Trump Media Assault: Lawsuits, Defunding, and Censorship Escalates

Atlantic Mag­a­zine is report­ing that US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s media assault has inten­si­fied in his sec­ond term, marked by a mul­ti-front war on jour­nal­ism that includes unprece­dent­ed law­suits, the elim­i­na­tion of fed­er­al sup­port for pub­lic broad­cast­ing, and a recon­fig­ured reg­u­la­to­ry bureau­cra­cy. This aggres­sive cam­paign, launched with new legal action against The Wall Street Jour­nal last week, aims to pun­ish and dimin­ish inde­pen­dent press, rais­ing alarms among press free­dom advo­cates. The arti­cle begins:

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump ’s lat­est assault on the news media came in the form of anoth­er law­suit last week. After The Wall Street Jour­nal report­ed that Trump had alleged­ly writ­ten a birth­day note, com­plete with “bawdy” doo­dling, to the con­vict­ed sex traf­fick­er Jef­frey Epstein in 2003, Trump boiled over with indig­na­tion. He denied writ­ing the note and filed a libel suit the next day, demand­ing $10 bil­lion in dam­ages from the Jour­nal, its par­ent com­pa­ny, and its prin­ci­pal own­er, Rupert Mur­doch, a some­time Trump ally. Although Trump faces con­sid­er­able legal obsta­cles to win in court, bet­ting against him would be unwise. In his first six months in office, he has been on a win­ning streak in his cam­paign to pun­ish and dimin­ish the press. His dis­pute with the Jour­nal, after all, hijacked the news cycle from anoth­er Trump “vic­to­ry”: elim­i­nat­ing fed­er­al sup­port for pub­lic broad­cast­ing. Ear­ly Fri­day morn­ing, Con­gress vot­ed to can­cel $1.1 bil­lion in sub­si­dies for NPR, PBS, and their affil­i­at­ed sta­tions, mark­ing the first time Con­gress has cut off pub­lic broad­cast­ers since its fund­ing began near­ly 60 years ago. Trump had pushed for the defund­ing, repeat­ed­ly assert­ing that NPR and PBS offered “biased and par­ti­san news cov­er­age.” Repub­li­cans in Con­gress appar­ent­ly agreed.

Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/07/donald-trump-campaign-media/683600/ [Pay­wall]

Key Points

• Pres­i­dent Trump has esca­lat­ed his cam­paign against the media with tac­tics includ­ing mas­sive law­suits, such as a $10 bil­lion libel suit against The Wall Street Journal.
• Fed­er­al sup­port for pub­lic broad­cast­ing (NPR, PBS) was entire­ly elim­i­nat­ed, mark­ing the first such cut in near­ly 60 years.
• The admin­is­tra­tion uses Strate­gic Law­suits Against Pub­lic Par­tic­i­pa­tion (SLAPP) to pres­sure news orga­ni­za­tions into mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar set­tle­ments, affect­ing com­pa­nies like Dis­ney-ABC, Meta, X, and Para­mount Global.
• Loy­al­ists appoint­ed to reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies, like Bren­dan Carr at the FCC, are rein­stat­ing com­plaints against major net­works and inves­ti­gat­ing pub­lic broad­cast­ers, impact­ing media oversight.
• Trump has recon­fig­ured White House press oper­a­tions, ban­ning some out­lets like the Asso­ci­at­ed Press and favor­ing MAGA-friend­ly media, along­side rescind­ing pro­tec­tions for jour­nal­ists in leak investigations.

The Global National Conservative Alliance & The Assault on the Media

The Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA) treats infor­ma­tion as a bat­tle­space: first, its strate­gists frame main­stream and “fact‑checking” out­lets as trans‑national left‑wing pow­er cen­ters to be neu­tralised—one inter­nal strat­e­gy memo explic­it­ly lists the glob­al media ecosys­tem among the insti­tu­tions the move­ment must “break,” a line echoed in a pro­posed Hun­gar­i­an crack­down that would let Budapest mon­i­tor, fine, or ban any news­room with for­eign sup­port. Hav­ing dele­git­imised watch­dogs, GNCA actors invest in a par­al­lel com­mu­ni­ca­tions infrastructure—think‑tanks, state‑backed broad­cast­ers, influ­encer sta­bles, Telegram channels—that can flood the base with care­ful­ly syn­chro­nised cross‑continental nar­ra­tives while side­step­ping hos­tile fact‑checkers and reg­u­la­tors, a pat­tern flagged in an ear­li­er threat assess­ment.

This net­work hap­pi­ly recy­cles dis­in­for­ma­tion sourced from friend­ly regimes: a high‑profile Carl­son inter­view shows how Krem­lin talking‑points are laun­dered through con­ser­v­a­tive influ­encers, then re‑amplified by Russ­ian state media, clos­ing the pro­pa­gan­da loop. Where per­sua­sion alone falls short, GNCA gov­ern­ments weaponise law—Hungary’s foreign‑funding bill offers a tem­plate for restrict­ing or crim­i­nal­is­ing inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism, and sim­i­lar rhetoric is now sur­fac­ing in U.S. and EU right‑wing cau­cus­es. Final­ly, the doc­trine recog­nis­es that move­ment dis­ci­pline is enforced through media war­fare: one recent on‑air feud demon­strates how rival fac­tions mobilise their audi­ences to set­tle strate­gic dis­putes, with who­ev­er com­mands the loud­er mega­phone steer­ing GNCA orthodoxy—or frac­tur­ing it.

Across mul­ti­ple juris­dic­tions, the GNCA is sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly tight­en­ing its grip on infor­ma­tion: leg­is­la­tion tar­get­ing foreign‑funded news­rooms, exec­u­tive mea­sures that side­line crit­i­cal out­lets, and influencer‑propaganda loops that recy­cle state nar­ra­tives all con­verge to erode press plu­ral­ism and ampli­fy movement‑approved mes­sag­ing. The pat­tern reveals a coor­di­nat­ed strat­e­gy that merges state pow­er with loy­al media ecosys­tems to silence dis­sent, shape pub­lic opin­ion, and entrench the alliance’s geopo­lit­i­cal agenda.

Exter­nal Sources

• Hun­gary post­pones vote on law that could curb for­eign-fund­ed groups

• Trump is fast dis­man­tling the free press. We all have to stop him.

• Ortho­doxy and Pro­pa­gan­da: Ana­lyz­ing Tuck­er Carlson’s Inter­view with Vadim Novinsky

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.