Is it Over Yet? 2025 in Review

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. And, of course, real things happen, too. Horrible things. And some good ones. Definitely missed a few, but... We sure tried. If you're a frequent listener, you know that, and we'll be here next year just as we have for the last 25, if we can. And 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. So please, if you like the work, support it. Give today at onemedia.org slash donate. And thank you now and for as long as it takes. That said, on with the show. And this week's on the media, a year to remember, even if you'd rather forget. I signed a sweeping slate of executive orders to stop the invasion of our borders. Elon Musk has been given access to the Treasury Department's payment system, including the personal information of millions of American workers. The January 6th investigation and the hundreds of criminal cases connected to it effectively erased. Moving forward, the White House press pool will be determined by the White House press team. Hours after a stunning government report. that the job market is considerably worse than previously thought. 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 farmer. 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. The good as well as the bad and the ugly all coming up right after this.

On the media is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Insurance isn't one-size-fits-fits-fits-name-your-price tool for years now. With the name-your-price tool, you can tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you options that fit your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easy to see your options. Visit progressive.com. Find a rate that works for you with the name your price tool. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates, price and coverage match limited by state law. This podcast is supported by the New York Community Trust. As a savvy New Yorker, you've probably heard of donor advised funds or DAFs, a tax-smart and streamlined way to give. But did you know there's a way to use your DAF to make a powerful difference today and an enduring local impact? That way is the New York Community Trust, your community foundation. Your DAF at the Trust comes with personal service, unique giving ideas, and the satisfaction of knowing you're helping your community today and tomorrow. Visit give2.nYC today. From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. I'm Michael Lowinger. And 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 and 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, and Miriam 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. So you're welcome. I guess. This year the news was delivered as an unceasing geyser. And while making our job here at the media analysis factory weirdly easier, the constant battering took a toll on our collective mental health. So we're going to look back as we do most years at some of the highlights, so to speak, and how we handled them. And 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. 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. He signed the first flurry of executive orders live on stage. And we declared a national energy emergency to drill baby drill. We ended.

destructive DEI mandates across the federal government. And more. We permanently stopped 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. 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 showerheads 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 bore the marks of AI. He signed 26 orders on his first day, and as I write this, 220 total this year. That's compared to Biden's 162 in four years and Obama's 277 in 8. In other words, a lot. On day one, Trump also issued a blanket pardon for nearly all those convicted after the January 6th 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. Partons 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, and 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.

Right off the bat in week one, the president resumed one of his favorite pastimes, baiting the press. Stop interrupting. We won this election and a landslide because the American public is tired of people like you that are just one side. 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? I think you should let me run the country. You run CNN. And if you did it well, your ratings are much better. When you report fake news, which CNN does a lot, you are the enemy of the people. Go ahead. Mr. President. 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. Across the media and technology sectors, you're seeing companies really throw Trump bones and bend the need to Donald Trump. It's happening with, you know, 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 Sun-Shiong, refiguring the opinion side of that newspaper. And echoing this larger move towards quote-unquote neutrality, the Washington Post adopted a new internal mission statement, quote, riveting storytelling for all of America. Is, in your mind, chasing less liberal audiences a good business strategy for these outlets? This has been, like, the dream of owners. They wish they could live in, like, 1995, where Republicans and Democrats, you know, gave their spiels. You heard from the right, you heard from the left, and people made up their mind. And that might somewhat work if both parties are committed to basic principles and the truth. But 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. But the MAGA Bayes, they don't not only dislike those outlets, right? They would celebrate if they shut down. The Washington Post saw an exodus of some of its most recognizable talent this year. Philip Bump, Glenn Kessler, Eric Wemple, Catherine Rampel, Perry Bacon Jr., Ruth Marcus, Eugene Robinson, Dave Jorgensen, and many more. But in the Columbia Journalism Review, John Alsop, after describing the Dark Times at the Post, wrote that, quote, 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.

Also on week one, Trump announced another one of his marquee issues. 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... Later, the project was allocated $170 billion in the One Big Beautiful Bill. Yeah, 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 one 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, and barging into restaurants demanding to see papers. firing tear gas and chemical irritants at U.S. citizens legally protesting in the streets. That story is guaranteed to continue into the new year. Coming up, the dire consequences of Trump's January 28th executive order stripping protections for federal workers. This is on the media.

