They Are Coming for the Press, but the Mainstream Media is Barely Covering It
- Kal Inois
- May 12
- 18 min read
Journalists are being arrested, deported, shot with pepper spray bullets, and had their homes raided by federal agents. Mainstream media is barely covering it. Here is the full documented record, and here is where to find the reporters who are willing to tell the truth.
There is a reason you have not seen this story dominate the front pages of the Washington Post or the New York Times. There is a reason cable news has not dedicated sustained coverage to the systematic campaign being waged by †rump’s regime against the journalists trying to cover it. That reason is $32 million. That is the combined amount that ABC News and Paramount’s CBS paid to settle lawsuits filed by †rump, with ABC handing over $16 million toward †rump’s legal fees and future presidential library, and Paramount paying another $16 million to make a lawsuit over a “60 Minutes” interview disappear. As Poynter’s definitive year-end analysis documented, those settlements did not just resolve legal disputes. They sent a message to every major news organization in this country about what happens when you do not cooperate. And most of them heard it loud and clear.
What is happening to the press in America right now is not a media story. It is a constitutional crisis, and it is being systematically undercovered by the very institutions that should be screaming about it from every platform they own. The 2026 Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index put the United States at 64th in the world, down seven spots in a single year, sitting behind the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and dozens of other countries that Americans have long assumed were less free than we are. The V-Dem Institute’s 2026 Democracy Report placed U.S. freedom of expression at World War II levels. Both organizations are nonpartisan, internationally respected, and have been tracking these indicators for decades. What they are documenting is not a trend. It is a collapse.
64th U.S. ranking in 2026 World Press Freedom Index, down from 57th in 2025
170 Assaults on journalists in the U.S. in 2025, 160 at hands of law enforcement
$32M Paid by major media companies to settle †rump lawsuits
215 Anti-media posts by †rump on social media in 2025 alone
Silence of the Mainstream
The $32 million in settlements is only the most visible part of the pressure campaign. The Federal Communications Commission, now led by Brendan Carr, a Prøject 2025 co-author, launched eight formal investigations in 2025 alone targeting NPR, PBS, ABC, NBC, and KCBS, among others, for everything from documenting IÇE raids to promoting diversity initiatives. Every one of those broadcasters has a license that the FÇÇ controls. Every one of them is now aware that critical coverage of the regime carries regulatory consequences. That awareness does not need to be spoken aloud to shape editorial decisions. It hangs over every newsroom like a threat that does not need to be delivered twice.
Former public defender Eliza Orlins, writing at Objection Everything on World Press Freedom Day, put it plainly: the methods vary, lawsuits, funding cuts, regulatory leverage, friendly buyers picking up media properties, but the goal is the same. Make journalism legally and financially risky enough that newsrooms back down before a story even gets filed. That is the same playbook Viktor Orbán ran in Hungary and Vladimir Putin perfected in Russia. It is working here because the institutions that should be resisting it have financial incentives not to.
When independent journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort were arrested by federal agents in January 2026, Critical Read’s analysis documented that the Washington Post and New York Times barely addressed the constitutional dimension of those arrests in their initial coverage, burying the First Amendment implications toward the bottom of their stories and attributing concerns only to others rather than stating them directly. Neither outlet used the phrase “freedom of the press” in their initial articles at all. This is what institutional capitulation looks like. There is no directive. There does not need to be. When a news organization has watched its parent company write a $16 million check to make a lawsuit go away, editors learn what kind of coverage creates problems and they adjust accordingly.
The administration has nothing to leverage against independent journalists because we have no parent company facing FCC merger approval, nor a board of directors that can be pressured into a settlement. The work runs on the First Amendment, primary sources, and an audience that wants the unvarnished version of what is actually in the document. – ELIZA ORLINS, OBJECTION EVERYTHING, MAY 3, 2026
Journalists Who Have Been Harmed
What follows is the documented record of what has been done to journalists in this country since †rump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025. It is not complete because the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, which comprehensively documents press freedom incidents across the country, continues to add new cases as they occur. This is real, sourced, and almost entirely absent from the sustained coverage it deserves.
