Brooke Gladstone: Hello, Dear listeners, what you're about to hear is the chronicle of our efforts over the last 12 months to explore the messages, the meanings, and stakes of a frankly preposterous year. In 2025, the media ether was sparking with shiny objects launched from the White House, but not just from there. Of course, real things happened, too, horrible things and some good ones. Definitely missed a few, but we sure tried.

If you're a frequent listener, you know that. We'll be here next year, just as we have for the last 25, if we can. By now, frequent listeners will also know that this is all prelude to a pitch, and we're all knee deep in them because it seems the impact of 2025 on the collective psyche has been to either paralyze or intensify one's passions. If we are one of yours, or if you think we could be or should be, we need your help each and every year to stay here.

WNYC is doing what it can to keep the public radio system going as a whole, especially in those places where the internet is bad. Public radio is sometimes the only news they can actually use. Please, if you like the work, support it, give today at onthemedia.org/donate, and thank you now and for as long as it takes. That said, on with the show.

On this week's On the Media, a year to remember, even if you'd rather forget.

Donald Trump: I signed a sweeping slate of executive orders to stop the invasion of our border.

News clip: Musk has been given access to the Treasury Department's payment system, including the personal information of millions of American workers.

News clip: The January 6th investigation and the hundreds of criminal cases connected to it effectively erased.

Karoline Leavitt: Moving forward, the White House press pool will be determined by the White House press team.

News clip: After hours after a stunning government report that the job market is considerably worse than previously thought.

Alex Padilla: If this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they're doing to farm workers.

News clip: I want you to get up. Go to your windows, open them and stick your head out, and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore."

Brooke Gladstone: The good as well as the bad and the ugly, all coming up right after this.

Micah Loewinger: From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. I'm Micah Loewinger.

Brooke Gladstone: I'm Brooke Gladstone. Our program has long asserted and, in fact, hinges on the idea that words and pictures matter. How interesting it is then, and how apt that Pantone's color of this year was a soft Mocha brown. For 2026, a quote, natural white. Kind of sums up our battles past and yet to come. Oh, and the Oxford Dictionary's word of the year was rage-bait. Merriam-Webster's was the word for fakery served up by AI slop. These days, political analysis, cultural analysis, linguistic and even color analysis are ultimately media analysis. You're welcome, I guess.

Micah Loewinger: This year, the news was delivered as an unceasing geyser. While making our job here at the media analysis factory weirdly easier, the constant battering took a toll on our collective mental health. We're going to look back, as we do most years, at some of the highlights, so to speak, and how we handled them. This time we'll start on day one, because much of what happened on that very first day set the tone for the rest of the year.

Donald Trump: There's never been a first day like yesterday, as you know. I signed a sweeping slate of executive orders to stop the invasion of our borders. I launched a government-wide effort to defeat inflation and bring down the cost of daily life [crosstalk]-

Brooke Gladstone: He signed the first flurry of executive orders live on stage.

Donald Trump: -and we declared a national energy emergency to drill, baby, drill. We ended destructive DEI mandates across the federal government.

Brooke Gladstone: And more.

Donald Trump: We permanently stop government censorship and restored free speech. That was signed yesterday. We renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Sounds so beautiful. The Gulf of America-

Brooke Gladstone: And much, much more. Here's a random selection in no particular order. He signed an order to grant top secret security clearances to White House staff without the usual vetting and orders to begin withdrawing us from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement. In fact, he signed a ream of orders attacking efforts to slow climate change and end current incentives to build green energy.

He even rolled back energy-efficient regulations for gas stoves, dishwashers, and those weak shower heads that piss him off. He signed a directive pressuring states to carry out the death penalty and one ensuring an ample supply of lethal injection drugs. He proclaimed the nation would recognize only two genders, which must be reflected in passports and visas.

He signed one to overturn the 14th Amendment guarantee of birthright citizenship, but a judge found it unconstitutional, so he'll have to appeal. No doubt he'll have trouble pulling off quite a few of the hundreds of orders, proclamations, and memos he signed. Many of dubious legality and some pockmarked with weird typos and unnatural language that legal experts said for the marks of AI.

Micah Loewinger: He signed 26 orders on his first day. As I write this 220 total this year. That's compared to Biden's 162 in four years and Obama's 277 in eight. In other words, a lot. On day one, Trump also issued a blanket pardon for nearly all those convicted after the January 6 riot at the Capitol, dozens of whom had prior records, including for rape, manslaughter, and domestic violence. Some went on to commit more violent crimes after their release.

Brooke Gladstone: Pardons have served as a kind of capital for this president, bestowed on such benefactors as Ross Ulbricht, serving a life sentence for aiding and abetting illegal drug sales online. He was pardoned, Trump said, in part because his libertarian movement, quote, supported me so strongly. He also pardoned former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, doing time for wire fraud, George Santos for, you name it.

