Trump Escalates Attacks on Free Press
NEWS & RESEARCH
On September 24, 2026, federal Judge Timothy J. Kelly granted a 14-day restraining order and directed the White House to “immediately return, reinstate, and restore” the press credentials held by employees of CNN, MS NOW and Politico. Judge Kelly, a Trump appointee, found that the news outlets were likely to prevail on their claim that the ban violated their First Amendment rights and that Trump failed to provide the news outlets an opportunity to be heard—due process—before issuing the ban. On September 18, 2026, President Trump had announced that he was banning the three media companies from the White House for presenting “fake news” and warned that bans on “Other Fake News Media Outlets” might follow. The next day journalists from the three news organizations were barred from entry at the White House gates and their press credentials were confiscated. The White House Correspondents' Association and major news organizations denounced the ban is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. However,, One American News network (OAN) largely parroted White House talking points about “fake news.” While certain commentators on Fox News were critical of the ban, Fox mostly emphasized justifications offered by the White House while downplaying the matter. Although most presidents have had tense relations with the press at times, early in his first term, Trump called the news media “the enemy of the people,” and has targeted broadcasters and newspapers with lawsuits, subpoenas, threats to licenses, and takeovers by ideologically friendly corporations. Trump previously banned Associated Press (AP) journalists from the Oval Office and Air Force One for refusing to say "Gulf of America." AP’s lawsuit contesting the ban is still in litigation. He sued news outlets over stories he dislikes, including a $10 billion defamation suit against The Wall Street Journal over its report on a 2003 birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein in which Trump’s squiggly signature appears as the pubic hair in a sketch of a nude woman and the letter references their shared secrets. His media company sued The Guardian over its reporting on a federal money-laundering probe. Some targets paid rather than fight back: ABC News settled for $15 million, and Paramount paid $16 million over a "60 Minutes" interview with Kamala Harris that Trump claimed was deceptively edited. He even sued The Des Moines Register over a poll showing him behind in Iowa, a case the judge warned could have "a massive, chilling effect." Trump stripped the White House Correspondents' Association of its century-old control of the press pool. At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth evicted legacy outlets from their workspaces, pushed out journalists who refused to sign pledges limiting their reporting, sidestepped a court ruling to require escorts for reporters and fired the editor and a reporter at the traditionally independent Stars and Stripes after they defended the paper's editorial freedom in a CBS News interview. Public media has been squeezed financially as well: after Trump signed an executive order cutting off NPR and PBS, later ruled unconstitutional, the administration pushed Congress to claw back $1.1 billion in funding, forcing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to shut down. For commercial broadcasters, the pressure has run through FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who has turned the licenses local TV stations need to operate into leverage. Carr suggested stations could lose their licenses over Jimmy Kimmel's comments, prompting ABC to pull his show temporarily, and threatened broadcasters over their Iran war coverage. He pressed "The View" to follow equal-time rules, which require broadcasters that host a candidate to offer rivals the same airtime, despite the show's long-standing news exemption, and CBS soon blocked Stephen Colbert from airing an interview with Texas Senate nominee James Talarico. After Trump and the first lady demanded Kimmel's firing, Carr ordered an unprecedented early review of ABC's station licenses, which the network is fighting in court as a "retaliatory campaign." He also approved Skydance's purchase of Paramount only after it agreed to end CBS's diversity policies and install a news-bias monitor, weeks after Paramount paid Trump $16 million. And the pressure extends to media watchdogs: the Federal Trade Commission investigated Media Matters for America after it reported that major brands' ads ran next to pro-Nazi posts on Elon Musk's X, a probe a federal judge called illegal retaliation and "a straightforward First Amendment violation." In January, the FBI searched the home of a Washington Post reporter and seized her phone and laptops, and in July, Justice Department agents went to the homes of New York Times reporters to serve subpoenas over the paper's reporting on security gaps in the jet Trump accepted from Qatar. The toll is measurable: Reporters Without Borders' World Press Freedom Index now ranks the United States 64th of 180 countries, just below Botswana and its lowest since the index began in 2002, a decline echoed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and Sweden's V-Dem Institute.
