A year ago in this space, I wrote that—as Donald Trump was preparing to begin his second term as president—I was deeply concerned about the diminishing state of press freedoms in the United States.
Of course, we now have ample confirmation that this concern was justified.
In his first 11-plus months back in the White House, Trump and his administration have made it crystal clear that they’re interested in power and glorification, and have no interest in even pretending to believe in the First Amendment.
I could write a lengthy list of all of the steps they’ve taken to diminish press freedoms, from the Pentagon-access policies to 60 Minutes to the Jimmy Kimmel debacle—but if you’ve been paying attention, you already know about all of these things. Instead, I’d like to discuss something you may not know about: the removal of a single word from a government website, and what that signifies.
Tom Jones, a senior media writer for the Poynter Institute, wrote in a commentary published on Dec. 18:
If you went to the Federal Communications Commission website first thing Wednesday morning, you would have read the following:
“An independent U.S. government agency overseen by Congress, the Commission is the federal agency responsible for implementing and enforcing America’s communications law and regulations.”
Note the word: independent.
However, if you went to the FCC website a little bit after noon Eastern time on Wednesday, you would have seen this:
“A U.S. government agency overseen by Congress, the Commission is the federal agency responsible for implementing and enforcing America’s communications law and regulations.”
Notice which word is missing: independent. …
So what happened? Why did the FCC say it was “independent” one moment and then have that word removed the next? Because FCC chair Brendan Carr, in fiery testimony during a Senate committee hearing, said the FCC was not independent.
In other words: The FCC answers to Trump, and must do his bidding—even if that means, for example, going after a talk-show host or news program that said something the president didn’t like.
Trump is not just using the federal government to go after media sources he dislikes; he’s also continuing to use the courts—most recently suing BBC for $10 billion (!) because of a bad edit in a pre-election documentary. Even though BBC admitted the mistake and apologized, and even though the edit clearly had no effect on the election results, he filed this insane suit.
In a CNN story, Bob Corn-Revere, chief counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said the suit “does not have any legal basis, either on defamation or jurisdictional grounds. This is nothing more than the president’s latest effort to intimidate media companies that he sees as adversarial to his administration.”
As we head into 2026, all Americans who care about free speech—Republicans, Democrats, independents, all Americans—need to pay attention. Trump is following the power-consolidation playbook laid out by dictators he admittedly admires, like Hungary’s Viktor Orban. Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court have made it clear that they won’t stop Trump, and as a result, the First Amendment is in serious trouble.