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      Americans are beginning to fear dissent. That’s exactly what Trump wants | Robert Reich

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      I was talking recently to a friend who’s a professor at Columbia University about what’s been happening there. He had a lot to say.When he needed to run off to an appointment, I asked him if he’d text or email me the rest of his thoughts.His response worried me. “No,” he said. “I better not. They may be reviewing it.”“Who’s ‘they’?” I asked.“They! The university. The government. Gotta go!” He was off.My friend has never shown signs of paranoia.I relay this to you because the Donald Trump regime is starting to have a chilling effect on what and how Americans communicate with each other. It is beginning to deter open dissent, which is exactly what the US president intends.The chill affects all five major pillars of civil society – universities, science, the media, the law and the arts.In Columbia University’s capitulation to Trump, it agreed to require demonstrators to identify themselves when asked and put its department of Middle Eastern studies under “receivership”, lest it lose $400m in government funding.The agreement is already chilling dissent there, as my conversation with my friend revealed.The Trump regime also “detained” a Columbia University graduate student and green card holder who participated in protests at the school. The administration’s agents have also entered dorms with search warrants and targeted two other students who participated in such protests.On Tuesday, an international student in a graduate program at Tufts University was taken into custody outside her off-campus apartment building by plainclothes homeland security agents, handcuffed and whisked away to a prison in Louisiana. She has a valid student visa. Her apparent offense? Putting her name to an opinion piece in the Tufts student newspaper that was critical of how the Tufts administration handled protests.Scores of other major universities are on Trump’s target list.Trump’s attack on science has involved threats to three of the largest funders of American science – the Centers for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation.Tens of thousands of researchers are worried about how to continue their research. Many have decided to hunker down and not criticize the Trump administration for fear of losing their funding.Philippe Baptiste, the French minister for higher education, has charged that a French scientist traveling to a conference near Houston earlier this month was denied entry into the US because his phone contained message exchanges with colleagues and friends in which he gave a negative “personal opinion” about Trump’s scientific and research policies. The US Department of Homeland Security denies this was the reason the scientist wasn’t admitted into the country.Meanwhile, America’s major media fear more lawsuits from Trump and his political allies in the wake of ABC’s surrender to Trump in December, agreeing to pay him $15m to settle a defamation suit he filed against the network.Journalists who cover the White House are reeling from Trump’s decision to bar those he deems unfriendly from major events where space is limited.The media chill is palpable. Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, has openly restricted the kinds of op-eds appearing in its editorial pages.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe latest example of Trump’s use of executive orders to target powerful law firms that have challenged him came on Tuesday, against Jenner & Block.The firm employed the attorney Andrew Weissmann after he worked as a prosecutor in the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Trump during his first term.The White House charged that the firm “participated in the weaponization of the legal system against American principles and values”, and an official specifically called out Weissmann.Last month, Trump removed the security clearances of lawyers at Covington & Burling who represented the former special counsel Jack Smith following his investigation of Trump’s role in the January 6 Capitol attack.Trump has also targeted Perkins Coie, a firm linked to opposition research against Trump in 2016. His order banned Perkins Coie lawyers from federal buildings and halted its federal contracts.Another executive order took aim at Paul Weiss, who employed the lawyer Mark Pomerantz before he helped prosecute Trump over hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.Last Thursday, Trump withdrew the executive order against Paul Weiss because, he said, the firm had “acknowledged the wrongdoing” of Pomerantz and pledged $40m in free legal work to support the Trump administration.Non-profits tell the Washington Post that law firms that once might have helped them fight Trump’s orders now fear Trump will pursue them if they do.Trump is even intimidating the arts by taking over the Kennedy Center, firing board members, ousting its president and making himself chairman.The comedian Nikki Glaser, one of the few celebrities to walk the red carpet at this year’s Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prizes, now thinks twice before doing political jokes directed at Trump.“Like, you just are scared that you’re gonna get doxxed and death threats or who knows where this leads, like, detained. Honestly, that’s not even like a joke. It’s like a real fear,” she told Deadline.Every tyrant in history has sought to stifle criticism of himself and his regime.But America was founded on criticism. American democracy was built on dissent. We conducted a revolution against tyranny.This moment calls for courage and collective action rather than capitulation – resolve by universities, researchers, journalists, the legal community, and the arts to stand up to Trump.Anyone holding responsible positions in these five pillars of civil society must reject Trump’s attempts at intimidation and condemn what he is trying to do.Those who surrender to Trump’s tyranny invite more of it.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      Advertising giant WPP cuts diversity references from annual report

