Tag: free press

America Alone

Donald Trump campaigned on a pledge to end “forever wars” and to put American interests first. In office, he has done the opposite.

In the first year of his second term Trump has bombed seven countries and 50 speed boats killing 159 people. His joint war with Israel on Iran is threatening global recession. None of these were authorized by the American Congress as required by our Constitution and violate international law as well. He has threated one an all even more freely (e.g. Canada, Greenland).

If this were not bad enough, Trump has insulted and alienated our friends and allies resulting in the refusal of most EU and Nato countries (Germany, France, UK, Spain, Italy) and Australia and Japan to agree to Trump’s plea for help in defending the Staits of Hormuz.

These measures have isolated and weakened the U.S.  Trump’s policies have not put America First–they have made a weakened America Alone.

Deploying his bully substitute for diplomacy, Trump, with help from JD Vance, Trump accused the EU of “extraterritorial censorship of Americans” through EU content‑moderation and hate‑speech rules. At the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, Vance warned that “across Europe, free speech…is in retreat,” This is from the same administration that repeatedly labeled critical media “fake news” and “the enemy of the people.” Currently he and senior officials have accused outlets critical of his Middle East war policy of undermining the country, with allies at the media regulator warning that broadcasters risked losing licenses if they spread “fake news.”

Condemning the opposition as enemies rather than challenging the policies of opponents is a sign of weakness and typical of tyrants. Trump attacks his domestic enemies as fiercely as foreign ones. Note the childish hate in Trump’s tweet today about the death of the man who investigated his misbehavior at the bottom of this blog:

The administration has backed or initiated high‑dollar defamation lawsuits against critical outlets (for example, a multibillion‑dollar suit against the Wall Street Journal). The Department of Justice has revived policies to subpoena reporters’ phone records to identify leakers, and Homeland Security officials have publicly boasted about catching sources for journalists—moves described by the Committee to Protect Journalists as “terrifying” and chilling to newsgathering.

The White House has at times revoked or restricted press credentials for reporters and outlets seen as adversarial, most famously CNN’s Jim Acosta. New, more restrictive rules for White House press passes have been criticized as targeting critical journalists and limiting independent coverage.

The unfunny clown who heads our Department of War has driving away most honest reporters by require department review of their prospective reports. A federal district court in Washington, D.C., just struck down key parts of the Pentagon’s new press-access and reporting restrictions. In a suit brought by The New York Times challenging the Defense Department’s 2025 press policy the judge ruled that the Pentagon’s policy limiting reporters’ access and conditioning accreditation on pledges not to gather or publish information without official approval violated the First Amendment and also raised due process concerns under the Fifth Amendment.

We have historically relied on the strength of our constitution and the separation of powers it establishes between the three major branches of government to contain abuses of government power. Generally, our institutions have served us well. But Trump has stretched executive power weakened its guardrails, for example by firing all Inspector Generals and failing to seek congressional support.

Trump and his repulsive advisor Stephen Miller’s immigration/deportation policies via the masked ICE agents who have killed two American citizens on public streets, have unleashed terror and abuse of power never seen in my life time. Last year 32 people died in ICE custody and in just the first weeks of 2026, at least 6 more people died in ICE detention.

The list goes on and on. From his reelection to his second term (2024) to early 2026, Trump’s estimated wealth has increased on the order of 2–4 billion dollars. Forbes reported his net worth at about 7.3 billion dollars by September 2025, calling it the most lucrative year of his career. In the realm of pure childish ego, he has added his name to the Kennedy Center now to be closed in two months, and the Institute of Peace, rebuilding the White House, and threatening to rename Dulles Airport. On top of that he wants his image on a gold coin. His administration proposing both a commemorative gold coin and a circulating $1 coin.

None of these are serving America’s interests.  Various indices of freedom/authoritarianism report a steep decline by the U.S.  Freedom House, which scores countries (0–100) on political rights and civil liberties and categorizes them as Free, Partly Free, or Not Free reports that the U.S. score is now at its lowest level since they adopted the 100‑point scale, while still rated “Free.”   The democracy watchdog, Martin Gelin reports that “Trump is aiming for dictatorship”. But we can still stop him if we wake up and yell STOP.

Our Free Press

A free press is an important pillar of a free society. In addition to reporting what is going on—who said and did what—the hard hitting investigative reporting of The Washington Post and other news outlet has exposed corruption and abuse of power from the Watergate scandal of Richard Nixon to the sexual misconduct of Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Roy Moore, Harvey Weinstein, Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, Kevin Spacey, Charlie Rose, Mark Halperin, Al Franken, and Representative John Conyers to name a few (more on this later). Such scrutiny of the behavior of those in positions of power is a critical service that is vital to the preservation of the integrity of our government.