Georgia Fort — Arrested, January 30, 2026
Georgia Fort is a regional Emmy-winning independent journalist based in the suburbs of St. Paul, Minnesota. On the morning of January 30, 2026, she woke to the sound of federal agents banging on her door with a warrant for her arrest, related to her coverage of a protest against IÇE activity at a church in Minnesota where an IÇE field director served as pastor. Fort had been covering immigration enforcement in her community for years. Amnesty International USA documented her case as part of a broader pattern of governments that do not ban journalism but criminalize it instead. She faces federal charges carrying up to ten years in prison. Her case is ongoing. After her release from federal custody, Fort was met by a crowd of reporters and asked: “Do we have a Constitution?”
Don Lemon — Arrested, January 29, 2026
Don Lemon, who now publishes independently on YouTube and Substack after leaving CNN in 2023, was covering the same Minnesota church protest as Fort when federal agents surprised him in a hotel lobby and took him into custody. A federal grand jury had indicted him on charges related to the protest. Notably, Free Press documented that a federal magistrate judge had already rejected the arrest warrant for Lemon once, finding no evidence of criminal behavior, before the DØJ obtained a second warrant and proceeded anyway. Lemon pled not guilty in February 2026 and said he will not be silenced. The ACLU described the prosecution as a serious threat to the First Amendment and called it a naked attack on freedom of the press.
Mario Guevara — Detained 110 Days, Deported, October 2025
Mario Guevara spent 18 years as an award-winning journalist in Atlanta covering immigration for Spanish-language outlets before founding MG News in 2024. In June 2025, he was arrested by police while covering a No Kings protest in Doraville, Georgia. His charges were dropped, but IÇE took him into custody anyway and initiated deportation proceedings. Poynter documented that Guevara spent 110 days in detention, where he said he lost weight and suffered depression after enduring 22 hours per day of solitary confinement. He held a work permit and had a pending green card application. The ACLU described his detention and prosecution as political censorship. He was deported to El Salvador in October 2025, the same country he had fled in 2004 after receiving death threats for his journalism.
Estefany Rodríguez — Detained, Nashville, 2025
Estefany Rodríguez was detained by immigration authorities and held by IÇE for over ten days in Nashville before being released. She had been covering immigration enforcement for a local Spanish-language outlet. The Committee to Protect Journalists documented her case alongside Guevara’s as part of a deliberate pattern of using immigration enforcement powers to silence reporters covering immigration enforcement, a circularity that is not accidental.
Hannah Natanson — Home Raided by ƒBI, January 14, 2026
Hannah Natanson is an investigative reporter for the Washington Post. On January 14, 2026, ƒBI agents arrived at her home in Virginia and seized her phone, digital watch, and two laptop computers as part of a leak investigation. WAN-IFRA’s comprehensive analysis of the raid noted that long-standing guidelines dating back to Watergate, under which searches of journalists’ homes were allowed only as a last resort, had been revised or set aside entirely by the †rump regime. Press freedom organizations warned of a “tremendous intrusion” and a profound chilling effect on investigative journalism. The raid was made possible by former Attorney General Pam Bondi reinstating a rule allowing federal investigators to secretly go after journalists’ records in leak investigations, a protection that Merrick Garland had put in place specifically to prevent this kind of government intimidation.
Sami Hamdi — Detained at San Francisco Airport, October 2025
Sami Hamdi, a prominent political analyst and journalist, was detained by IÇE at San Francisco International Airport in October 2025 while on a U.S. speaking tour. His visa was revoked the day before his detention. The Department of Homeland Security falsely accused him of supporting terrorism, citing a report from a group the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified as an anti-Muslim hate group. The Columbia Journalism Review documented his case alongside those of Guevara and Fort as part of a coordinated pattern of silencing journalists through immigration enforcement.
