Americans feel free expression is eroding

Let’s begin today with a reality check: Only 54% of Americans think they are “very” or “mostly” free to express their political views without government interference or punishment today. And they think it’ll be worse ten years from now.

“Americans feel that free expression rights are eroding,” the Knight Foundation concluded after commissioning a survey by SSRS.

The survey found a “stunning 30-point decline when asked to compare their freedom to express themselves without fear of government interference or punishment ten years ago to their expectations for ten years from now.”

Note that this survey doesn’t say Americans are forgoing their First Amendment rights; we all know that’s not the case. Opposition to President Trump’s free press/free speech crackdown is audible, visible and very often successful (read on for more on that).

But Knight’s report suggests that Americans are aware of the potential consequences. They also suspect that the news media feels Trump’s pressure. Respondents were asked how free Americans are to “report on current events or news about the government” without punishment, and 24% said very free; 26% said mostly free; 30% said somewhat free; 14% said not very free; and 6% said not free at all. That’s quite a range.

For what it’s worth, my answer would have been “mostly free,” since the Trump administration has doled out many forms of punishment, so to speak, but journalists have not been deterred from doing the work.

Unsurprisingly, but still notably, the groups with the greatest confidence about expressing their free speech rights in 2026 are conservative media consumers, Fox News fans, Republicans generally, older people, White people, and people with “high social involvement.” (Knight finds that people who are civically active “are more likely to say they are free to use their free expression rights,” perhaps because they’re already out there doing so.)

The groups expressing a lot less confidence include Black people, Hispanic people, young people, LGBTQ Americans, “people who didn’t vote in 2024,” and “people who do not identify a major news source.”

This is such impressive work by Reuters reporters Nate Raymond and Jan Wolfe. The headline: “Trump vowed to ‘bring free speech back.’ Judges in 75 cases ruled that he has stifled it.”

The reporters combed through court filings from across the country and “identified 75 federal-judge rulings finding Trump’s government infringed on First-Amendment rights including freedoms of speech, religion, and the press.”

The reporters combed through court filings from across the country and “identified 75 federal-judge rulings finding Trump’s government infringed on First-Amendment rights including freedoms of speech, religion, and the press.”

The reporters also anticipated what-about-Joe-Biden whataboutism and did those requisite searches. They found that during Biden’s four years in office, there were just 13 instances of judges ruling against his administration over First Amendment issues, and most of those involved vaccine mandates, “which were challenged on religious-freedom grounds.” Read the full story here…

CNN’s Kara Scannell reports: In a motion this morning, Don Lemon’s lawyers asked a judge to dismiss an indictment tied to his presence at a protest in a Minnesota church earlier this year, arguing the charges violate the First Amendment and are a result of a vindictive prosecution.

The motion cites more than a dozen statements from Trump and his aides, including Trump’s remarks about Lemon at the WHCA dinner last month. “The government should not be permitted to use criminal prosecutions to chill journalism disfavored by the president,” his lawyers wrote. Here’s a PDF of the filing.

>> As soon as FCC chair Brendan Carr led a vote to repeal the national TV ownership cap yesterday, opponents said they would sue to stop it, arguing that only Congress has the authority to make such a change. (CNN)

>> Earlier this week GOP Sen. John Kennedy “voiced unease” with other Carr actions, saying “sometimes the FCC scares me right now” and cautioning that “you’re getting into the foothills of violating the First Amendment.” (Politico)

>> The WSJ’s Hannah Critchfield and Shane Shifflett showed “how ICE is weaponizing social media against its critics” in a front-page story. (WSJ)

Yesterday, the president trotted out his old nickname for The Washington Post, the “ComPost,” and said, “I really believe their fake ‘reporting’ is treasonous.”

It’s not, and editor Matt Murray said as much in a statement defending The Post’s high standards. “Efforts to discredit our work will not alter our commitment to delivering fair, independent, and accurate journalism,” he wrote.

CNN’s team took a close look at Trump’s anger over news reports about the depleted US munitions stockpile here, noting that “Trump appeared to acknowledge that at least some of the information circulating about the stockpiles was accurate. He said his administration would seek ‘long term jail sentences’ for those found to have made the information public.”

Why, Abby Phillip asked last night, would he be “calling it treasonous and saying he’s going to go after leakers if it wasn’t true?”

Nexstar and Tegna have been dealt another big setback. The state attorneys general who successfully sued to block the merger went back to court last month, claiming that Nexstar was violating District Judge Troy Nunley’s injunction by placing its current and recent former executives on Tegna’s board.

Yesterday, Nunley sided with the states again, saying that “Nexstar officials cannot serve on the board of Tegna as an order remains in place to keep the two companies separate,” Deadline’s Ted Johnson reports.