One way to undermine the role of our free press is to challenge its integrity—to create doubts about the honesty of news reports—to label news as “fake news.” I am not suggesting for a second that news reports are never wrong or that we should not scrutinize them with some care and skepticism, but if the public comes to believe only those news sources that repeat what they already believe, one of the most important institutions protecting our freedoms (the fourth estate) would be seriously weakened.

We know that Mr. Putin’s Russia has been actively undermining faith in Western institutions by their citizens. In the U.S. and Europe Russia has used social media to plant fake news with both the right and the left in order to fan social divisions. One element of this campaign has been to undermine confidence in news reporting in general.

According to Hedrick Smith, former New York Times Moscow Bureau Chief and author of the global best-seller, The Russians: “Putin has turned to cyber warfare, using his intelligence services and computer hackers rather than military force to disrupt the West – and we can expect more of that in the 2018 elections and beyond…. It’s kind of Putin’s revenge for the fact that we pushed the Russian bear back in the cave by moving the frontiers of NATO into the Baltic states—Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. And (Putin) sees us as being behind the overthrow of the pro-Russian president in the Ukraine. So he’s hitting back.” (Putin wants new cold war) Putin also needs external enemies—external distractions—to divert the attention of Russians from deficiencies at home.

As part of this attack on American institutions they have called the news media “the enemy of the American people,” and planted statements such as: “It’s frankly disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write, and people should look into it.” New York Times /2017/10/12/ And in a direct attack on the First Amendment, this: “Why Isn’t the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up-FAKE!” Money CNN/2017/10/05/

If you didn’t catch it already, I played a little trick on you in the previous paragraph. Those of you who have been paying attention will have spotted that the above quotes attacking the American press and fake news were not Russian propaganda but from President Trump. He also said in a February White House press conference:

“I’m making this presentation directly to the American people with the media present … because many of our nation’s reporters and folks will not tell you the truth and will not treat the wonderful people of our country with the respect they deserve.

“Unfortunately, much of the media in Washington, D.C., along with New York, Los Angeles, in particular, speaks not for the people, but for the special interests and for those profiting off a very, very obviously broken system.

“The press has become so dishonest that if we don’t talk about it, we are doing a tremendous disservice to the American people, a tremendous disservice. We have to talk about it. We have to find out what’s going on because the press, honestly, is out of control. The level of dishonesty is out of control.”  (Trump: media out of control)

Why does Trump do this? Some think that Trump’s attempt to undermine confidence in the news media is part of a well thought out strategy to raise doubts about the veracity of news reports critical of him. It is all “fake news.” I am more inclined to think that he is simply unable to control his anger whenever his ever present and huge ego is bruised. He and his ego are more important than the health and well being of our country, as when he complained about a lack of gratitude for his helping get the release of three UCLA basketball players caught shoplifting in China. On November 15, Trump tweeted:

“Do you think the three UCLA Basketball Players will say thank you President Trump? They were headed for 10 years in jail!”

A few hours later at a press conference the three did just that, but the father of one of them, LaVar Ball, downplayed Trump’s role in his son’s release precipitating the following Presidential tweet:

“Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal. I should have left them in jail!”

Are you shocked or have you acclimated to the new normal? I leave it to you to decide whether Trump is reflecting his concern for the well being of our country or his ego. (Trump-college-basketball-players-helped-free-china-left-jail)

Undermining our faith in our institutions and in particular our news media is a serious matter. It is dangerous whether promoted by Russia or Trump. (Trump’s dangerous attacks on the press.) The press and its supporters, to their credit, are fighting back. (US-press-freedom-tracker-documenting-press-freedom-violations)

As David Ignatius put it: “Amid the slithering mess of problems that emerged in 2017, the one that bothers me most is that people don’t seem to know what’s true anymore. “Facts” this year got put in quotation marks.

“All the other political difficulties of the Donald Trump era are subsumed in this one. If we aren’t sure what’s true, how can we act to make things better? If we don’t know where we are on the map, how do we know which way to move? Democracy assumes a well-informed citizenry that argues about solutions — not about facts.” He suggests the reestablishment of newspaper ombudsmen and would “like to see [Google, Facebook, etc.] using machine learning to interrogate supposed facts to establish where they’ve been — how they first surfaced, and how they were passed from user to user.” (“Getting-back-to-facts/2017/11/23/”)

At the same time, the American press deserves some of the criticism it has received. The following article by Chris Wallace puts the case very well: Trump-is-assaulting-our-free-press-but-he-also-has-a-point The distinction between news and opinion is sometimes blurred.

