1. United States
2. Va.
3. Letter

This is not a press freedom concern. This is a press freedom emergency. In the last ten days alone: On August 18, ABC and Disney sued the FCC for conducting a retaliatory license review — one that was triggered after Jimmy Kimmel mocked Melania Trump and President Trump posted on Truth Social asking if broadcast licenses should “be terminated?” The FCC responded within days. On August 21, the editors of Stars and Stripes were fired for saying they work for the troops and not the president. And this morning, the President threatened to report NBC’s Kristen Welker to the FCC for “rebuke or punishment” because she accurately reported that his endorsement record has “mixed results.” Mixed results. That is what it now takes to become a target of the federal government’s broadcast regulatory agency. The lone Democrat on the FCC said it plainly: “The FCC has no authority to punish journalists this administration doesn’t like. These threats to press freedom are dangerous. They undermine the foundation of our democracy.” She is right. And yet FCC Chair Brendan Carr — Trump’s handpicked ally — has not responded to a single press request for comment. The Republican majority on the FCC has said nothing. This is the pattern: A president posts a complaint. A regulatory agency jumps. Licenses are threatened. Editors are fired. Reporters are charged with federal crimes for covering protests. And a customs law is used to secretly obtain 10,000 phone records from a journalist a federal judge had already twice refused to surveil. This is not politics. This is authoritarianism. And history has shown us exactly where it leads. We demand that Congress pass immediate legislation protecting broadcast licenses from politically motivated FCC review, investigate DHS’s use of customs law to surveil journalists, hold emergency hearings on the firing of Stars and Stripes staff, and say loudly and clearly: the free press is not the enemy. The people trying to destroy it are. Do your jobs before there is no free press left to cover whether you did.