Nunley’s ruling was scathing: He wrote that Nexstar and Tegna’s conduct was “brazen” and admonished them “for their lack of candor.”

Nunley “also ordered a set of steps to ensure compliance, including providing board minutes and other documents to the plaintiffs on a monthly basis,” Johnson writes.

For all the speculation about the state AGs maybe striking a settlement deal allowing Paramount–WBD, keep in mind that Nexstar–Tegna has been frozen in place for almost four months, with a trial date set for next July…

Paramount and the NFL “agreed to pause their negotiations over higher broadcast rights fees while the company deals with legal challenges to its planned $110 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery,” Bloomberg’s Hannah Miller reports.

The Paramount deal “was supposed to establish a baseline for new media rights terms with the NFL’s other partners,” like Fox. Yesterday, Fox said “that it wouldn’t restart contract talks with the league until after the 2029 season.”

Matt Lasswell. His interim appointment was announced internally yesterday, and it’s being reported here first. Lasswell is replacing Adam O’Neal, who blindsided staffers by quitting last week. He still hasn’t explained why.

Lasswell joined The Post in 2018 as associate op-ed editor after a falling out with his bosses at the WSJ. He was promoted to deputy opinion editor a year ago, so his promotion gives the Opinion section a bit of much-needed stability.

>> Pakistan “has begun a sweeping new crackdown on reporters that rights groups and local journalists say will close off one of the last remaining ways to get independent journalism about the world’s fifth-most-populous country,” Elian Peltier reports. (NYT)

>> Senate Democrats have introduced a new bill “to roll back Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s news media restrictions at the Pentagon, stating that those are suppressing independent reporting at the department.” There’s no reason to think the bill will move forward as long as the GOP controls the Senate. (The Hill)

>> The Government Accountability Office has confirmed what responsible news outlets reported as it was happening: Elon Musk’s DOGE “inflated the $110 billion it said it saved the federal government.” Will all the irresponsible outlets that did DOGE’s bidding and promoted the bogus #s follow up now? (CNBC)

USA Today Co. has struck a deal with Palantir “to better monetize its customer data,” Poynter’s Angela Fu reports.

Anticipating many raised eyebrows, USA Today chief executive Mike Reed said “all of our data remains our data,” and Palantir’s systems will simply speed up ad targeting, tailored subscription offerings, etc. “What may take us a considerable amount of time to build internally, we can do in a matter of weeks or months with Palantir,” Reed said.

CNN’s Ramishah Maruf writes: “Meta must pay $567 million into a fund to remedy its role in a youth mental health crisis, on top of a previously decided $375 million in penalties, a New Mexico judge ruled Thursday.”

This is the latest fallout from the March finding of liability after a trial on child safety. Per yesterday’s ruling, Meta must also “delete the accounts and all personal information collected from accounts belonging to a user under 13 years of age.”

E.W. Scripps reported a huge Q2 loss, days after laying off staffers in newsrooms across the country. (TVN) Roku’s Q2 earnings crushed Wall Street estimates. (Variety) Nintendo “smashed its first-quarter earnings estimates,” bolstered by “strong games sales and US tariff refunds.” (The Verge) Nielsen announced a deal to buy DoubleVerify for $2.15 billion in a “bid to augment digital measurement.” (Variety)

“Suno, the most popular AI music creation tool, spent years making it incredibly easy to generate music. Now it’s introducing download limits, watermarking and fingerprinting to stop people flooding streaming services with AI slop,” TechRadar’s Graham Barlow writes.

Barlow says it suggests something important: “Even the companies building generative AI are starting to realize unlimited AI creation comes with unintended consequences.”

Apple TV’s “Widow’s Bay” is “setting a milestone” for the streamer as “its first series to get a theatrical exposure,” Deadline’s Nellie Andreeva reports. The final three episodes of the breakout horror comedy will hit select AMC Theatres “for free, one-night-only fan screenings.”

The new “Spider-Man” sensation “has landed the highest-grossing first week in domestic box office history,” surpassing “$500 million in North America in its first seven days, becoming the fastest film to reach that half-billion milestone,” THR’s Ryan Gajewski writes. This weekend will be huge too…

Least surprising news of the day: The World Cup hydration breaks will continue. “FIFA is exploring selling US media rights for the next two tournaments together that would keep the controversial hydration breaks that boosted ad revenue,” the aforementioned Hannah Miller wrote yesterday, citing a source.

The negotiations are “still very early,” and FIFA “is also interested in potentially bundling rights for English and Spanish broadcasts together instead of separately…”

This edition of Reliable Sources was edited by Andrew Kirell and produced with Liam Reilly. Email us your feedback and tips here.