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      The British advertising giant WPP has become the latest company to cut the phrase “diversity, equity and inclusion” from its annual report as the policies come under attack from the Trump administration.The agency, which counts the US as by far its largest market, boasts the storied “Madison Avenue” agencies J Walter Thompson, Ogilvy and Grey among its top brands.In WPP’s annual report, which was released on Friday, the chief executive, Mark Read, told shareholders that “much has changed over the last year” due to political events.“In today’s complex world, a pressing question for brands and organisations is whether to engage on social issues in a more contested public arena, and how to navigate the expectations of different audiences with competing views on sensitive topics,” he wrote.The same document axed all references of “diversity, equity and inclusion”, “DE&I” and “DEI”. The policy attracted 20 mentions in the previous year’s report. The earlier document mentioned three times that the company was seen as a “diversity leader”.The omissions, which were first reported by the Sunday Times, included changes to how the company reports on measuring top executives’ non-financial performance, which contributes to the size of their short-term bonuses. In the new report, the phrasing has switched to “people and culture”.WPP declined to comment on whether the new wording was a response to anti-DEI policy moves by the Trump administration. The company said that, while the phrasing in its annual report had changed, the way in which executives’ short-term bonuses are calculated was unaltered.Within his first few days in office, Donald Trump instructed US government agencies to shut down their DEI programmes and federal employees working in diversity offices were immediately put on paid leave.Trump signed two executive orders targeting DEI programmes within the federal government. The first executive order largely scrapped the DEI efforts that took place under Joe Biden, who had ordered all federal agencies to come up with equity plans.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA second executive order effectively ended any DEI activities within the federal government. This order overturned a handful of executive orders from past presidents, including one from Lyndon B Johnson that was signed during the civil rights era that required federal contractors to adopt equal opportunity measures.The Financial Times recently reported that more than 200 US companies have removed references to “diversity, equity and inclusion” from their annual reports since Trump’s election. More

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      ‘Revenge is his number one motivation’: how Trump is waging war on the media