Alistair Kitchen — Denied Entry at LAX, June 2025
Australian writer Alistair Kitchen was denied entry to the United States at Los Angeles International Airport after ÇBP agents searched his phone and questioned him about his views on the Israel-Gaza war. Kitchen had previously written about student protests at Columbia University and published his reporting on Substack. The Committee to Protect Journalists noted that his case, while one of relatively few reported border stops of journalists, sends a potent message about who is now permitted to enter the United States and on what conditions. A Substack writer was turned away at the American border for what he wrote. That has not happened before in modern American history.
Block Club Chicago Journalists — Shot with Pepper Spray Bullets, Chicago, 2025
Block Club Chicago, an independent nonprofit newsroom, joined several other Chicago outlets in a federal lawsuit against the †rump regime and top officials after federal agents used what the lawsuit described as “extreme brutality” against journalists at protests. Columbia Journalism Review’s reporting documented the accounts directly: Francia García Hernández, a Block Club reporter, said federal agents, initially IÇE and then Border Patrol, used chemical weapons on protesters and journalists. Block Club’s co-executive editor Stephanie Lulay confirmed that four of their journalists were shot with pepper spray bullets and tear-gassed while covering protests. A journalist at Unraveled Press was arrested and later released. A journalist at WBBM-TV was shot with a pepper-spray projectile by a masked IÇE agent while driving past the entrance of an IÇE facility.
Four Journalists Arrested in Cameroon — February 19, 2026
In one of the most underreported stories of 2026, four journalists and a lawyer were arrested in Cameroon while trying to cover †rump’s secret deportation program. The journalists were interviewing deported immigrants at a government detention center in the capital, Yaoundé, when they were detained by police and taken to the country’s judicial police headquarters to be interrogated. The New Republic documented that three of the journalists were on assignment for the Associated Press. The detainees at the facility, none of whom were Cameroonian citizens, all had U.S. court orders barring their deportation to their home countries due to risk of persecution. The regime deported them anyway, in defiance of those court orders, and then arrested the journalists who tried to report on it.
Dave Decker — Shot, Beaten, Tackled, Arrested Across Two States, September through November 2025
Dave Decker is a 52-year-old freelance photojournalist based in Tampa, Florida, on assignment for PBS Frontline, Zuma Press, News2Share, and CL Tampa Bay. Between September and November 2025, he was attacked by law enforcement not once, not twice, but four times across two states, each time while visibly credentialed press. On September 26, 2025, federal officers shot him multiple times with pepper balls while he was covering protests outside an IÇE facility in Broadview, Illinois. He wrapped his arm around reporter Leigh Kunkel and ran after she was struck and her nose began bleeding. The next day, September 27, federal officers shot him in the lower legs with pepper balls again and struck his camera directly, leaving a massive imprint on the lens. Footage from a livestream shows an officer pointing directly at Decker and saying “Get him” before officers peppered his legs because he had his foot sitting off a curb. On October 11, Illinois State Police struck him at least three times with a baton and tackled him to the ground. He repeatedly shouted that he was press. When one officer realized, he pulled Decker out of the dogpile. His leg the next day was hyperswollen and he was bruised badly. He kept working. On November 22, sheriff’s deputies in Miami-Dade County arrested him outside another IÇE facility. He presented his National Press Photographers Association credentials. A Florida Highway Patrol sergeant said “I don’t care about any of this” and arrested him anyway. He was held in tight flex cuffs for eight hours, three of them with his hands behind his back. His car was impounded with his camera equipment inside. The financial toll for a freelance journalist was devastating: $1,250 in bonds and $600 to retrieve his car. Most devastating of all, he could not get his photos and videos to the three outlets waiting for them. “They stopped the news from getting out,” he told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. “Talk about putting the brakes on press freedom.” The Committee to Protect Journalists joined 22 press freedom organizations in demanding charges be dropped. On December 16, all charges were dismissed.Decker went back to work.
