Brad Reed

Media advocacy organization Free Press on Tuesday unveiled an index that documents and rates major media organizations' reactions to the coercive demands being made by U.S. President Donald Trump.

As Free Press explained in a press release, its Media Capitulation Index tracks actions being taken by 35 major media conglomerates who are facing pressure from Trump and his allies to curb critical reporting and commentary on his administration.

"In this investigation, Free Press found that to varying degrees the owners of America's largest media firms are caving to pressure from an authoritarian-minded president and his captured federal agencies," the organization wrote. "This capitulation is not unique to owners of news outlets—like Paramount (which owns CBS), Disney (ABC) and Warner Bros. Discovery (CNN). Rather, it's a pervasive trend that applies to nearly all commercial media, including cable and telecommunications firms and online platforms."

Free Press argued that media companies have been bending to Trump's will through four major methods: Paying out lavish settlements in lawsuits brought by the president; rolling back their programs for enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion; pressuring journalists and commentators to soften or even censor their criticisms of the president; and "attempting to curry favor with the president during inaugural ceremonies, private dinners at Mar-a-Lago, and meetings in the White House."

The index uses a scale to rate media organizations that range from "independent" on one end to "propaganda" on the other. Of all the media companies surveyed by Free Press, only two are rated as independent: Bloomberg Media Group and Netflix. The New York Times Company for now is the least compromised of any print media conglomerate outside of Bloomberg and is merely listed as "vulnerable," while Nant Capital, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, is the most compromised and is rated as "obeying" the Trump administration.

When it comes to broadcast media, no companies earned an "independent" ranking, and CBS owner Paramount was ranked as "obeying" the Trump administration in the wake of its decisions to give Trump a $16 million payout and then cancel the show of longtime Trump critic Stephen Colbert.

Former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan, a longtime critic of the American media's response to Trump, praised Free Press on her Substack page for highlighting the major problems facing the American media in the second Trump term.

"Huge, diverse corporations own news companies, and independent journalism all too often takes a back seat to corporate profits, mergers, and other forms of consolidation," she said. "Meanwhile, public media has been defunded, local journalism lacks local ownership, and partisan propaganda has found an influential home on radio and cable news."

She also interviewed Tim Karr, who works as Free Press' senior director of strategy and communications, about why her former employer did not earn an "independent" rating on the index.

"There is a tendency to 'both-sides' reporting about the Trump administration,” Karr said of The New York Times' coverage, which he added seems to give "equal weight to the forces of democracy and the forces of authoritarianism."

Former megachurch pastor John Pavlovitz has written a new piece on his Substack page that takes a distinctly Old Testament attitude toward supporters of President Donald Trump.

In his piece, Pavlovitz makes the case that Trump supporters "must be ostracized" going forward due to their complicity in what he sees as the president's ruinous second-term policies.

"The people we love, live alongside; those we work and study shoulder to shoulder with; those we have invited into our hearts and homes. They are as responsible for all of this as he is, as those in his Cabinet are," he writes.

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Pavlovitz argues that Trump supporters have had all sorts of chances to correct course over the years despite seeing the president's cruelty and his authoritarian aspirations up close.

"They shunned their responsibility as Americans, they rejected the teachings of their faith tradition, and they abandoned any kind of moral footing by enabling the ascension of a felon-rapist-scumbag mobster who lacks a single noble impulse," he contends. "Through whatever combination of racism, misogyny, prejudice, intellectual ignorance, and plain old hatred, they willfully coronated him."

He then goes on to advise his followers to simply cut any Trump-supporting friends or relatives out of their lives.

"If we truly believe in bending the arc of the moral universe toward justice at this place and time, his supporters need to become pariahs," he writes. "They should not be welcome where good people gather. They need to be held accountable for unleashing this hell on the rest of us."

Pavlovitz does make an exception for Trump supporters who have "come to their senses" and he advises treating them with a spirit of forgiveness and charity.

"But as far as his cheerleaders, champions, kindred spirits, sycophants, and disciples—they are proving themselves unreachable with reason, impervious to compassion, and mortally allergic to anything that reasonable human beings value," he adds.

