US President Donald Trump speaks with reporters upon his arrival to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland on October 10, 2026. (Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
“The investigation is nonsense,” said one press freedom advocate. “Trump may view the presidency as a business venture, but news outlets’ standing up for their constitutional rights has nothing to do with antitrust law.”
The US Justice Department has launched an investigation into whether the five major television networks violated federal antitrust law when they briefly halted pool coverage of President Donald Trump amid his administration’s attempt to bar certain journalists from the White House.
The New York Timesreported late Saturday that DOJ officials “contacted networks on Friday and demanded communications and materials related to the White House TV pool.” ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Fox News rotate the responsibility of capturing and distributing footage of the president. The networks paused pool coverage last month after the Trump administration dropped CNN from its scheduled pool assignment.
Emily Covington, a spokesperson for the Justice Department, confirmed the existence of the investigation in a statement on Saturday, saying that “group boycotts among commercial competitors can violate the Sherman Act.”
Press freedom organizations and other critics condemned the probe as a politically motivated attack on journalism and questioned the administration’s expressed concern about antitrust violations—particularly given that the DOJ has effectively abandoned antitrust enforcement during Trump’s second term.
Bruce Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the investigation “appears to be a pretext for seeking records from the networks about how they are covering daily White House events during a media ban the president himself put in place.”
“The decisions news organizations make about coverage are protected by the First Amendment, and summoning antitrust authority, on top of the retaliatory actions the White House has already taken to bar certain outlets, is another and even more brazen attempt to try to intimidate journalists,” said Brown.
Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, called the investigation “nonsense.”
“The investigation is nonsense. Trump may view the presidency as a business venture, but news outlets’ standing up for their constitutional rights has nothing to do with antitrust law, no matter what Laura Loomer says,” Stern added, pointing to the far-right activist’s public call for an antitrust lawsuit against the major TV news networks. “Depriving Trump of the attention he craves is not a competitive harm, and in any case, antitrust law has long recognized First Amendment exceptions even when there is anticompetitive impact.”
News of the DOJ investigation came after CNN, MS NOW, and Politico sued the president over his attempt to bar the outlets from the White House. Late last month, a Trump-appointed judge ordered the administration to restore White House access to the outlets as the lawsuit proceeds.
Jonathan Kanter, who headed the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division under the Biden administration, told CNN on Saturday that the media networks’ actions in the wake of the attempted White House ban are “not even in the same zip code of an antitrust violation.”
“It’s literally freedom of speech,” said Kanter. “It’s no more an antitrust violation than the reporters coming together to form the pool in the first place.”
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A television camera is pointed at the entrance to the West Wing of the White House on September 18, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Daniel Heuer/Getty Images)
“There will effectively be no TV coverage of Trump’s UN visit or other presidential events,” said one media reporter. “This is a very big deal.”
The major US television networks launched what was described as a boycott against TV pool coverage of President Donald Trump on Monday after the White House dropped CNN from the network’s scheduled pool assignment, escalating the administration’s assault on the country’s most prominent media organizations and press freedom.
CNN was set to act as the television pool network accompanying the president during his trip to the United Nations General Assembly this week, but the administration stripped the network of its assignment shortly after Trump banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House, prompting a retaliatory lawsuit from the three outlets.
The major television networks typically rotate responsibility for traveling video coverage of the president. Bryan Boughton, Washington, DC bureau chief for Fox News and current chair of the TV press pool, said Monday morning that “effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the president.”
“This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties,” Boughton added. “There will be no replacement pool put in place.”
Scott Nover, a media reporter with The Washington Post, noted that “it’s effectively a boycott by the fellow members—ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX.”
“There will effectively be no TV coverage of Trump’s UN visit or other presidential events, though I imagine smaller networks may take the White House’s own feed,” Nover wrote on social media. “This is a very big deal and one only possible because of solidarity from the whole pool.”
The TV press pool developments unfolded as CNN, MS NOW, and Politico announced early Monday that they intend to sue the Trump administration for banning them from the White House. The outlets argued that the ban, which Trump announced late last week, endangers press freedom and “the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.”
CNN, MS NOW and Politico announced the lawsuit in a joint statement, describing the legal action as an effort to “protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes.”
“Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting,” the news organizations said. “Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom.”
The lawsuit came after journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico were denied access to the White House grounds early Saturday, hours after Trump announced in a social media tirade that he was banning the outlets. Trump, without providing any examples, accused the three outlets of publishing “fiction and lies when they’re covering the president of the United States”—and suggested other news outlets could also be banned in the near future.
When Politico reporter Cheyenne Haslett attempted to enter the White House on Saturday in the wake of Trump’s social media post, Secret Service denied her access and confiscated her press pass. Journalists from the other two outlets reported similar experiences.