Lately, former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, convicted of conspiracy to import cocaine and possession of machine guns. Trump said more than once that he pardoned some people because they were convicted by the, quote, same lunatics who'd persecuted him.

Micah Loewinger: Right off the bat in week one, the president resumed one of his favorite pastimes, baiting the press.

Donald Trump: Stop interrupting. We won this election in a landslide because the American public is tired of people like you that are--

Micah Loewinger: He didn't just argue with the press. In January, he talked about how he wanted to reshape it. He declared on Truth Social that MSNBC, quote, shouldn't even have a right to broadcast and that it was, quote, even worse than CNN. Speaking of CNN, remember how Jim Acosta so irritated the president in his first term.

Donald Trump: I think you should let me run the country. You run CNN, and if you did it well, your ratings--

Jim Acosta: Let me ask-- if I may ask--

Donald Trump: When you report fake news, which CNN does a lot, you are the enemy of the people. Go ahead.

Jim Acosta: Mr. President.

Micah Loewinger: In January, Acosta was informed by his CNN bosses that his two-hour morning news show had been moved to the midnight slot. He quit soon after. I spoke to Oliver Darcy, founder of the independent outlet Status News.

Oliver Darcy: Across the media and technology sectors, you're seeing companies really throw Trump bones and bend the knee to Donald Trump. It's happening with Jeff Bezos blocking the endorsement of Kamala Harris and really signaling that he wants that paper to be more accepting of the MAGA movement. It's happening at the LA Times with Patrick Soon-Shiong refiguring the opinion side of that newspaper.

E: Echoing this larger move towards "neutrality," The Washington Post adopted a new internal mission statement, "Riveting Storytelling for All of America," is in your mind, chasing less liberal audiences, a good business strategy for these outlets?

Oliver Darcy: This has been like the dream of owners. They wish they could live in, like, 1995, where Republicans and Democrats gave their spiels. You heard from the right, you heard from the left, and people made up their mind. That might somewhat work if both parties are committed to basic principles and the truth. When you have a party that undermines the rule of law, when you have a party that is engaged in lying about basic fundamental things like an election outcome, it's very difficult to imagine serving both audiences. The reality-dwelling public will certainly consume information from outlets like The New York Times. The MAGA base, they don't not only dislike those outlets. They would celebrate if they shut down.

Micah Loewinger: The Washington Post saw an exodus of some of its most recognizable talent this year. Philip Bump, Glenn Kessler, Erik Wemple, Catherine Rampell, Perry Bacon Jr., Ruth Marcus, Eugene Robinson, Dave Jorgenson, and many more. In the Columbia Journalism Review, Jon Allsop, after describing the dark times at the Post, wrote that, "It also feels like a moment of opportunity. That is, if the owners and management know what they're doing. The same is true in journalism."

Brooke Gladstone: Also, on Week 1, Trump announced another one of his marquee issues.

Donald Trump: I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the--

Brooke Gladstone: Later, the project was allocated $170 billion in the One Big Beautiful Bill. Yes, the same bill that called for hefty cuts to Medicaid and SNAP benefits. The Brennan Center called it the launch of a deportation industrial complex with the goal of deporting 1 million people a year Through 2025 headlines blazed with reports of masked men snatching up grandmothers and landscapers, kindergarten teachers at schools, Home Depots, and immigration courts. Barging into restaurants, demanding to see papers, and firing tear gas and chemical irritants at US citizens legally protesting in the streets. That story is guaranteed to continue into the new year.

Micah Loewinger: Coming up, the dire consequences of Trump's January 28th executive order stripping protections for federal workers.

Brooke Gladstone: This is On the Media.

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Micah Loewinger: This is On the Media. I'm Micah Loewinger.

Brooke Gladstone: I'm Brooke Gladstone. The defining story of February was Elon Musk's rampage through government agencies with a diamond-encrusted chainsaw. No, not a metaphor.

News clip: Musk has been given access to the Treasury Department's payment system, including the personal information of millions of American workers.

News clip: Backlash after Elon Musk seized control of USAID, the agency that provides US humanitarian assistance around the world.

News clip: Musk bragged about feeding USAID into the wood chipper.

News clip: The DOGE team has visited the Centers for Disease Control and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. They also have sought access to payment and contracting systems across the Department of Health and Human Services.

Micah Loewinger: Musk and his DOGE task force also targeted the Office of Personnel Management, the beating heart of the federal workforce.

Vittoria Elliott: In that way, I would say DOGE is meddling with all of the government.

Micah Loewinger: I spoke with Vittoria Elliott of WIRED magazine.

Vittoria Elliott: I will say that they are certainly holding with the Silicon Valley mantra of move fast and break things. They are indeed moving fast, and we are concerned they may break things.

Micah Loewinger: What have they broken recently?

Vittoria Elliott: Seemingly, possibly a lot of laws, and if not laws, certainly protocols.

