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Did Trump Violate AP's Freedom Of Speech? Fox Says Yes, But Its Stars Say No

The stars of Fox News have used their shows to defend President Donald Trump’s banning of Associated Press reporters from the Oval Office and Air Force One because the wire service refuses to adopt the administration’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” They’ve characterized the AP’s actions as “deadnaming” the Gulf and said that “the White House is right” to restrict its access in response.

But Fox has also reportedly signed on to a letter calling on the Trump White House to restore the AP’s access and characterizing the ban as “serious breach” of the First Amendment's protections for the press. So has Newsmax, whose on-air talent praised the White House response while attacking the “Fake News AP” as “Associated Propaganda.”

The disconnect demonstrates how Trumpist propaganda channels like Fox and Newsmax occasionally try to bolster their standing by play-acting as legitimate news channels which share the values of the free press, even as their on-air product plays to their right-wing viewership base.

Oliver Darcy reported last Wednesday that “40 news organizations have signed onto a confidential letter circulated by the White House Correspondents’ Association supporting the AP,” including both legitimate news outlets and “the pro-Trump channels Fox News and Newsmax.”

Darcy published the letter, which said in part:

The First Amendment prohibits the government from asserting control over how news organizations make editorial decisions. Any attempt to punish journalists for those decisions is a serious breach of this Constitutional protection.

The decision to exclude The Associated Press from covering the president aboard Air Force One and in the Oval Office is an escalation of a dispute that does not serve the presidency or the public. News organizations must be free to make their own editorial decisions without fear of government intrusion.

...

We once again ask the White House to lift this ban on the AP immediately and to underscore its support for press freedom.

But that sort of defense of the First Amendment principles and repudiation of the Trump White House’s actions is a far cry from what the viewers of Fox and Newsmax have been hearing on those channels.

Indeed, the night before Darcy’s report, Fox star Jesse Watters said of the controversy on his prime-time show: “The Associated Press took Mexico's side. They're deadnaming the Gulf, so they got kicked out of the White House.”

Watters likewise said on his February 12 show, “The Associated Press is sticking with Mexico, and now they are banned from the Oval Office,” adding, “Kick them out. Kick them out, and kick some other people out while you're there. I have a list.”

Watters’ colleagues were similarly blithe about the prospect of the federal government reducing access to reporters due to the editorial decisions of their outlet.

“So-called journalists in the media mob are ramping up their petty anti-Trump reporting,” Jason Chaffetz offered while guest-hosting the February 14 edition of Hannity. “For example, The Associated Press is still refusing to refer to the Gulf of America by its new name, despite recognition from Google, Apple, and other major outlets.”

After reading a quote from a White House official who said the AP’s decision is “not just divisive, but it also exposes the Associated Press' commitment to misinformation,” he commented, “The White House is right.”

Chaffetz later asked Fox contributor Joe Concha for his view of the White House’s restrictions on the AP. “It’s the best unintentional comedy of the week, Jason, hearing how the Associated Press, because they haven't been permitted onto Air Force One, into the Oval Office, that's somehow a threat to free press and a chilling attack on the First Amendment,” Concha said.

Other Fox hosts focused on mocking former CNN anchor Jim Acosta’s call for the press corps to take collective action and stop attending events from which the AP was barred. Greg Gutfeld said on the Wednesday edition of his show that the press would “love any excuse not to cover all of Trump's wins” and commented, “Your scam is up, media, and trust me, the hits are going to keep coming.” And guest-hosting Friday’s edition of The Ingraham Angle, Charles Hurt said of Acosta’s remarks, “I think that this derangement syndrome is in full swing, not just in celebrity la-la land, but also among our press brethren.”

Special Report, the flagship “news” show hosted by Bret Baier, has not addressed the controversy according to a review of its transcripts in the Nexis database.

Likewise, Newsmax hosts Rob Schmitt, Rick Leventhal, and Ed Henry teamed up to mock the AP and any concerns over whether the White House had breached the First Amendment during the February 13 edition of Schmitt’s show.

On-screen text castigated the “fake news AP” and called the outlet “Associated Propaganda” as Schmitt introduced the segment, blaming the Associated Press for “refusing to accept Gulf of America” and said that “the media has no right to be” in the Oval Office.

Henry, a former president of the WHCA, began his response by saying that he would not be a “hypocrite” and “always stand up for the First Amendment.” But he went on to criticize the AP on the grounds that “it’s called the Gulf of America,” adding, “If you are not going to follow the actual name of the body of water, then I can understand why they don't want to give you access. You’re not playing with the basic facts.”

