The Trump administration is embracing an intimidation strategy to silence critical media coverage. Here’s how it works: A federal agency launches a pretextual investigation into a perceived enemy, keeps the investigation open to coerce compliance, and resists any effort to have a court review the lawfulness of the agency’s actions.

There’s no better example than the Federal Trade Commission’s retaliatory investigation of Media Matters for America for its critical coverage of one of the Trump administration’s most powerful allies.

Such investigations aim stifle speech and chill the questioning of those in power. They’re an acute danger to nonprofit organizations that Americans rely on for critical information. That’s why 17 nonprofit organizations, led by The Intercept’s Press Freedom Defense Fund, filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The brief, authored by Albert Sellars LLP, asks the appellate court to uphold a preliminary injunction to protect Media Matters’ speech rights.

Media Matters is a media watchdog. In 2023, it published an article detailing how advertising from companies like Apple and IBM appeared next to pro-Nazi and other antisemitic content on X. The platform’s owner, Elon Musk, responded with what he called a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters, alleging the nonprofit systematically manipulated X to defame his company.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called on “conservative state Attorneys General” to investigate; Missouri and Texas did just that. Then the FTC followed suit seeking details concerning Media Matters’ reporting, communications with third parties, and six years of its financial information, potentially including donors.

The FTC’s intent was clear. Chair Andrew Ferguson vowed to target “the radical left” and “progressives.” The District of Columbia federal district court concluded that the FTC’s investigation was ““a straightforward First Amendment violation.”

This tactic of retaliatory investigation has been mirrored by other federal agencies, particularly the Department of Justice as it targets hospitals providing gender-affirming care, and the Federal Communications Commission as its tries to quiet media organizations.

And that’s just one way the Trump administration attacks speech rights.

For instance, the Justice Department is trying to use the FACE Act – legislation designed to protect abortion clinics and patents from violent intimidation — to stifle newsgathering. Pointing to a provision referencing places of worship, the DOJ is prosecuting journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for the crime of reporting on a protest at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. The claims are farcical: Lemon stands accused of meeting with activists before a protest, not disclosing the location of the protest until it happened, interviewing protesters and congregants, and getting in the face of the pastor while asking hard questions. The indictment, which was rejected by a magistrate and appellate court, is even less specific on Fort’s alleged crime; the administration seems to contend she violated the law by standing beside Lemon when he was interviewing the pastor.

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The same chilling intent is evident in the recent search of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s home and the seizure of her devices. The warrant greenlighted the search because Natanson’s articles allegedly contained national defense information said to be provided by a government contractor. But the search wasn’t just focused on their alleged conversations; it was all-inclusive. The feds captured an account on the encrypted messaging app Signal with more than 1,000 confidential sources from more than 120 agencies. In a hearing last Friday, a federal judge in Virginia lambasted prosecutors for failing to disclose that news reporters are protected from such searches and seizures by the Privacy Protection Act. And it was revealed that the government had tried multiple times to get a broader warrant, which the court had rejected.

Anyone who works with investigative reporters knows that the seizure of a Signal account effectively halts their ability to do their jobs. And that was the goal: silencing a journalist reporting on how government workers are reacting to the abuses of their employer.

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The Trump administration’s anti-speech campaign doesn’t only scare journalists. The Department of Homeland Security has, for instance, deployed administrative subpoenas to unmask anonymous social media accounts critical of the violent activities of immigration agents. From the founding of this country, the right to speak anonymously has been protected under the First Amendment. Federalists Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay signed the Federalist Papers under the “Publius” name; Anti-Federalists also published under pseudonyms. “Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority,” the Supreme Court wrote in the 1995 McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission case. “It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation-and their ideas from suppression-at the hand of an intolerant society.”

None of these Trump administration actions are intended to uphold a legal principle. They are intended to punish and intimidate. In Media Matters’ brief supporting the continued injunction, its attorneys write that the federal investigation “has breathed new life into the ‘culture of fear’ within Media Matters. Employees refrain from investigating ‘even tangentially-related public figures and events because they could be flashpoints for further retaliation.’”

That’s the strategy in the Lemon and Fort prosecutions, Natanson’s search and seizure, and the administrative subpoenas aiming to identify anonymous accounts. The administration seeks to instill fear, but we will not be chilled.

