Dec. 11, 2025, 7:03 PM EST

ByAri Bernick

It’s upsetting to have to advocate for respect in the workplace. It’s even more upsetting that the main offender is the president of the United States.

The most recent instance of the president directly attacking women in the media happened at the White House on Monday: “You are the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place,” the president said, berating ABC’s Rachel Scott, after she asked about video of the Sept. 2 strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean. “Let me just tell you, you are an obnoxious, a terrible ― actually a terrible reporter, and it’s always the same thing with you.”

Last week, the president diminished CNN’s Kaitlan Collins as “always Stupid and Nasty” in a social media post. Some of his other recent lows:

• Pointing at Bloomberg News’s Catherine Lucey and barking, “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.”
• Replying “Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person?” when Nancy Cordes of CBS asked about administration vetting of the National Guard shooting suspect.
• Calling Katie Rogers of The New York Times “a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out.”

Remaining silent does a disservice to the women in the media who have come before me, those who stand alongside me and those who want to join the field in the future.

I might still be new to the industry, but I know female reporters deserve better.

It was not lost on me last month, seeing the attack on Rogers after a Times article about the president agingthat the president’s social media post did not scold or even mention the article’s male co-author.

Going after a female reporter’s looks and intelligence reminds me of things I learned in a media history class at Northwestern University: how women were excluded from newsrooms because people did not believe they had the intellectual capacity to be reporters, and how women used to be told to report on lifestyle and culture instead of “hard news” topics such as the economy. They were paid less, harassed more and were essentially told, “this isn’t for you.”

But journalism is for us.

These public humiliations are outrageous. And it’s frustrating to have spent four years studying how to ethically and accurately report only to see past injustices repeated and for the president to disrespect my chosen profession time and again.

But my larger concern is how this rhetoric could turn into action. In this administration, reporters have been turned away from the White House and Pentagon briefing rooms. What’s to stop the president from going even further?

I’m also worried about how the president’s rhetoric raises risks for me in my own work. For my job on the MS NOW social team, I spend a lot of time approaching people on the street for reactions to news stories. In October, for example, I interviewed several Chicagoans about how they felt about the National Guard deployments  in their city. The president’s aggressive behavior gives a green light for people to bash me for simply asking questions.

Asking difficult questions is crucial to journalism. Answering them is a responsibility of holding public office.

I shouldn’t have to spell this out but: No one should be berated for doing their jobs competently.

I’m standing up for my peers because I’m grateful for the previous generations that made my career path possible; for the journalism professors who encouraged me to speak the truth, boldly; and for female coworkers, producers and managers whose professionalism has mentored me directly and indirectly.

While the number of women going into journalism has increased, a 2024 study from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that the share of women in leadership positions in the field is still low. I worry that aspiring young journalists might feel reporting is not for them because of how the president treats women in the industry. I also worry that reporters might refrain from asking tough questions to avoid direct attacks from the commander-in-chief.

In 2015, when the president, then a candidate, made disparaging comments about Megyn Kelly after a Republican primary debate, the criticism that followed was widespread. More recently, some fellow reporters have denounced this disrespect of their colleagues and asked about the president’s behavior. Appallingly, the White House press secretary suggested everyone “should appreciate the frankness and the openness.”

Bullying wasn’t okay in a schoolyard, and it’s not okay coming from the Oval Office.

Dec. 11, 2025, 7:02 PM EST

ByEarle J. Fisher

A year ago, the Department of Justice released a pattern and practice findings on the Memphis Police Department that documented systemic abuses and discriminatory enforcement that harmed Black residents. Twelve months later, instead of real reform or positive federal oversight, Memphis has been drawn into a national political performance. At the center is the Memphis Safe Task Forcea political creation of the Trump administration and a clear example of punitive populism, the latest expression of what Alec Karakatsanis names “Copaganda.”

The task force has made more than 3,100 arrests since Oct. 1. Roughly 1,900 of them are for nonviolent offenses. During the same period, the task force has initiated more than 35,000 traffic stops. These numbers appear on a city dashboard that community members have criticized for lacking detail, yet local law enforcement and city/state officials are already being used as evidence of crime reduction. What the numbers actually show is the volume of enforcement, not the presence of genuine reform.

The Trump administration is presenting Memphis to the nation as a model of successful intervention by collapsing traffic stops, misdemeanors and immigration-related encounters into the broad category of crime control.

The Memphis Safe Task Force resembles earlier programs such as stop-and-frisk in New York, Blue CRUSH (Criminal Reduction Utilizing Statistical History) in Memphis and the “broken windows to the next level” policing approach that White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller has celebrated. It creates aggressive encounters with marginalized people to create the illusion that such encounters promote safety.

As was the case in so many cities across the country, violent crime in Memphis was declining before the task force was created, reaching what some described as a 25-year low. Crime was also at or near record lows in Chicago and Washington, two other cities where Trump has sent in troops. Though Attorney General Pam Bondi claims to have “reversed the trend of crime” in Memphis, that reversal was already underway.

The immigration data is even more revealing. Nearly 40% of local arrests tied to the task force involve immigration activity. Nationally, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested almost 75,000 people with no criminal record. It’s unknown what the numbers show in Memphis. As the Tennessee Lookout reported last week, “Task Force officials initially reported immigration arrest numbers but have since stopped providing that data.”

But, in general, the operation has allowed officials to claim a crime crackdown even when people targeted are not linked to violent offenses. Here in Memphis, local and state officials want the public to conflate law enforcement activity with safety and accept an increase in activity as a substitute for accountability. They want to redirect attention away from the deeper rot in the Memphis Police Department that the DOJ report exposed.

The public is repeatedly shown selected numbers by Attorney General Bondi’s office — and echoed by local agencies and officials — to reinforce a predetermined story that the task force has created quick, measurable improvements, that these gains justify the erosion of civil liberties and that Memphis is safer because more people have been stopped or detained.

But public safety cannot be measured by the number of people funneled through the criminal legal system. Arrests and traffic stops are not evidence of transformation. They are only evidence of encounters. They say nothing about community trust or the changes required to prevent violence.

This narrative also obscures what has happened since the DOJ released its findings. Rather than embracing federal oversight, the mayor and city administration dismissed the report as “meaningless” and even asked a federal court to disregard it. They then announced another task force to study MPD oversight. Ten months later, that group has not published a single policy or recommendation. The structural problems identified by the DOJ remain unaddressed. In the vacuum created by this refusal to pursue real reform, political actors have substituted a storyline suggesting the city has already turned a corner.

The danger is not only local. When national leaders hold up Memphis as a model without scrutinizing the data, they normalize a strategy that encourages the public to equate policing with safety. One year after the DOJ confirmed what many residents had been saying for decades, we deserve more than political theater.

Other cities with problematic law enforcement agencies deserve more, too: reforms guided by independent oversight, transparency that distinguishes perception from reality and a public safety strategy rooted in truth. Instead, we’ve been offered a spectacle. And the Trump administration is promoting Memphis as a success story even as the underlying issues that threaten our safety remain unresolved.