Leventhal also criticized the AP, saying that “they are supposed to be free of bias and opinion” and that by refusing to adopt the Gulf of America moniker, “you're saying you don't agree with the president, you don't like what the president did, and you're not going to play by his rules. That is completely opposite of what the Associated Press is supposed to be.” He added: “You can't make those kinds of unilateral decisions. You report the news, Associated Press.”

“That's exactly right,” Schmitt replied.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Why America Needs Birthright Citizenship

It's part of who we are.

The White House executive order theoretically ending birthright citizenship grandly proclaims its purpose as "Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship." As we've come to expect from this administration, the proposed change to American law would do the exact opposite. Also in keeping with the Trumpian model, the president's comments accompanying the signing were false. "Birthright, that's a big one," Trump frowned. "It's ridiculous. We are the only country in the world that does this with the birthright, as you know, and it's just absolutely ridiculous."

Trump frequently adds "as you know" or "as you know very well" to his reality-bending comments to rope the hearers (usually members of the press) into a kind of involuntary consent. They have no opportunity to object or protest, and so he seems to rope them into his various fantasies, such as the lie that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election or that Ukraine hosted Hillary Clinton's CrowdStrike email server.

But, no, we don't know very well that the United States is the only country in the world that grants unconditional birthright citizenship. Not even close. According to a 2018 report by the Library of Congress, practically the entire Western Hemisphere does the same, including Canada and Mexico. Pakistan too gives citizenship to every child born within its borders, and Germany and the UK have something close — extending it to babies with one citizen or permanent resident parent.

Nor is it the case, as Trump contended in his first term, that "birth tourism" is an urgent national problem. The anti-immigration Center for Immigration Studies published a claim that 33,000 babies were born per year to women traveling to the United States just to give birth. The Niskanen Center examined their statistics and found that, while it's true that some women do scheme to have their babies here, the CIS numbers were wildly exaggerated. The true number, they reckon, was closer to 2,000.

Trump is trying to behave like an emperor. He sits at the Resolute Desk and scrawls his Sharpie across documents as if that's all there is to it. He has the effrontery to do so with the preamble "By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered ... "

The president has vast powers, but he does not have unlimited power. He cannot, with the stroke of a pen, repeal a Constitutional amendment. And the Constitution of the United States is entirely clear about birthright citizenship. The 14th Amendment prescribes that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." This was a Constitutional corrective to the infamous Dred Scott decision that had denied all rights to African Americans. The phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" was understood at the time to exclude the children of diplomats and some Native American tribes — not immigrants. This isn't some throwaway line that no one has ever challenged. In 1898, the Supreme Court ruled that a man who had been born to Chinese immigrant parents on U.S. soil could not be denied his citizenship even though in the years after his birth, Congress had passed the Chinese Exclusion Act.

As Judge John C. Coughenour, a Reagan appointee, noted last week in a ruling temporarily blocking Trump's order, "This is a blatantly unconstitutional order." He even directed some ire at Trump administration lawyers, saying, "Frankly, I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind."

The assault on birthright citizenship is more than an overzealous assault on immigration; it is part of Trump's ongoing attempt to limit membership in the American family. He rose to political prominence by calling the first Black president's citizenship into question, bullied Black lawmakers with the taunt that they should go back to where they came from and lamented that we are not attracting more immigrants from places like Norway. Not subtle.

Those who approve of Trump's approach (even if they acknowledge that he should do this via a proposed constitutional amendment instead of an absurd ukase) should reflect on what it would mean to repeal birthright citizenship. The rule that your citizenship cannot be questioned if you are born on American soil is integral to American identity.

This country is not comprised of people sharing the same ethnicity and heritage. It is not the ancestral homeland of anyone except the Native Americans. It is composed of immigrants (most voluntary, some enslaved) who made this their home. No American should feel that his Americanness is dependent upon long ancestry in the land. Trump's own mother was born abroad. Most of his children are also the children of immigrants. No, if you're born here or become a naturalized citizen, you are as American as any Mayflower descendant.

If we were to dispense with birthright citizenship, we would erode the sense of equality that Americans enjoy and replace it with tiers — legitimate citizens who can trace their ancestry back a generation or two, and interlopers.

One of the greatest strengths of this country has been our ability to assimilate immigrants and transform them from whatever they were into Americans. Birthright citizenship is a vital aspect of this process. The parents who welcome an American citizen child are tied to their child's nationality and all the more willing to contribute and participate.