SOURCES: The Hill | NPR | Reuters | New York Times | Fox News | New York Times | CNBC | ACLU | NPR | Free Speech Center | Washington Post
ANALYSIS & OPINION
The White House Correspondents' Association statement noted that freedom of the press enshrined in the Constitution does “not depend on whether the president likes a news organization’s coverage, agrees with its reporting, or approves of the questions its journalists ask.” CNN and Politico indicated that they would contest the ban in court. Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, called the ban unconstitutional as it excludes members of the press “on the basis of their viewpoints.” Even one of Trump’s reliable defenders in the academic legal community, Jonathan Turley, called the ban “terrible precedent and practice” that “would raise serious constitutional questions and undermine the country’s long-standing position as a voice for the free press.” During Trump's first term, the White House attempted to revoke the credentials of CNN's Jim Acosta and Playboy correspondent Brian Karem. In both instances, federal judges stepped in and ordered the White House to immediately restore their press passes, setting a legal framework that protects reporters from retaliatory credential bans. Trevor Timm of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which tracks press freedom violations, said the administration's moves "have certainly risen to the level where they're kind of off the charts," and the group has recorded more government efforts to subpoena and threaten journalists than at any time since it began tracking in 2017. Judges called the FTC's probe of Media Matters "a straightforward First Amendment violation," struck down the order defunding NPR and PBS, forced the Justice Department to drop its subpoenas of New York Times reporters, and ruled the Pentagon's press restrictions unconstitutional. Yet winning in court is not the same as winning. The process is the punishment, and Trump has admitted as much: he once said he sued a reporter simply "to make his life miserable, which I'm happy about." Media Matters beat the FTC but, by its own account, held back articles while the probe drained its finances. ABC conceded in court that fear of retaliation led it to air a Trump speech it otherwise would not have carried and to avoid certain guests on "The View." The FCC's defense is equally telling. Carr cites the Supreme Court's 1969 Red Lion decision to argue that "no one has a First Amendment right to a license." But that ruling upheld rules meant to widen the range of voices on the air, not to punish broadcasters the president dislikes. The Communications Act bars the FCC from censorship, and a unanimous Supreme Court held in 2024 that officials may not threaten regulated companies into silencing speech. The deeper problem is structural. Many of the protections journalists relied on, such as the Justice Department's limits on subpoenaing reporters and the rule guaranteeing Stars and Stripes' independence, were policies rather than laws, and each was erased with the stroke of a pen. Unless Congress writes these protections into law, the damage could outlast this presidency.
SOURCES: The Hill | NPR | Reuters | New York Times | Fox News | New York Times | CNBC | ACLU | NPR | Free Speech Center
HOW TO FIX IT
Federal action:
Pass the No Political Enemies (NOPE) Act, which would prohibit federal officials, including the president, from using investigations or enforcement actions to punish protected speech. It would let targets sue for damages and recover attorney's fees.
Pass the PRESS Act (Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act), a federal shield law that would protect journalists from being forced to reveal their sources and bar the government from obtaining their records from phone and email providers.
Pass the Privacy Protection Updates Act, which would make it harder for the government to raid journalists' homes, as the FBI did to a Washington Post reporter. It would require prosecutors to tell judges about existing press protections before seeking a warrant, and it would mandate court review of emergency seizures within 48 hours. It would also bar illegally seized materials from use in court and extend protections to records stored in the cloud.
Pass the Broadcast Freedom and Independence Act, which would bar the FCC from punishing broadcasters or revoking their licenses over the viewpoints they air, and from attaching viewpoint-based conditions to merger approvals.
Pass the JAWBONE Act (Justice Against Weaponized Bureaucratic Overreach to Networked Expression Act), which would bar federal officials from coercing broadcasters over lawful speech. It would let targets sue for damages and fees, and it would require agencies to publicly log their communications with these companies.
