Donald Trump turns administrative power against the press
By Adele Rutherford · Reporting from Atlanta ·
By turning state regulatory machinery against reporters and broadcasters, Donald Trump trades the long-term legitimacy of public institutions for short-term silence.
Donald Trump is treating the machinery of the American state as a personal weapon to silence dissent. He is wrong not because he dislikes the press, but because he is trading the long-term legitimacy of our institutions for the short-term convenience of silence. When a president uses the law to punish a critic, he is not enforcing a rule. He is creating a tool. The danger is that once the tool is built, it remains in the box for whoever holds the keys next.
The regulatory drag
The administration is not merely fighting with the press; it is attempting to regulate it out of existence. According to The Mining Journal, the Federal Communications Commission has conducted investigations and an early review of broadcast licenses owned by ABC. ABC and Disney claim these proceedings are "retaliation for programming and editorial decisions that the administration dislikes." To justify this, the administration cites "bias, discrimination, misinformation, ideological imbalance or institutional misconduct."
This is administrative drag used as a substitute for a ban. theintercept.com reports that this campaign includes FBI agents arriving at reporters’ homes and subpoenas for journalists’ records. The New York Times notes that these clashes have grown into a "sweeping campaign to control speech." This is the process of weaponization. It turns the neutral functions of the state into a series of threats.
The cost of the street
The rhetoric of the executive branch eventually finds its way to the street. inquirer.com reports that the Freedom of the Press Foundation found 170 incidents of assaults on journalists. A survey by the International Women's Media Foundation revealed that 36% of working U.S. journalists experienced physical threats or actual violence. Consequently, the U.S. press freedom ranking from Reporters Without Borders fell to 64th.
At Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, editor Dylan Hembrough was interviewed by police over an email criticizing the administration. Official Nicole Franklin claimed a journalist questioning policy "has become an unsafe environment for me." When the state defines a question as a threat, the answer is usually force.
The mechanism of silence
The administration has spent years labeling journalists as "the enemy of the people." The goal is to make the truth a matter of partisan loyalty rather than a matter of record. We saw this when the president lunged at Rachel Scott, shouting "Not you!" when she asked about a scheme to send every American a $5,000 check.
This strategy shares a mechanism with the Pentagon Papers. In that case, the executive branch employed legal injunctions and state power to suppress the publication of government records that expose administrative deception. The current administration is simply expanding the scope. It no longer seeks to stop a single leak; it seeks to control the entire pipeline of information. By putting MAGA loyalists in charge of federal law enforcement and the military, the administration ensures that the process serves the person.
The current crisis is not a failure of the law. It is a success of the administration's strategy to bypass it. By using the FCC to threaten licenses and the FBI to intimidate reporters, Donald Trump is operationalizing administrative harassment. If the courts do not stop this, they are not protecting the law. They are providing cover for its dismantling. The result will be a government that does not fear the truth because it has successfully broken the tools used to find it.