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One year ago today, Trump escalated his assault on reliable news

Donald Trump’s first year back as U.S. president was explosively bad for journalism. RSF spent the year sounding alarm after alarm over his relentless attacks on press freedom. His longstanding war against trustworthy reporting surged on all fronts: government data was censored, reporters barred from the White House and Pentagon, insulting journalists metastasised into a witch hunt, and vital independent outlets countering disinformation and propaganda worldwide were gutted and starved. RSF has released a timeline of all the Trump administration’s assaults on the right to information in the past 365 days, and here’s a look at some of the most urgent fires we’re working to put out.

Video

French journalist expelled from Russie for five years

Watch the condensed version of our timeline here.

NEWS BRIEFS

The “Muskification” of US tech

Donald Trump’s second term has also laid the foundations for an alliance between the White House and U.S. tech giants, an alignment that can be traced back to Elon Musk’s ideological, ruthless overhaul of Twitter, now known as X. The budding pact is founded on a mutual disdain for regulating the online information space, and is being cemented by the Trump administration’s institutional bullying of these cyber titans.

Press freedom reaches new low in Venezuela after US intervention

Following the illegal US military action on 3 January, Venezuelan reporters have increasingly found themselves in the crossfire. On January 5th, the country’s security forces temporarily arrested 14 journalists during the inauguration of the new president, Delcy Rodríguez. On January 8th, around 200 foreign journalists were stranded at the Colombian border awaiting authorisation to enter the country, and at least four have been detained. We interviewed some of these journalists in an exclusive video.

Deportation looms for Guan Heng after filming Uyghur Camps

Guan Heng, a Chinese citizen who bravely and secretly filmed detention facilities in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, has been detained in the US since he was arrested by ICE officials in August 2025 while awaiting asylum. He now risks being deported to China. Without Guan’s work, US media outlets would have struggled to report on the inhumanity of Chinese detention camps for ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang and the falsehoods propagated by the Chinese Communist Party about them.

BBC: Trump’s actions “straight out the authoritarian playbook”

As Trump attempts to sue the BBC over its editing of his speech from the day of the insurrection instigated by pro-Trump supporters on 6 January 2021, RSF warns about the danger of political interference in public service media and Trump’s lawfare against coverage he deems negative. While no media is above criticism, the BBC has earned its reputation as one of the most trusted news brands in the world. Undermining it only serves those who seek to erode democracy.

Silencing Voice of America (VOA)

On 2 December, Trump announced the closure of overseas VOA offices, directly contravening a judge’s return-to-work order from April. It’s the latest of many measures targeting the public broadcaster that began with the dismantling of the US Agency for Global Media, the body responsible for allocating funds to US public broadcasters, including Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Worsening with the choice to place all VOA staff on administrative leave — ending news production overnight — a measure later followed by the termination of over 500 people's contracts.

Staggering cuts to USAID

In February 2025, President Donald Trump froze billions of dollars in aid projects, including over $268 million allocated by Congress to support independent media and the free flow of information in over 30 countries, massively increasing pressure on an already financially fragile sector and silencing some of the only free voices left in some regions. In 2023, the agency funded training and support for 6,200 journalists, assisted 707 non-state news outlets, and supported 279 media-sector civil society organisations.

“2026 will also mark the 250th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence, which paved the way for the US Constitution. It’s important to stand firm on the first amendment of that document, which specifies that freedom of speech and freedom of the press shall not be abridged or restrained by the government of the United States. This is precisely what Donald Trump is doing.”

Thibaut Bruttin

RSF Director General

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We are Reporters Without Borders, but not without you. Thank you for standing up for the right to reliable, independent news and a free press.

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