‘Brazen Attempt to Try to Intimidate Journalists’: Trump DOJ Launches Antitrust Probe Into News Networks

“The investigation is nonsense,” said one press freedom advocate. “Trump may view the presidency as a business venture, but news outlets’ standing up for their constitutional rights has nothing to do with antitrust law.”


US President Donald Trump speaks with reporters upon his arrival to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland on October 10, 2026.
(Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Oct 11, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


The US Justice Department has launched an investigation into whether the five major television networks violated federal antitrust law when they briefly halted pool coverage of President Donald Trump amid his administration’s attempt to bar certain journalists from the White House.

The New York Times reported late Saturday that DOJ officials “contacted networks on Friday and demanded communications and materials related to the White House TV pool.” ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Fox News rotate the responsibility of capturing and distributing footage of the president. The networks paused pool coverage last month after the Trump administration dropped CNN from its scheduled pool assignment.

Emily Covington, a spokesperson for the Justice Department, confirmed the existence of the investigation in a statement on Saturday, saying that “group boycotts among commercial competitors can violate the Sherman Act.”

Press freedom organizations and other critics condemned the probe as a politically motivated attack on journalism and questioned the administration’s expressed concern about antitrust violations—particularly given that the DOJ has effectively abandoned antitrust enforcement during Trump’s second term.

Bruce Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the investigation “appears to be a pretext for seeking records from the networks about how they are covering daily White House events during a media ban the president himself put in place.”

“The decisions news organizations make about coverage are protected by the First Amendment, and summoning antitrust authority, on top of the retaliatory actions the White House has already taken to bar certain outlets, is another and even more brazen attempt to try to intimidate journalists,” said Brown.

Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, called the investigation “nonsense.”

“The investigation is nonsense. Trump may view the presidency as a business venture, but news outlets’ standing up for their constitutional rights has nothing to do with antitrust law, no matter what Laura Loomer says,” Stern added, pointing to the far-right activist’s public call for an antitrust lawsuit against the major TV news networks. “Depriving Trump of the attention he craves is not a competitive harm, and in any case, antitrust law has long recognized First Amendment exceptions even when there is anticompetitive impact.”

News of the DOJ investigation came after CNN, MS NOW, and Politico sued the president over his attempt to bar the outlets from the White House. Late last month, a Trump-appointed judge ordered the administration to restore White House access to the outlets as the lawsuit proceeds.

Jonathan Kanter, who headed the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division under the Biden administration, told CNN on Saturday that the media networks’ actions in the wake of the attempted White House ban are “not even in the same zip code of an antitrust violation.”

“It’s literally freedom of speech,” said Kanter. “It’s no more an antitrust violation than the reporters coming together to form the pool in the first place.”

Newsom Endorses Ballot Measure That Would Cancel Out Billionaire Tax—and Ban Future Wealth Taxes

“He’d rather millions of children and families lose their healthcare than ask a couple hundred billionaires to finally pay their fair share.”


California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) speaks to reporters inside the US Capitol in Washington, DC on May 20, 2026.
(Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Oct 11, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

California Gov. Gavin Newsom ramped up his opposition to a proposed tax on the state’s billionaire residents on Friday by endorsing a competing ballot measure that would both cancel out the billionaire wealth tax initiative and prohibit any new taxes on the ownership of financial assets or other personal property.

“He’s showing California his true colors,” Debru Carthan, vice president of Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW)—which is leading the campaign for the California billionaire tax—said in response to Newsom’s endorsement of Proposition 42. “He’d rather millions of children and families lose their healthcare than ask a couple hundred billionaires to finally pay their fair share.”

The push for Proposition 42 is funded by Building a Better California, a group bankrolled by Google co-founder Sergey Brin and other billionaires.

If passed, Prop 42 would ban “any new state tax... imposed on the ownership of personal property (all things people own other than real estate).” It would also prohibit any tax that “applies retroactively based on taxpayer’s past activities.” (The proposed 5% billionaire tax, which will appear on California’s November ballot as Proposition 40, would apply retroactively to billionaires living in California on or after January 1, 2026.)

In a statement, Newsom framed his support for Prop 42 as an effort to protect Californians’ retirement savings.