Pass the Free Speech Protection Act, a federal anti-SLAPP law that would let news outlets get meritless lawsuits dismissed early and make plaintiffs pay the defendants' legal fees.
Pass the Protecting Pentagon Press Access Act, which would restore reporters' unescorted access to areas of the Pentagon open to them before Hegseth's restrictions. It would require career officials, not political appointees, to handle press credentials, and bar future changes to press access without consulting Congress.
Pass the Stars and Stripes Editorial Independence Act, which would write the military paper's independence into law after the Pentagon revoked the regulation that had guaranteed it. It would keep the newsroom outside the military chain of command, bar the Pentagon from suppressing coverage that reflects poorly on the department, and require a civilian publisher.
Amend the Communications Act so broadcast licenses can be reviewed only when they expire, and only on the station's record during that term. This would stop the FCC from ordering early reviews like the one aimed at ABC.
Pass the Daniel Ellsberg Press Freedom and Whistleblower Protection Act, which would stop the Espionage Act from being used against journalists who publish classified information.
Hold hearings on FCC overreach, and support removing Brendan Carr as chairman.
Direct action:
New organizations are banding together to refuse pool reporting where a member organization is barred. Members of the pool take turns taping a presidential public appearance and then they share the footage with other pool members. Five networks—ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC—announced on September 19, 2026 that they are suspending their pool coverage of the president due to viewpoint discrimination.
Litigation:
ABC v. FCC. Disney and ABC argue the FCC's early license review is unconstitutional retaliation for content the administration dislikes. It is the first time a major network has fought back instead of settling. A win would set the first court precedent limiting the FCC's use of licenses as leverage, and it would give other broadcasters a template to follow.
NewsGuard v. FTC. NewsGuard is challenging an FTC merger condition that bars a major advertising company from using news-reliability ratings, which effectively blacklisted NewsGuard. A win would establish that regulators can't use merger approvals to punish organizations for their editorial judgments.
The New York Times v. Department of Defense. The Times is challenging Pentagon rules that required reporters to sign pledges limiting what they could seek to publish and later barred them from moving through the building without an escort. The paper won twice in district court, but the Pentagon reissued the restrictions in a new form and won a temporary reversal on the escort rule. An appeals court ruling for the Times would restore reporters' access and establish that agencies can't evade a court order by repackaging the same restrictions.
Associated Press v. Budowich. The AP is challenging its exclusion from White House events over "Gulf of America." A merits ruling that the government can't exclude outlets for their viewpoint would give CNN, MS NOW, Politico and any future targets a clear precedent to cite.
NPR v. Trump. A judge ruled the executive order defunding NPR and PBS unconstitutional. Upholding that ruling against any appeal would establish that a president can't cut off funding to punish news outlets for their coverage.
Slavin v. Hegseth, Smith v. Department of Defense, and Dardarian and Church v. Department of Defense. These are the Stars and Stripes cases. Wins would reinstate the fired staff and ombuds role and could undo the Pentagon's repeal of the rule guaranteeing the paper's independence.
Trump v. Selzer. A ruling that a published poll is protected speech, not "consumer fraud," would shut down the legal theory Trump used to sue The Des Moines Register.
CNN, MS NOW and Politico announced they will challenge in court their September 18, 2026 White House bans as viewpoint discrimination. Trump's own post blaming "FAKE NEWS" is direct evidence of his motive. A ruling for the outlets would make press bans legally risky for this White House and future ones.
Legislation: H.R.4250 – PRESS Act | S.4268 – Privacy Protection Updates Act | S.867 – Broadcast Freedom and Independence Act of 2025 | H.R.7060 – No Political Enemies Act | S.4749 – JAWBONE Act | S.188 – Free Speech Protection Act | S.5288 – Protecting Pentagon Press Access Act | S.4614 – Stars and Stripes Editorial Independence Act | H.R.7930 – Daniel Ellsberg Press Freedom and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2026