“We stand by her and all reporters here covering the White House,” Jonathan Greenberger, Politico’s global editor-in-chief, wrote in response to the incident involving Haslett. “We will vigorously defend our First Amendment rights.”
The media outlets’ lawsuit is set to be filed Monday in a federal district court in Washington, DC. The suit aims to restore the outlets’ White House access and alleges that Trump’s ban violates free press and due process protections.
“The president’s ban of CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House is a direct assault on the First Amendment and a blatant violation of due process,” said Ted Boutrous, an attorney for the outlets. “The president has been explicit that this ban is intended to punish reporting he doesn’t like and to intimidate journalists and news organizations covering him and his administration. This ban on the free press harms the American people, who are entitled to rigorous, fact-based coverage of the president of the United States. The law is on our side across the board, and we look forward to presenting our arguments to the court as soon as possible.”
Jameel Jaffer, executive director, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, applauded the news outlets’ lawsuit and said his organization would support them in court. The Knight First Amendment Institute has previously supported The Associated Press and other news outlets in successful legal fights against the president, who has shown blatant disdain for press freedom during his two terms in office.
“We’re glad to see that these news organizations are suing,” said Jaffer. “The president’s decision to bar them from the White House for the content of their reporting is a flagrant violation of the First Amendment. It’s an attack both on press freedom and the public’s right to independent information about the government.”
Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone … unless he gets distracted or falls asleep.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.
Severe weather has gripped the globe this week, with record-shattering, deadly heat in Western Europe. In the US, heat, wind and drought conditions fueled wildfires in the Southwest, while heavy thunderstorms, wind and floods caused destruction in eastern and central states.
Scientists attribute these extremes to fossil fuel–driven climate change. Europe’s heatwave would have been “virtually impossible to occur at this time of year” 50 years ago, scientists from the World Weather Attribution group reported. The project’s Theodore Keeping of Imperial College London told reporters (EuroNews, 6/26/26):
The science of how climate change is worsening heatwaves is settled…. Continued fossil-fuel emissions are directly responsible for the disruption people are experiencing this week in their homes, schools and workplaces.
With extreme weather events worsening each year, and the world on track to surpass by 2030 the Paris Agreement’s attempt to limit global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, connecting these disruptive and deadly events to climate change is a key part of the story.
Yet on the evening of Tuesday, June 23, despite leading their shows with severe weather headlines, nightly news shows on NBC, ABC and CBS failed to mention climate even in passing.
Cropping out climate
NBC Nightly News (6/23/26) had a tight shot of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres…
Substitute anchor Hallie Jackson began the NBC Nightly News (6/23/26) by describing apocalyptic scenes around the globe:
Tonight, the dangerous triple weather threat with fires, floods and deadly heat affecting millions. The flash flood emergency here at home: Fast-moving waters trapping drivers and washing out roads. Wildfires exploding out West. Plus, overseas, a record-shattering heatwave in Europe leaving dozens dead.
The broadcast covered heavy rains in Oklahoma, wildfires in Utah and Nevada, and heat and fire in Miami disrupting World Cup events. In France, it was so hot, Paris shut down the Eiffel Tower Tuesday, and Wednesday was expected to reach a 102°F record. More than 40 people were believed to have drowned in France’s rivers and beaches while trying to escape the heatwave that began last week.
In London, NBC’s Danielle Hamamdjian reported record highs in the city on Tuesday, with even higher temperatures anticipated to come.
The broadcast then cut to a clip of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres saying, “And today this city—and far beyond—are experiencing the hottest day of the year—with higher temperatures to come.”
The event that he was speaking at—London Climate Action Week—was not identified. In fact, a banner with the London Climate Action Week logo that was behind Guterres was cropped out of the shot. The soundbite NBC featured was excised from Guterres’ longer remarks about the severity of climate change and the critical necessity of quickly and justly transitioning from fossil fuels:
We have just lived through the 11 hottest years ever recorded. And today this city—and far beyond—are experiencing the hottest day of the year—with higher temperatures to come. London isn’t just calling—it’s cooking. Around the world, climate disasters are becoming more frequent, more destructive and more costly. And the World Meteorological Organization has warned we ain’t seen nothing yet. El Niño is not just knocking on the door. It risks blowing the house down. Turning up the heat. Disrupting food and water systems. And hitting the vulnerable the hardest. Ten years ago, world leaders agreed in Paris to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Now scientists say average annual temperatures will exceed that threshold in the coming years.
Later in the speech, Guterres demanded that AI companies publicly disclose their energy usage and commit to powering data centers with renewables by 2030.
From a speech entirely about climate change and its tangible impacts, NBC Nightly News managed to cherrypick a soundbite of Guterres essentially saying nothing more than “it’s hot.” While the segment linked together these extreme weather events in Europe and the US as a global phenomenon, climate change didn’t even get a passing mention.
