This month, reporters at The New York Times have faced Justice Department scrutiny after Trump reportedly became “enraged” by their reporting that the Qatari-donated plane he had begun using as Air Force One lacked the defensive countermeasures of its predecessors. The White House subsequently ordered FBI Director Kash Patel directly oversee a criminal investigation to find the story’s sources, which resulted in the DOJ swiftly issuing subpoenas for the Times reporters to compel their testimony before a grand jury. 

And on Monday — just days before Trump was scheduled to celebrate the free press with the WHCA — newly unsealed court filings revealed the Justice Department had gone even further, having “sought the phone records of several New York Times journalists and their relatives — including one reporter’s mother.”

The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post fought off similar Justice Department subpoenas aimed at forcing their journalists to testify about the sources who informed their reporting about the Iran war. The DOJ sought those subpoenas, which were issued in May but withdrawn last month, after Trump reportedly “passed a stack of news articles he and other senior officials thought threatened national security” to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche “with a sticky note on it that said ‘treason.’”

While Trump accuses news outlets of providing “treasonous” coverage of the Iran war and berates individual reporters with such allegations, and his appointees at DOJ and FBI subpoena and investigate them, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has cut off their access. 

The Pentagon hasn’t held a press briefing since May 5 and has “stripped away the protections necessary for reporters working to keep the military in check,” as an extensive CJR timeline details — most recently, last week an appeals court upheld a new Pentagon policy requiring reporters to accept escorts when they visit the building. 

At the same time, the Defense Department faces a legal fight over its efforts to curtail the editorial independence of Stars and Stripes, a newspaper partially funded by the Pentagon that covers the U.S. military.

Meanwhile, Trump renewed his repeated demands for ABC and NBC to be stripped of their broadcast licenses during his July 17 election denial speech, citing their decisions not to air the address. It’s not an idle threat — Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is dedicated to using his power to cudgel the broadcast networks for airing speech the president doesn’t like. 

Carr ordered an early review of all station licenses owned by ABC on April 28 — the day after Trump demanded that Jimmy Kimmel “should be immediately fired” by ABC and its parent company Disney over a joke the late night host told on his ABC show the week before. 

ABC is vigorously contesting what it correctly describes as the FCC’s “unconstitutional retaliation and coercion,” but Bloomberg reported last week that the FCC is likely to advance its probe to an agency hearing as soon as next month. 

Back in April, Patel, Blanche, Hegseth, and Carr all joined Trump in celebrating the First Amendment by attending the canceled WHCA dinner. 

Eminent journalists argued during Trump’s first term in office that reporters were “not at war with the administration, we’re at work.” But while journalists at the WHCA still seem to grasp for such reassuring mantras, the second Trump administration is taking the war to them.