This is on the media. I'm Michael Lowinger. And 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. Elon Musk has been given access to the Treasury Department's payment system, including the personal information of millions of American workers. Backlash after Elon Musk seized control of USAID. the agency that provides U.S. humanitarian assistance around the world. Elon Musk bragged about feeding USAID into the wood chipper. The Doge team has visited the Centers for Disease Control and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. They also have sought access to payment and contracting systems across the Department of Health and Human Services. Elon Musk and his Doge task force also targeted the Office of Personnel Management, the beating heart of the federal workforce. In that way, I would say Doge is meddling with all of the government. I spoke with Vittoria Elliott of Wired Magazine. 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. What have they broken recently? seemingly possibly a lot of laws, and if not laws, certainly protocols. 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? 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 Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter in 2022 for Wired. Having done that work has made our team. really ready for this moment. Where do you think the puck is headed? I think that what we can say from the public statements of people like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and Mark Andrescent 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, yeah, get rid of bureaucracy, get rid of red tape. But... 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, you know, applying for government funding for research works. And that, you know, remains stable. because so many of these places where Doja's inserting itself are fundamentally considered apolitical. They keep the wheels turning no matter who's in the political office. And that engenders trust. Could they all be more efficient? Probably for sure. But the reality is those criticisms, those valid criticisms, are not the same as what?

Elon 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. 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 woodchipper, 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 Elon 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. I have been consistently bowled over by the bravery of people who 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. 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 Pam Bondi would head a new task force with a broad and, frankly, bizarre mandate. 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. Meanwhile, the 2021 Capitol riot was being swiftly scrubbed from the public record. The January 6th investigation and the hundreds of criminal cases connected to it effectively erased. All traces of it have been deleted from the FBI website. It turned out that the blanket clemency awarded to more than 1,500 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. It was rough. Ryan Riley 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 6th investigations. For a lot of the assistant U.S. attorneys, the federal prosecutors who had to work these cases, and then the banned 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. But what's interesting to me is I don't know if it's really broken through with the American people more broadly because, you know, 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. And 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, you know, 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. 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, War Room. 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 criminal or civilly, we'll figure that out. But yeah, we're putting you all on notice. Cash soon announced he was installing fellow right-wing podcaster Dan Bongino as his deputy director, a guy that NBC's Brandy Zadrosny had been following for years. Dan 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 sort of scoop up when he hitched his wagon to Trump 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. 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. Dan 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. And this was kind of a departure for Dan Bongino because prior to this, he had been fairly mild about the FBI on his show, right? 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. And so someone like Dan 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. As somebody who's been along for the ride for so long, Brandy, what is it like to see these people welcomed in to the seat of American power? bananas, absolutely bananas. I can't believe it. I really can't believe it. And 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 sort of alone was one of the few people operating in this way and making this kind of media, and 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. Dan Bongino announced in December that he'd be stepping away from the FBI in January. As Donald Trump put it, quote, I think he wants to go back to his show. 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 shake-up in the briefing room. We're also opening up this briefing room to new media voices, who produced 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. 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. 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. But we will also be offering the privilege to well-deserving outlets who have never been allowed to share in this awesome responsibility. Including conspiracy theorists, propagandists, and far-right influencers.

Mother Jay Jones's Anna Merlin 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. Thank you very much. You know, Caroline, your first brief thing. The media went after this administration for supporting illegal immigrants they claimed were not criminals. The question is, do you think they're out of touch with Americans demanding action on our border crisis? The media out of touch? I think that media certainly is... So, is that how this goes? 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. On February 11th, 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. 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. Khalil was separated from his wife, a US citizen, and promptly transported to a lockup in Louisiana. According to the online outlet Zateo, 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. They're troublemakers, they're agitators. They don't love our country. We ought to get them the hell out. 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 U.S., 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. 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. McCarron 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, but it also solidified the use of expansive ideological and political tests. for admissions and deportation from the United States. And over the years, this act was used to deny visas to Doris Lessing, who won the Nobel Prize, to Iris Murdoch, Graham Green, 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. Khalil was held in an immigration detention center in Louisiana until June 20th, missing the birth of his child. He's still in the U.S., still under deportation orders, and still no criminal charges have been filed against him. Brooke, we've only covered the first quarter of the year, and we're already halfway through this hour. We gotta speed this up. I know, but there's still some really crucial stories we covered in March. 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. Kari Lake, loser of two statewide races in Arizona, was appointed to lead. Okay, kill the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees the Voice of America as well as the government-funded Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and more. Unfortunately, the product is not pro-American. It's not pro-American at all. As of today, the Voice of America has been effectively silenced. Also still in March, Signalgate, when the Atlantic's editor-in-chief was added to a text chain on Signal with top security officials. The White House has been repeatedly saying that there were no classified information. There were no war plans discussed within those text messages. Take a look for yourself. I'll read a little bit of here. These are texts from Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, talking about at 1144 Eastern that day. Weather is favorable. Just confirmed with CENTCOM, we are a go for mission launch. 1215 texts in this chat. F-18's launch declares this the first strike package. Just simply a stunning.