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      On Tuesday 4 March, Donald Trump stood in the House of Representatives to issue a speech to a joint session of Congress, the first of his second term.Near the beginning of what was to be a marathon address, the president declared: “I have stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America. It’s back.”What Trump did not mention was that less than three weeks earlier he had barred Associated Press journalists from the Oval Office, because the news agency refused to use his preferred nomenclature for the Gulf of Mexico. He did not mention that he was waging lawsuits against ABC and CBS, nor that the man he appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission had ordered a flurry of investigations into NBC News, NPR and PBS.The president ignored entirely what has become an all out attack on the media and other institutions, something that media experts have described as a “broad, systematic assault” on free speech, a vendetta that threatens “the essential fundamental freedoms of a democracy”.Since that speech the situation has only got worse. The anti-media rhetoric has ramped up from Trump officials, Trump has suggested some media groups should be “illegal”, funding has been cut from organisations like Voice of America and last week the White House lambasted journalist Jeffrey Goldberg and the Atlantic magazine for breaking a scoop about national security lapses on a Signal messaging app.“Revenge is Trump’s number one motivation for anything in this second term of office, and he believes he has been treated unfairly by the media, and he is going to strike out against those in the media who he considers his enemies,” said Bill Press, a longtime liberal political commentator and host of The Bill Press Pod.“He’s going in the direction of really curtailing the freedom of the press, following the pattern of every autocrat ever on the planet: they need to shut down a free and independent press in order to get away with their unlimited use of power.”Trump was critical of the media in his first term. But as Press pointed out, that was more verbal attacks: the never-ending accusations of “fake news”, the encouragement of anti-CNN chants at rallies. Two months into Trump’s second term, he has already taken it further. Associated Press, one of the world’s premier news agencies which is relied upon by thousands of news outlets, remains banned from the Oval Office and Air Force one: the president angered by the agency’s refusal to use the term “Gulf of America” to refer to the Gulf of Mexico.Trump is suing the owner of CBS News for $10bn, alleging the channel selectively edited an interview with Kamala Harris, which the network denies, and the Des Moines Register newspaper, which he accuses of “election interference” over a poll from before the election that showed Kamala Harris leading Trump in Iowa.The FCC investigations, led by the hardline Trump appointee and Project 2025 author Brendan Carr, are ongoing, while in February Trump ejected a HuffPost reporter from the press pool – which refers to a rotating group of reporters allowed close access to the White House – and denied reporters from the news agency Reuters access to a cabinet meeting.View image in fullscreenAt various times Trump and rightwing groups have accused each of the outlets of bias or of presenting negative coverage of his presidency. By contrast, the White House has allowed rightwing news outlets, including Real America’s Voice and Blaze Media and Newsmax, to be included in the press pool.“It’s designed to shut down criticism, and I think that the danger of that is that there is this effort to make it look like everyone approves of the government and of the Trump administration,” said Katie Fallow, deputy litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute, a non-profit which seeks to preserve and advance first amendment freedom rights.“It’s a threat to the ability of the of the press to critically cover the president, but perhaps more importantly, the function of the press is to inform the public about the workings of government, and allow the public to decide whether or not it wants to vote for these people again, or whether it approves. And so it’s more than just its effect on the media, its effect on the general public.”In recent days the Trump administration’s attack-the-media playbook has been on show in the way senior officials have sought to discredit Goldberg, the editor in chief of the Atlantic who was invited into a secret Signal group where a coming US attack on Yemen’s Houthi militia was being discussed.The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and Trump himself have criticized Goldberg: Waltz described him as “the bottom scum of journalists”, while Trump called the reporting “a witch-hunt” and described the Atlantic as a “failed magazine”.Trump has also appeared to flirt with using law enforcement to target the media, including a speech to federal law enforcement officials in March. “As the chief law enforcement officer in our country, I will insist upon and demand full and complete accountability for the wrongs and abuses that have occurred,” Trump said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe disparaged certain lawyers and non-profits, before later adding: “The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and MSDNC, and the fake news, CNN and ABC, CBS and NBC, they’ll write whatever they say.”Trump continued: “It’s totally illegal what they do,” adding: “I just hope you can all watch for it, but it’s totally illegal.”The war on free speech has not just been limited to the media. Trump’s efforts have increasingly also focussed on areas including education, law and charitable organizations, as the government seeks to bring key aspects of society into line.“You have to look at this as part of a broad, systematic assault that the president and his administration have been waging since he returned to office on every other power center that impacts politics in any way,” said Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters, a watchdog group.“All the sort of liberal, civil society institutions: big law firms, universities, the government itself, the courts and the press have come under fire, and as part of that, we have this really unprecedented multifront attack on media institutions.”Trump has been aided in this endeavor by the owners of some media organizations. Jeff Bezos, the Amazon co-founder and owner of the Washington Post, pulled an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris during the campaign and recently overhauled the newspaper’s opinion pages.Amazon donated a million dollars to Trump’s inauguration, and Bezos’ space company Blue Origin competes for federal government contracts. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, also blocked the newspaper from endorsing Harris, while Mark Zuckerberg dismantled Facebook’s factchecking network after Trump won the presidency. (Like Bezos, Zuckerberg donated to, and attended, Trump’s inauguration.)“What makes the situation so worrying is that for the last several years, Donald Trump himself and the leading lights of the rightwing media and political movement: from Tucker Carlson to Kevin Roberts at the Heritage Foundation, have cited as their exemplar Viktor Orbán of Hungary. That’s what they want to accomplish,” Gertz said.“And what Orbán did with the press was squeeze different media corporation owners until they agreed to either make their press more palatable to him, or sell their outlets to someone who would. I think that is basically, by their own admission, what the Trump administration is trying to bring about in this country.“I think the hope is that we have more guardrails than Hungary did to prevent that from happening. But it’s unnerving that the president of the United States is trying to follow in those footsteps.” More

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      Trump has managed to spin Signalgate as a media lapse, not a major security breach | Andrew Roth

