The Dictatorship

Trump’s attacks on media echo authoritarians who silence dissent

Published

9 months ago

September 19, 2025

Trump’s attacks on media echo authoritarians who silence dissent

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has waged an aggressive campaign against the media unlike any in modern U.S. history, making moves similar to those of authoritarian leaders that he has often praised.

On Wednesday, Trump cheered ABC’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show after the comedian made remarks about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk that criticized the president’s MAGA movement: “Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

It was the latest in a string of attacks against news outlets and media figures he believes are overly critical of him. Trump has filed lawsuits against outlets whose coverage he dislikesthreatened to revoke TV broadcast licenses and sought to bend news organizations and social media companies to his will.

The tactics are similar to those used by leaders in other countries who have chipped away at speech freedoms and independent media while consolidating political power, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a close Trump ally whose leadership style is revered by many conservatives in the U.S.

“What we’re seeing is an unprecedented attempt to silence disfavored speech by the government,” said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College. “Donald Trump is trying to dictate what Americans can say.”

Is Trump taking cues from Orbán?

Trump’s approach to governing has drawn comparisons to Orbánwho has been in power since 2010. The Hungarian leader has made hostility toward the press central to his political brand, borrowing Trump’s phrase “fake news” to describe critical outlets. He has not given an interview to an independent journalist in years.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders says Orbán has built “a true media empire subject to his party’s orders” through allies’ acquisitions of newspapers and broadcasters. The group says that strategy has given Orbán’s Fidesz party control of about 80% of Hungary’s media market. In 2018, Orbán’s allies donated nearly 500 news outlets they had acquired to a government-controlled conglomerate, a group that included all of Hungary’s local daily newspapers.

Opposition parties complain that they get just five minutes of airtime on public TV during elections, the legal minimum, while state broadcasters reliably amplify government talking points and smear Orbán’s political opponents. Hungary’s media authority, staffed entirely by Orbán’s party nominees, has threatened nonrenewal of broadcast frequencies to keep outlets in line and forced the liberal-leaning station Klubrádió off the air.

“Here, they bought outlets and replaced editorial staff wholesale,” said Hungarian media analyst Gábor Polyák.

The moves against independent media, along with Orbán’s systematic capture of Hungary’s democratic institutions, prompted the European Parliament in 2022 to declare that the country could no longer be considered a democracy.

Polyák said that while the American media landscape is far larger and more diverse than Hungary’s, he’s been struck by the willingness of major U.S. companies to accommodate Trump’s threats.

“There is a very strange kind of self-censorship in America,” he said. “Even with European eyes, it is very frightening to see to what degree individual bravery does not exist. From Zuckerberg to ABC, everyone immediately surrenders.”

Kimmel suspension is part of a pattern by Trump

Kimmel became the second late-night comic with a history of pillorying Trump to lose their show this year. CBS canceled Stephen Colbert’s show just days after he had criticized the network’s settlement of a lawsuit filed by Trump over its editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s opponent last fall.

CBS said the July move was made for financial reasons, but Trump celebrated it nevertheless while appearing to foreshadow this week’s developments: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings,” he wrote on his social media platform at the time. “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.”

People walk by the Jimmy Kimmel Live studio on Hollywood Blvd., Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

ABC’s suspension of Kimmel on Wednesday came after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr made a pointed warning about the comedian on a conservative podcast earlier in the day: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he said.

Carr also launched an investigation into CBS and opened probes into public broadcasting networks after Trump persuaded Congress to defund them.

The Kimmel suspension has highlighted the president’s broader efforts to pressure journalistsmedia companies, and now comedians and commentatorsto align with his views. On Thursday, as he returned from Great Britain, Trump said regulators should consider revoking the licenses of networks that provide what he considers “only bad publicity.”

Trump also has targeted social media giants, claiming Meta dropped its fact-checking program partly because of his threats, which included jailing founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Even powerful media owners have appeared to bend under pressure. Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, whose companies have significant government contracts, killed an editorial endorsement of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris before the 2024 election and, like Meta, donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration. Disney-owned ABC News agreed to a $15 million settlement to resolve a Trump lawsuit.