lack of operational security. And let's recall, of course... 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. I've been, you know, asked this question a few times today. It's why did you have such a hard time believing this? And the answer is because it's unbelievable. 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. And then the markets tanked. But two days later, he did announce a 90-day pause. The GOP hailed his business acumen, and the markets rallied. Whiz back? What a move. Incredible. Jim Kramer on Mad Money. NASAC shooting into orbit up 12.16%. Second best day on record. Today, we saw investor and big-time Trump supporter Bill Ackman tweet. This was brilliantly executed by Trump textbook, Art of the Deal. The Art of the Deal, Trump's 1987 book, ghost written by journalist Tony Schwartz, who's since called it the... Greatest Regret of My Life. without question. The most notable deals that Trump made, according to congressional Democrats like Adam Schiff, were ones he may have brokered for friends and family. Insider trading within the White House, within the administration. 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, Trump posted this to Truth Social. He said, now is a great time to buy. And that has some questioning if that was a tip-off to investors. The question is, who knew what the president was going to do? And did people around the president trade stock knowing... the incredible gyration the market was about to go through. Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday with some visiting billionaires. Some people made off like bandits just before the market resumed tumbling, when on Thursday Trump upped tariffs on Chinese goods to 145%. We begin this out with stocks falling following their biggest... 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 yippy. But there's a deeper story here about how Trump has attempted to circumvent Congress. 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.

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 any time he wants to sidestep checks and balances, creating crises that further entrenched presidential power. That may prove to be the greatest national emergency of them all. And then came June, and a shocking encounter between a sitting U.S. senator and Homeland Security officers. We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country. A press conference with Homeland Security Secretary Christine Home in L.A. California Senator Alex Padilla tried to ask a question. Senator Alex Padilla, I have questions for the secretary because the fact of the matter is a half a dozen violent criminals that are rotating on your hands off. On the ground. On the ground. Hands on your back. Kristi Noem on your back. Lave you let me get on my hands. Go ahead. All right. All right. Cool. Hey, one hand. Lay flat. Lay flat. Other hand, sir. Kristi 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, quote, disrespectful. Senator 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 farmers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country. We already have a statement from the Department of Homeland Security that has accused Senator Alex Padilla of being disrespectful, as if that is a rationalization for violence. Connecticut Senator 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 they re-represent. Make sure that we do not normalize. this kind of violence. 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. And he says that's a common thing. Really? They get up to him this far away and then they start spitting in their face. That happens. They get hit very hard.

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, quote, 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... 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. 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. In 1976, that film was a satire and the main character, Allooned. But it doesn't seem so loony anymore. Coming up, the rest of the year, squished into the remaining minutes of this hour. This is on the media. On the media, it's supported by Dell. Back to school starts now. Get long-lasting battery life on the Dell XPS laptop powered by Series 3 Intel Core so you can work from anywhere. Now starting at 699 with exclusive student pricing starting at 599. And it's lightweight, portable, and packed with enough processing power to make multitasking a breeze. So say goodbye to distractions and hello to more free time because you finished your work. faster. Complete your setup with savings on select monitors and more must have electronics and accessories, limited time deals, and free shipping on PCs, and more await you at Dell.com slash deals. That's Dell.com slash deals.

