On September 18, in another attack in his long-standing war on the media, President Donald Trump expelled three major news outlets from the White House. His claim is that these outlets published “fake news”; it is demonstrable that he simply dislikes their coverage. This episode is, as Liz Oyer, former U.S. Pardon Attorney at the Department of Justice, puts it, “One of the most blatantly illegal things he has done as President.”
It is also something that these media outlets in particular helped to engineer and encourage.
The corporate media’s failure to live up to its duty as the Fourth Estate—the watchdog of the three official branches of government and a check on their power—is part of what got us here. Where is here? A United States in which voting rights have been gutted and dissent openly criminalized, where essential public services have been eliminated and entire agencies shut down, where critical regulatory enforcement and public service have been largely left to the individual states, where citizens and noncitizens alike are abducted and detained without warning by masked federal agents.
The outlets cast out are MS Now, Politico, and CNN, news organizations with long track records of acting as stenographers to power, building consensus for government intervention, and failing to inform the public in favor of presenting sensationalist coverage. CNN’s State of the Union program with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, reported In These Times, did not book one Palestinian or Palestinian American guest in the first fifteen months of the genocide in Gaza despite running multiple segments on the topic, instead giving free rein to Biden Administration officials. Politico is infamous for its cozy insider relationship with the people and government agencies it covers, and has for years taken money from Big Oil to fund its climate and energy coverage. MS Now, back when it was still MSNBC in 2025, canceled programs hosted by Joy Reid and Ayman Mohyeldin, who were critical of Israel. In more recent days MS Now has been under fire for its out-of-touch interview with progressive Twitch streamer and political lightning rod Hasan Piker.
This is not new. Certain segments of the press often serve national interests. In the midst of the Revolutionary War, prolific newspaper editor and printer Benjamin Franklin famously expounded on the virtues of the timber rattlesnake as a symbol of national identity. Native to “no other quarter of the world besides America,” he wrote, the animal is vigilant, courageous, and solitary. Franklin was referring to the image of a timber rattlesnake next to the words “don’t tread on me,” which was everywhere at the time. It was popularized by a flag designed by a slaveholding Southern army brigadier general and flown on the ships of the Continental Navy, newly established to protect the nascent country’s emerging trade interests. This symbol of the American Revolution was reappropriated after September 11, 2001 and again by the anti-government Tea Party movement. What started as a symbol of freedom from imperialism shed its layers over the centuries and became an emblem of American individualism and exceptionalism. It’s a snake that swallows democracy whole just before its own tail.
In this October/November issue, we chronicle the devouring of our democracy in the lead up to a highly fraught midterm election. John Nichols breaks down the failure of corporate media to substantively cover the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary election and insurgent democratic socialist candidacy of Francesca Hong. Emily Markwiese reports on how the labor union National Nurses United works to prevent the termination and deportation of its members. Melinda Tuhus documents how one Connecticut child care provider is tackling the affordability crisis by offering its employees free housing. Brea Baker reports on the health impacts of hundreds of data centers concentrated near the nation’s capital. For our “On the Line” photo essay, Cristina Panagi captures the goings on inside 26 Federal Plaza, a Manhattan immigration court notorious for immigrant intimidation and detention. We share an excerpt from Mahmoud Khalil’s new book, No Land To Stand On: Notes From Detention. Our publisher Norman Stockwell speaks with New York Times bestselling author and political strategist Ben Wikler, former chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, about his prescription for resuscitating U.S. democracy.
As this issue went to press, Politico sent out a new edition of one of its many email newsletters, Surge, which covers global energy markets. The subject line on it was: “the world laps America on climate.” It reported a shift in the United States’ global positioning on climate change, summarizing what Democratic Hawai‘i Senator Brian Schatz said was his new message for international leaders: “Leave the United States behind.” A disclaimer ran at the top of the newsletter, stating: “Presented by ExxonMobil.”
As a popular slogan, “Leave the United States behind” doesn’t have the same ring as “Don’t tread on me.” But it is that vision of America that got us here.
