In the United States, the freedom of the press has hit an all-time low. For years, the country was ranked “satisfactory” by Reporters Without Borders’ standards for journalism. As of last year, it’s now “problematic,” having plummeted to 57th place out of 180 countries on the 2025 Press Freedom Index. This is largely due to President Donald Trump’s recent pushes to censor, ban, and silence television, broadcast, and the press. From lashing out on anyone who criticizes him to seeking to deport immigrants based on their speech, Trump has blatantly disregarded the First Amendment rights of both the media and the people, meeting little to no repercussions on his rampant tirade of national censorship.
One of the most recent instances of Trump’s violation of free speech rights was the suspension of late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! following its Sept. 15 episode, in which its host, Jimmy Kimmel, criticized the president’s unmoving reaction to political commentator Charlie Kirk’s assasination, describing it as “how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.”
This was met by immediate backlash from conservatives and Trump’s Make American Great Again (MAGA) circle, with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr calling Kimmel’s comments “truly sick” and threatening to “take action” against the show’s parent companies, Disney and ABC, during an interview with political commentator Benny Johnson. A few days later, following pressure from the Trump Administration, ABC announced that it was pulling the show “indefinitely” off air, declining to explain why. Trump celebrated by posting on Truth Social, threatening to cancel other hosts he took issue with: “That leaves Jimmy (Fallon) and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!”
Though the show returned on air a week later, this was just one event in a series of pressures Trump and his administration have inflicted upon the media’s freedom of speech. For Trump, a favored approach to silencing the press is suing whenever he disagrees with something that was published. He has sued the Wall Street Journal for ten billion dollars for writing about a birthday letter he sent to Jeffery Epstein, CBS News for the same amount over the way a “60 Minutes” interview was edited, and most recently, the New York Times for $16 billion for defamation, among other lawsuits.
Despite the fact that these lawsuits would typically be an easy win for media companies, given that they are completely within their First Amendment rights and the cases would quickly be thrown out in court, what gives the Trump Administration real power is the control it has over the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In the case of the “60 Minutes” episode, Paramount, which owned CBS, intended to merge with Skydance Media, which would require government approval from the FCC. To avoid jeopardizing the transaction by angering the FCC, the company ultimately decided to settle with Trump for $16 million. By looming as an ominous threat over commercial deals, the FCC and the Administration behind it has bullied many media companies into silence and submission.
Trump has also suppressed press freedom outside of courts. In February 2025, he banned the Associated Press (AP) from various press events because it did not refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. This month, he threatened to revoke the licenses of correspondents covering the Pentagon unless they agreed to restrictions on their reporting. He’s also utilized his executive privilege to control the media; for instance, his Executive Order 14290, signed in May 2025, cut funding for PBS and NPR, citing biased news coverage.
The nature of these attacks and restrictions has exposed the hypocrisy and injustice with which Trump regards free speech. For example, in March 2025 his administration attempted to dismantle the Voice of America (VOA), a broadcaster that channeled news into countries whose governments prohibited free information – the very type of government, it seems, that our nation is becoming through actions like these. At the same time, Trump and his administration pick and choose what they want to hear and which constitutional rights they want to acknowledge, censoring anything they deem “hate speech,” which is completely protected under the First Amendment, while promoting the flagrant misinformation distributed by Fox News and many conservative commentators.
The Administration’s reckless disregard for free speech rights not only impacts Americans in that the information heard is increasingly being cherry-picked by Trump himself, there’s also the danger that Americans could be targeted for their words too. Recently, many students and scholars have been assailed for expressing their opinions: in March 2025, Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk was arrested and detained by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after she co-authored an op-ed criticizing the university’s response to pro-Israel protests. Efforts like these will only be strengthened through initiatives like “Catch and Revoke,” which utilizes AI to scrape the social media accounts of immigrants and foreign students to find speech that might lead to deportation or visa revocation. This is a clear violation of First Amendment rights, which non-citizens are also constitutionally entitled to.
However, Trump hasn’t been completely successful in all of his efforts at censorship and oppression of the media. Courts have dismissed several lawsuits filed by the president for defamation, and a federal judge blocked the administration’s plan to lay off employees at the Voice of America (VOA). Additionally, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has challenged attempts to defund broadcast stations like NPR and PBS, contending that it’s an infringement of their First Amendment rights. The president’s attack on freedom of speech has also been met by resistance by youth-led initiatives, such as the Sunrise Movement, an organization originally dedicated to climate justice that is now expanding their mission to counter the Administration’s despotism.
The president has labeled journalists “the enemy of the people” and “fake news,” a technique historically utilized by authoritarian leaders such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong. According to experts, his ruthless attacks upon the media have led to a “chilling effect,” where individuals and establishments self-censor in an attempt to avoid punishment, and they don’t seem to be ending anytime soon. As we fall silent, we bend under Trump’s will. In a time when our voices are increasingly being suppressed, it’s all the more imperative that we speak out.