This is on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. And I'm Michael Onger. 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 would be ending Stephen Colbert's show when his contract expires in May 26. That decision had nothing whatsoever to do with Stephen Colbert's joke about his network's $16 million payout to the White House, greasing the wheels for a big media merger. 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. 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. But 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. Hours after a stunning government report that the job market is considerably worse than previously thought. President Trump posting on truth social that the jobs report was... rigged to, quote, make a great Republican success look less stellar. Why should anybody trust numbers? I believe the numbers were phony just like they were before the election. So you know what I did? I fired her. Erica McIntyrefer, 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. You know, we've cut drug prices by 1,300, 1,400, 1,500, 1,500, 1,500, 1,500 percent. I don't mean 50%, I mean 14, 15, 100%. In June, he claimed to have cut the price of eggs by 400%. But a quantity cannot decrease by more than 100% of itself. Even I know that. And I don't have an uncle who taught at MIT. In September, the National Guard presence on the streets of the nation's capital was causing much distress. The press says, he's a dictator. He's trying to take over. No, all I want is security for our people.

Get out of our neighborhood. You can see in multiple videos, federal agents wearing masks during arrests in the district in recent weeks. You see Attorney General Brian Schwab now suing the Trump administration over the deployment of the National Guard troops here in Washington. The city's top legal officials saying the surge of troops amounts to a forced military occupation. 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. The major media narratives that we're seeing are false. Jameson Foser is a political consultant and media critic. In September, he told me that the mainstream press was manufacturing consent. By manufacturing consent, I mean, the public does not currently agree with Donald Trump or what he's doing. But the media in the way they're covering this story is increasing support for it by suggesting he's trying to fight crime. And then on September 10th, A horrendous assassination at a university event shook the foundations of the MagaFaceful. Witnesses say immediately before the shooting, Kirk was taking questions from an audience member about mass shootings and gun violence. I'm going to give you some credit. Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years? Counting or not counting gang violence? Great. Investigators say the gunman fired a shot from a nearby rooftop and hit Kirk in the neck. 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 the so-called trans ideology. But by the end of that week's news cycle, many, including Wisconsin Republican Derrick Van Orden, blamed the press. So 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. One article of mag of 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 her spouse in the shooting of another and his spouse, or the brutal thrashing of Paul Nancy Pelosi. shootings at Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party's campaign office in Tempe, Arizona three times in less than a month. And 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, and in fact, a national emergency there may well be, just not the one he thinks there is. Our nation is broken? Utah's Republican Governor Spencer Cox pleaded with his fellow Americans to look in the mirror. 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. Late night host Jimmy Kimmel made a reference to the shooting that offended some on the right, and 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. I mean, 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. 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 firing, suspension, investigation, and other actions against more than 600 people. 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. 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. 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. After CBS Evening News anchors John Dickerson and Maurice Dubois announced they were leaving, Bari Weiss replaced them with CBS morning host Tony DeCopal. We live in a time in which many people have lost trust in media, Bari Weiss wrote. Tony DeCopal 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, end quote. More likely, Bari Weiss was hiring someone who shares her politics. Just one year ago, DeCopal was reprimanded by CBS News after his interview with author Tanahasi Coates, who had just written a book about Israel's treatment of Palestinians. DeCopal repeatedly questioned Coates' premise. 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. And so then I found myself wondering, Why does Tanahashi 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? And is it because you just don't believe that Israel in any condition has a right to exist? 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.

We could end the show, and this year, on bad news. But 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. 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. And in New Jersey, Democratic Congressman Mikie Sherrill has won the governor's race. And in New York City, Zohran Mamdani has won the closely watched mayoral race, defeating Mississippi Senate Democrats celebrated their efforts to gain two more seats. Georgia Democrats, they are celebrating their first statewide election win in nearly five years hoping. In December, a... The 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. Also last month, a federal judge temporarily blocked further efforts to detain Kilmar Abrago Garcia, 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, but 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. 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. Fear is the mine killer. Fear is the little death. Be not afraid. This is Jamel Bowie, a New York Times opinion writer speaking to his followers on TikTok in January about their feelings on week one of the second Trump administration. The reason why I urge people not to fall into panic and fear is because panic and fear will overwhelm your critical faculties. And once you begin using your critical faculties, you start asking questions like, well, how exactly are they going to do X or Y or Z? Bui, 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. There are threats and there are dangers. They are real. But 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. Fate de complete. But it isn't. That means it is within the capacity to change it. And 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. That's it for this week's show. On The Media is produced by Molly Rosen, Rebecca Clark Callender, and Candace Wong. Travis Manon is our video producer. Our technical director is Jennifer Munson with engineering from Jared Paul. Eloise Blondio is our senior producer and our executive producer is Katya Rogers. On The Media is produced by WNYC. I'm Brooke Gladstone. And I'm Michael Langer.