Dean Moses — Shoved Off Elevator by IÇE Agents, September 30, 2025
Dean Moses, a journalist for amNewYork, was in a hallway outside an immigration courtroom at 26 Federal Plaza when IÇE agents grabbed and shoved him. Moses had attempted to photograph a woman from Peru being arrested who had just left the immigration court. A masked agent wearing a bulletproof vest labeled “police” grabbed Moses, told him to “get the fuck off the elevator,” and physically removed him. A freelance journalist who had previously worked for the Associated Press was shoved to the floor during the struggle. Moses later said the agents appeared not to want to be seen taking the woman into custody. The incident was documented by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, which continues to log incidents like this one that receive minimal national coverage.
The Constitutional Crisis They Are Ignoring
The attacks on journalists are part of a broader pattern of constitutional violations that the regime has been executing since †rump took office, many of which have been documented by courts, legal scholars, and nonpartisan watchdog organizations, and most of which have received far less coverage than they deserve. Heather Cox Richardson, writing at Letters from an American, has been among the most consistent voices documenting these violations in their full historical context, connecting each unconstitutional action to the specific constitutional provision it violates and the specific precedent it breaks.
The Iran War is the most consequential example. †rump launched military strikes against Iran on February 28, 2026, without seeking congressional authorization as required by the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which gives a president 60 days to obtain congressional approval before military operations must be terminated. When that 60-day mark arrived, the regime claimed the war had “terminated” on April 7 due to a ceasefire, even as the U.S. military blockade of Iranian ports continued and exchanges of fire resumed. As Richardson documented, a blockade is an act of war. Just Security’s litigation tracker notes that legal scholars at Just Security itself have argued the strikes also violated the United Nations Charter, which prohibits the use of force except as defense against an actual or imminent threat. †rump’s own advisors testified that Iran did not have the capacity to build a nuclear weapon in less than ten years. The war was started without legal authority and is being continued without congressional approval. Mainstream media has covered the war extensively, but it has hardly touched the constitutional violations – as a matter of fact, almost not at all.
The defiance of court orders is equally alarming and equally underreported. A Washington Post analysis found that by mid-July 2025, the †rump regime had defied judges and courts in roughly one third of all cases against it, actions described by legal experts as unprecedented for any presidential administration in American history. When journalists at The New Republic documented the deportation of immigrants to Cameroon in defiance of U.S. court orders protecting them from removal, they were documenting a regime that had decided federal court orders are optional. Deporting people in defiance of a federal court order is not a political choice. It is a government telling a judge to go to hell.
Former public defender Eliza Orlins at Objection Everything has been breaking down the specific legal dimensions of each constitutional violation in language any reader can understand, doing the work that legal correspondents at major networks have largely abandoned. Investigative journalist Judd Legum at Popular Information documented that IÇE increased its spending on weapons by 700% in 2025 compared to 2024 levels, a fact that received one day of coverage before disappearing. Legum has also been tracking the regime’s multi-pronged effort to undermine confidence in the 2026 midterm elections, including ƒBI raids on election offices in Georgia and the administration suing 30 states over voter roll information.
Three separate federal court rulings have found regime actions to be unconstitutional violations of the First Amendment, and all three have received insufficient mainstream coverage. A federal judge ruled that the executive order defunding NPR and PBS was unconstitutional, finding it targeted the outlets for viewpoints †rump dislikes. A federal judge ruled that the Pentagon’s new restrictive press policy discriminated on the basis of viewpoint in violation of the First Amendment. A federal judge ruled that the regime’s funding freeze against Harvard University violated the First Amendment because it was retaliation for Harvard’s refusal to comply with ideological demands. CBS News documented all three rulings in detail. The †rump regime has appealed all of them.