Media crackdowns in other countries

Hungary is not the only country where similar patterns to erode an independent media landscape have been playing out. In neighboring Serbia, populist President Aleksandar Vucic has faced accusations of curtailing media freedoms since coming to power over a decade ago.

Critics have cited a combination of political pressure, public smear campaigns and financial pressure on the media as the means Vucic’s government has used to establish control over mainstream outlets and the public RTS broadcaster.

Journalist safety in Serbia has worsened since the start of student-led protests some 10 months ago that have challenged Vucic’s firm rule. The Media Freedom Rapid Response group — which monitors press freedom in Europe — said in a recent report they were “gravely concerned” that Serbian journalists “have been reporting under immense political pressure, faced with physical violence, censorship, smear campaigns, abusive lawsuits, and daily death threats.”

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin consolidated control over national television early in his rule and later expanded restrictions on civil society, independent journalism and online platforms. Authorities later used a flurry of laws to restrict freedom of speech.

The restrictive label “foreign agent” has been slapped on the few remaining independent media outlets and scores of journalists, and the government has steadily tightened controls on the internet. Putin’s crackdown has only intensified after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukrainewhen new laws criminalized criticism of the war and forced many journalists into exile.

The rise in India of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has coincided with mounting pressure on comedians and satirists. Police have arrested performers for jokes deemed offensive to Hindu deities or critical of Modi’s party. Comedians such as Kunal Kamra and Vir Das have faced lawsuits, show cancellations and harassment from nationalist groups for skewering the government.

Leaders also have cracked down on the media in multiple Latin American countries. Nicaragua withdrew from the United Nations’ main cultural agency earlier this year to protest a press freedom award it gave to the country’s main opposition newspaper. That publication, La Prensa, has been largely produced by writers in exile since the government raided its Managua offices in 2021.

___

Riccardi reported from Denver. Associated Press writer Jovana Gec in Belgrade, Serbia, contributed to this report.

The Dictatorship

Rep. Julia Letlow wins Louisiana GOP Senate primary runoff

Published

5 hours ago

June 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Rep. Julia Letlow wins Louisiana GOP Senate primary runoff

Jun. 27, 2026, 9:51 PM EDT

Rep. Julia Letlow won Louisiana’s Republican Senate primary runoff Saturday, defeating former Rep. John Fleming.

Her win comes as a victory for President Donald Trump, who has endorsed her repeatedly throughout the race — including before she was even officially running.

Letlow made history in 2021 when she became the first Republican woman to represent Louisiana in Congress. In that special election, she won the seat that her late husband, Luke Letlow, had won prior to dying of complications related to Covid-19 in December 2020.

Letlow had no political experience prior to running for her late husband’s seat. She holds a doctorate in communication from the University of South Florida and worked as an administrator for Tulane University and the University of Louisiana, according to her LinkedIn page. Nonetheless, she won the special election House race with nearly 65% of the vote.

In Congress, she has served on the appropriations and education committees, and has been a reliably MAGA Republican.

Letlow’s win also comes as a rebuke to Fleming, who loaned himself more than $11 million, according to the Federal Election Commission, and tried running for the same seat in 2016 only to finish in fifth place in the nonpartisan primary. (Letlow did not loan her campaign any money, and took in more than $5.35 million compared to Fleming’s more than $12.1 million, FEC filings show.)

Trump has played a key role in the race. In addition to backing Letlow early on, the president also helped tank Republican incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy’s re-election campaign in last month’s primary, based on the senator’s record of bucking his party and voting in favor of Trump’s second impeachment. In the primaryLetlow earned nearly 45% of the vote, giving her a healthy lead over both Fleming, who received about 28% of the vote, and Cassidy, who earned nearly 25%.

