The Guardian - Trump’s trade commission is using fear to silence dissent
CJL Director Courtney Radsch argues that the Trump administration and Elon Musk are using regulatory power, lawsuits, and financial pressure to punish watchdogs, advertisers, and media companies that challenge powerful interests—creating a chilling effect where dissent becomes too costly, institutions self-censor, and democratic media accountability is weakened without the need for overt censorship.
Is there something “radically left” about being anti-Nazi? That was the question a judge put to the lawyer for the Federal Trade Commission, which has no good answer.
This week, the FTC abruptly settled its case with Media Matters for America, a media watchdog the FTC had been investigating over its reports about pro-Nazi content running alongside ads on X. Those reports drove advertisers off the platform and prompted X owner Elon Musk to threaten a “thermonuclear lawsuit”.
Four months after Andrew Ferguson took the FTC helm, having explicitly vowed before his appointment to stand up to “the radical left”, his agency sought communications records from Media Matters.
Ferguson described his agency’s logic at an antitrust conference in April 2025, noting that his investigative tools are “expensive when applied to you even if we don’t win at the end of the day, so knuckle under”. This is not a description of law enforcement but rather a textbook definition of lawfare at its finest.
The FTC does not have a mandate to investigate first amendment disputes like this one. Nor do state attorneys general. Yet Ken Paxton of Texas and Andrew Bailey of Missouri also launched fraud investigations into Media Matters after pressure from Stephen Miller, now deputy White House chief of staff.
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