Micah Loewinger: You guys are beating The New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC, big newsrooms, Washington bureaus with deep sourcing throughout Capitol Hill. How is your team so far ahead of the competition?

Vittoria Elliott: WIRED is fundamentally a tech publication. These are people we have been covering for many years. We understand how they like to run their companies, what they value. For me personally, I covered Musk's purchase of Twitter in 2022 for WIRED. Having done that work has made our team really ready for this moment.

Micah Loewinger: Where do you think the puck is headed?

Vittoria Elliott: I think that what we can say from the public statements of people like Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen, and many large figures in Silicon Valley is that their goal is the dismantling of the administrative state. Dismantling of bureaucracy, which sounds really sexy when you say, like, yes, get rid of bureaucracy, get rid of red tape. The reality is, the reason that America feels stable to so many people is because we know that, whether or not there's a Republican or Democrat in the Oval Office, your Social Security check is still going to come on time.

There's still a process for how court cases work. There's still a process for how applying for government funding for research works. That remains stable. Because so many of these places where DOGE is inserting itself are fundamentally considered apolitical. They keep the wheels turning no matter who's in the political office. That engenders trust. Could they all be more efficient? Probably, for sure. The reality is those criticisms, those valid criticisms, are not the same as what Musk and his allies have very publicly said for a long time now, which is they don't want those systems to exist at all.

Brooke Gladstone: This summer, the British medical journal, The Lancet published a report with data from 133 countries and territories estimating that more than 14 million people could die by 2030 because USAID went into the wood chipper, including 4.5 million children younger than five. As of now, some 300,000 federal workers have lost their jobs. In December, when rumors were swirling of DOGE's demise, Elliot said that even if Musk is no longer in the picture, the work of dismantling the government goes on. She's spoken to laid-off civil servants all year.

Vittoria Elliott: I have been consistently bowled over by the bravery of people will probably be invisible. There are a lot of people who have been in these roles for a vast majority of their career who have given up private sector opportunities. Who really believe in government, even if they're frustrated by it, even if every last one of them would agree that it could be more efficient and better. There are a lot of people who have spoken to us at great personal risk, at very hard moments in their lives, and that has been incredibly brave of them.

Brooke Gladstone: February was also the month we got a good, hard look at the new Department of Justice. Hours after her confirmation, in the span of just 20 minutes, Attorney General Pam Bondi shot off 14 memos to the DOJ, including a call for greater use of the death penalty and banning funds for sanctuary cities, and another threatening investigations into DEI initiatives at companies that receive federal grants. Trump also announced that Bondi would head a new task force with a broad and frankly bizarre mandate.

Donald Trump: The mission of this task force will be to immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government, including at the DOJ, which was absolutely terrible. The IRS, the FBI terrible, and other agencies.

Micah Loewinger: Meanwhile, the 2021 Capitol riot was being swiftly scrubbed from the public record.

News clip: The January 6 investigation and the hundreds of criminal cases connected to it effectively erased. All traces of it have been deleted from the FBI website.

Micah Loewinger: It turned out that the blanket clemency awarded to more than 1500 people convicted of crimes relating to the events of January 6th was just prelude to a campaign of retribution against those Trump felt unfairly targeted him and his followers. All of this understandably led to chaos at the Justice Department.

Ryan Reilly: It was rough.

Micah Loewinger: Ryan Reilly covers the DOJ and federal law enforcement for NBC News. In February, he told me about the mass firing of senior FBI officials and federal prosecutors working the January 6 investigations.

Ryan Reilly: For a lot of the assistant US attorneys, the federal prosecutors who had to work these cases and then abandoned individuals who they were seeking justice on behalf of, including officers who were really brutally assaulted that day. That was really tough for them to do. One of them described having a guttural reaction when they had to file something, dismissing a case that they knew was justified, that they knew the evidence and the facts supported.

What's interesting to me is I don't know if it's really broken through with the American people more broadly, because we're talking about Watergate-level type of things happening within the FBI. You're talking about the explicit targeting of prosecutors over the individuals that they pursued because they are either friends with or affiliated with, or supportive of the president in some capacity. I think that the chilling effect that this is going to have within the bureau, which is, I should say, a conservative-leaning law enforcement organization, is going to last for a while.

I just don't think it's likely, based on the conversations that I've had with folks, that you're going to see individuals who are very enthusiastic about taking up any cases that have anything to do with Donald Trump. Or even one of Donald Trump's relatives or someone he's affiliated with, or a friend, or somebody who has the right connections. That's really the worry within the FBI is that there's just going to be a growth of public corruption.

Micah Loewinger: That worry was not assuaged by the appointment of erstwhile podcaster and conspiracy theorist Kash Patel to lead the FBI. Here he is on Steve Bannon's podcast, WarRoom.

