similarly objected to Kimmel's remarks, and said it would be pulling the late-night show from its stations "indefinitely." Sinclair praised FCC Chairman Carr's comments, and asked Kimmel to issue an apology to Kirk's family, and to make a "meaningful personal donation" to both them and Turning Point USA, the conservative outreach group founded by Kirk.

"Regardless of ABC's plans for the future of the program, Sinclair intends not to return Jimmy Kimmel Live! to our air until we are confident that appropriate steps have been taken to uphold the standards expected of a national broadcast platform," Sinclair said.

According to CNN, Sinclair—like Nexstar—has matters awaiting approval from the Trump administration.

Newsweekhas contacted Sinclair via email for comment.

After ABC followed suit, Johnson boasted that it was his podcast with Carr that led to Kimmel's show being taken off the air.

"It's called soft power. The Left uses it all the time," he wrote on X. "Thanks to President Trump, the Right has learned how to wield power as well."

FCC Chairman Carr, meanwhile, responded to CNN's request for a reaction with a GIF taken from The Office,in which the characters Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute are pumping their hands in the air in celebration.

What People Are Saying

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, in an interview with Sean Hannity on Wednesday evening, said that broadcast licenses carry "a unique obligation to operate in the public interest."

Commenting on the decisions by Nexstar and Sinclair to pull the show, Carr added: "I'm very glad to see that American broadcasters are standing up to serve the interests of our community."

President Donald Trump reacted to the news on Truth Social, writing:"Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that's possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!! President DJT."

Andrew Alford, President of Nexstar's broadcasting division, said: "Continuing to give Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to preempt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue."

Anna Gomez, the only Democratic commissioner at the FCC, posted to X: "An inexcusable act of political violence by one disturbed individual must never be exploited as justification for broader censorship and control. This Administration is increasingly using the weight of government power to suppress lawful expression."

The Writers Guild of America (WGA), a Hollywood labor union, said in a statement:"Shame on those in government who forget this founding truth. As for our employers, our words have made you rich. Silencing us impoverishes the whole world. The WGA stands with Jimmy Kimmel and his writers."

California Governor Gavin Newsom posted to X: "Corrupt, despicable, & spineless behavior. A coordinated effort to control the media is happening before our eyes & it needs to be called out."

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren posted to X:"First Colbert, now Kimmel. Last-minute settlements, secret side deals, multi-billion dollar mergers pending Donald Trump's approval. Trump silencing free speech stifles our democracy. It sure looks like giant media companies are enabling his authoritarianism."

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) reacted: "The government pressured ABC—and ABC caved. The timing of ABC's decision, on the heels of the FCC chairman's pledge to the network to "do this the easy way or the hard way," tells the whole story. Another media outlet withered under government pressure, ensuring that the administration will continue to extort and exact retribution on broadcasters and publishers who criticize it."

What Happens Next?

Sinclair said that its ABC stations will air a tribute to this Friday, during Jimmy Kimmel Live's usual time slot.

---

TRUMP EVERY NEG /HARD QUESTION HE ID REPORTER THEN THREAT OR PUT DOWN THEIR OUTLET EG AUSSIE ON BIZ DEALS YOUR PM IS COMING I WILL NAME YOU TO HIM

---

NYT SUED uae chips deal?! LOOMER?!

---

CONTEXT

an 9 25

Far-right MAGA conspiracy theorist and self-described "proud Islamophobe" Laura Loomer was critical of Charlie Kirk near the end of his life. As Loomer saw it, the Turning Point USA founder wasn't pro-Donald Trump enough — even though Kirk was, in fact, an ardent Trump supporter.

In a July 13, 2025 post on X, formerly Twitter, Loomer wrote, "I don't ever want to hear @charliekirk11 claim he is pro-Trump ever again. After this weekend, I'd say he has revealed himself as political opportunist and I have had a front row seat to witness the mental gymnastics these last 10 years. Lately, Charlie has decided to behave like a charlatan, claiming to be pro-Trump one day while he stabs Trump in the back the next."

But after his fatal shooting, Loomer called for the imprisonment of anyone who criticizes Kirk — a proposal that former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan is calling out as "fascism."

In a September 13 post on X, Loomer wrote, "I have to say, I do want President Trump to be the 'dictator' the Left thinks he is, and I want the right to be as devoted to locking up and silencing our violent political enemies as they say we are. I've had enough of the Left only thinking we will defund them, prosecute them, lock them up and dismantle their power for generations to come. It just needs to happen."

IFrame Content

Hasan gave a forceful response to that post on September 17, tweeting, "If this isn't a call for open, violent, unadulterated fascism and authoritarianism, from a top adviser to the president, then what is it? Seriously, what the hell is it?"

Hasan isn't the only one on X who is sounding the alarm about Loomer calling for Trump to act like a "dictator."

