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Media and University Bosses Are Silencing Their Employees for Fear of Trump’s Wrath
The silencing is happening across American media because Trump cannot stand criticism, because he’s vindictive as hell, and because he’s willing and able to use the federal government to punish media corporations.
Jul 26, 2025
The latest casualty of U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to silence media criticism is Eduardo Porter, one of the most thoughtful and intelligent critics of this heinous regime.
On Tuesday, Porter wrote his last column for The Washington Post. In it, he criticized Trump’s attempt to dismantle the global trading system.
Porter didn’t stop there. He also explained why he was leaving the Post:
Jeff Bezos and his new head of Opinion are taking the paper down a path I cannot follow, directed toward the relentless promotion of free markets and personal liberties… I have no idea to what extent this is driven by Mr. Bezos’ fear of what Donald Trump could do to his various business interests, most of which are more valuable to him than the Post.
Well, I do have an idea. Bezos stopped the Post from endorsing former Vice President Kamala Harris. He made a huge contribution to Trump’s inauguration. And he stood directly in front of Trump at Trump’s swearing in.
Why? Because Bezos owns a bunch of mega-corporations, including Amazon, that depend on Trump’s goodwill and could be in deep trouble if Trump decided to retaliate against Bezos.
It’s much the same story with Stephen Colbert, longtime host of CBS’ “The Late Show” and the top-rated late-night talk show host in the United States.
On July 14, Colbert openly criticized CBS’ parent company, Paramount, for its $16 million settlement with Trump of his frivolous lawsuit over the routine editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris that Trump claimed gave her an unfair advantage in the 2024 election.
Said Colbert in his opening monologue:
As someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I am offended. And I don’t know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company… 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. Because this all comes as Paramount's owners are trying to get the Trump administration to approve the sale of our network to a new owner, Skydance.
Three days later, on July 17, Paramount pulled the plug on Colbert’s show, eliciting from Trump a celebratory, “I absolutely love that Colbert was fired.”
(A few days later, Colbert came out swinging, telling Trump to “go fuck yourself,” and joking that it had always been his dream to have a sitting president celebrate the end of his career.)
Yesterday, one week after Colbert’s show was cancelled, Trump’s Federal Communications Commission approved Paramount’s sale to Skydance.
To cinch the deal, Skydance CEO David Ellison promised that he’d eliminate all U.S.-based Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs at Paramount and CBS and create a new ombudsman to field complaints of ideological bias in news coverage.
Trump says CBS also agreed to run $20 million worth of public service announcements consistent with his ideological beliefs.
Let’s be clear. Jeff Bezos has silenced any criticism of Trump on the editorial pages of The Washington Post because Bezos fears Trump’s wrath.
CBS and its parent corporation, Paramount, has silenced criticism of Trump on Colbert’s hugely popular “Late Show” because its top corporate brass fears Trump’s wrath.
The new owner of CBS has agreed to some federal interference in the content of what it produces because he fears Trump’s wrath.
The silencing is happening across American media because Trump cannot stand criticism, because he’s vindictive as hell, and because he’s willing and able to use every department and agency of the federal government to punish any media corporations that allow its writers or hosts to criticize him.
It’s the same with American universities, whose professors have often criticized Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional actions and whose research has often yielded conclusions that contradict Trump’s lies (such as that climate change is a “hoax”).
Columbia University, Dartmouth College, and a handful of others have gone out of their way to “cooperate” with the Trump regime in order to avoid Trump’s wrath.
What does “cooperation” entail? Silencing Trump’s potential critics.
Columbia has just agreed to allow the regime to review its admissions and hiring practices in order to receive the federal research grants that the regime had held back.
Friends, this is how democracy dies.
Shame on any media outlet or university that allows Trump to silence it.
Trump is a dangerous despot. America needs its Eduardo Porters, Stephen Colberts, and all others in the media and in academia who have helped the nation understand just how truly dangerous Trump is.
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'Bowing Down to Authoritarianism,' Columbia Agrees to Pay $200 Million in Deal With Trump
"Columbia has effectively waived the white flag of surrender in its battle at the heart of the Trump administration's war on higher education and academic freedom," said Rep. Jerry Nadler.
Jul 24, 2025
Columbia University has agreed to pay a $200 million fine and make other significant concessions to the Trump administration in a deal to restore federal grants canceled earlier this year as part of the president's assault on institutions of higher education.
Under the terms of the settlement, which was released Wednesday, Columbia agreed to "conduct a thorough review" of its educational programs "in regional areas across the university, starting with the Middle East"—bowing to the Trump administration's interference in curriculum-related decisions.
Columbia also pledged to "undertake a comprehensive review of its international admissions processes" and "ensure that international student-applicants are asked questions to elicit their reasons for wishing to study in the United States" as the Trump administration—under the guise of combating antisemitism—targets international students who have taken part in Palestinian rights demonstrations.
Earlier this week, Columbia suspended or expelled dozens of students over Gaza-related protests.
Columbia University has handed over its undergraduate admissions process to Donald Trump and his MAGA allies, who will now decide at their sole discretion whether the university has admitted enough white people. It's no longer an independent institution.
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— Kevin Carey (@kevincarey1.bsky.social) Jul 23, 2025 at 10:22 PM
Columbia's deal with the federal government sparked immediate, furious backlash, with critics condemning the university's leaders as "cowards" who are "bowing down to authoritarianism."