Kash Patel: We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're going to come after you, whether it's criminally or civilly, we'll figure that out. Yes, we're putting you all on notice.

Micah Loewinger: Cash soon announced he was installing fellow right-wing podcaster Dan Bongino as his deputy director, a guy that NBC's Brandy Zadrozny had been following for years.

Brandy Zadrozny: Bongino, 2015, 2016, had this little podcast. It wasn't really doing so well, but he understood the Trump loyalist force and the audience that he could scoop up when he hitched his wagon to Trump's star. Then on to 2017, he became a huge proponent of this conspiracy theory called Spygate, this theory that the FBI was spying on Trump's 2016 campaign in an effort to rig the election for Hillary Clinton.

Dan Bongino: The devastating disclosures of the FBI implanting confidential informants, spies inside the Trump team, were so devastating that the only way for the Democrats to get away from looking like a bunch of police state tyrants was to insist that they weren't spying or investigating the Trump team. They were investigating the Russians.

Brandy Zadrozny: Bongino latched onto that and suggested, as part of a larger narrative, that Democrats and biased members of the FBI were all colluding to steal the election from Trump.

Micah Loewinger: This was a departure for Bongino because prior to this, he had been fairly mild about the FBI on his show, right?

Brandy Zadrozny: Pretty deferential. He was a law-and-order guy. Remember that? Law and order, like that was a thing. What it is now is that the institutions are bad, they are corrupt. Someone like Bongino needs to go in and strip them of the DEI and the Democratic ideology and all the rest that has infiltrated and is now weaponized against Donald Trump.

Micah Loewinger: As somebody who's been along for the ride for so long, Brandy, what is it like to see these people welcomed into the seat of American power?

Brandy Zadrozny: Bananas. Absolutely bananas. I can't believe it. I really can't believe it. I think it does send a signal to other creators that this is the way to power. I think that once, where Dan Bongino was alone, was one of the few people operating in this way and making this kind of media. Now I think there are a long line of successors. People are trying to recreate the magic of that formula, which again, is just owning the libs, fealty to Donald Trump, and provocative statements.

Micah Loewinger: Bongino announced in December that he'd be stepping away from the FBI in January. As Donald Trump put it, "I think he wants to go back to his show."

Brooke Gladstone: The installation of people pulled from the right-wing media sphere to fill roles once occupied by qualified staff extended into the West Wing. Just days after new press secretary Karoline Leavitt took up her post, she announced a shakeup in the briefing room.

Karoline Leavitt: We're also opening up this briefing room to new media voices who produce news-related content and whose outlet is not already represented by one of the seats in this room. We welcome independent journalists, podcasters, social media influencers, and content creators to apply for credentials to cover this White House.

Brooke Gladstone: Not long after she announced the White House Correspondents' Association would no longer be the body choosing who gets to fill those precious 49 seats in the briefing room or write the pool reports when the President is on the road.

Karoline Leavitt: Moving forward, the White House press pool will be determined by the White House press team. Legacy outlets who have participated in the press pool for decades will still be allowed to join. Fear not. We will also be offering the privilege to well-deserving outlets who have never been allowed to share in this awesome responsibility.

Brooke Gladstone: Including conspiracy theorists, propagandists, and far-right influencers. Mother Jones's Anna Merlan told me that the seat now designated for new media, and here the occupants rotate, have actually held real reporters, but also those who are anything but. Here's Rumble podcaster John Ashbrook using his seat to search for truth.

John Ashbrook: Thank you very much. Karoline, in your first briefing, the media went after this administration for supporting illegal immigrants, they claimed were not criminals. Question is, do you think they're out of touch with Americans demanding action on our border crisis?

Karoline Leavitt: The media out of touch? I think the media is certainly--

Brooke Gladstone: Is that how this goes?

Anna Merlan: That's how this goes. I'm sorry. I'm not laughing because it's funny. I'm laughing because these are incredible levels of comment. Not a question. If I had asked a question like this of a Democratic administration, I think it would have gone viral on Twitter with people making fun of me.

Brooke Gladstone: On February 11, the AP was officially barred from the press briefing room for declining to adopt the new name for the Gulf of Mexico. Two months later, the White House ditched the traditional slot reserved for the wire services in the press pool, leaving journalism's ultimate day laborers like the AP, Bloomberg, and Reuters in rotation with all the other outlets. The AP lawsuit continues.

March was the month a Columbia University graduate was seized by ICE.

News clip: Mahmoud Khalil, who helped lead Columbia University student encampment protest against the war in Gaza, was taken into custody. According to his attorney, one of the agents said they were executing a State Department order to revoke Khalil's student visa. When the attorney told them he had graduated in December and was in the US as a permanent resident with a green card, they said they were revoking that, too.

Brooke Gladstone: Kahlil was separated from his wife, a US citizen, and promptly transported to a lockup in Louisiana. According to the online outlet Zeteo, Khalil had sent emails pleading with Colombia for protection just the day before he was detained. President Trump said that his arrest was just the beginning.