Here are two quick examples: The-FCC-has-unveiled-its-plan-to-rollback-its-net-neutrality-rules. The Post article linked here provides a reasonably balanced report on those favoring and those opposing the FCC’s proposed return to more or less the legal situation prior to 2015. The problem, as is often the case, is that the article’s headline is not written by the article’s authors and the headline gives a totally misleading impression of what is proposed: “FCC plan would give Internet providers power to choose the sites customers see and use” However, the headline writer probably reflects the better disguised biases of the reporters (to their credit). My own blog on the subject from last May is far more balanced if I may say so myself: https://wcoats.blog/2017/05/17/net-neutrality/

The discussion now underway on Republican tax reform legislation provides another example of press bias. Every morning I read the Wall Street Journal followed by the Washington Post, which should provide a bit of balance. But I have found press reporting (editorials and opinion pieces are free to say whatever they want) on this subject sufficiently biased to provoke me to blog twice on it: https://wcoats.blog/2017/11/12/tax-reform-and-the-press/    https://wcoats.blog/2017/11/18/salt-more-press-nonsense-on-tax-reform/

And finally from my highly selective short list was the recent Post headline: Trump boosts Moore in Ala. Senate race despite sexual misconduct allegations (Trump-boosts-Moore-in-ala-senate-race-despite-sexual-misconduct-allegations)  This is very interesting (and amazing) on several levels.

Trump does not indorse Moore in this article but speaks out against his opponent: “’We don’t need a liberal person in there, a Democrat,’ Trump said about Moore’s opponent, former federal prosecutor Doug Jones, who has led in some recent polls in the state.”

The WSJ version of the same story was titled: “Trump Signals Support for Roy Moore Over Democratic Opponent.” WSJ 11/22/2017 With regard to the multiple sexual misconduct claims against Mr. Moore, “Mr. Trump pointed to the can­di­date’s state­ments: ‘Look, he de­nies it… He to­tally de­nies it. He says it didn’t hap­pen. And, you know, you have to lis­ten to him also.’”

A few hours later this article was updated as follows: “Trump said, ‘He totally denies it.’ Previously, the White House said that Mr. Trump believed Mr. Moore should leave the race if the allegations proved to be true.”

From CNN news: “President Donald Trump on Tuesday defended embattled Alabama Republican Roy Moore, all but endorsing the Senate candidate who has been accused of sexual assault and child sex abuse. “He denies it. Look, he denies it,” Trump said of Moore. “If you look at all the things that have happened over the last 48 hours. He totally denies hit. He says it didn’t happen. And look, you have to look at him also.” But to repeat, Trump did not endorse Moore.

Trump’s tolerance of “questionable” behavior by Republican’s is not extended to Democrats. When he returned from Asia he tweeted on Nov 16 about a picture in which Al Franken is holding his hands above Leeann Tweeden’s breasts, while they were on a 2006 USO tour to entertain U.S. troops.

“The Al Frankenstien picture is really bad, speaks a thousand words. Where do his hands go in pictures 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 while she sleeps?”

He continued in a second tweet, “And to think that just last week he was lecturing anyone who would listen about sexual harassment and respect for women.”

Trump seems to suggest that we should believe the denials of Republicans and investigate the denials of Democrats. He had wisely kept silent to that point about Moore’s pedophile charges, presumably not to remind the public of his own admitted sexual misdeeds (plus the large number of claims he has denied). Here is the full list: President Trump-and-accusations-of-sexual-misconduct-the-complete-list . The mystery is why when he consulted his advisor on such things (himself, of course) he decided to break silence on the subject—condemning Sen. Franken while giving Moore a pass. I suggest that he change advisors.

We have sadly and dangerously grown used to the routine lying of Trump and others. We live in a world of fake news. There have always been limits on our generally wide-ranging freedom of speech, however. Famously, we may not shout fire in a theater when we know there is none. The balance between the First Amendment’s protection of free speech and protection against willful defamation, for example, can be tricky. The following article provides a useful discussion of this balance in the context of the defamation case against Trump by one of his claimed sexual abuse victims, Summer Zervos, a contestant on Trump’s reality television show, “The Apprentice.” “She accused then-presidential candidate Trump of sexual harassment that purportedly occurred in 2007. Trump denied the allegations, and, in his characteristically understated style, tweeted that those allegations, and similar allegations made by other women, were “nonsense,” lies,” “phony” and “100 percent fabricated.” Zervos then claimed that Trump’s comments amounted to defamation.” (Trump’s attack on Summer Zervos blows hole first amendment) This might prove more damaging to Trump than the Russia investigation.