Ahead of Saturday’s runoff, polling showed Letlow and Fleming in a close race, with Letlow retaining a small lead in several polls.

Letlow will now proceed to the November general election to face off against the Democratic nominee, farmer Jamie Davis, who came out on top in tonight’s Democratic primary runoff.

The state has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 2008, when Mary Landrieu won her last term in office.

Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.

The Dictatorship

‘Horrifying’: Pulte’s choice for top spy aide stokes fears of Trump vote tampering

Published

5 hours ago

June 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

‘Horrifying’: Pulte’s choice for top spy aide stokes fears of Trump vote tampering

Jun. 28, 2026, 1:36 PM EDT

Bill Pulte, the acting director of national intelligencehas stirred fear by choosing as his chief of staff a GOP election lawyer who oversaw a poll watching program that included Jack Posobiec and other conservative conspiracy theorists. The lawyer, Christina Norton, also appears to have no experience working in the intelligence community.

“It is horrifying,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official told MS NOW Saturday. “Not only does Norton have absolutely no background, experience or expertise in national security or intelligence, but her principal qualifications appear to be loyalty to Pulte and an embrace of absurd election-interference conspiracies.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who has been a vocal critic of Pulte, also raised concerns about election integrity on Sunday while taking shots at the director of national intelligence and the office itself.

“We should eliminate the DNI, and we should eliminate Pulte from the DNI until that happens,” he said on BLN, adding, “I am concerned that we’re gonna continue to cast doubt on elections in November and erode what has been a 250-year tradition of a peaceful transition of power.”

Pulte’s choice of Norton is also likely to increase concerns among Democrats that President Donald Trump intends to use the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to interfere in the midterm elections. Pulte, a loyalist with no intelligence experience, has used his current position as head of federal mortgage agencies to refer political rivals of the president for federal criminal prosecution.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told MS NOW on Sunday that the choice “just confirms” that the “only job qualification is absolute political loyalty and devotion to Donald Trump.” But he expressed faith in the judicial system during an appearance on “The Weekend,” noting that “right now we have federal courts across the land that are rejecting their various attempts to take over the election process. Nine different federal courts have rejected the claim that the president, by executive order, can compel the states in the union to turn over all of their voter lists to Donald Trump and to the White House.”

The New York Times first reported Norton’s appointment.

The former senior intelligence official, who requested anonymity due to concerns of retaliation, told MS NOW the choice also “signals as clearly as could be that Pulte has been put at ODNI to misuse the awesome power of the U.S. intelligence community to interfere in the upcoming midterm elections.”

Norton, reached by MS NOW by telephone, declined to comment and referred questions to an ODNI spokesperson. The spokesperson declined to comment on Norton but defended Pulte’s tenure.

“Acting Director Pulte and his team are focused on carrying out President Trump’s national security priorities while faithfully executing ODNI’s statutory mission,” the spokesperson told MS NOW. “We are leading the Intelligence Community to provide President Trump with elite, apolitical intelligence that keeps America safe.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., appearing on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” Sunday, said his objection to Pulte is “that he used personal information to target a political enemy of the president,” a reference to New York Attorney General Letitia James.

“You should not be using the force of government to crash upon somebody just because the person in charge does not like them or finds them inconvenient. The fact that Bill did that is disqualifying for someone to be the director of national intelligence,” Cassidy said.

Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on Friday that Congress would ensure that the ODNI under Pulte will “report on legitimate foreign threats to elections, not Donald Trump’s imaginary ones.”

Himes warned that, “Trump was explicit when he appointed Bill Pulte to a job he had no qualifications for that he had elections in mind.”

Trump has said in interviews with the news media that he would like to see Pulte shrink the size of the ODNI and investigate election fraud. Pulte’s predecessor, Tulsi Gabbard, participated in investigations in Georgia and Puerto Rico to find proof of Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Democrats and some former intelligence officials say they worry that Pulte may try to falsely claim that his office has found evidence that foreign governments are secretly funding Democratic candidates in the midterms.