Donald Trump: They're troublemakers. They're agitators. They don't love our country. We ought to get them the hell out. I think that guy--

Brooke Gladstone: In The New York Times news pages and in letters to the editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, The Boston Globe, and on cable news, Khalil's case conjured dark memories of the Red Scare in the mid-20th century. When Senator Joe McCarthy, a Wisconsin Republican, campaigned to root out Communists in the US, Corey Robin, the Brooklyn College Distinguished professor who's written reams on the period, told me about the current State Department's use of a McCarthy-era law, the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, as the basis for holding and deporting Khalil.

Corey Robin: The story about that bill is that for several years before that, a lot of liberal and Jewish groups had been pushing to reform America's immigration system to make it more open. Jewish groups were so identified with these efforts that their opponents on the right called immigration reform the Jewish problem. McCarran and Walter were both fairly anti-Semitic. Walter said he wanted to use this bill to expose Jewish influence. It really helped solidify an immigration quota system that had already been established. It also solidified the use of expansive ideological and political tests for admission and deportation from the United States.

Over the years, this act was used to deny visas to Doris Lessing, who won the Nobel Prize, to Iris Murdoch, Graham Greene. Just a whole range of figures. I think the parallel is that once again, we are seeing the systemic use of the state and all of these instruments to both suppress heterodox belief and push the culture further to the right. The Red Scare involved many, many more individuals than Joseph McCarthy.

Brooke Gladstone: Khalil was held in an immigration detention center in Louisiana until June 20th, missing the birth of his child. He's still in the US, still under deportation orders, and still no criminal charges have been filed against him.

Micah Loewinger: Brooke, we've only covered the first quarter of the year, and we're already halfway through this hour. We got to speed this up.

Brooke Gladstone: I know, but there are still some really crucial stories we covered in March.

Kari Lake: I have been on the job for a couple of weeks now, and I'm horrified by some of the things I'm learning about this agency.

Brooke Gladstone: Kari Lake, loser of two statewide races in Arizona, was appointed to lead-- okay, kill the US Agency for Global Media, which oversees the Voice of America as well as the government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and more.

Kari Lake: Unfortunately, the product is not pro-American. It's not pro-American at all.

Brooke Gladstone: As of today, the Voice of America has been effectively silenced. Also still in March, Signal-gate, when the Atlantic's Editor in chief was added to a text chain on Signal with top security officials.

Karoline Leavitt: The White House has been repeatedly saying that there were no classified information. There were no war plans discussed within those text messages.

News clip: Take a look for yourself. I'll read a little bit of here. These are text from Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, talking about at 11:44 Eastern that day, "Weather is favorable. Just confirmed with CENTCOM. We are a go for mission launch." 12:15 texts in this chat. "F18's launch declares this the first strike package." Just simply a stunning lack of operational security. Let's recall, of course--

Brooke Gladstone: The Atlantic story quickly became the biggest story of 2025 so far, according to social media engagement data collected by Axios, and to think it just landed in Jeffrey Goldberg's pocket.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I've been asked this question a few times today. It's why did you have such a hard time believing this? The answer is because it's unbelievable.

Micah Loewinger: On a Monday morning in April, chaos ensued following rumors that Trump was considering a 90-day pause on his tariff plan. Wall Street was finally starting to exhale until it learned that he hadn't said that at all. Then the markets tanked. Two days later, he did announce a 90-day pause. The GOP hailed his business acumen, and the markets rallied.

Jim Cramer: Whiz bang. What a move. Incredible.

Micah Loewinger: Jim Cramer on Mad Monday.

Jim Cramer: Nasdaq shooting into orbit, up 12.16%. Second-best day on record.

News clip: Today, we saw investor and big-time Trump supporter Bill Ackman tweet, "This was brilliantly executed by Trump. Textbook art of the deal."

Micah Loewinger: The Art of the Deal, Trump's 1987 book, ghost-written by journalist Tony Schwartz, who's since called it the--

Tony Schwartz: Greatest regret of my life without question.

Micah Loewinger: The most notable deals that Trump made, according to congressional Democrats like Adam Schiff, were ones he may have brokered for friends and family.

Adam Schiff: Insider trading within the White House, within the administration.

Micah Loewinger: See, just like Wall Street's fake news, sugar high from Monday, the surge on Wednesday was a momentary blip. Except this time, Trump World was poised to profit. Hours before he made his announcement about the tariffs world, Trump posted this to Truth Social.

News clip: He said now is a great time to buy. That has some questioning if that was a tip-off to investors.

News clip: The question is, who knew what the President was going to do? Did people around the president trade stock knowing the incredible gyration the market was about to go through?

Micah Loewinger: Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday with some visiting billionaires.