Journalist Bastian Brauns posted, "It's already well past 10 after 12. 'I do want President Trump to be the 'dictator' the Left thinks he is.' This is written by Laura Loomer, the woman who is allowed to personally whisper to Trump which 'traitors' he should fire from the government next."

Iowa-based writer Raymond Baker tweeted, "You know @LauraLoomer has never studied history nor does she understand what drives men like Stalin, Putin, Kim Jong II, Pol Pot, or Donald Trump. Authoritarian dictators are cruel and once they assume power, they no longer want or need supporters like Loomer."

Activist William Richards wrote, "Laura Loomer wants Trump to be a dictator? She wants to lock up the Left because she believes they are all violent. Mirror politics & projection is what Laura is up to! It's easily demonstrated that the Right are the purveyors of violence in our Country, not the Left.

---

rww

09/15/2025

Kyle Mantyla

Brenden Dilley is a overtly racist, unapologetically misogynistic, and gleefully amoral Trump cultist who has established close ties to the Trump administration and the president himself, thanks to the role he plays in leading a "troll army" that relentlessly promotes Trump and attacks his enemies on social media.

Dilley has openly stated that he doesn’t “give a fuck about being factual” and will “make shit up” if doing so furthers Trump’s political agenda, pledging to "lie, cheat, [and] fucking steal" on behalf of Trump. For this, he has been repeatedly rewarded with meetings with Trump and invitations to the White House.

Dilley has openly issued threats against Trump's enemies, declaring that Trump supporters had better "start developing a stomach for death," proclaiming that his mission to just keep "keep curb-stomping these motherfuckers," and warning that he and others MAGA activists are just waiting until Trump "gives us the green light" to take to the streets and start gunning down activists.

Ignoring his own history of violent rhetoric, Dilley reacted to the murder of Charlie Kirk by calling on Trump to become a dictator and impose martial law on the nation until those on the left whom he deems responsible for Kirk's death have been rooted out and destroyed.

"The time for words is totally over, man," Dilley declared. "The only thing I wanted to hear [from Trump is,] 'Here's what I'm doing to make sure that this shit stops instantly.' I wanted to wake up today and have all of the media outlets banned temporarily; executive order. I'm pulling the licenses of Fox, MSNBC, CNN, CBS, and all other mainstream media until we can sort out what is going on."

"They've been calling Donald Trump a dictator for 10 years," he added. "You already got the name. One man's dictator is another man's patriot. Go full Abe Lincoln; suspend habeas corpus, introduce martial law. Let's actually cut out the cancer from the mainstream media."

"What is it going to take us? 90 days?" Dilley asked. "All I know is that whatever the response is to Charlie's death—and Charlie's death is horrific—must be 100 times more aggressive, deliberate and well-executed. It has to be. Whatever the government's response is to this has to be shock and fucking awe."

---

PRESS SUPPRESS 5 925

The slipshod authoritarianism of Trump’s Times attack

Trump keeps demanding criminal punishment for reporting he dislikes

The White House press bans aren’t about ethics in journalism

Related

Criticizing Israel? Nonprofit Media Could Lose Tax-Exempt Status Without Due Process

Chilling Dissent

Trump denounces “TREASONOUS” New York Times over Iran reporting

US Falls to Lowest-Ever Rank on Press Freedom Index as Trump Pours ‘Gasoline on the Fire’

“Trump and his administration have carried out a coordinated war on press freedom since the day he took office, and we will live with the consequences for years to come.”

House GOP, With Help of 4 Dems, Votes to Take Food Aid From Millions of Women and Kids

World Press Freedom Index - Wikipedia

US Falls to Lowest-Ever Rank on Press Freedom Index as Trump Pours ...

As Trump accuses news outlets of “TREASON,” Fox models MAGA Iran coverage

Mark Levin: Trump’s war prevented a second holocaust and a nuclear attack on America

Sean Hannity: Iran’s leaders should “get out while they can”

Fox & Friends: “Are we on the 5-yard line? Of course, but the president had to take this action.”

You can’t celebrate the First Amendment with Donald Trump

Right-wing media figures are getting briefed on the Iran war before Congress

After calling for Don Lemon’s arrest, right-wing media are now celebrating it

The year the media oligarchs bowed to Trump

Most Read

Guilt by Literature

The Framers Loved Zines

Baier, Bartiromo pass on MBS criticism, score seats to his gala

Trump's failed nominee sues Politico for $150M over defamation in harassment claim

Jimmy Kimmel and the MAGA strong-arming of American media

This capitulation is only the latest sign of increasing MAGA control over the free press

Why It Matters

Russian State TV Floats Theory Trump Planned Charlie Kirk's Killing

Why Was Jimmy Kimmel Taken Off the Air?

What People Are Saying

What Happens Next?