Trump and Putin. Soul brothers in suppressing press freedom

Uncategorized 3 Minutes

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 9.19.2026

Then civilian Trump leaves a New York City Courthouse after being charged with multiple felonies. He was convicted of 34 felonies for falsifying records on May 30, 2023

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have a lot in common. One continuous thread in their insidious relationship is their loathing of a free press.

Donald Trump is certainly constrained by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution – Wikipedia. But this has not stopped Trump from his ongoing threats and assaults on the American media. The latest being the banishment of established news organizations from the White House: CNN, Politico and MSNOW.

The American media has always been aggressive in protecting its rights to broadcast and publish. This is no exception and wannabe dictator Trump’s latest outrage will fail.

Trump will be long banished to the history books and the American free press will carry on.

Excerpted from The New York Times 9.19.2026

“He (Donald Trump) thinks that he can bully anyone or any entity into doing whatever he wants and he’s seen it work out for himself with the entire Republican Party bending the knee to him,” said Sarah Matthews, a deputy press secretary in Mr. Trump’s first term. “He is facing pushback from the courts, the Fed, people in his own party, and he’s lashing out.”

The White House on Saturday moved ahead with Mr. Trump’s surprise announcement banning journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, an escalation in Mr. Trump’s long battle with the press.

But it also fits a pattern for Mr. Trump when he faces a political quagmire, according to former government officials and civil rights organizations: He seeks to change the narrative by mobilizing the government to crack down on those willing to question his power.

Excerpted from Committee to Protect Journalists 2.17.2026

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, its media has experienced an unprecedented crackdown. Hundreds of journalists have been forced into exile, where they continue to face transnational legal persecution, and their families have been harassed back home. Meanwhile, reporting from inside Russia has become increasingly difficult, with journalists and media outlets often silenced by laws criminalizing independent coverage.

Evan is a Wall Street Journal reporter who was detained in Russia on March 29, 2023, while doing his job as a journalist. He was freed Aug. 1, 2024, as part of the largest and most complex East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War. He is the American-born son of Soviet-era emigres to the U.S. Evan learned Russian from his parents and built a career as a journalist focused on the region. He joined the Journal in January 2022 and before that reported from Moscow for Agence France Press and the Moscow Times.

Since February 24, 2022, CPJ has documented:

  • 27 journalists imprisoned on criminal charges: 15 Russian, 10 Ukrainian, and 2 American. Of these, 4 released, 2 exiled, and 1 killed.
  • Charges against those jailed: 9 for “fake” news; 14 for terrorism, extremism, and other anti-state crimes; 4 were undisclosed.  
  • 27 exiled journalists sentenced to jail in absentia.
  • 355 journalists and media outlets branded “foreign agents.”
  • 27 media outlets banned as “undesirable.”
  • 14 journalists added to Russian financial intelligence agency Rosfinmonitoring’s “terrorists and extremists” list
  • More than 25,000 websites blocked in connection with war reporting.
  • Source: CPJ, OVD-Info, Roskomsvoboda

(To see CPJ’s 2022-2024 prison data by most recent, click twice on Date column. For 2025, see Ekaterina Barabash, Sasha Aleksandrova, and Svetlana Khustik.)

Russia’s repression record – Committee to Protect Journalists

President Nixon tried to stop publication of the Pentagon Papers, the history of the Vietnam War. The Supreme Court said NO in a historic validation of the First Amendment. Cartoon by Herblock in The Washington Post. June 1971
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I am a Green Party member, legal worker, walker, cyclist who follows politics, world events, 🌎 the literary world and 🎥 film

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