President Donald Trump on Friday angrily lashed out at Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) after he made a trip to El Salvador to confirm the well being of Kilmar Abrega Garcia, an immigrant whom the Trump Department of Justice acknowledged had been wrongfully deported to the country.

Writing on his Truth Social page, the president accused Van Hollen of engaging in an empty publicity stunt, despite the fact that he succeeded on Thursday night in meeting with Garcia and confirming that he was alive and unharmed.

"Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland looked like a fool yesterday standing in El Salvador begging for attention from the Fake News Media, or anyone," Trump fumed. "GRANDSTANDER!!!"

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Trump and his administration have in the interpretation of experts been defying an order from the United States Supreme Court to facilitate Garcia's return to the United States, although so far no court has yet moved to hold the administration in contempt for its defiance.

Trump this week floated the idea of sending American citizens to El Salvador and even told El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele that he should construct five additional megaprisons to house "home-grown" American criminals.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected the Trump Department of Justice's request to block orders that the Trump administration facilitate the release of wrongly deported immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

The decision, which was written by Reagan-appointed Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, informed the administration that it would not "micromanage" the orders of Judge Paula Xinis, who has demanded that the administration provide daily updates its efforts to return Garcia to the United States.

What's more, Wilkinson laid out the stakes of the Garcia case in bracing terms.

"The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order," he wrote. "Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear."

Wilkinson then referred to the recent Supreme Court decision ruling that the administration facilitate Garcia's return, which he said took care to not infringe upon the powers of the executive branch as outlined by Article II in the United States Constitution.

"The Supreme Court’s decision does not, however, allow the government to do essentially nothing," the judge wrote. "It requires the government 'to ‘"facilitate" Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador. 'Facilitate' is an active verb. It requires that steps be taken as the Supreme Court has made perfectly clear."

Toward the end of his opinion, Wilkinson warned the Trump administration that they were harming their own powers by refusing to comply with court orders.

"The Executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions," he wrote. "The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time history will script the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph."

United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has reportedly been trying to calm President Donald Trump's rage at Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell due to the negative impacts it could have on the economy.

Politico reports that Bessent has "repeatedly cautioned" Trump against his desire to fire Powell, as doing so would likely set off panic in the global stock markets and further damage the American economy that has already been reeling from the president's trade disputes with nearly every country on the planet.

"Any attempt to remove Powell — a legally questionable option Trump considered in his first term — would feed instability in markets already woozy from the recent tariff whiplash," Politico writes. "Investor confidence that the central bank will make decisions based on the path of the economy rather than on short-term politics is a key underpinning of the U.S.’s global financial reputation."

ALSO READ: Trump has found a 'trapdoor' that could 'swallow the Constitution': analysis

Trump has been pushing Powell to aggressively cut interest rates as the economy is showing signs of major weakness, but Powell on Wednesday indicated that he has no plans for rate cuts in the immediate future.

What's more, Powell signaled that he was waiting to see how Trump's global trade war would affect the American economy, as he noted the tariffs implemented by the president are even larger than the ones passed nearly a century ago that economists blame for fully sinking the United States into an economic depression.

Powell's term is not set to expire until next year and Trump on Thursday indicated that he is very anxious to see him depart, despite the fact that Trump nominated Powell for this very job during his first term in office.

The Atlantic's Jonathan Chait says that President Donald Trump's refusal to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador is about much more than a wrongly deported immigrant.

As he writes in his latest piece, Chait believes that the Garcia case represents a "trapdoor" that Trump is exploiting that he believes could "swallow the Constitution" thanks to his deal with El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to permanently imprison both immigrants and potentially American citizens.

"So long as he can find at least one foreign strongman to cooperate, Trump can, if he wishes, imprison any dissident, judge, journalist, member of Congress, or candidate for office," writes Chait. "If this sounds hyperbolic, bear in mind that Trump has expressed his desire to do these things."

ALSO READ: 'Do your damn job': GOP senator ignites fury by saying she fears Trump 'retaliation'

Chait argues that this is the result of pro-Trump activists radicalizing themselves after his loss to President Joe Biden in 2020 and spending years concocting plans to bring down the pillars of American civil society that they find most threatening to their agenda.

