The United States has experienced a severe loss of press freedom in the past year under the leadership of President Donald Trump, a new report from the group Reporters Without Borders revealed on Thursday.
The nonprofit organization’s World Press Freedom Index for 2026 ranks the U.S. in 64th place, down seven spots from the 2025 rankings.Â
“After a century of gradual expansion of press rights in the United States, the country is experiencing a significant and prolonged decline in press freedom, with Donald Trump’s return to the presidency greatly exacerbating the situation,” the group notes.Â
The report specifically cites Trump’s “systematic weaponisation of state institutions” as a major contributor to the lowered ranking and calls out funding cuts to public broadcasting at PBS and NPR, both of which were enabled by congressional Republicans.
Related | FBI puts final nail in the coffin of free speech
Trump’s “politically motivated investigations” of independent journalists have also been a blow to press freedom, the report states. For instance, scandal-plagued FBI Director Kash Patel approved the raid of a Washington Post reporter’s home in January.
Patel is also suing a reporter for interviewing multiple sources and unveiling concerns within the law enforcement community about his heavy consumption of alcohol.
Reporters Without Borders says that Trump’s hostility to independent journalism is causing a negative effect throughout the Americas. The report specifically notes that Argentinian President Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele are “Trump’s most vocal supporters in Latin America” and have “taken their cue from the White House in their approach to the media, with unsurprisingly similar results.”
The U.S.’s poor showing is an outgrowth of a sustained war on the First Amendment under Trump.
His administration has used its power to pressure television stations to drop late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, demand that talk shows give accommodations to Republicans while pushing for the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s show, and purge reporters from covering the Pentagon on site when they wouldn’t submit their stories for approval before publishing.
Even as the Trump team is attacking factual reporting, the corporate owners of major news outlets have rushed to curry favor with the administration. For instance, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has pushed the outlet’s coverage to the right (and was praised by Trump for doing so), while the pro-GOP Ellison family has taken control of CBS News and installed conservative leadership that subsequently squashed stories critical of Trump.
Trump constantly calls news stories he doesn’t like “fake news,” but the real story is that American freedom is plummeting under his leadership.
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