No president in history has challenged constitutional limits or sought to increase presidential power in the way that President Donald Trump has in this term in office. – ERWIN CHEMERINSKY, DEAN, UC BERKELEY SCHOOL OF LAW, SCOTUSBLOG, JANUARY 5, 2026
The Protect Democracy Retaliatory Action Tracker documents the regime’s systematic use of federal investigations, prosecutions, and administrative actions against political opponents, former officials, and critics, including a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell that a judge ultimately quashed, a prosecution of the Southern Poverty Law Center that legal experts called an attempt to criminalize civil rights monitoring, and administrative actions against retired General John Kelly that legal scholars said violated the First Amendment and separation of powers. The Democracy Watch newsletter at The Developer has been specifically tracking the regime’s efforts to access voting systems across eight states, including ƒBI subpoenas of election offices and attempts by DØJ officials to access voting equipment in Colorado, in what legal experts describe as the groundwork for federal takeover of state election administration.
The Journalists Telling the Truth
The story of what is happening to press freedom in America is being told. It is just not being told primarily by the major institutions whose job it is to tell it. It is being told by independent journalists on Substack, by nonprofit newsrooms with no corporate parent to pressure, and by press freedom organizations that have been tracking these incidents with meticulous care.
Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson has millions of subscribers and publishes daily, placing every current event in its full historical context. Richardson is a professor of American history at Boston College and her work connects what is happening now to what has happened before in ways that are essential for understanding the stakes. Her coverage of the War Powers Act violations and the regime’s defiance of court orders has been among the most thorough available anywhere.
Popular Information by Judd Legum is independent accountability journalism at its most rigorous. Legum and his team have documented IÇE’s 700% weapons spending increase, the regime’s effort to undermine the 2026 midterms, corporate complicity with the regime’s demands, and dozens of stories that received minimal mainstream coverage. Legum has described his method as identifying people and organizations with significant power and holding them accountable for what they are doing, which is the definition of journalism that the major institutions have largely abandoned in this moment.
Objection Everything by Eliza Orlins brings fifteen years of experience as a public defender to the task of explaining what the regime’s legal maneuvers actually mean in constitutional terms. Orlins reads the indictments, the statutes, and the court filings and translates them into plain language. Her coverage of the Don Lemon and Georgia Fort arrests was among the most legally precise available and named clearly what the major outlets softened: this is a prima facie violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press.
Drop Site News, founded by Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim, does newsroom-style investigative reporting on power, security, and accountability that legacy outlets will not touch. Their coverage of the Iran War, the regime’s foreign policy corruption, and the systematic dismantling of accountability mechanisms has been essential and is entirely reader-funded, meaning no corporate parent can pressure their editorial decisions.
Democracy Watch at The Developer by Donny Evans has been doing the granular work of tracking the regime’s efforts to interfere with state election administration, documenting the pattern of ƒBI subpoenas, DH$ demands for voter records, and attempts to access voting equipment that together constitute the most serious threat to the integrity of the 2026 midterms. This is the story that most needs to be told and is receiving almost no sustained mainstream coverage.
Democracy Docket, founded by voting rights attorney Marc Elias, is one of the most essential active journalism and legal analysis publishers covering voting rights, redistricting, and election law in the country. Their live redistricting tracker is the definitive real-time record of what is happening to congressional maps across every state. Their case tracker documents every voting rights lawsuit in the country. Their original analysis and explainers break down court rulings and legal developments in plain language that any reader can understand. The work they publish every day is the most thorough available on voting rights and election law anywhere.
The Dworkin Report by Scott Dworkin has been covering †rump’s political corruption, Russian business ties, and the grassroots resistance to the regime with a level of detail and specificity that most major outlets have abandoned. Dworkin is credited with first exposing †rump’s business ties to Russia, work that the FBI initially ignored. His newsletter is built on the premise that informed activists create ground-level change in their local communities, and his media commentary alone is worth the subscription.