Donald Trump: He made 2.5 billion today, and he made 900 million.

Micah Loewinger: Some people made off like bandits just before the market resumed tumbling. When on Thursday, Trump upped tariffs on Chinese goods to 145%.

News clip: We begin this out with stocks falling following their biggest day--

Micah Loewinger: Even as his supporters and spokespeople attempted to cast the events of the week as a brilliant master plan of a financial genius. Donald Trump himself said he just changed his mind after people got yippee. There's a deeper story here about how Trump has attempted to circumvent Congress.

News clip: President Trump declared a national emergency, and by doing so, he created the ability for himself and only himself to regulate and impose tariffs across the board on lots of different countries.

Micah Loewinger: Trump declared a state of emergency on the influx of fentanyl from Canada and at the border with Mexico, invoking the Enemy Aliens Act to deport some migrants without due process. He said there was an energy emergency when he forced California to open its dams after the wildfires. He said there's a lumber emergency in order to skirt environmental safeguards for logging.

In short, we have a leader who declares a national emergency anytime he wants to sidestep checks and balances, creating crises that further entrench presidential power. That may prove to be the greatest national emergency of them all.

Brooke Gladstone: Then came June and a shocking encounter between a sitting US Senator and Homeland Security officers.

Kristi Noem: We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this--

Brooke Gladstone: A press conference with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in LA. California Senator Alex Padilla tried to ask a question.

Alex Padilla: Senator Alex Padilla, I have questions for the secretary because the fact of the matter is half a dozen violent criminals that you're rotating on your-- hands off.

News clip: On the ground. On the ground. Hands behind your back. Hands behind your back.

Alex Padilla: [inaudible 00:34:35] my hands, go ahead. [inaudible 00:34:37] my back.

News clip: All right, cool.

News clip: Lay flat. Lay flat.

News clip: Other hand, sir.

Brooke Gladstone: Noem later said he wasn't identified. He clearly identified himself, and he was handcuffed by agents of the Secret Service and the FBI who frog-marched him out of the room and forced him to the ground in the hallway because he was "disrespectful." Senator Padilla.

Alex Padilla: If this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they're doing to farmworkers, to cooks, to day labor out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country.

Chris Murphy: We already have a statement from the Department of Homeland Security that has accused Senator Padilla of being disrespectful, as if that is a rationalization for violence.

Brooke Gladstone: Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy.

Chris Murphy: They're going to spin this, but I'm begging my Republican colleagues, don't let them do it. Protect our ability as servants of the people to speak up for the people we represent. Make sure that we do not normalize this violence.

Brooke Gladstone: Oh, but they have. It's an essential part of the project. Disrespect is now a crime against the state. The president is livid at the idea that someone might spit at his police officers or soldiers. He says that's a common thing. Really?

Donald Trump: They get up to him this far away, and then they start spitting in their face. That happens they get hit very hard.

Brooke Gladstone: Veteran ABC journalist Terry Moran, a longtime Washington correspondent and past co-anchor of Nightline, was fired from the network after a late-night post on X condemning Stephen Miller, who designed Trump's immigration policy. He described Miller as, "A man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred, whose hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate." He added that Mr. Trump is a world-class hater, but his hatred is only a means to an end, which is his own glorification. It was a Hail Mary of sorts, I guess, like the one thrown by another newsman pushed to the brink in the movie network.

News clip: I want you to get up right now. Get up, go to your windows, open them, and stick your head out and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore."

Brooke Gladstone: In 1976, that film was a satire and the main character a loon. It doesn't seem so loony anymore.

Micah Loewinger: Coming up, the rest of the year squished into the remaining minutes of this hour.

Brooke Gladstone: This is On the Media.

[music]

This is On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

Micah Loewinger: I'm Micah Loewinger. In July, Congress cut funding for public media, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, established in 1967 by President Johnson, began to dismantle itself. Also in July, CBS announced it was would be ending Stephen Colbert's show when his contract expires in May 2026. That decision had nothing whatsoever to do with Colbert's joke about his network's $16 million payout to the White House, greasing the wheels for a big media merger.

Stephen Colbert: Now, I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles. It's big, fat bribe.

Brooke Gladstone: In August, I spoke about Trump's fact-eradication project. Over the decades working this beat, I've had sharp reminders that the mission to speak truth to power is not just a self-serving cliche. In this moment, perhaps the more crucial mission, especially since power is no longer listening, is to speak truth to each other. Not merely to inform, but to reassure you who listen that no, you are not going crazy and I'm not even talking about the higher truths, the moral ones. I mean, just the plain facts. On August 1st, Trump fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

News clip: Hours after a stunning government report that the job market is considerably worse than previously thought.

News clip: President Trump posting on Truth Social that the jobs report was rigged to, "Make a great Republican success look less stellar."

Donald Trump: Why should anybody trust numbers? I believe the numbers were phony, just like they were before the election. You know what I did? I fired her.