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      When it comes to Trump-era scandals, the shameless responses to “Signalgate”, in which top administration officials discussing details of an impending strike in Yemen in a group chat without noticing the presence of a prominent journalist, should set alarm bells ringing for its brazenness and incompetence.In a particularly jaw-dropping exchange, Tulsi Gabbard, the United States’ director of national intelligence, was forced to backtrack during a house hearing after she had said that there had been no specific information in the Signal chat about an impending military strike. Then, the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg published the chat in full, contradicting Gabbard’s remarks that no classified data or weapons systems had been mentioned in the chat.“My answer yesterday was based on my recollection, or the lack thereof, on the details that were posted there,” said Gabbard. “What was shared today reflects the fact that I was not directly involved with that part of the Signal chat.”Then there was the US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth who – staring straight down the camera – baldly stated: “Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that.” The next day, Goldberg revealed that Hegseth himself had texted the precise timing of the attacks and the weapons systems to be used, specifically F-18 jets and MQ-9 drones.And Michael Waltz, the White House national security adviser, was left scrambling on live television as he was quizzed by a Fox News anchor on how Goldberg’s number had ended up on his phone. “You’ve never talked to him before so how is the number on your phone?” asked conservative television anchor Laura Ingraham. “It gets sucked in,” Waltz, a former congressman and army special forces soldier, replied – without explaining how a number can get “sucked in” to a phone.But despite all this, no one is really taking the prospects of an investigation seriously. At heart, this is about politics – and the fact is that Democrats simply don’t have the votes or the sway to deliver a body blow to the administration at this point.It’s unlikely that anyone will be punished. Donald Trump has told his aides that he doesn’t want to give the Atlantic a scalp, and vice-president JD Vance responded forcefully during a trip to Greenland on Friday: “If you think you’re going to force the president of the United States to fire anybody you’ve got another think coming … I’m the vice-president saying it here on Friday: we are standing behind our entire national security team.”For decades, national security was broadly seen as the last bastion of bipartisanship in Washington, an area where Democrats and Republicans put aside their differences for a general consensus on supporting the national interest. Members of Congress on the intelligence and foreign affairs committees often maintained cordial relationships. There was also an understanding that big scandals could jump the partisan line, and lead to serious repercussions even with tensions between the parties at their highest.Scooter Libby, once chief of staff to vice-president Dick Cheney, was sentenced to prison after an investigation into the leak of the identity of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. The Department of Justice under Barack Obama launched more Espionage Act investigations for leaking sensitive information than all previous administrations combined.And the FBI, of course, launched a years-long investigation into Hillary Clinton for keeping emails on a home computer server that ultimately may have helped sway the elections. “It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity,” Clinton wrote in a New York Times op-ed on Friday. “We’re all shocked – shocked! – that President Trump and his team don’t actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws … What’s much worse is that top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat. That’s dangerous. And it’s just dumb.”Observers have remarked that the scandal would have been far greater if it had taken place at a lower level in the intelligence community. Mid-level officers and defence officials would all face far harsher blowback if they were caught divulging the kind of information that Hegseth sent into the chat, including the specific timing of the strikes and the weapons systems to be used.But the Trump administration believes that it can simply divert and divide public attention until there is a new scandal. That may be a winning strategy. Trump is to introduce tariffs this week that will probably dominate the news agenda for weeks. And his deputies are out on cable news every day, pushing back at the media for covering the scandal and suggesting that Goldberg somehow sneaked his way into the chat rather than being added directly by Waltz, the national security adviser.“They have treated this as a media event to be spun rather than a grievous error to be rectified,” wrote Phil Klay, a military veteran and guest columnist for the New York Times. The early indications are that the Trump administration will skate through this scandal, crossing into new territory in Washington where even a major security leak can be repainted as the fault of the media for covering it. More

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      US judge temporarily blocks Trump from firing Voice of America staff

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      A federal judge on Friday ordered Donald Trump’s administration to temporarily pause its efforts to shut down Voice of America, stopping the government from firing 1,300 journalists and other employees at the US news service that were abruptly placed on leave earlier this month.District judge J Paul Oetken said in a Friday opinion that the Trump administration could not unilaterally terminate Voice of America and related radio programs that were approved and funded by Congress. Rescinding funds for those programs would require congressional approval, the judge wrote.Oetken did not require Voice of America to resume broadcasts, but his order made clear that employees should not be fired until further court proceedings could determine whether the shutdown was “arbitrary and capricious” in violation of federal law.“This is a decisive victory for press freedom and the First Amendment, and a sharp rebuke to an administration that has shown utter disregard for the principles that define our democracy,” said Andrew Celli, an attorney for the plaintiffs.The US Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other government-funded media, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.The agency had told unions that it was about to terminate 623 Voice of America employees, a number that “entirely forecloses” any attempt to resume broadcasts at the level envisioned by Congress, according to court documents filed by the plaintiffs.Voice of America was founded to combat Nazi propaganda at the height of the second world war, and it has grown to become an international media broadcaster, operating in more than 40 languages and spreading U.S. news narratives into countries lacking a free press. As a group, US Agency for Global Media employed roughly 3,500 workers with an $886m budget in 2024, according to its latest report to Congress.Voice of America journalists and their unions sued the US Agency for Global Media, its acting director, Victor Morales, and special adviser Kari Lake last week, saying that their shutdown violated the workers’ constitutional first amendment right to free speech.The Voice of America employees’ lawsuit is one of four pending challenges to the Trump administration’s attempted shutdown of government-funded media programs. Other challenges have been filed by Radio Free Europe, a separate group of Voice of America employees, and grant recipient Open Technology Fund.US Agency for Global Media had argued that it had not violated the laws that governed Voice of America’s operations. The agency said in court filings that it had reduced operations to a “statutory minimum” by restoring broadcasts in Cuba and reinstating 33 employees at the Office of Cuba Broadcasting. More