“We all agree that Californians deserve to have their retirement and life savings protected from new state taxes so those savings are there when they need them,” the governor said.

But critics have described Prop 42 as a “poison-pill measure” whose supporters are fearmongering about a nonexistent threat to retirement savings in an effort to defeat the proposed billionaire tax, revenue from which would be used to fund healthcare, food aid, and education in the state.

“Its true target is Prop 40,” the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote of the Newsom-backed measure. “Prop 42 papers over its real purpose by cynically appealing to middle-class worries about retirement security. Reject this appalling tactic and disincentivize its further use by voting no.”

Newsom has opposed the idea of a wealth tax on California’s billionaires from the proposal’s inception, pitting him against major unions, the California Democratic Party, and prominent national progressives such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.).

“Some of the SEIU-UHW members I’ve talked to are tired of Democratic politicians like Gavin Newsom taking their marching orders from the donors who would fund a future presidential campaign,” Khanna, who is considering a presidential run, said during a rally in support of Prop 40 last weekend. “We are tired of a governor defying grassroots delegates in the California Democratic Party, defying California labor... all because he’s on the side of Trump allies like Peter Thiel and Sergey Brin.”

“You can’t pretend to be anti-Trump if you’re doing the bidding of Trump donors,” Khanna added.

Escalation fears mount as US strikes civilian vessel in Oman: 'What a disaster'

Alexander Willis
October 11, 2026

RAW STORY


Smoke and fire rise from a commercial cargo vessel following a strike, which US Central Command says it had disabled in the Gulf of Oman after the ship's crew ignored warnings and attempted to run a naval blockade against Iran, at a location given as the Gulf of Oman, October 10, 2026, in this still image taken from a handout video. U.S. Central

 Command/Handout via REUTERS 

Reuters was able to confirm the date using ship-tracking data, which also showed the vessel's last known location before US Central Command reported the strike in the Gulf of Oman on October 10. - Exact location not verified but ship tracking data confirmed the coordinates of vessel Ocean Molica at 25.21363862583486, 56.85150146484376.

 - No older version found posted online before October 10.


Fears of escalation in the Middle East mounted Saturday night after the U.S. military carried out a strike on a civilian vessel in the Gulf of Oman.

“U.S. Central Command forces disabled a commercial cargo vessel in the Gulf of Oman, Oct. 10, after the ship’s crew ignored repeated warnings and attempted to run the ongoing naval blockade against Iran,” reads a statement from U.S. Central Command. “The large cargo vessel was attempting to transit regional waters after having previously departed an Iranian port.”

According to U.S. Central Command, the vessel, a Panama-flagged cargo ship, was struck with a “precision munition,” which fully disabled the ship’s propulsion “without harming the crew.”

Reacting to news of the strike, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) questioned what the Trump administration’s long-term strategy was, arguing that the U.S. blockade had no clear endgame despite its exorbitant cost to taxpayers.

“What is this all for? Why are taxpayers paying billions to hit [commercial] ships?” Murphy asked in a social media post on X. “Apparently the goal is to gain leverage in order to convince the Iranians to let us pay them billions to return everything to the way it all was before the war. What a disaster.”

Geopolitical expert Brett Erickson noted that the strike was “the first strike we have seen from the United States in a long time now,” and questioned whether it would prompt Iranian retaliation.

“This will be interesting to see whether or not Iran escalates in retaliation to this, or if this was merely a test to see if the U.S. would seriously maintain their blockade in the lead-up to the midterms,” Erickson wrote in a social media post on X.

President Donald Trump’s deeply unpopular war against Iran has sent fuel prices soaring across the United States and has coincided with the president’s approval plummeting to career lows in the lead-up to the midterms next month.

Looming midterms paralyze Trump's ability to help US ally after deadly attack: analyst

Alexander Willis
October 11, 2026 

RAW STORY


Smoke and flames rise from King Khalid Airport, after Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis said they attacked the airport, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, October 8, 2026, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video. 

Social Media/via REUTERS 

The location was verified as Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from the airport buildings, light poles, and painted tarmac markings which matched satellite imagery. Coordinates: 24.952651844496998, 46.70783371105999 Smoke was seen rising from a stationary aircraft at Riyadh airport on Thursday, according to a witness and three people briefed on the matter. There was no immediate official confirmation from Saudi authorities on the reported incident. No versions of the video were found posted online before October 8.