Pulte could falsely claim foreign actors have hacked U.S. voting machines, they say, and altered vote totals in favor of Democrats during the midterms. Or Trump could instruct Pulte to be present if FBI agents seize ballots and election records in November as they did earlier this year in Fulton County, Georgia.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned in a statement on Friday that Pulte should not use his position to spread Trump’s false election conspiracy theories.

“The mission of ODNI is to identify and counter foreign threats, not to import election denialism into the Intelligence Community,” Warner said. “Americans have every reason to fear that this administration is once again eroding the wall between our intelligence agencies and domestic elections.”

David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.

The Dictatorship

In Springfield, Ohio, Trump’s rhetoric becomes a grim reality

Published

5 hours ago

June 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

In Springfield, Ohio, Trump’s rhetoric becomes a grim reality

Jun. 27, 2026, 4:07 PM EDT

Having lived with Donald Trump’s infamous and baseless insult against them — “they’re eating the dogs … they’re eating the cats” — Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are bracing for a far bigger injury.

More than 10,000 Haitians across Ohio and hundreds of thousands more around the country who had Temporary Protected Status now face the imminent prospect of deportation. The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration can halt those legal protections for Haitians and Syrians and resume forcing them to leave.

Justice Samuel Alito’s opinionfor the court’s Republican-appointed majority curbed the power of courts to review government decisions to terminate protections under the TPS program.

“They side with him on everything that he says or everything that he does, which means there is no check and balance,” said Viles Dorsainvil, a Haitian TPS holder and executive director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, a town Trump catapulted into a maelstrom of misinformation about immigrants when he was running to retake the White House in 2024.

“The president has that freeway in front of him to do whatever he wants to do, unfortunately, and most of the time to a minority group of people,” added Dorsainvil, who has lived in the United States since 2020.

In a country rife with political and economic instability, Haitians returning from the U.S. are in danger of being killed or kidnapped, said Dorsainvil’s colleague at the Haitian Support Center, Rose Thamar Joseph.

“There is this perception in Haiti that if you are living here in the United States, you have money, so you are living your good life, so sending people back to Haiti will put them in real danger,” Joseph said.

Staying in the U.S. without legal status creates a different crisis.

“We received calls this morning from people saying that, unfortunately, starting on July 1, they won’t be able to go to work anymore,” Joseph said Friday.

Joseph predicted that families would be separated during the deportation process.

“We know that there will be separation,” she said. “A lot of those parents with TPS … they have kids who were born in the United States, so we know that it will happen, not for everybody, not for all the families, but it will happen,” she said.

The oncoming nightmare for the Haitian community in Springfield was, in many ways, predictable after Trump notoriously targeted them on the debate stage against then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the fall of 2024.

“They are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump said without a shred of evidence, greatly amplifying an unfounded rumor that had been confined to smaller corners of social media.

That rhetoric continued Trump’s track record of racist languageparticularly when it comes to immigration, including during his first White House stint when he referred during his first to Haiti and other majority non-white nations as “shithole” countries.

Dorsainvil argued that the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday proved his beliefs are institutionalized, calling it “a validation of all those bad rhetorics of the president against us.”

Asked by MS NOW if those with TPS should expect to be deported, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said, “Well, of course. If you no longer have status in this country, then you’re supposed to be deported.”

Miller, the architect of the administration’s immigration policy, went on to single out the Haitian population by name.

But the outcry against the court’s ruling blurs party lines in Ohio.

“Changing the immigration status of these individuals is not in the best interest of the United States nor Ohio,” Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said.

Springfield’s Republican mayorRob Rue, has denounced Trump’s misinformation about his community as dangerous from the start.

“Many of the individuals affected by this decision are our neighbors, coworkers, business owners, taxpayers, and parents,” Rue said in a statement after the ruling came down. “They contribute to our local economy, support our schools, strengthen our neighborhoods, and have become part of the fabric of Springfield.”

Alex Tabet is a reporter for MS NOW.