Trump uses the FCC to turn the press into a state monologue
By Nikhil Raghavan · Reporting from San Francisco ·
Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, calls the administration's strategy "Full Spectrum Dominance." In a military context, that means controlling the air, land,…
# The Architecture of Silence: Full Spectrum Dominance in the American Press
Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, calls the administration's strategy "Full Spectrum Dominance." In war, that means controlling the air, land, and sea to freeze an enemy in place. Applied to the national information environment, the term is a confession. This is not a fight against "fake news" or a series of spontaneous grievances; it is a plan to use federal agencies to ensure that only the narrative issued by the Oval Office survives.
The Regulatory Noose for a Late Night Joke
To see the machinery in motion, look at the plumbing. The White House banned The Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One after the news agency refused to call the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America." The administration also clashed with the AP over the rights to a photo of the President following the 2024 shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania. While these disputes look like petty feuds, they function as stress tests for compliance.
The strategy has shifted from denying access to threatening existence. When President Trump and the first lady demanded that ABC fire Jimmy Kimmel over a joke, the White House did more than tweet. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched an early review of the federal licenses for ABC stations. This is the actual lever of power: the state does not need to jail a journalist if it can make a corporate legal department panic about its primary broadcast asset.
Brendan Carr, the FCC Chairman, said the President is "changing the game" to stop executives in Hollywood and New York from dictating the narrative. Carr told AlterNet that the administration is reshaping the media landscape. This is the current blueprint: the FCC no longer acts as an independent regulator but as a political enforcement arm. During Trump's first term, the weapons were insults and revoked press passes. Now, the weapons are licenses and statutes.
Is this the New Gleichschaltung?
The administration is pursuing Gleichschaltung. In the 1930s, the Nazi regime used this process to synchronize every independent social and media institution—from trade associations to newsrooms—with state goals. The regime did not always ban speech; it coordinated it until the cost of dissent became administratively impossible.
Supporters argue that this is a corrective measure. They claim the American media is a corporate oligarchy that has functioned as a left-wing propaganda wing for decades, and that "reshaping" the landscape simply restores balance. They point to the perceived bias of the New York Times or CNN to justify using state power to break that monopoly.
That argument fails because the goal is not a pluralistic marketplace of ideas, but a state-mandated monologue. When the FCC targets a late-night host or the President files libel suits against authors like Timothy L. O’Brien specifically to "make his life miserable," the state is not fighting a monopoly; it is building one. It replaces a corporate filter with a government filter. This mirrors the way Viktor Orbán consolidated the Hungarian press, using state advertising and friendly oligarchs to hollow out independent news from the inside.
The U.S. falls behind Botswana
The data shows the slide. According to reporting from TV News Check and bluevirginia.us, the U.S. now ranks 64th on the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index. This is the lowest standing for the U.S. in two decades, placing the country behind Botswana.
This playbook mirrors the 2011 Syrian protests, where the state did not just censor the news but intimidated the messengers until the narrative synchronized. A private-sector preview appeared during Elon Musk's acquisition of X, where the platform suspended journalists reporting on the center of power. Now, the President wields that same power through the FCC and the Department of Justice.
The next steps are predictable. The FCC will likely initiate license reviews for other networks to compel the firing of critical commentators. A flood of strategic lawsuits—SLAPPs—will aim to bankrupt investigative reporters. "Full Spectrum Dominance" is not a series of accidents; it is a deployment.
The administration no longer wants to win the argument; it wants to own the microphone. By turning regulatory agencies into tools of personal retribution, the White House has moved beyond political combat to seize the levers of power. When the state decides that one "correct" narrative is the only one allowed to exist, the press does not just lose its access—it loses its purpose.