Yemen’s Houthi militants carried out a deadly attack on U.S. ally Saudi Arabia Saturday that killed at least 12 people and injured more than 300, but the looming midterms will likely limit the Trump administration’s response, according to conflict analyst Hisham Al-Omeisy.

“Fortunately, I don’t see them rushing for major action,” Al-Omeisy, senior Yemen adviser at the European Institute of Peace, told Al Jazeera for its report published Sunday. “The last thing the administration needs is getting stuck in another quagmire in the region, especially with what’s happening in Hormuz that has not been resolved yet.”

Saturday’s attack saw the Iran-backed Houthis strike Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport, which the group previously struck last week and last month. Trump told reporters on Saturday that his administration “may” retaliate against the Houthis militarily, but according to Al-Omeisy, that was unlikely given the administration’s unresolved conflict with Iran, which continues to keep fuel prices elevated heading into the midterms.

The Houthis have continued their campaign to exert more control over the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a critical global shipping chokepoint in the Red Sea, much like the Strait of Hormuz. The group announced a blockade on all Saudi oil exports transiting the Bab al-Mandab Strait in July, one that its territorial gains have only made stronger in recent weeks.

Even if the Trump administration were to move forward with strikes against the Houthis, such efforts would prove futile, warned F. Gregory Gause, a Saudi specialist at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C.

“The only realistic solution for the Saudis is an end to the Iranian-American war, in which the U.S. gets the Iranians to commit the Houthis to an end of hostilities as part of the overall deal,” Gause told The New York Times Sunday. “Unfortunately for the Saudis, it is not clear how much President Trump listens to them on this.”

'News to me': Zelenskyy blindsided by Trump's surprise warfare announcement

Alexander Willis
October 11, 2026 
RAW STORY

FILE PHOTO: Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky meet at Trump Tower in New York City, U.S., September 27, 2024. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo

President Donald Trump raced to Truth Social Sunday to announce the brokering of a new ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine — an announcement that stood for mere minutes before it was contradicted by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, according to Axios’ Barak Ravid.

Trump claimed that “effective immediately,” a ceasefire had been agreed to by Russia and Ukraine to halt strikes on energy infrastructure. Moments later, however, Ravid claimed to receive conflicting information after speaking with Zelenskyy by phone.

“The announcement about the ceasefire was news to me,” Zelenskyy said, according to Ravid.

Trump has made similar claims before. In September, he announced that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to stop striking energy targets, only for Ukraine to hit a major Moscow-area oil refinery days later.

Nevertheless, Zelenskyy said that if Russia did agree to pause striking energy targets, Ukraine would follow suit.

“But if the Russians agree to a ceasefire in the energy sector, Ukraine will also agree,” he said, according to Ravid. “If President Trump agreed to this with Putin — please let us know when the ceasefire begins. We are ready and will agree to it.”

Disbelief as Trump’s ceasefire crumbles within hours: ‘What can you even say’

Alexander Willis
October 11, 2026
RAW STORY

President Donald Trump was ridiculed en masse Sunday after the purported ceasefire he claimed had been brokered between Russia and Ukraine fell apart within hours.

“What can you even say,” wrote investigative journalist and writer Ilya Lozovsky in a social media post on X.

Sunday morning, Trump took to social media to claim that an agreement had been reached between Russia and Ukraine to halt attacks on energy infrastructure.

“Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine,” he wrote. “Both parties have agreed. Do not break it!”

Moments later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said of the purported agreement, “the ceasefire was news to me,” but said he would agree to halt attacks on Russian energy targets if Moscow followed suit.

Hours later, Zelenskyy said that Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy sites had continued despite Trump’s claim.

“There were strikes, unfortunately, with aerial bombs,” Zelenskyy said during his nightly video address, according to Reuters. “There were strikes on our energy infrastructure. Just now, there was a strike on the joint power and heating plant in the city of Kharkiv — hitting Kharkiv’s energy system.”

Former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger sarcastically expressed shock that Trump’s purported agreement had proven to be false.

“What??? Trump lied???” Kinzinger wrote.

And Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and journalist, issued Trump an especially harsh condemnation.

