The United States is now at a critical juncture concerning both the future of freedom of the press and democratic institutions more broadly.

In place of legitimate reporters, Leavitt has invited newcomers who transform the press pool into a casting call for a Trump-era Miss USA.

“The most powerful way to change the world is to secretly commit little acts of compassion. You must behave as if your every act, even the smallest, impacted a thousand people for a hundred generations. Because it does.”

As Trump tries to destroy one free institution after another—universities, law firms, independent public agencies, trade unions—sooner or later he will come for the press.

To sustain this new system, Thornton told me, nonprofit news organizations need diversified funding from membership, sponsorship, events, and philanthropy, which will need to support local media in perpetuity, the way they do the arts.

The “intolerable risk to press freedom” posed by device searches at the border.

A federal judge ordered the White House on Tuesday to restore The Associated Press’ full access to cover presidential events, affirming on First Amendment grounds that the government cannot punish the news organization for the content of its speech.

Local officials and business moguls are also turning to lawsuits or the threat of them to silence the press.

How Signal, Silence, and Schedule F Are Killing Government Transparency

If you relied on articles and broadcasts from the legacy national news media during early 2025, you wouldn’t know the extent of grassroots action prompted by this discontent.

During the 2024 campaign, the Times sane-washed Trump’s mental unfitness, downplayed MAGA fascism, and sometimes treated a political turning point for our country as a source of lighthearted amusement.

In a country that routinely distrusts and villainizes local news, these attacks did not occur in a vacuum; if they can happen in Clarksdale or Marion, they can happen anywhere.

Bob, with his remarkable intellect and even more remarkable capacity for communicating his vision of a media that served citizens rather than corporations, was always the driving force. His research and his insatiable curiosity helped him to see the future more clearly than any scholar of his generation...

In 2024, the Democrats ran on the catchphrase “We are not going back.” Even after the party’s resounding defeat, the refrain may have been more prophetic than they imagined. New research shows that once a country begins a descent into authoritarianism it’s extremely difficult to reverse. And the first vector of attack is often the free press.

Chinese state media are celebrating President Donald Trump’s move to gut Voice of America and other U.S. government-funded news outlets that push back against authoritarian regimes.