As a Jewish American, I've looked countless times at my passport in gratitude that I was born in New York City and no one could contest my legitimacy. If birthright citizenship is overturned, what will the criteria for unassailable Americanness be?

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Would-Be Despot Trump Renews His Assault On Press Freedom

"The press freedom fire is at our door step now," said one Washington Post journalist on Thursday night after news broke that two months before President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office, he has already begun to wage legal warfare against on the news media.

The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) reported that days before the election, a lawyer for Trump, Edward Andrew Paltzik, sent a letter to The New York Times and Penguin Random House demanding $10 billion in damages for publishing articles and a book that were critical of the president-elect, who was convicted of 34 felony counts earlier this year.

Trump's legal team took issue with a book by Times journalists Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner titled Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success. They also said they were demanding damages over "false and defamatory statements" in the October 20 article "For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment" by Peter Baker and the October 22 piece "As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator" by Michael Schmidt.

The former article covered numerous wrongdoings by the president-elect and accusations against him, pointing out that he "is the only president in American history impeached twice for high crimes and misdemeanors, the only president ever indicted on criminal charges, and the only president to be convicted of a felony (34, in fact)," and that he has also boasted about sexually assaulting women and spearheaded numerous businesses that went bankrupt.

The latter article detailed comments by Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly, who told the Times that the definition of fascism accurately describes Trump.

The president-elect himself said while campaigning that he planned to govern as a dictator only on "Day One" of his term in office.

"Governments and powerful figures threatening journalists and media outlets with costly legal battles and bankruptcy is a common tactic against press freedom in repressive countries."

Paltzik told the newspaper that the articles demonstrate the Times' "intention of defaming and disparaging the world-renowned Trump brand that consumers have long associated with excellence, luxury, and success in entertainment, hospitality, and real estate, among many other industries, as well as falsely and maliciously defaming and disparaging him as a candidate for the highest office in the United States."

The CJR reported that the Times responded to Paltzik's letter, telling him the newspaper stood by its reporting on Trump.

As Barry Malone, deputy editor-in-chief of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, said on social media on Friday, Trump's legal threats may be designed not to actually win billions of dollars in damages but "to tie the media up with time-consuming and often prohibitively expensive cases."

The Times and Penguin Random House threats were reported two weeks after Trump suedCBS News for another $10 billion, claiming an interview with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost the November 5 election, was unfairly edited to present her in a positive light and qualified as "election interference."

CBS said it would "vigorously defend" its journalistic practices and called the lawsuit "completely without merit"—a similar response to the one by The Washington Post, which was accused by Trump on the same day of making an illegal in-kind donation to Harris.

Anne Champion, an attorney who has represented several journalists and CNN in legal cases initiated by Trump, told the CJR that the legal threats will likely have "a mental chilling effect" on reporters and news outlets in the United States as Trump prepares to take office.

"It is both conscious and unconscious," said Champion. "Journalists at smaller outlets know very well that the costs for their organization to defend themselves could mean bankruptcy. Even journalists at larger outlets don't want to burden themselves or their employees with lawsuits. It puts another layer of influence into the journalistic process."

Trump has a longstanding disdain for the media, saying numerous times during his first term that journalists were the "enemy of the people." During one campaign rally just before the election he said he wouldn't "mind" if reporters at the event were shot, and he called the media the "enemy camp" during his victory speech last week.

During his first term he also threatened to "take a strong look at our country's libel laws"—which are actually controlled by states, not the federal government—and ensure that "when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone, that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts."

The American Civil Liberties Union pointed out at the time that the First Amendment and the lack of federal libel laws would stand in Trump's way, but on Thursday Lachlan Cartwright wrote at CJR that "the drumbeat of legal threats signals a potentially ominous trend for journalists during Trump's second term in office."

As Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah noted on the social media platform Bluesky, "governments and powerful figures threatening journalists and media outlets with costly legal battles and bankruptcy is a common tactic against press freedom in repressive countries."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

For Republicans, Turning History Upside Down Is The Point

It turns out Nikki Haley stumbling over the cause of the Civil War was not a one-off.

The topsy-turvy twisting of American history, as it applies to Black Americans — their resilience and contributions despite injustice — is a tactic, a well-planned cynical one. And recent perpetrators don’t even have the decency to make a half-hearted attempt at backtracking, as Haley eventually and reluctantly managed to do after being called out on her amnesia about slavery.