“Trump announces an energy ceasefire. Ukrainians learn about it from social media. Immediately, there are more Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure,” Applebaum wrote. “The president lives in a fantasy world of his own construction.”

'So much for bringing jobs back': GOP voters seethe as Trump policies decimate workers

Alexander Willis
October 11, 2026 
RAW STORY


As oil flooded the market, demand went down, and as a result, oil prices have fallen below $30 a barrel. Photograph: Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters

Often touted as a tool to reshore manufacturing jobs, President Donald Trump’s tariffs have been named as the primary cause for thousands of layoffs — and a number of longtime GOP voters are expressing outrage.

“So much for bringing jobs back,” said Nelson Vandermeer, who’s voted for GOP candidates for decades but lost his job at a clockmaker after the company shut down, speaking with the Associated Press.

While a longtime GOP voter, Vandermeer “balked at” supporting Trump out of fear of his tariffs, a fear that ultimately materialized with him losing his job as a product designer. He now plans to vote “straight Democrat in the midterms,” the Associated Press reported.

Tracy Chew is another former GOP voter who voted for Trump in 2016 but then backed Democrats in 2020 and 2024. She lost her job in April after a backhoe manufacturer shut down its plant in Iowa, as did several of her family members.

“I’m furious he isn’t doing enough,” Chew told the Associated Press. “Tariffs are not targeting the right companies, the right amount.”

The employment research firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas documented 7,908 layoffs in 2025 that it classified as tariff-related.

The United States experienced a 40-plus-year decline in manufacturing after the abandonment of protectionist trade policies in the 1980s and onward. While supporters of Trump’s tariffs argue that the president’s tariffs are a return to such protectionist trade policies, critics argue that the tariffs failed to take into account the tens of thousands of factories that shuttered over the past few decades, decimating America’s manufacturing infrastructure.

“I understand the mindset behind tariffs, but I just don’t know if it’s working,” said Heather Kingston, who voted for Rep. Dan Meuser (R-PA) but is now reconsidering supporting him in the midterms, speaking with the Associated Press. “There doesn’t seem to be many manufacturing jobs moving into the area.”

'Worst I've ever seen': Data expert's mind boggles at Trump's 'laughably bad' numbers

Travis Gettys
October 9, 2026 

RAW STORY


Harry Enten/CNN


President Donald Trump’s approval numbers are “laughably bad” heading into the midterms, according to CNN's Harry Enten, who says no president in modern history has been in a worse position this close to Election Day.

The data analyst pointed to new Pew Research Center polling showing Trump’s net approval rating 38 points underwater, and he expressed astonishment.

“No president I’ve ever seen is in a worse position before a midterm election than President Trump,” Enten said. “You go all the way back. You go back to Harry S. Truman, FDR. At this point before a midterm, ever, ever, ever ... the worst I’ve ever seen is Donald John Trump, 38 points underwater.”

“It’s laughable,” he added.

Enten stressed that Pew isn’t an outlier, showing that Trump is 33 points underwater in a Reuters/Ipsos poll and was 34 points underwater in another Ipsos survey last month. A CNN poll has him 34 points underwater, and an Associated Press poll matches Pew’s 38-point deficit.

“No other president before a midterm election was even at minus-31,” Enten said. “We are looking at history in the making here for the unpopularity of President Trump.”

He said that should alarm Republicans on the ballot.

“It’s historic headwinds in which you are essentially going, oh my God, how am I supposed to win with numbers from a president this bad?” Enten said.

According to Enten, the biggest problem for Trump is independents. Pew’s validated voter research found independents split evenly between Trump and Kamala Harris in 2024. Now Trump is 57 points underwater with them.

“You just never see numbers” like that, Enten said. “I struggle to come up with the adjectives because you run out of them.”

Enten also mocked Trump’s call for supporters to “vote like I’m on the ballot.”

“Democrats, please, pretty, pretty, please, with a cherry on top, they are saying, yes, vote as if President Trump is on the ballot,” he said. “Because if he is on the ballot, you can pretty much guarantee that Democrats will take back the United States House.”

He added that Trump’s unpopularity is also why Democrats’ chances of winning the Senate “have been going up and up and up.”

“This president, as unpopular as he is, is dragging Republicans underwater,” Enten said.