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What happens to freedom of the press when the president can bully media outlets he doesn’t like into paying big money to end his meritless lawsuits against them?   

Buckle up. We’re about to find out.

Per , Paramount Global — the parent company of CBS News — is in talks to settle a $10 billion dollar lawsuit President Donald Trump filed against the network last November shortly after the election. The president’s lawsuit claims “60 Minutes,” the network’s flagship news program, violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act by editing an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris to make her more appealing to viewers.

The suit is flatly without merit. For starters, editing interviews is standard journalistic practice. Just ask FOX News, which has edited its own  and  of the president to tighten up rambling answers. Those cuts are protected by the First Amendment, which guarantees the press broad freedom to make editorial decisions about the content they print or air. And laws like Texas’ are designed to prevent used car salesmen from passing off lemons to unsuspecting buyers, not to police journalism.

That’s why CBS’ initial public statements about Trump’s suit rightly struck a defiant and principled tone. The network  it would “vigorously defend” itself, correctly arguing Trump’s attempt to “punish” CBS for its editorial choices is “barred by the First Amendment.”

So what happened? Why is CBS now reported to be capitulating? There are two reasons, neither of them good for our free and independent press: Money and power. 

Trump’s lawsuit isn’t concerned with winning so much as imposing a financial and political cost on people that say things he doesn’t like.

First, the money. Paramount Global hopes to merge with Skydance Media, a deal worth some $8 billion to heiress Shari Redstone, Paramount’s owner — but only if it’s approved by the Federal Communications Commission.

That’s where the raw governmental power comes in. Brendan Carr, Trump’s pick to run the FCC, has made clear in  that the agency’s review of the merger will take into consideration Trump’s “news distortion complaint.” And in private, Carr  warned Paramount that addressing Trump’s dissatisfaction was a precursor to approval. In other words: Nice little network you got there — be a shame if anything happened to it.

This kind of pressure from government regulators — “jawboning” — is all the more objectionable when it’s aimed toward the personal benefit of the president. Rather than stand up for the journalists at CBS, Redstone appears to be , even  an unedited transcript to the FCC after refusing to do so for months.

What is jawboning? And does it violate the First Amendment?

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Indirect government censorship is still government censorship — and it must be stopped.

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That’s bad enough. But wait — there’s more.

Our litigious president is fresh off  his 2021 lawsuit against Meta, which alleged the company’s decision to ban Trump from Facebook after Jan. 6, 2021, violated his First Amendment rights. Like his suit against CBS, Trump’s class action suit was without merit; private social media companies have their own First Amendment right to run their platforms as they see fit. They are not government actors, as the district court dismissing the cases against social media companies . Nevertheless, the company agreed this week to pay $25 million to end the appeal. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who attended the president’s inauguration, appears to have concluded that settling the suit was a small price to pay for political favor and access.

Late last year, Trump also  with ABC News for $15 million dollars, ending a defamation suit. That suit  on a George Stephanopoulos interview with Rep. Nancy Mace during which Stephanopoulos mischaracterized the outcome of writer E. Jean Carroll’s successful sexual abuse and defamation claims against the former president. Stephanopoulos stated that Trump was “found liable for rape” and “defaming the victim of that rape,” when a jury had  Trump sexually abused Carroll — not that he raped her, as the term is narrowly defined in New York’s criminal code.

Trump’s dictatorial appetite to use lawfare to silence or punish outlets that publish content he doesn’t like is most plainly on display in his ongoing suit against pollster J. Ann Selzer and The Des Moines Register. 

ABC’s case presented real challenges, but the network may have been able to mount a sturdy defense. The First Amendment provides news outlets significant breathing room when commenting on public figures like President Trump, as established in the Supreme Court’s landmark 1964 ruling New York Times v. Sullivan. While the jury specifically rejected finding Trump guilty of rape, the district court judge  the “definition of rape in the New York Penal Law is far narrower than the meaning of ‘rape’ in common modern parlance, its definition in some dictionaries, in some federal and state criminal statutes, and elsewhere.”

Per , however, the network ultimately chose to settle what might have proven to be a challenging case rather than risk Trump’s ire — or provide the current Supreme Court a potential opportunity to weaken Sullivan’s broad protections. After all, the plaintiff has been loud and clear about his desire to “” American libel law. 

Trump’s dictatorial appetite to use lawfare to silence or punish outlets that publish content he doesn’t like is most plainly on display in his ongoing suit against pollster J. Ann Selzer and The Des Moines Register. 

FIRE’s defense of pollster J. Ann Selzer against Donald Trump’s lawsuit is First Amendment 101

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A polling miss isn’t ‘consumer fraud’ or ‘election interference’ — it’s just a prediction and is protected by the First Amendment.

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Selzer, hailed for decades by political observers as the dean of Iowa polling, conducted an early November poll published by The Register giving Harris a three-point lead in the Hawkeye State. Despite correctly forecasting Trump’s Iowa victories in 2016 and 2020, Selzer’s polling missed the mark this cycle. But Trump wasn’t content to take the win, choosing instead to file a claim against her under Iowa’s Consumer Fraud Act. 

FIRE represents Selzer against the president’s bogus claim. Americans have a First Amendment right to make political predictions, and newspapers have a First Amendment right to publish them. But Trump’s lawsuit isn’t concerned with winning so much as imposing a financial and political cost on people that say things he doesn’t like. That’s un-American.

Elections have consequences, it’s true. But silence cannot be one of them. We must protect our free press against meritless lawsuits and the coercive power of the federal government — lest we miss it when it’s gone.