Now politicians are standing proudly as they try to co-opt the language and history of the Civil Rights movement, which fought for equal rights for all and forced America to take a step toward living up to its ideals.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is a master, presenting himself as a billionaire victim and inviting his supporters to follow. But dishonest is too mild a word for politicians when they do everything but break into a chorus of “We Shall Overcome” to sideline the legacy of Americans who truly had to.

In the Florida of Gov. Ron DeSantis, it was not a surprise when the state’s Transportation Department told cities that if they chose to light up their bridges at night, the only acceptable colors would be red, white and blue. The prohibition, set to last between Memorial Day and Labor Day, was widely seen as using an aura of patriotism to preempt the tradition of displaying rainbow colors during June for Pride Month.

But did DeSantis have to label it a part of the state’s “Freedom Summer,” a name that powerfully resonates in American history?

Freedom Summer, also known as the Mississippi Summer Project, was a 1964 voter registration drive — the brainchild of Bob Moses of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee — that brought hundreds of white volunteers to join with African Americans to register Black voters in the state. The intimidation and violence they faced led to international attention, outrage and the eventual passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

For DeSantis — who has gerrymandered Black voters out of representation, thwarted voters’ efforts to restore voting rights to former felons and fought against having just such history taught in Florida schools — his version of “Freedom Summer” was no doubt intentional.

Staying in Florida, Republican U.S. House member Byron Donalds has been making the rounds defending statements he made at a Philadelphia event designed to attract Black voters to the GOP.

“You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, more Black people were not just conservative — Black people have always been conservative-minded — but more Black people voted conservatively,” he said, as reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Rather than explain away his comments, Donalds should travel to Mims, Fla., for a lesson in Jim Crow’s effect on Black families in his own state. A cultural center tells of Harry T. and Harriette Moore, teachers whose Civil Rights activism cost them first their jobs, and then their lives, when a bomb exploded under their bedroom. It was Christmas night 1951 and the couple’s 25th anniversary.

When their daughter Evangeline Moore died in 2015 at the age of 85, her Washington Post obituary recounted a last message. “My mother told me from her deathbed that she never wanted me to ever think about hating white people — or anybody else,” Ms. Moore told the Orlando Sentinel in 2009, “because it would make me ugly, and she didn’t want me to be an ugly woman.”

That Donalds is a Black man doesn’t excuse his message. Considering that he owes the possibility of his rise to activists like the Moores, it might make it worse.

Then there’s a North Carolina GOP congressman’s rush to the bottom. Rep. Dan Bishop is making a bid to be his state’s attorney general, running against Jeff Jackson, a Democratic congressman gerrymandered out of any chance to be reelected to his own House seat.

Though he aspires to be the state’s top legal adviser, Bishop has joined fellow Republicans’ disdain for the country’s justice system after it held Donald Trump to account in a New York courtroom, with a jury convicting the former president on 34 felony counts.

Bishop did not stop there, though. “When I say it’s rigged, they don’t go into it as a fair fight,” he said in an interview on Charlotte radio station WBT. “They go into a place where they know the fight is unfair. It’s as bad as it was in Alabama in 1950 if a person happened to be Black in order to get justice. That’s what they did in New York,” he said.

Bishop actually compared a man with a high-priced defense who helped pick a jury in the jurisdiction in which the crimes were charged to a Black man in Alabama in 1950.

There was not much justice for the victim or perpetrator in Alabama in 1950 for Hilliard Brooks Jr.,a 22-year-old Black man murdered on Aug. 13 of that year in Montgomery, after he was accused by a white bus driver of “creating a disturbance” for refusing to enter through the back door. He was shot by a white police officer, though no one was ever charged, and left behind a wife and two children.

His story and thousands of others are told at the Legacy Sites in Montgomery, a museum and memorial complex that’s an essential visit for any American, particularly one who would ask the diverse citizens of a Southern state to trust him to interpret and enforce the law fairly.

Now, laws that prohibit the teaching of African American history make sense. It’s so much easier to sell lies if the next generations don’t know the truth.

Bishop and Donalds, DeSantis and Trump know what they’re doing, as do all the politicians who would erase and replace in their bid to divide and conquer. In fact, Bishop was defiant, saying “the people who attack me for saying so can attack all they want.”

Sadly, those attacks he knew were coming might actually help him ingratiate himself, not only with his party’s leader but also with voters who find comfort in playing victim, too.

Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.

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Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

Did Trump Violate AP's Freedom Of Speech? Fox Says Yes, But Its Stars Say No

Why America Needs Birthright Citizenship

Would-Be Despot Trump Renews His Assault On Press Freedom

For Republicans, Turning History Upside Down Is The Point

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