Trump’s Attacks on Press Freedom Are Paving the Way for Authoritarianism

In 2024, the Democrats ran on the catchphrase “We are not going back.” Even after the party’s resounding defeat, the refrain may have been more prophetic than they imagined. New research shows that once a country begins a descent into authoritarianism it’s extremely difficult to reverse. And the first vector of attack is often the free press.

The findings come from the “Democracy Report 2025,” just out from the V-Dem Institute, a global democracy research project run out of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden whose dataset is considered the gold standard. For the first time in more than 20 years, by the study’s estimate, the world now has more autocracies (91) than democracies (88), with liberal democracies (29) now the least common regime type. Twenty-seven countries have transitioned from democracies to autocracies since 2005. “If autocratization starts in a democracy, the probability of surviving is very low,” the authors note. “The favorite weapon of autocratizers is media censorship.”

Foreign Affairs. “What lies ahead is not a fascist or single-party dictatorship, but competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition.”

The “fatality rate” of democratic regimes that have begun the slide into autocracy is 67%, and the window to turn things around is generally about five years. After 10 years of decline, a democratic rebound is “close to impossible.”

V-Dem’s research indicates that a free press is a key bulwark against authoritarian consolidation and suggests the possible stakes in the battle over US press freedom. The media assault has already been well-documented. Anticipatory obedience is rife—from The Washington Post, which has gutted its opinion section, to ABC News, which chose to settle a libel suit filed by Trump rather than fight it. The Associated Press remains locked out of the White House press pool because it refuses to adopt the Trumpian denomination for the Gulf of Mexico. Pro-Trump influencers are displacing traditional media from the White House to the Pentagon. And Trump’s lawsuits are grinding ahead. In an action against CBS News, Trump has objected to the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris; CBS News refutes the charge. Trump claims The Des Moines Register committed fraud when it published a preelection poll showing Harris in the lead (though it is hard to argue for damages since Trump won Iowa—and the election); the Register and its parent company, Gannett, have described Trump’s case against them as meritless. The president has also gone after the Pulitzer Prize Board, saying it libeled him—libeled him?—when it defended its decision to honor The New York Times and Washington Post for reporting on Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US elections.

Another media assault has been less visible but more immediately consequential in terms of the consolidation of autocratic power: the takedown of Voice of America. The authors of Project 2025’s nearly 900-page “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” offered Trump very specific guidance on what he should do with VOA and the other US media outlets funded by US taxpayers. The president, the report advised, should reform the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the agency that oversees those outlets, curtail its independence, trim its costs, and bring it under the direct control of the executive branch in order to “tell America’s story and promote freedom and democracy around the world.” In December, Trump announced that one of his staunch acolytes, election denier Kari Lake, was his choice to serve as director of VOA.

Journalists I spoke to at VOA assumed that Lake, who had a long career as a TV reporter before launching unsuccessful campaigns for Arizona governor and senator, would try to turn Voice of America into the Voice of Trump, despite her claims to the contrary. They were alarmed because VOA’s mission as established in 1942 is to promote American soft power by showcasing the value of independent journalism, often in places where a free press does not exist. But they were not prepared for what happened next.

Twenty-seven countries have transitioned from democracies to autocracies since 2005. By the study’s estimate, the world now has more autocracies (91) than democracies (88).

While Lake’s official appointment as VOA director awaited the Senate confirmation of the next CEO of the USAGM, in early February, Elon Musk called for the broadcaster to be shut down altogether. Weeks later, Lake was named special adviser to the USAGM and sworn in on March 3. Soon thereafter, she reportedly showed up at VOA headquarters with several DOGE staffers in tow. On March 15, following an executive order from the president seeking to dismantle the USAGM, virtually the entire VOA staff, more than 1,300 people, were put on administrative leave, and full-time contractors had their contracts terminated. The legality of the whole undertaking is being challenged in a lawsuit filed March 21 that names Lake as a defendant.

When VOA’s millions of viewers and listeners from around the world tuned in, they either got dead air or music on a loop. It reminded VOA veteran Steve Herman of covering coups abroad. “I’ve been on the ground in places around the world and all of a sudden the music comes on instead of the programing—it’s like, uh-oh, I know what’s happening,” says Herman—the chief national correspondent and former White House bureau chief, who had already been suspended by the USAGM over his social media activity, before the rest of his colleagues were put on leave. “The loss is incalculable to America’s image.”

