• Private platforms and publishers have their own First Amendment rights and cannot generally be forced by government to carry particular viewpoints.
These cases illustrate the Supreme Court’s ongoing balancing act: enabling protection from certain harms (especially to minors and in the context of broadcast), while maintaining a strong presumption against government censorship and prior restraint across all forms of media. In the digital context, the Court is grappling with how to apply long-standing principles to new technologies and platforms
Trump and Republican Efforts to Censor and Control Media (2017–2025)
In recent years, former President Donald Trump and allied Republican officials at both the federal and state levels have engaged in unprecedented efforts to censor or control broadcast, online, and print media. These actions range from verbal attacks and lawsuits against news organizations to executive orders, legislative bills, and state-level policies aimed at restricting certain content in schools, libraries, and on the internet. This comprehensive report examines those efforts in detail – highlighting specific incidents, anecdotal stories of people affected, and verifiable quotes from credible sources. It focuses on developments up to 2025, showing how a pattern of media hostility and censorship has evolved and intensified.
Trump’s War on the Press: Attacks, Lawsuits, and Retaliation
From the start of his political career, Donald Trump openly vilified mainstream news outlets and individual journalists. He repeatedly labeled critical media as “fake news” and even denounced the press as “the enemy of the American people” aljazeera.com . In a notorious February 2017 tweet, Trump blasted major networks and newspapers by name and declared, “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” aljazeera.com . Such language, described by analysts as echoing authoritarian regimes, sent shockwaves through the journalistic community aljazeera.com . It signaled that the new President saw a free and critical press not as essential to democracy, but as a hostile force to be undermined.
Trump’s rhetoric soon translated into concrete actions against reporters and media outlets. His administration revoked or suspended press credentials for journalists who challenged him, upending long-standing norms of White House press access. In November 2018, after CNN’s Jim Acosta pressed Trump with unwanted questions, the White House yanked Acosta’s “hard pass” credentials without due process cjr.org cjr.org . CNN sued, and a federal judge ordered Acosta’s reinstatement, affirming that such expulsions cannot occur arbitrarily cjr.org . But rather than relent, the Trump White House responded by tightening credential rules in 2019. It imposed a new requirement that any reporter must have physically attended the White House at least 90 days in a prior 180-day span to qualify for a hard pass cjr.org . This seemingly neutral rule had sweeping impact: “virtually the entire press corps failed to meet this new test, including all six of the Post’s White House correspondents,” reported The Washington Post cjr.org . Dozens of veteran journalists suddenly faced the loss of their credentials and had to petition for “exceptions.” Trump critics like Dana Milbank found their exceptions denied – Milbank wrote, “I strongly suspect it’s because I’m a Trump critic”, noting the move fit Trump’s pattern of punishing outlets he disliked cjr.org . Indeed, nearly the entire White House press corps was converted to serving “at the pleasure” of Trump’s press team, who could remove them at any time for any reason cjr.org cjr.org . “This is what dictators do,” protested Senator Patrick Leahy as news broke, calling the mass credential purge “un-American and needs to be reversed ASAP” cjr.org . The message to journalists was chilling: fall in line or lose your access.