President Donald Trump lobbed a series of attacks aimed at dismantling the free press earlier this year. These attacks include a $1.1 billion cut in public broadcasting funds to NPR and PBS stations, as well as a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal.
Earlier this month, the ACLU filed a friend-of-the-court brief in NPR v. Trump — a case that challenges the Trump administration’s executive order banning the use of congressionally-appropriated funds for NPR and PBS stations. The order, which accused the media outlets of failing to create “fair, accurate, or unbiased” reporting, clearly violates the First Amendment. Government officials should not be able to withhold taxpayer dollars, designated by Congress to promote private speech, from news outlets whose coverage they disapprove. Defunding NPR and PBS stations threatens to leave communities across the U.S. with limited access to local news and educational content, especially in rural areas.
The federal government’s blatant attack on the media is unprecedented in recent history, but not unexpected from a president who has exhibited hostility toward the press for almost a decade. From banning The Associated Press from the White House press pool to suing media companies over their reporting, Trump’s personal and official track record with the media has proven that his administration is willing to dismantle our free press and violate the Constitution.
In our second installment of “Press in Peril,” our series on the value of a free press, we explore how Trump, Congress and regulatory agencies have targeted media organizations for exercising their First Amendment rights.
White House and Pentagon Sideline Legacy Media
While attacking publicly funded media, the Trump administration has also targeted outlets and institutions that cover federal affairs at the White House and Pentagon. In one of the administration’s earliest moves against the press, Trump signed an executive order in February banning The Associated Press from the White House press pool for not using Trump’s new name for the Gulf of Mexico. A federal judge ordered the White House to restore the newsroom’s access in April on the grounds that the ban violated the First Amendment. However, that decision was temporarily delayed by the D.C. Circuit with an appeal currently pending.
Despite this win for freedom of speech and the press, the administration has broken from centuries of precedent by restricting press coverage. The White House Correspondents’ Association announced that — after more than a hundred years — it would no longer control the White House press pool in February. By ceding control of that power to the Trump administration, the White House now decides which journalists and news organizations are part of the press pool. Similarly, the Pentagon removed longstanding offices for legacy media outlets such as The New York Times, NPR, and Politico for new media outlets, the majority of which lean conservative in their coverage.
Trump’s Legal Campaign Against the Free Press
The previous installation of “Press in Peril” covered how New York Times v. Sullivan and the “actual malice” standard seeks to protect the press from high-cost defamation lawsuits for their reporting. However, Trump has not let this precedent stop him from intimidating the press through litigation.
Most recently, Trump filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit after The Wall Street Journal published a story on a 2003 letter sent from Trump to Jeffery Epstein on his birthday. Denying that he had written the letter, Trump sued Rupert Murdoch, News Corp and their CEO Robert Thomson, Dow Jones & Company, and the reporters who wrote the story. Trump described the piece as a “false, malicious, defamatory, FAKE NEWS" on Truth Social.
The Wall Street Journal is not the only news company that Trump has sued in the past year. He recently settled for $16 million in a lawsuit against Paramount and CBS News for the “60 Minutes” coverage of former Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential race. In December, he reached a $15 million settlement with ABC News over a misquotation by host George Stephanopoulos. Trump also threatened to sue The New York Times and CNN for their reporting on the U.S. airstrike in Iran.
Trump has also targeted smaller outlets. He sued the Des Moines Register and Iowa pollster Ann Selzer in December 2024 over a poll that predicted former Vice President Kamala Harris would win the presidential election. Trump called the poll “fraud” and “brazen election interference.” For smaller outlets with fewer resources, these actions raise concerns about the president’s willingness to sue over any unflattering news coverage.
Weaponizing the FCC’s Investigatory Power
Weeks after he won the 2024 election, Trump appointed Republican commissioner, and Project 2025 author, Brendan Carr as head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which regulates communications across the country.
Since Carr became Chair, the FCC has opened baseless investigations into several media outlets that the president and his administration don’t like, including ABC, NBC, CBS, and local news outlets.
Companies with pending matters before the FCC have made troubling concessions regarding their public and private expression in an apparent effort to obtain favorable business outcomes. For example, the FCC launched an investigation into CBS’s “60 Minutes” for the way they edited an interview with Harris. It’s no coincidence that the FCC launched the investigation after Trump had already sued CBS in his personal capacity. Needing the FCC’s permission for a merger, Paramount — the corporate parent of CBS — settled a $16 million lawsuit with Trump, and announced they would pull back on various diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Weeks later, the FCC approved the merger which, among other concessions, included hiring a bias monitor at CBS. Verizon and T-Mobile also agreed to dismantle their DEI programs just days before the FCC approved their respective mergers.
The Fight to Protect the Free Press
Press protections are integral to the First Amendment, including the right to report without fear of government interference. As more cases like NPR v. Trump reach the courts in future months, the ACLU continues to challenge such actions to uphold the First Amendment. The ACLU is committed to fighting for reporters’ right to hold those in power accountable.
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