This is why, Chait adds, Trump's second term has been so much more radical than his first.

"The previous Trump White House allowed all kinds of kooks and extremists into its ranks, but the new version has pushed the boundaries even further," he explains. "Darren Beattie, who briefly got a job in the first Trump administration before being fired over ties to white nationalism, was welcomed back into the new administration. Marko Elez, a staffer for Elon Musk, lost his DOGE job over recent social-media posts explicitly endorsing racism; Vance intervened to restore him. Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist once banished from Trump’s orbit, was able not only to brief the president, but to persuade him to fire half a dozen senior national-security officials."

In conclusion, Chait warns that the "post-liberal right’s ideas about revenge and power are currently the most influential ideas in the world" and "their implications need to be taken with deadly seriousness."

A clip of Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) making the rounds on social media has ignited controversy because she admitted to feeling intimidated by threats from President Donald Trump and his supporters.

In the video, Murkowski responded to a question about what she'd say to Americans who are worried about speaking out against Trump and she said that "we are all afraid" and then added that "I am oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real."

However, Murkowski also said that speaking out was "what [voters] asked me to do" and she said that she was going to "use my voice to the best of my ability" even if it came off as "pretty confrontational."

Many users on BlueSky reacted with anger to the clip and said that many Americans who have a lot less power and wealth than Murkowski were nonetheless not afraid to speak out against the president.

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"You're a United States Senator in the face of fascism," wrote University of Wisconsin Madison political scientist Mark Copelovitch. "Do your damn job. People with far less power than you are sitting in overseas concentration camps right now, our students are being deported, and the lying idiot you confirmed for HHS Secretary is demonizing autistic kids and lying about vaccines."

"Wow," wrote Brown University political scientist Corey Brettschneider. "This is a member of the president's party saying she is afraid (I take it) of him. This should be an inflection point. Principled Republicans need to speak up, even if they worry about what might happen, because they helped bring us here."

Other commentators were more sympathetic to Murkowski's position but still believed she could be doing more.

"I sympathize with feeling fear to do your job but I feel strongly the remedy is to quit your job, not to stop doing it, especially when people rely on you to do your job," wrote attorney Ken White.

City University of New York historian Angus Johnston encouraged his followers to watch Murkowski's full remarks and to not just react to her comment about feeling afraid.

"Lot of people dunking on this clip, but Murkowski, asked for advice for people who are afraid to speak up, acknowledges that she shares that fear," he explained. "But she then says it's 'not right' that people are made to be afraid of retaliation for speaking up, and says it won't stop her from doing her job."

Health care policy analyst Charles Gaba, meanwhile, suggested that Murkowski could do more to throw roadblocks into Trump's agenda.

"She shouldn't resign, because she'd just be replaced by a MAGA a------," he wrote. "But she could EASILY switch parties or at least go Indy... hell, she won re-election as a WRITE-IN candidate a couple of terms ago."

CNN's Natasha Bertrand on Thursday brought word that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had failed to greet French Minister of the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu after he arrived in the United States to discuss the war in Ukraine.

While talking with host John Berman, Bertrand revealed that "we are just learning that [Hegseth] failed to greet the French defense minister outside the Pentagon early this morning during an honor cordon."

She then explained why this was so potentially significant.

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"Really a remarkable break from protocol," she said. "And it's unclear why he essentially snubbed the defense minister there. He has been trying studiously, though, to avoid the press, and press would have been present at that honor cordon. And so that could be one reason why he did not appear there, but it is really a remarkable break from previous secretaries of defense, who make it a point as a show of respect to greet their counterparts outside the Pentagon when they host them for these very high level bilateral meetings."

"Huh," replied Berman. "That is something."

Hegseth has been under intense press scrutiny after it was revealed that he sent classified attack plans into a Signal group chat in the presence of The Atlantic's editor in chief last month.

Watch the video below or at this link here.

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) got some pushback during an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" for her party's response to the barrage of controversial actions being taken by the Trump administration.

During a roundtable discussion with Warren, "Morning Joe" contributor Mike Barnicle pointed out that many of the Trump administration's moves were laid out in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 long before he won the 2024 election, and he wondered why Democrats nonetheless seem to have been caught flat footed.