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      FCC to investigate Disney and ABC over potential violation in diversity practices

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      The US’s top media regulator on Friday said it was opening an investigation into the diversity practices of Walt Disney and its ABC unit, saying they may violate equal employment opportunity regulations.Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair, wrote to the Disney CEO, Robert Iger, in a letter dated on Thursday that the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts may not have complied with FCC regulations and that changes by the company may not go far enough.“For decades, Disney focused on churning out box office and programming successes,” Carr wrote in the letter. “But then something changed. Disney has now been embroiled in rounds of controversy surrounding its DEI policies.“I want to ensure that Disney ends any and all discriminatory initiatives in substance, not just name,” Carr wrote.He has sent letters to Comcast and Verizon announcing similar investigations into diversity practices.Disney has come into conflict with Republicans in recent years. In 2023 the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, clashed with Disney over its opposition to the state’s so-called “don’t say gay” law and rightwingers have attacked the company for being “woke” – most recently for the casting of Rachel Zegler, an American actor of Colombian descent, in the titular role of its Snow White reboot.“We are reviewing the Federal Communications Commission’s letter, and we look forward to engaging with the commission to answer its questions,” a Disney spokesperson said.Disney recently revised its executive compensation policies to remove diversity and inclusion as a performance metric, adding a new standard called “talent strategy”, aimed at upholding the company’s values.Carr said the FCC’s enforcement bureau would be engaging with Disney “to obtain an accounting of Disney and ABC’s DEI programs, policies, and practices”.Carr, who was designed chair by Donald Trump on 20 January, has been aggressively investigating media companies.In December, ABC News agreed to give $15m to Trump’s future presidential library to settle a lawsuit over comments that anchor George Stephanopoulos made on air involving the civil case brought against Trump by the writer E Jean Carroll.Days after Carr took over as chair, the FCC reinstated complaints about the 60 Minutes interview with Harris, as well as complaints about how ABC News moderated the pre-election TV debate between then president Joe Biden and Trump.It also reinstated complaints against Comcast’s NBC for allowing Harris to appear on Saturday Night Live shortly before the election.Trump has sued CBS for $20bn, claiming that 60 Minutes deceptively edited the interview in order to interfere in the November presidential election, which he won.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      in Elections

      Turkey Deports BBC Reporter Who Covered Mass Protests

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      Mark Lowen was detained in Istanbul after reporting on unrest prompted by the arrest of a rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the broadcaster said.The BBC said on Thursday that Turkey had deported a correspondent who was covering the antigovernment protests in the country, after he was detained and labeled “a threat to public order.”The broadcaster said in a statement that Mark Lowen, who had been in the country for several days, was taken from his hotel on Wednesday and held for 17 hours. He arrived in London on Thursday morning.“No journalist should face this kind of treatment simply for doing their job,” said Deborah Turness, the chief executive of BBC News, who described the detention and deportation as “an extremely troubling incident.”“We will continue to report impartially and fairly on events in Turkey,” she added, and said that the BBC would reach out to the Turkish authorities.Mr. Lowen was in Turkey reporting on the political crisis sparked by the arrest last week of Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s top rival, on accusations of corruption and supporting terrorism. Hundreds of thousands of Turks have protested in cities across the country since his arrest. About 170 people have been jailed pending trial, the country’s interior ministry said as of Wednesday.Mr. Imamoglu, who was subsequently removed from his post as mayor and jailed pending trial on the corruption charges, said his arrest was politically motivated. Critics of Mr. Erdogan said the moves were the latest example of his increasingly authoritarian tactics after two decades in power.Mr. Lowen, a well-known correspondent who had previously lived in Turkey for five years, was not the only journalist to be caught up in the crackdown. Of the more than 1,300 people that the interior ministry has said have been arrested in connection with the protests, 11 were journalists. Seven of the detained reporters, including a photographer for the French news agency Agence France-Presse, were released without charge on Thursday.“To be detained and deported from the country where I previously lived for five years and for which I have such affection has been extremely distressing,” Mr. Lowen said in a statement. “Press freedom and impartial reporting are fundamental to any democracy.”Turkey did not announce the deportation and Turkish officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Ben Hubbard More