Records broken by unknown force
ABC World News Tonight (6/23/26) reported on weather like there was no such thing as climate.
ABC World News Tonight (6/23/26) with David Muir followed suit. Raising the alarm about tornadoes and flood watches in the east, severe storm threats in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado and Wyoming, extreme heat in the southwest and heatwaves in France, England, Italy and Spain, the broadcast didn’t mention the word “climate” once.
“We’ve lived here for 20 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” a Fairfax County, Virginia, man said of the winds and storms that sent trees into cars and homes in the area.
CBS Evening News (6/23/26) led with fires, droughts, floods and storms across the US, spotlighting Utah, where one wildfire was the size of San Francisco. “The outbreak follows the state’s warmest winter on record and one of the driest, with just a fifth of normal snowpack,” said host Tony Dokoupil.
In the next segment, correspondent Leigh Kiniry reported from London about record temperatures across Europe. Uniquely among the corporate networks’ evening newscasts, this report alluded vaguely to climate change, noting that “the continent is warming faster than any other.” But viewers were given no clue as to how or why: Direct mentions of climate change were nonexistent throughout the entire broadcast.
‘Not one government is making progress’
PBS NewsHour (6/23/26): “But with the changing climate, what hope is there for family farmers?”
The lone exception to the erasure of climate change on the nightly news broadcasts was PBS NewsHour (6/23/26). While the show didn’t lead headlines with extreme weather, its segment about the European heatwave included a soundbite from a Paris resident expressing dissatisfaction with how governments have ignored climate change. “Paris when temperatures go high is just hell on earth,” she said:
It’s catastrophic. I’m worried for the coming years. We have known about climate change for a while, and not one government is making progress on this issue.
Later in the broadcast, PBS dedicated a segment to droughts in the Southern US affecting farmers in Georgia. The report was part of an ongoing PBS series called Tipping Point, which focuses on the impacts of climate change and communities’ efforts to adapt.
Rachel Cleetus of the Union of Concerned Scientists explained:
Climate change is making these more frequent, both the short-duration kinds of droughts that we’re seeing in some places, but also the longer megadroughts like the Southwest is experiencing. The unpredictability of it, the extremes, both the droughts and then the whiplash with extreme rainfall events, that makes it very difficult to plan for these kinds of conditions.
The report went on to describe precision irrigation systems as a possible mitigation—though noting that their cost is often prohibitive. The segment points to “policy steps worth considering,” like helping farmers obtain these technologies through grants and low-cost loans.
PBS deserves credit as the only nightly broadcast that mentioned climate change at all. But while it addressed the issue of adaptation, it avoided the more fundamental question of causation; the burning of fossil fuels, and its connection to the segment’s weather horror stories, wasn’t mentioned at all.
FAIR (7/18/23) has previously documented that even when TV news connects extreme weather events to climate change, it seldom connects climate change to fossil fuels—but the industry seems to have taken a step backward.
The lack of climate coverage in legacy media follows a trend media analysts have been tracking since President Donald Trump’s second term began. A Media Matters study (3/4/26) found that ABC, CBS and NBC aired 35% less climate coverage in 2025 than in 2024. A FAIR study (4/14/26) found that trend mirrored in online news. But as coverage decreases, climate change’s effects only increase in frequency and severity.
FAIR’s work is sustained by our generous contributors, who allow us to remain independent. Donate today to be a part of this important mission.
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A U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone flies a training mission over the Nevada Test and Training Range, in Nevada, United States. [USAF – William Rio Rosado – Anadolu Agency]
The US has lost eight MQ-9 Reaper drones in the Middle East since April 1, raising the total number lost in the Iran conflict to 24, CBS reported.
According to the recent report, the financial impact is estimated at around $720 million, since each Reaper drone can cost $30 million or more depending on the model.
The MQ-9 Reaper, produced by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, is an unmanned aircraft used for intelligence gathering, surveillance, reconnaissance, and precision strike missions.
Data compiled by CBS News indicates that the US and Israel have carried out strikes on more than 13,000 targets across Iran since launching joint operations on Feb. 28.
The same data showed that Iran has hit targets in 12 countries throughout the region during the conflict.
Although a two-week ceasefire was announced on Tuesday, Israel continued conducting strikes in Lebanon.
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As millions around the world, fresh off watching real-time footage of federal law enforcement murdering Renee Good, saw federal agents murder Alex Pretti, CBS viewers got a headline (1/24/26): “Person Dead After Shooting in Minneapolis Involving Federal Immigration Agents.”
You can check your calendar; it is 2026. And yet corporate media still think we’ll fall for that passive voice business, wherein law enforcement are…there…and people just kinda die.
Or we get—as CBS (1/27/26) offered elsewhere—“videos of the incident appear to contradict officials’ claims.”