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), whose district includes Columbia, said he was "deeply disappointed" to learn of the university's "outrageous and embarrassing $200 million capitulation to the Trump administration's repugnant extortion campaign."
In response to the Trump administration's claim that the university was violating federal law by failing to protect its Jewish students, Nadler stressed that "no investigation was ever conducted by the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights—the single body charged under federal law with investigating antisemitism on campus." (Columbia did not admit to wrongdoing as part of the agreement.)
"Rather, unlike Harvard, my alma mater has allowed a once highly respected institution to succumb to the Trump administration's coercive and exploitative tactics," Nadler said in a statement. "Columbia has effectively waived the white flag of surrender in its battle at the heart of the Trump administration's war on higher education and academic freedom."
The Columbia Daily Spectator, the university's student newspaper, reported that under its settlement with the Trump administration, the university "agreed to reveal the admissions data of both rejected and admitted students, including their race, GPA, and standardized test performance, to the federal government."
"As part of the deal, the federal government will not institute 'any civil action' against the university and will resume canceled National Institutes of Health and Health and Human Services funding, but does not restore grants from the Department of Education," the Spectator observed. "The university is required to comply with Title VI to maintain the terms of the deal."
Jacob Schriner-Briggs, visiting assistant professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, wrote on social media that the deal represents "a vicious blow to the academic freedom of university employees and students alike" and accused Columbia of "taking its lead from the government as to what questions it will ask international applicants and which 'longstanding traditions' it will ensure all of its students are 'committed to.'"
"This capitulation is indefensible," wrote Schriner-Briggs.
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Sanders Meets Freed Trump Political Prisoner Khalil as Columbia Punishes Gaza Protesters
"We must not allow Trump to destroy the First Amendment," Sanders said as the Ivy League school expelled or suspended scores of students in what critics called a bid to win back blocked federal funding.
Jul 22, 2025
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday met with Mahmoud Khalil—the former Columbia University Palestine defender recently imprisoned by the Trump administration—on the same day that the school expelled or suspended more than 70 students who protested Israel's genocidal obliteration of Gaza.
Sanders (I-Vt.) posted a photo of himself with his arm around a beaming Khalil, with the caption: "I met with Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student at Columbia University, who was imprisoned for 104 days by the Trump administration for opposing [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's illegal and horrific war in Gaza. Outrageous. We must not allow [U.S. President Donald] Trump to destroy the First Amendment and freedom to dissent."
Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent married to a U.S. citizen, last year finished his graduate studies at Columbia. He was arrested at his New York home by plainclothes Department of Homeland Security officers on March 8 before being transferred to New Jersey and then Louisiana, where he missed the birth of his first child.
Accused of no criminal offense and widely considered a political prisoner, Khalil was arrested following Trump's issuance of an executive order authorizing the deportation of noncitizen students and others who take part in pro-Palestine demonstrations. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also invoked the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952—which allows for the deportation of noncitizens whose presence in the United States is deemed detrimental to foreign policy interests—to target peaceful Palestine protesters who have committed no crimes.
Khalil was released last month upon a federal judge's order. He is far from the only student jailed for opposing the Gaza genocide; others include Mohsen Mahdawi and Yunseo Chung—both permanent U.S. residents—as well as Rümeysa Öztürk, Badar Khan Suri, and others.
On Tuesday, Columbia announced disciplinary action against more than 70 students who took part in last year's protests for Gaza at the New York City school's Butler Library. Around 80 Columbia students were arrested amid the violent police crackdown on campus encampments and occupations.
"While the university does not release individual disciplinary results of any student, the sanctions from Butler Library include probation, suspensions (ranging from one year to three years), degree revocations, and expulsions," Columbia's Office of Public Affairs said in a statement.
The school's announcement came days after Columbia and Trump administration officials met in Washington, D.C. to negotiate an agreement to restore most of the nearly $400 million in federal contracts for the university that were canceled in March over an alleged failure to tackle antisemitism.
As part of the deal, Columbia agreed to adopt the dubious International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism, which critics say conflates legitimate criticism and condemnation of Israeli policies and practices with anti-Jewish bigotry, and forces people to accept the legitimacy of a settler-colonial apartheid state engaged in illegal occupation and a war that experts increasingly agree is genocidal.
The school also said it would partner with the Anti-Defamation League on antisemitism training. Last year, the Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the ADL for what it called a "pattern of enabling anti-Palestinian hate."
Columbia University interim president Claire Shipman has already been working with white nationalist Stephen Miller—Trump's White House deputy chief of staff and a primary architect of the president's first-term migrant family separation and Muslim travel ban policies—to restore lost contracts.
Columbia's acquiescence to the Trump administration comes as Israeli forces have killed or maimed more than 215,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, including at least 14,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Most of Gaza's more than 2 million people have been forcibly displaced, often multiple times, and hundreds of thousands of Gazans are starving amid an increasingly fatal famine fueled by Israel's siege of the enclave, which is partly the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
Israel has also been accused of committing scholasticide in Gaza, where every university has been destroyed or damaged.
"Hundreds of academics have been killed. Books and archives have been incinerated. Entire families have been erased from the civil registry," said one student quoted in a recent Columbia University Apartheid Divest blog post. "This is not a war. It is a campaign of erasure."
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