Brooke Gladstone: Erika McEntarfer, a labor economist with 20 years of public service under her belt. She headed the team of statisticians responsible for revising the recent employment numbers sharply downward. When President Trump doesn't get the beautiful numbers he seeks, he offers alternatives, even if they defy the immutable laws of mathematics.

Donald Trump: We've cut drug prices by 1200-1300-1400-1500%. I don't mean 50%. I mean 14, 1500%.

Brooke Gladstone: In June, he claimed to have cut the price of eggs by 400%. A quantity cannot decrease by more than 100% of itself. Even I know that. I don't have an uncle who taught at MIT.

Micah Loewinger: In September, the National Guard presence on the streets of the nation's capital was causing much distress.

Donald Trump: The press says he's a dictator. He's trying to take over. No, all I want is security for our people.

People: Get out of our neighborhood.

News clip: You can see in multiple videos federal agents wearing masks during arrests in the district in recent weeks.

News clip: You can see Attorney General Brian Schwab, now suing the Trump administration over the deployment of the National Guard troops here in Washington.

News clip: The city's top legal officials saying the surge of troops amounts to a forced military occupation.

Micah Loewinger: The President and his allies framed the troop deployments as a crime-fighting initiative. That was echoed, of course, by right-wing outlets, but not just by them.

Jamison Foser: The major media narratives that we're seeing are false.

Micah Loewinger: Jamison Foser is a political consultant and media critic. In September, he told me that the mainstream press was manufacturing consent.

Jamison Foser: By manufacturing consent, I mean the public does not currently agree with Donald Trump or what he's doing. The media, in the way they're covering this story, is increasing support for it by suggesting he's trying to fight crime.

Brooke Gladstone: Then, on September 10th, a horrendous assassination at a university event shook the foundations of the MAGA faithful.

News clip: Witnesses say immediately before the shooting, Kirk was taking questions from an audience member about mass shootings and gun violence.

Charlie Kirk: Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years? Counting or not counting gang violence? Great.

News clip: Investigators say the gunman fired a shot from a nearby rooftop and hit Kirk in the neck.

Brooke Gladstone: The target was Charlie Kirk. Turning Point USA founder, debater of college kids, podcast host, and potential heir apparent to Donald Trump. In the wake of his death, much blame was assigned to the left to so called trans ideology. By the end of that week's news cycle, many, including Wisconsin Republican Derrick Van Orden, blamed the press.

Derrick Van Orden: Every single one of you people needs to go home tonight and do some deep soul searching. There's a dead man who left two kids and a widow because of you.

Brooke Gladstone: One article of MAGA faith is that the left is responsible for the lion's share of political violence. Demonstrably untrue. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has found far-right groups significantly outpace the far left when it comes to terrorist plots and incidents like the murder of a Democratic state lawmaker and herself spouse in Minnesota and the shooting of another and his spouse. Or the brutal thrashing of Paul Pelosi. Shootings at Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party's campaign office in Tempe, Arizona, three times in less than a month.

Even though Trump and his movement are in control of all three branches of government, he still lays an exclusive claim to victimhood. In fact, for the President, all this might qualify as a national emergency. His favorite way to violate the constitutional rights of his foes. In fact, a national emergency there may well be, just not the one he thinks there is.

Spencer Cox: Our nation is broken.

Brooke Gladstone: Utah's Republican governor Spencer Cox, pleaded with his fellow Americans to look in the mirror.

Spencer Cox: We just need every single person in this country to think about where we are and where we want to be, to ask ourselves, is this it? Is this what 250 years has wrought on us? I pray that that's not the case and that all of us, all of us, will try to find a way to stop hating our fellow Americans.

Brooke Gladstone: Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel made a reference to the shooting that offended some on the right. His show was suspended until the Disney Corporation received blowback so intense it changed course and brought the comedian back. The Kimmel affair highlighted the expanded role of FCC chief Brendan Carr, who aims to bring TV networks into line.

Brendan Carr: Look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.

Brooke Gladstone: Kimmel was maybe the highest-profile person whose livelihood was threatened after Kirk's killing, but he wasn't the only one. Reuters released a comprehensive report concluding that two months after Kirk's assassination, a government-backed campaign led to the first firing, suspension, investigation, and other actions against more than 600 people.

Micah Loewinger: In October, the Pentagon press corps left the building en masse in protest of a new Defense Department policy that imposed constraints on reporters. Also in October, David Ellison bought CBS and swiftly changed it.

News clip: The company has purchased The Free Press, a digital news site, and the founder, Bari Weiss, will now serve as editor in chief of CBS News.

News clip: Bari Weiss has very little experience in broadcast TV. The Wall Street Journal writing she's known for her outspoken support of Israel and strong takes on polarizing topics, including gun rights, diversity, and inclusion programs.