‘No hate, no fear’
“Every time this country has had a debate on the sustainability and expansion of our democracy,” Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates told Workday (1/23/26), “workers have settled that debate—and I’m looking for workers to do the same thing this time.”
It’s not clear whether corporate media know they’re writing themselves a resignation letter, but they are. Fortunately, there are other outlets ready to step up and speak up.
You can read Hammer & Hope (Fall/24) for an interview with Doran Schrantz, a longtime organizer of Minnesota’s faith-based communities on “How a Decade of Multiracial, Interfaith Organizing in Minnesota Undergirds the Resistance.” Schrantz explains:
We built a strategy together around how we understand what it means to unequivocally be East African and Muslim. Or rural with a rural perspective. No one’s asking you to change any of those things. We are explicitly posing the question about how we can publicly demonstrate, over and over again, the critical importance of multiracial democratic power. We center this question partially to model, but partially to protect our movements from being distracted and divided by identitarian or weaponized racialized attacks.
You can read Sarah Lazare writing for Workday Magazine (1/23/26) and In These Times (1/23/26) about Minnesota’s January 23 strike and shutdown. Tens of thousands marched through downtown Minneapolis shouting, “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here.”
That action crucially involved workers and unions. A union leader from SEIU Local 26, which represents more than 8,000 of Minnesota’s janitors, window cleaners and property service workers told Lazare they’ve “lost over 20 members to these abductions by federal agents, often without warning, often without due process.”
You can read Katya Schwenk at the Lever (8/28/25), who details how ICE has been allowed to swallow more and more resources based on a broad authority that Congress gave the Department of Homeland Security to reshuffle funds with little oversight.
The latest is DHS draining money from FEMA, tasked with disaster relief but lately wielded as a political cudgel, as when Trump floated the idea that he would deny relief to states that allowed consumers to ban Israeli products. Once an independent agency, FEMA was subsumed into DHS in 2003 as part of George W. Bush’s post-9/11 reorganization.
Congress has repeatedly given DHS authority to move money around in a way not afforded to all departments, who have to trouble with things like approval from lawmakers.
Switching names not changing course
“What is motivating all of the reporting on Trump’s ‘pivot’?” Popular Information (1/28/26) asked. “Trump softened his rhetoric, calling Pretti’s death ‘very unfortunate’ and ‘very sad.’”
You can read Popular Information (1/28/26), which warns of media disinformation around a supposed Trump “pivot” on ICE actions in Minnesota. For instance, AP (1/27/26) reports that Trump has “shifted toward a more conciliatory approach,” that this is an “about face.” The New York Times (1/26/26) ran a headline declaring “Trump Changes Course in Minnesota.” Except that switching names at the top—Homan for Bovino, or anyone for Noem—is actually not proof that the violent crackdown in Minneapolis won’t continue indefinitely.
Popular Information also breaks down, for those interested, the weak corporate response to citizens’ murder by the state. Conspicuously silent after Renee Good’s killing, large companies in Minnesota evidently felt moved to address the issue after Alex Pretti. The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce released a letter on behalf of more than 60 CEOs based in the state that consisted of 215 words that said next to nothing.
“With yesterday’s tragic news, we are calling for an immediate deescalation of tensions and for state, local and federal officials to work together to find real solutions,” the CEOs wrote, with no thoughts on how tensions could be deescalated or what a real solution would look like.
Popular Information contacted all 68 companies that signed the letter, asking: “Do you condemn the killing of two Minnesotans by federal officers?” All either declined to comment or to respond at all.
‘Not our first rodeo’
“They [constitutional observers] are the ones keeping watch,” Immigrant Defense Network’s Edwin Torres Desantiago told Sahan (1/28/26). “They’re the ones that are making sure our constitution is upheld.”You can read, at the Guardian (1/20/26), Alyssa Oursler’s notes on just how grassroots networks in the Twin Cities, with things like community watch and mutual aid, are building on work honed in the 2020 protests in response to George Floyd’s state sanctioned murder. As Oursler quotes one rapid response organizer, “This is not our first rodeo.”
Another aid worker is cited: “We’ve always had to do it ourselves. We have whistles and we have organizing. That’s all we have against people with huge trucks and guns.”
And you can stay in touch with reporting from Minnesotan journalists, like those at Sahan Journal, a nonprofit digital newsroom focused on the state’s immigrants and communities of color, offering reports along the lines of “Bravery in the Face of Fear: Immigrant Defense Network Goes Statewide With Constitutional Observer Training” (1/28/26).
There have been creditable Big Media reports on Minneapolis, but just as events have shown us the need for a disruptive new way forward in politics, they’ve shown up the failures of so-called legacy media to confront the moment, and the value of citizen journalism that doesn’t pretend to come from nowhere, but instead centers the people at the sharp end of the policies crafted by the forces to whom corporate media give pride of place.
Support your local and independent journalists, is what I’m trying to say.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