"They planned these things and clearly have planned them for quite some time, and it seems to me that there's no really tough, almost gangster-like response from the Democrats about what's going on," he pointed out.

"Ultimately that's not who we are," Warren replied.

"Well you better step it up then!" Barnicle replied.

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Warren evaded answering and said that voters should be concentrating on the unpopular agenda Republicans are trying to push through Congress.

"There is a pattern here, I know it feels like a dust storm, but watch what's happening back in Congress," she said. "They're moving forward every step, taking every step to do what? To be able to do giant tax giveaways for billionaires and pay for it how? On the backs of cutting Social Security, cutting our promises to our veterans, cutting health care for little babies, taking away support for our public schools, for our kids with special needs. They think they can get away with that... Here's our secret plan: We'll tell everyone right now... the truth because... this is so damned unpopular."

Watch the video below or at this link.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

President Donald Trump's determination to build a nationwide missile shield on par with the Iron Dome in Israel may be about to become even more controversial.

Reuters reports that Elon Musk's SpaceX, along with software maker Palantir and drone builder Anduril, have emerged as the "frontrunners" to build Trump's "Golden Dome" missile shield that has been widely criticized by defense experts as a costly and unnecessary proposal.

According to Reuters' sources, the three companies are pitching a plan to "build and launch 400 to more than 1,000 satellites circling the globe to sense missiles and track their movement" and to also build "a separate fleet of 200 attack satellites armed with missiles or lasers would then bring enemy missiles down."

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However, the plan includes one highly unusual clause that could give Pentagon officials pause: SpaceX is pitching its missile dome system as a subscription service in which the government would pay for access to it, which means that the United States would not actually own the infrastructure being put in place.

Reuters notes that "all three companies were founded by entrepreneurs who have been major political supporters of Trump," including most prominently Musk, who spent hundreds of billions of dollars to get the president elected.

Critics have claimed that building such a system would cost taxpayers trillions of dollars and have questioned its necessity given that no foreign country has ever launched missile attacks against the United States.

Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) accused the Trump administration of blatantly lying about the whereabouts of wrongfully deported immigrant Kilmar Ábrego García on Wednesday.

After touching down in El Salvador to inquire about García's whereabouts, Van Hollen said that he was not able to see García nor even to have a phone call with him.

Per CBS News' Scott MacFarlane, Van Hollen explicitly said that "the Trump administration is lying" about García.

"If you listen to President Trump... you would think that U.S. courts have found that Mr. Ábrego García is part of MS-13," Van Hollen said, referring to the violent criminal gang whose origins are in Central America. "But in fact they have not found that. Recently a U.S. federal judge said that the Trump administration did not have evidence to support the claim that he had ever been part of MS-13."

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He also emphasized that García has never been charged with a crime.

García has been held at the Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT), a megaprison in El Salvador that has faced numerous accusations of human rights abuses.

The Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate García's return to the country but so far it has not taken any steps to do so.

Fox Business correspondent Charlie Gasparino on Wednesday warned that President Donald Trump's international trade war strategy would soon face a do-or-die moment.

Writing on X, Gasparino outlined why Trump's plan appears fraught with peril for the American economy.

"The Trump trade strategy faces its ultimate test," he wrote. "Its weakness may soon be exposed as we gird for all out trade war with China while trying to convince the world now to join us."

He then said that the Trump administration had put itself in a "difficult, self-inflicted spot" because they "decided to shoot first at the world, and then focus on China while now asking the same trading partners we p---ed off to help us triangulate a common foe."

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Gasparino then predicted that the administration would have to make some unwanted concessions if it had any hope for this strategy to succeed.

"[Treasury Secretary Scott] Bessent may wiggle out of this by cutting half-ass deals with the EU, Canada and Mexico, but it wont be easy or pretty," he warned. "And it was so avoidable. The damage China has done to free trade is enormous; it's a command control economy, a militaristic super power that obviously uses our public markets and openness to further its gains. You can't say that about Canada and the EU or Israel. I'm just here to report what's going down, but a little common sense shows that we have backed ourselves into a negotiating corner."