Micah Loewinger: After CBS Evening News anchors John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois announced they were leaving, Weiss replaced them with CBS Morning host Tony Dokoupil. "We live in a time in which many people have lost trust in media," Weiss wrote. "Tony Dokoupil is the person to win it back. That's because he believes in old school journalistic values, asking the hard questions, following the facts wherever they lead, and holding power to account."

More likely, Weiss was hiring someone who shares her politics. Just one year ago, Dokoupil was reprimanded by CBS News after his interview with author Ta-Nehisi Coates, who had just written a book about Israel's treatment of Palestinians. Dokoupil repeatedly questioned Coates's premise.

Tony Dokoupil: I have to say, when I read the book, I imagine if I took your name out of it, took away the awards and the acclaim, took the cover off the book, the publishing house goes away. The content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist. Then I found myself wondering why does Ta-Nehisi Coates, who I've known for a long time, read his work for a long time, very talented, smart guy, leave out so much.

Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it? Why not detail anything of the first and the second intifada, the cafe bombings, the bus bombings, the little kids blown to bits? Is it because you just don't believe that Israel, in any condition, has a right to exist?

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Well, I would say the perspective that you just outlined, there is no shortage of that perspective in American media. I am most concerned always with those who don't have a voice, with those who don't have the ability to talk. I have asked repeatedly in my interviews whether there is a single network, mainstream organization in America with a Palestinian American bureau chief or correspondent who actually has a voice to articulate their part of the world.

Brooke Gladstone: We could end the show and this year on bad news. Now, as we move on to November, looking for portents of the year to come, and I know this seems a little weird, it may be more telling and easier on our mental health to focus on our politics shifting again.

News clip: Good morning. It was a big night for Democrats as the party swept key races across the country. In the race for governor of Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger defeated Republican Winsome. In New Jersey, Democratic Congressman Mikie Sherrill has won the governor's race. In New York City, Zohran Mamdani has won the closely watched mayoral race, defeating independent--

News clip: Mississippi Senate Democrats celebrated their efforts to gain two more seats.

News clip: Georgia Democrats they are celebrating their first statewide election win in nearly five years, hoping--

Micah Loewinger: In December, a second grand jury rejected the indictment of New York Attorney General and perceived Trump antagonist Letitia James. The case against another Trump foe, former CIA director James Comey, failed on the first try. Meanwhile, the GOP's massive nationwide redistricting project, which might have ensured that party's congressional majority for years to come, has gone a little wobbly.

In December, despite heavy White House pressure and a blitzkrieg of ads, Indiana lawmakers voted to block a proposed new congressional map. Republicans who voted against the measure said that they'd listened to their constituents.

Micah Loewinger: Also, last month, a federal judge temporarily blocked further efforts to detain Kilmar Ábrego García, who was caught up in an ICE raid in March and sent to the notorious El Salvadoran torture prison. The authorities admitted it was an administrative error, and he was returned to federal custody in June. The White House is still trying to oust him as a symbol of its seemingly limitless power to expel. For now, he's back home with his family in Maryland.

Brooke Gladstone: Meanwhile, in Washington, many House Republicans joined Democrats in voting against Trump's bid to strip federal employees of their collective bargaining rights. He'll probably win in the Senate, but still, the president's dyke is starting to spring leaks.

Jamelle Bouie: Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death. Be not afraid.

Micah Loewinger: This is Jamelle Bouie, a New York Times opinion writer, speaking to his followers on TikTok in January about their feelings on Week 1 of the second Trump administration.

Jamelle Bouie: The reason why I urge people not to fall into panic and fear is because panic and fear will overwhelm your critical faculties. Once you begin using your critical faculty to start asking questions like, well, how exactly are they going to do X or Y or Z?

Micah Loewinger: Bouie, of course, believes there are legit things to be concerned about. In other videos, he's discussed how the Trump administration will likely do awful things for bodily autonomy, food and water safety, labor protections, the social safety net, and so on.

Jamelle Bouie: There are threats, and there are dangers. They are real. A threat and a danger is still something that could happen. This is the word I want you to remember. It's contingent. A lot of you, in my observation, are treating the threat, the danger, as if it's an accomplished fact, fait accompli. It isn't. That means it is within the capacity to change it.

Brooke Gladstone: It seems like there's a lot more capacity around now than there was at the start of the year, so we'll use it. Meanwhile, raise a cup to 2026 and celebrate turning the page. Have a happy New Year.

[music]

Micah Loewinger: That's it for this week's show. On the Media is produced by Molly Rosen, Rebecca Clark-Callender, and Candice Wong. Travis Mannon is our video producer.

Brooke Gladstone: Our technical director is Jennifer Munson, with engineering from Jared Paul. Eloise Blondiau is our senior producer, and our executive producer is Katya Rogers. On the Media is produced by WNYC. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

Micah Loewinger: I'm Micah Loewinger.

 

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