The coalition behind the amicus brief includes the Press Freedom Defense Fund, CalMatters, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Coalition for Independent Technology Research, the Dangerous Speech Project, Defending Rights & Dissent, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the First Amendment Coalition, Free Press, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Lion Publishers, MuckRock Foundation, The National Coalition Against Censorship, Open Vallejo, the Project On Government Oversight, Public Knowledge, and Reporters Without Borders USA.

The post Trump Uses the Courts to Intimidate Critics. The Media Must Fight Back. appeared first on The Intercept.

The FACE Act was written with a very specific purpose: to protect those seeking abortions without restricting First Amendment-protected speech. Passed in 1994 under President Bill Clinton, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act arose after a horrific string of attacks on reproductive care facilities and providers across the United States.

Decades later, the Trump administration is twisting this law to chill dissent by prosecuting journalists for the crime of reporting.

Two journalists, former CNN host Don Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort, were arrested Friday after covering a recent protest at a Minneapolis-area church. According to the Department of Justice, Lemon’s crime was a start-to-finish livestream reporting on the protest, beginning with an organizing meeting and concluding with the protest itself at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. As for Fort, the only allegation proffered by federal prosecutors is that she and Lemon approached the pastor — who has a day job running the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office — in “close proximity” and tried to oppress and intimidate him by “peppering him with questions.”

Such actions, prosecutors allege, are violations of the FACE Act, which includes a provision focused on houses of worship.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi brought these charges despite the fact that the FACE Act protects “expressive conduct (including peaceful picketing or other peaceful demonstration) from the jeopardy of prosecution.” That language clearly did not confuse a federal magistrate and an appellate court when they refused to issue a warrant. So the Justice Department convinced a grand jury to indict them.

Courts have found the right to report and record events of public concern almost universally to be “expressive conduct.”

The FACE Act itself provides specific instructions on the kind of behavior that constitutes a violation. It notes that one cannot interfere, intimidate, or obstruct ingress or egress to a reproductive health services clinic or to or from a place of worship, “rendering passage to or from such a place of worship unreasonably difficult or hazardous.”

It’s this language about a place of worship that the Trump administration is leaning on. But it’s clear that this language ensures that the law applies only to actions involving restriction on physical freedom of movement, interference in access to property, or actions causing a person to experience reasonable fear of harm.

In this case, the term “interfere with” means to restrict a person’s freedom of movement. “Intimidate” means to place a person in reasonable apprehension of bodily harm to themselves or to others. And “physical obstruction” means making it unreasonably difficult or dangerous to enter or leave a facility that provides reproductive health services or a place of worship.

Looking at video of the protest, it’s clear that these journalists weren’t interfering, obstructing, or intimidating in ways that would violate the FACE Act. Covering a protest — even one inside a church — isn’t a crime. And asking questions — including difficult ones — isn’t a violation of religious freedom.

These are things all journalists do, which is precisely what makes this prosecution so chilling.

Courts have warned about the danger of the FACE Act being abused by overzealous prosecutors for years.

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In the case New York v. Operation Rescue, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals noted in 2001 that courts must prevent abuse of the FACE Act because an erroneous application “threatens to impinge legitimate First Amendment activity.” The courts have made a distinction between actions that make going to a place of worship “unpleasant or even emotionally difficult, including yelling,” and conduct that is prohibited by the FACE Act. Since the act does not criminalize protesting or even unpleasant yelling, it certainly does not criminalize two reporters doing their job by covering a community crisis — even if that community crisis is at a house of worship.

This, of course, isn’t the first attempt by the Trump administration to stifle the press. Just this month, for instance, federal agents raided the home of a Washington Post reporter and seized her devices in a leak investigation.

As the Trump administration’s attacks on press freedom continue to mount, it’s critical that journalists who find themselves under fire find support. As the director of the Press Freedom Defense Fund, I’m working to make sure that Fort has the resources she’ll need to mount a strong defense.

Weaponizing the FACE Act against journalists is a dangerous escalation from the White House. What’s critical is that the media cover this attack, look at the administration’s motivations, and pay attention to who is being prosecuted — whether it’s a Washington Post reporter with a deep Rolodex of government sources, or two Black journalists covering anti-ICE activism in Minnesota.

The news industry must also continue to chronicle the litany of abuses carried out by the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement apparatus on the streets of Minneapolis and other cities across the U.S. This is not simply a shambolic legal gambit, but also an obvious attempt to divert attention away from the horrifying assault that has resulted in true violations of First Amendment rights of protesters and journalists, and the brutal killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.

The post The Farcical Case Against Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for Protest Reporting appeared first on The Intercept.