Trump Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Wednesday horrified many observers when he floated raising the retirement age for air traffic controllers.

Duffy's remarks came during an appearance on Fox Business in which he wondered why air traffic controllers retired from their jobs after 25 years of service, and he suggested that America could fix its current shortage of ATCs by having them work longer.

"We have too many controllers that retire after 25 years of service," Duffy complained to Fox Business's Stuart Varney. "And so we have to look and go, is this a national security issue? Is this a safety issue? And should these air traffic controllers be retiring after 25 years of service?"

As critics noted, extensive studies have shown that having ATCs work past the age of 56 significantly reduces their effectiveness and increases the likelihood that a deadly mistake occurs on their watch.

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In fact, author Tyler King pointed to the specific law passed by Congress that requires ATCs to retire at 56 specifically for this reason.

"Air traffic controllers are required by law to retire at a certain age because the job is incredibly stressful and requires such a high level of mental acuity and focus," King wrote on BlueSky.

"Yes, it's a safety issue!" exclaimed Princeton historian Kevin Kruse. "You don't have to "look into it," Encyclopedia Brownshirt. They've already studied this extensively."

"25 years seems like a long time to do an incredibly stressful job that requires intense focus the entire time you're on the clock," remarked journalist James Surowiecki on X.

Economist Patrick Chovanec was amused that Duffy was mulling making the ATCs work for longer given that Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency had been trying to push them out the door just weeks ago.

"I thought they were PUSHING for people to retire early?" he asked.

National security attorney Bradley Moss commented on the seeming cruelty of the idea being floated by Duffy and wrote, "You are no longer allowed to retire."

A new report from the New York Times reveals that many of the big law firms that struck deals with President Donald Trump to avoid having their security clearances stripped are now finding that they're getting more than they bargain for.

Specifically, the Times reports that the firms thought that the tens of millions of dollars worth of pro-bono work they agreed to do for the Trump administration would revolve around relatively uncontroversial issues such as cases involving veterans' benefits.

However, it seems that Trump and his White House are taking a far more expansive view of the agreements and the Times reports that the administration could even try to force the firms to represent Trump or his allies in criminal cases free of charge.

"The emerging gap between what the firms initially thought they agreed to and what Mr. Trump says they can be used for shows how the deals did little to insulate them from his whims," the Times reports. "Further demands on the firms from Mr. Trump could raise the potential for conflicts with paying clients and could further fuel internal dissension."

ALSO READ: Trump business allies reeling as they realize 'he is crazier than they thought': analysis

This uncertainty is compounded by the fact that it's not known if the deals the firms reached with Trump were formal written agreements or handshake deals.

Harold Hongju Koh, a professor of international law at Yale Law School, tells the Times that he thinks that the firms did not properly understand the type of administration they were dealing with when they decided to cave to Trump's threats.

"They thought they made one-shot deals which they would fulfill,” he said. “But the administration seems to think that they have subjected these firms to indentured servitude.”

All of this led New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt to wonder on X whether "the deals between Trump and the law firms" could ultimately"be unraveling."

CEOs who thought that President Donald Trump would be good for business say they got a massive shock earlier this month when he unveiled his "Liberation Day" tariffs that sent the stock market nose diving.

As political commentator Matthew Yglesias writes, Trump's allies in the business community learned that Trump "is crazier than they thought" thanks to his erratic tariff policies, and he makes the case that they should understand that Trump is behaving just as destructively in other policy areas.

Among other things, Yglesias points to the fact that Trump recently fired several national security officials at the behest of Laura Loomer, a right-wing influencer with a long history of pushing racist conspiracy theories whom even many Republicans regard as being akin to "radioactive waste from Godzilla."

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Yglesias goes on to document Trump policy blunders with dissolving USAID, which he said has led to the deaths of children in Africa; his slashing of scientific research and education funding; and his decision to let Elon Musk and his staff at the Department of Government Efficiency make cuts to staffing and regional offices at the Social Security Administration.

"My point is that far from seeing Trump’s reversal as a positive sign, it ought to be an eye-opening moment for sane people on the center-right about the fact that these guys really will do things that are incredibly crazy and stupid," he warns. "They are, in fact, doing many such things."