Editorials & Other Articles

Tom Homan, the White House “border czar,” for example, said this week that he believes the Justice Department “needs to look at” CNN because of its report. As The New York Times reported, he wasn’t alone.

Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said on Tuesday that she was ‘working with the Department of Justice’ to see if the Trump administration could prosecute CNN for publishing an article about an app that allows users to send alerts about the presence of nearby immigration agents. ‘We’re going to actually go after them and prosecute them,’ Ms. Noem told reporters at an appearance with President Trump in Florida.

The DHS secretary went on to describe the reporting that the administration didn’t like as “illegal.”

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:aunpu65mdrhwfie7ynymlzeh/post/3lsvzae2w5c2i

Link to tweet

......In case this isn’t obvious, let’s pause to take note of a few things. First, CNN reporting on a popular and publicly available app is perfectly legal under the First Amendment. Second, “working with” federal prosecutors to target a news organization for running a perfectly legal report is unambiguous authoritarianism.

Third, CNN’s reporting on Trump’s pre-emptive military strikes in Iran wasn’t “false” — and even if it were, it wouldn’t have been illegal. (If the White House has evidence of a media outlet getting a story wrong, it can ask for a correction. It cannot sic federal law enforcement on journalists.)

But it's also worth appreciating the larger context.

In the run-up to Election Day 2024, Trump was nearly as eager to attack the free press as he was to attack Kamala Harris. The Republican, for example, referred to journalists as “the enemy of the people,” media outlets as “evil,” and news professionals as “scum.”

But the offensive wasn’t just rhetorical. As regular readers might recall, Trump also made clear that he hoped to use governmental power to crack down on journalism he dislikes. It’s why he invested so much time and energy talking about the FCC stripping TV networks of their broadcast licenses for airing coverage he disapproves of......

And then the tactics did, in fact, get worse. The president demanded that CBS face “fines and punishment” for airing a “60 Minutes” episode he didn’t like; he tried to penalize The Associated Press over its decision to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Mexico; and the White House has also taken steps to control press pools, in part to ensure sycophantic questions.

Those who take the First Amendment’s press freedoms for granted need to recognize the fact that Trump is eyeing the kind of crackdown on journalism that’s unheard of in any modern democracy.