Common Dreams has been independent, nonprofit, advertising-free, and entirely reader-supported since 1997, making it one of the longest-running progressive news outlets in the country. It covers breaking news and opinion across every major issue the regime is attacking, from press freedom and voting rights to climate, labor, and civil rights, with no corporate pressure shaping what gets covered and what gets buried. Writers including Robert Reich have published there regularly. If you want a daily feed of news that is not filtered through advertiser relationships or parent company anxiety, this is where to go.
Block Club Chicago is the independent nonprofit newsroom whose journalists were shot with pepper spray bullets by federal agents while covering protests. They have continued reporting anyway, filing lawsuits, documenting the violence against them and their colleagues, and covering the communities that IÇE is tearing apart with the granular local detail that only a newsroom embedded in those communities can provide. Supporting Block Club directly is supporting the kind of journalism that the regime most wants to silence.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a project of the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Committee to Protect Journalists, maintains a comprehensive database of every documented press freedom incident in the United States. Every arrest, every assault, every equipment seizure, every border interrogation. It is the most complete record available of what is being done to journalists in this country, and it is updated continuously. If you want to understand the full scope of what is happening, start there.
What You Can Do
The regime is counting on you not knowing about any of this. It is counting on the settlements and the FÇÇ investigations and the chilling effect doing their work quietly, on major newsrooms softening their coverage until the alarm is no longer audible, on the sheer volume of crises making it impossible to follow any single story long enough to understand its full implications. The answer to that strategy is the same answer it has always been: stay informed, support the journalists doing the work, and make sure everyone around you knows what is happening.
Subscribe to the independent journalists who are telling this story. Read Letters from an American every day. Follow Popular Information for accountability journalism on corporate and political power. Read Objection Everything for the legal breakdown of every constitutional violation. Follow Drop Site News for investigative reporting the major outlets will not touch. Track voting rights and redistricting in real time at Democracy Docket. Follow The Dworkin Report for investigative reporting on political corruption and grassroots resistance. Read Common Dreams for daily independent progressive news coverage with no advertiser pressure. Track election integrity threats at Democracy Watch. Support Block Club Chicago directly.
Support the press freedom organizations doing the legal and documentation work. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker documents every incident. The Committee to Protect Journalists advocates for journalists who have been harmed. The Freedom of the Press Foundation provides legal support and has documented 32 arrests and 170 assaults on journalists in 2025 alone. PEN America fights for writers and journalists facing government persecution. Reporters Without Borders tracks press freedom globally and has placed the United States at its lowest ranking in 25 years. Support Democracy Forward and the ACLU, both of which are actively litigating against the regime’s unconstitutional press freedom attacks in federal court right now.
Contact your representatives and demand they support the specific legislation that would protect journalists. The PRESS Act, the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act, is the most important press freedom bill in modern American history. It passed the House without objection but was blocked in the Senate. It would protect journalists from being forced to reveal confidential sources and stop the government from spying on reporters. The Journalist Protection Act would establish federal criminal penalties for intentionally assaulting journalists. Both bills are sitting in the Senate waiting for a Democratic majority willing to pass them. Find your U.S. Senators and your U.S. Representative and demand they support both bills. Use 5calls.org to make scripted calls to your representatives in five minutes. Call the White House comment line at (202) 456-1111.
And in November 2026, vote. The PRESS Act and the Journalist Protection Act are not passing as long as Republicans control the Senate. A free press is not a partisan issue but protecting it has become one, because one party has spent sixteen months arresting journalists, raiding their homes, deporting their colleagues, and extracting tens of millions of dollars from news organizations under legal threat. The journalists named in this article were doing their jobs legally and constitutionally when the regime came for them. The only thing that stops this from getting worse is political power in the hands of people who understand that when the press goes, every other freedom goes with it.
The regime has spent sixteen months arresting journalists, deporting reporters, raiding homes, shooting press with pepper spray, extracting $32 million from news organizations, and defying court orders that a free press tried to enforce. The major outlets have largely covered it as a series of isolated incidents rather than the coordinated constitutional assault it is. The independent journalists have not. Find them. Read them. Support them. Share their work. That is how this story survives.
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