Next on the DOGE chopping block may be US public media: the NPR and PBS stations across the nation, which are also funded in part by American taxpayers. The DOGE Subcommittee of the Congress, led by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, heard testimony from the heads of NPR and PBS this week, and the proceedings had the aura of a show trial. “As we continue to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse, we can look no further than the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” said Greene in her closing statement, in which she said the committee would be calling for the organization to be dismantled and defunded. “From what we have heard here today, the American people will not allow such propaganda to be funded through the federal government.”

On average, NPR member stations receive about 10% of their revenue from the US Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is funded by Congress. Still, a cutoff in underwriting could be devastating, particularly to local stations in more rural areas. Jim Schachter, the president and CEO of New Hampshire Public Radio, tells me that citizens across his purple state depend on NPR as a primary news source and continue to rely on radio in emergencies. “It’s my country too,” says Schachter, describing his concern for the fate of public media. “You don’t take things away from me simply because you don’t like them.”

Beyond the threat to NPR itself, publicly questioning the value of fact-based journalism in a congressional hearing could further soften up public sentiments and lay the groundwork for legal attacks on independent national media. Trump has indicated these may be coming, and based on previous statements could be high on the agenda for Trump’s FBI director, Kash Patel.

“What lies ahead is not a fascist or single-party dictatorship, but competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition.”

Of late, the president has also thrown shade at CNN, MSNBC, and other major news networks, saying, “it’s totally illegal what they do,” and has been posting on his own media platform, Truth Social, to call out journalists by name, at times using condescending epithets. While such swipes may seem petty (the president merely expressing his passing, if customary, pique), they actually serve to signal to Trump’s minions that these outlets and news people are fair game. It’s part of the same playbook that Trump has used at rallies, sometimes inflaming members of the crowd to hassle the media representatives in the press pen.

It also sets an example for his supporters—and others in the administration. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, for example, went on the warpath this week. After it was revealed that he shared sensitive military information in a group chat, using the encrypted messaging app Signal, he did not publicly accept responsibility for a potential security lapse, nor did the president immediately come out and admonish him. Instead, Hegseth tried to turn the tables on Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, the journalist who was apparently unwittingly added to the officials’ Signal conversation about a pending US military assault on Houthi positions in Yemen. This wasn’t just “blame the messenger.” It was: raise questions about the credibility of a member of the media so as to deflect attention from one’s own behavior—and demonize that journalist in the process.

Trump’s attacks on the traditional media seem to be only part of his strategy. A second part, evidently, is an effort to manage or encourage platforms within the media ecosystem that support him—from X to Truth Social to the bro-castors who rallied around his campaign. “Competitive autocracies always try to control the media,” says Kate Wright, a media scholar at the University of Edinburgh, former BBC journalist, and coauthor of a book on VOA. “Often that control is covert, but it can be overt as well. This slants public conversations about political issues in favor of the ruling administration, while sustaining the illusion of a full and free democracy.”

This is why it’s so important to put into perspective what these efforts to undermine the media mean in terms of the potential US descent into authoritarianism, as part of a broader assault on institutions of democratic life, from civil society to universities. According to V-Dem’s research, the “fatality rate” of democratic regimes that have begun the slide into autocracy is 67%, and the window to turn things around is generally about five years. There does not seem to be much consensus among democracy scholars about how far along the US is in terms of its autocratic transition. But one thing is clear. After 10 years of decline, a democratic rebound is “close to impossible,” according to a recent V-Dem policy brief.

The fate of America’s democracy, therefore, depends in good measure on the fight to preserve media freedom. The battle lines are no longer about who controls the narrative or who gets access to the president. It’s more elemental. Media organizations across the country must rally to defend their rights, protect their people, and report the news with independence. In practical terms, this means preparing their newsrooms to work in a more adversarial environment, marshalling legal resources, and building strong alliances around a shared commitment to press freedom. If they fail—and the ramparts have already been breached—then America’s authoritarian future may be all but inevitable. Once autocracy takes hold, it’s very hard to dislodge. There may be no going back—to democracy.