The Abuse of Civil Forfeiture

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance

We need to repeat this warning twice every day. Today’s example comes from a three-part series in The Washington Post on the use and abuse of civil forfeiture by the police. Our free press is an essential pillar of our liberty.

The police, whose job is to protect us and enforce the law, can catch criminals more easily if they can freely search our private properties (our homes, cars, email, etc). It is more difficult to get away with unwanted crimes in a totalitarian state than in a liberal democracy that respects privacy as an important protection against the abuse of state power. We have wisely chosen not to live in a totalitarian state and have struck a balance between privacy and state/police intrusiveness that favors privacy. This makes it more difficult for the police to find criminals, but reduces the number of innocent citizens falsely accused. This is the way we like it, and we need to remain vigilant to keep it that way.

We also understand the importance of incentives for influencing and motivating behavior. If we want to encourage more of a particular activity, rewarding it financially can be effective. If those who find stolen (or illegally earned) money get to keep some of it, more will be found. That is what bounty hunting was (is) all about. But what if those finding the money are also given the authority to judge its legality? That would constitute a clear-cut conflict of interest. A bounty hunter could increase his financial take by declaring money illegal in questionable cases without due process to protect the innocent.

Our sacred principle of “innocent until proven guilty” is being undermined by the civil forfeiture of private property by police who are allowed to keep part of what they take. “Civil forfeiture is the government power to take property suspected of involvement in a crime. Unlike criminal forfeiture—used to take the ill-gotten gains of criminal activity after a criminal conviction—with civil forfeiture, police can take property without so much as charging the owner with any wrongdoing.” http://www.ij.org/inequitablejustice

“Cash seizures can be made under state or federal civil law. One of the primary ways police departments are able to seize money and share in the proceeds at the federal level is through a long-standing Justice Department civil asset forfeiture program known as Equitable Sharing. Asset forfeiture is an extraordinarily powerful law enforcement tool that allows the government to take cash and property without pressing criminal charges and then requires the owners to prove their possessions were legally acquired.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/

The practice of “equitable sharing” encourages police to circumvent state laws on civil forfeiture in order to share in the proceeds of property confiscated under federal law. This financial incentive encourages the police to seize more private property but suffers from an unacceptable conflict of interest. The results, as revealed in The Washington Post’s three article series, can be ugly. We should not be surprised, but we should be indignant.

Here is one of many examples: “Mandrel Stuart, a 35-year-old African American owner of a small barbecue restaurant in Staunton, Va., was stunned when police took $17,550 from him during a stop in 2012 for a minor traffic infraction on Interstate 66 in Fairfax. He rejected a settlement with the government for half of his money and demanded a jury trial. He eventually got his money back but lost his business because he didn’t have the cash to pay his overhead.
“I paid taxes on that money. I worked for that money,” Stuart said. “Why should I give them my money?”” http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/

“Last year, equitable-sharing agreements funneled $600 million to police budgets. Clearly, with the size of the federal Asset Forfeiture Fund exceeding $2 billion in 2013, civil forfeiture is big business for the government.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/tim-walberg-an-end-to-the-abuse-of-civil-forfeiture/2014/09/04/e7b9d07a-3395-11e4-9e92-0899b306bbea_story.html

“The Post found:
• There have been 61,998 cash seizures made on highways and elsewhere since 9/11 without search warrants or indictments through the Equitable Sharing Program, totaling more than $2.5 billion. State and local authorities kept more than $1.7 billion of that while Justice, Homeland Security and other federal agencies received $800 million. Half of the seizures were below $8,800.
• Only a sixth of the seizures were legally challenged, in part because of the costs of legal action against the government. But in 41 percent of cases — 4,455 — where there was a challenge, the government agreed to return money. The appeals process took more than a year in 40 percent of those cases and often required owners of the cash to sign agreements not to sue police over the seizures.
• Hundreds of state and local departments and drug task forces appear to rely on seized cash, despite a federal ban on the money to pay salaries or otherwise support budgets. The Post found that 298 departments and 210 task forces have seized the equivalent of 20 percent or more of their annual budgets since 2008.

“Since 2001, police have seized $2.5 billion in cash from people who were never charged with a crime.”  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/09/08/civil-asset-forfeitures-more-than-double-under-obama/

This has gone much too far for the health of our Republic.