Donald Trump is poised to return to the White House as the 47th president of the United States, and press freedom groups are sounding the alarm early about what his election means for the state of journalism in the U.S. and around the world. Courage joins these groups in standing up for truthtellers, for journalists’ right to publish, and for your right to know, regardless of which party is in power.
Trump’s record on media freedom in his first term was infamously bleak. Beyond calling the press “the enemy of the people,” Trump viciously attacked news outlets and individual journalists whose coverage he didn’t like and weaponized the state in an effort to silence them. He surveilled reporters, banned outlets from press briefings, and persecuted leakers. In 2017, Trump called on the Federal Communications Commission to revoke the licenses of ABC, NBC, and other news stations, a threat he renewed in the 2024 campaign.
And of course the biggest assault on press freedom at least since the 1972 Pentagon Papers was the Trump Administration’s indictment of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. In 2019, Trump’s Justice Department levied 17 counts under the Espionage Act against Assange, including charges for soliciting, possessing, and publishing classified documents in the public interest, escalating the Obama Administration’s war on whistleblowers to a full-blown war on journalism.
Campaign threats foreshadow dangerous second term
It appears we can expect more of the same in Trump’s second stint in office. Defending Rights & Dissent writes about the policy plans of Trump and his associates:
“[Trump’s] close supporters have put together a plan to crack down on pro-Palestine protesters, surveil journalists, and jail whistleblowers. And Trump has made clear he wants to violate the First Amendment by criminalizing flag burning and deporting activists.
They have declared their intent to abuse laws like RICO to silence those who support Palestinian rights and hire more FBI counterintelligence agents to spy on journalists so the government can unmask and imprison whistleblowers.”
When Trump’s CIA went so far as to draw up plans to kidnap and even assassinate Assange while he was detained in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, Mike Pompeo was at the helm. Trump brought Pompeo along for several major rallies at the close of the 2024 campaign, and initial reports suggested his name was floated for another cabinet position. Just days after being reelected, however, Trump announced preemptively that Pompeo (as well as fellow neocon and former Ambassador Nikki Haley) will not be in his new administration — though he praised Pompeo’s work in Trump’s first term.
More explicitly, Reporters Without Borders found that Trump has verbally threatened the press more than 100 times on the campaign trail, including suggesting he wouldn’t mind if journalists at his rally were shot.
The Committee for the Protection of Journalists, reporting on the massive increase in attacks on the press in the last year, “found that the hostile media climate fostered during Donald Trump’s presidency has left a legacy that poses great risks to media inside and outside the country.”
While the Biden Administration has made some important changes in the intervening years, including Attorney General Merrick Garland’s revision of the DOJ’s policies to prohibit subpoenas for journalists (with narrow exceptions), they have done nothing to truly protect sources and journalists more permanently. The Assange case ended in a plea deal under Biden and Garland, rather than a dropped indictment, instilling a chilling effect on investigative journalists around the world, and the Espionage Act remains at Trump’s disposal, with no public interest defense available to protect defendants in court.
Furthermore, both administrations fully support funding and arming the ongoing killing of Palestinian journalists at an unprecedented rate amid Israeli’s assault on Gaza and Lebanon.
Biden could still pass the PRESS Act
Biden’s lame-duck Congress could still enact policy changes to protect reporters. Chief among them is getting the Senate to pass the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (PRESS) Act, which passed in the House unanimously and which would severely curtail the government’s ability to surveil reporters. The Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Trevor Timm said,
“The Senate should immediately pass, and President Biden should sign, the bipartisan PRESS Act to stop Trump from spying on journalists, as he repeatedly did in his first term, and from throwing them in jail for refusing to reveal their sources, as he has threatened in the most disgusting terms.
Congress must make good on promises to fix dangerous and sloppily drafted mass surveillance legislation passed earlier this year that gives the U.S. government extraordinary power to spy on its own citizens.
And lawmakers must take a vocal stand against abusing anti-terrorism laws to punish free speech. It’s imperative the White House reverses its spineless position on Israel’s unprecedented attacks on press freedom and pressure its ally to stop using U.S. weapons to kill journalists.”
Support press freedom and those defending it
Whether the Biden Administration and the outgoing Congress pass these protections or not, press freedom groups will continue to fight back in the war on journalism throughout Trump’s second term. Courage has been partnering with many of these groups on a range of issues — from the prosecution of Julian Assange to the widespread killing of Palestinian journalists — in an effort to speak out en masse, our collective voices louder than each of us on our own. We encourage you to support these organizations as you’re able, as the need for solidarity will only grow.
