| Friend,
Welcome to the mid-year edition of the Free Press Action Update!
2025 has been a wild ride, to say the least. With so much chaos and cruelty to navigate, it’s hard to keep track of it all — and that’s a feature of the Trump regime, not a bug. So we wanted to reflect on the last six months and the road ahead to put everything into perspective.
Let’s get started: WE CALLED OUT THE TECH BROLIGARCHS READY TO SERVE TRUMP Elon Musk, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Amazon Chairman Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg — who all gave millions of dollars to Trump’s inaugural committee — took center stage at Trump’s inauguration in January, relegating senior government officials who would traditionally be seated near the front of the dais to overflow seating.
The broligarchs’ presence set the tone for the direction of the media and tech landscape as we know it under Trump 2.0: Ensuring the health and safety of users on social-media platforms is an afterthought. As long as tech CEOs curry favor with Trump, billions in federal contracts are likely to follow. WE DEFENDED — AND CONTINUE TO DEFEND — EXISTENTIAL ATTACKS ON PUBLIC MEDIA
Free Press Action Co-CEO Craig Aaron speaking at a “Protect Public Media Day” protest Donald Trump’s attacks on public-media funding have been relentless. His administration is formally requesting that Congress rescind more than a billion in already-approved funds for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — and also issued an executive order to end all federal support for NPR and PBS.
Despite Trump’s repeated attacks and lies, public broadcasting remains an incredibly popular use of taxpayer dollars. A Free Press Action poll found that more than half the people in the United States support federal funding to create and expand local and independent news.
We’ve already mobilized supporters like you several times this year to speak out against these attacks on public media. With the House’s official approval of the rescission request, we’re ramping up the pressure to urge senators in the coming days to listen to their constituents and reject these unjust cuts to an institution that has served the American public for more than 50 years. WE’RE CONFRONTING RISING AUTHORITARIANISM
National Guard soldiers assemble in Los Angeles as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on protesters. Credit: U.S. Northern Command via Wikimedia Commons This year, the threats to press freedom and democracy haven’t just escalated — they’ve become the centerpiece of the administration’s increasingly authoritarian agenda. We’ve seen this playbook before — but this time, the attacks are faster and louder.
From Trump deploying the National Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles to crack down on protesters demonstrating against his administration’s cruel, illegal and inhumane deportations, to local broadcasters advising their reporters to be careful about how they cover stories for fear of government retribution, the stakes are getting higher by the hour.
Free Press Action has responded with clarity and purpose. We created our Future of Freedom webinar series in which we bring experts, community members and lawmakers together to shed light on Trump’s attempted authoritarian takeover of our country. We’ve mobilized supporters to join nationwide rallies to protest Trump’s total seizure of power. And we’ll continue to jump into action to protect free speech and independent journalism. Sign up to be the first to hear about future Free Press Action webinars. WE CREATED A PLAN TO TRANSFORM LOCAL NEWS Lawmakers across the country are increasingly coming around to an undeniable reality: We need policy change to ensure that communities have the news and information they need, especially as corporate consolidation wreaks havoc on the journalism industry, disinformation accelerates amid the explosion of AI, and tech broligarchs gut content-moderation policies on social-media platforms.
What kind of policy solution should lawmakers pursue? On June 12, the Media Power Collaborative — a national coalition run by Free Press Action — hosted a webinar to answer that very question.
With the help of three expert speakers, we issued a bold call to action to lawmakers: Enact a 1 percent tax on the advertising revenues of corporate and tech giants. Then use the money to fund independent grantmaking bodies to support local news. WE MOBILIZED TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE TO SPEAK OUT In the last six months alone, we’ve: Generated more than 50,000 petition signatures Welcomed more than 3,000 people to six webinars Driven more than 2,000 calls to Congress And we’re just getting started.
With your support, we'll continue making real progress in upholding First Amendment rights. But as authoritarian attacks and policy proposals from the Trump administration and their backers in Congress intensify, new threats will put those rights even further at risk.
We’re facing these huge lobbying machines, but that hasn’t stopped us from putting together countless briefs, filings, policy papers and visits to Capitol Hill. Our policy team does incredible work against incredible odds, and a lot of it happens outside the public eye: Free Press Action is standing up to corporate power in every arena of the fight against the oligarchy.
That's why your support today is so critical. With your help, we will fight Trump’s attacks on journalists, protesters and the truth. We will defend funding for public media. We will move to enact bold policies to save and transform local news. We will hold accountable the media and tech billionaires who powered Trump’s return. And if the federal government won’t help people or carry out its responsibilities, we will continue to take our fights to the states.
Make an urgent gift to Free Press Action today to help sustain our work over the next six months.
Thank you for reading and being a part of this incredible community,
All of us at Free Press and Free Press Action | 