Reporters raises their hands in hopes of asking a question for White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, right, in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Two months into Donald Trump’s second term, the United States is in crisis. Trump is playing fast and loose with multiple federal court orders, expanding his executive powers, extraditing people to foreign slave prisons without due process, threatening critics and collecting untold millions through blatant corruption. Meanwhile, Elon Musk is every bit as lawless with his smash-and-grab efforts to fire federal workers, destroy government agencies and take over the lucrative remains of the U.S. government for his own personal benefit.

None of this makes us stronger, safer, more prosperous, or freer. Meanwhile, markets are teetering, wars continue in Ukraine and Gaza and inflation is going back up. And yes, egg prices are still at a record high.

Does mainstream news coverage reflect the unprecedented chaos that has America’s democracy on the brink?  How have Trump’s relentless attacks on journalism impacted the reporting?  Will media owners continue to cave to Trump’s demands? Which news outlets and individual journalists are making an important impact?  These are some of the critical questions facing journalists just 60 days and counting into Trump’s dizzying second term.

During the 2024 campaign, Trump threatened to jail reporters and take news networks off the air. He also sued media companies over news coverage he didn’t like. In the past two months, the lawsuits have continued, and now the activist FCC has joined the fray. Last week, Trump called for investigations into CNN and MSNBC, claiming negative coverage of him was illegal.  Trump also shuttered the government run, pro-democracy Voice of America, evicted mainstream news outlets from the Pentagon, kicked the Associated Press out of the press pool and invited right-wing propaganda outlets into the White House.  Russian-owned news outlet TASS actually had a front-row seat for the recent Oval Office ambush of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Shocking.

To its credit, AP has mounted a fierce fight for free speech after Trump shunned the news agency for refusing to go along with his fiat rechristening of the Gulf of Mexico. This is in contrast to tech giants Apple, Google and Microsoft falling in line with the Trump EO, promptly changing their online maps. Cowards, all of them.

We’ve also seen disgraceful capitulation by many owners of other large media companies.  Examples include Jeff Bezos’ turning the Washington Post opinion section into a MAGA megaphone; ABC News paying what amounts to a $15M dollar bribe to Donald Trump rather than fight his frivolous lawsuit in court; and Paramount, the corporate parent of CBS News, also flirting with making a big payoff to Trump instead of fighting his ridiculous complaint about how the network edited an interview with Kamala Harris.

Another stunner has been Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong’s short-lived “bias meter” that labeled the political leanings of opinion pieces. That AI-fueled effort hit a snag when it downplayed the Ku Klux Klan, so it appears to be offline…. for now. Soon-Shiong also added CNN’s resident right-wing flamethrower, Scott Jennings, to the paper’s opinion team.  Meanwhile, CNN gave Jennings a hefty pay raise to keep spreading his MAGA talking points. However, reports indicate the news network showed a brief moment of good judgment by refusing to give Jennings’ his own show.

The good news:  Fearless journalism is making a mark

As in every other industry, the failure of powerful incumbent organizations to meet changing needs opens the door to innovative rivals. Smaller news outlets and efforts by individual journalists doing fearless, fact-based reporting on the Trump/Musk assault are gaining audiences the old-fashioned way: by good reporting.

The Atlantic has what may be the most consequential reporting so far with a shocking story about the reckless Trump national security team using non-governmental, commercial group chat technology to discuss military planning. Mike Waltz, the national security advisor, carelessly added Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat that revealed military secrets, along with nasty criticism of our European allies. Goldberg wrote that the “post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”

Other outlets are providing much-needed coverage.  Wired has led the way with critical information about what the secretive DOGE effort is actually doing inside federal government agencies. Rolling Stone, The American Prospect, ProPublica, The Guardian U.S. and Judd Legum’s “Musk Watch” and “Popular Information” are just a few of the many journalism entities providing necessary reporting and insight. Some of the local news coverage — especially on raucous town halls and stories highlighting the incredible work done by fired federal workers — has also been quite impressive. The States Newsroom is a particular standout when it comes to local news coverage on these topics.

In a polarized time, it’s easy to think all commentary is just propaganda. But the deep commitment to facts and to laying them out in thoughtful argument is as important as it is rare. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow have done incredible work in this regard, and I want to give a special shout out to their insight into Americans’ efforts to push back and their regular wrap-ups on court actions.  “60 Minutes” also continues its powerful work despite Trump’s legal challenge against CBS. New online projects from former network anchors Jim Acosta and Joy Reid are also offering up smart analysis and timely interviews. The Contrarian is a meaningful new entry, too.

These past two months, we have also seen some remarkable up-to-the minute reporting on the highly consequential courtroom battles over DOGE and Trump’s executive overreach. Those hero journalists include Chris Geidner of Law Dork, Anna Bower of Lawfare, Joyce Vance, Katie Phang of MSNBC and Kyle Cheney of Politico. Also notable: the work from the teams at Just Security and Talking Points Memo.

We need fearless journalism like this now more than ever. So, I encourage you to seek out these news outlets and individual reporters providing this excellent coverage of Trump/Musk and do what you can to support them.

Jennifer Schulze is a longtime Chicago journalist. She’s on Bluesky @newsjennifer.bsky.social and Substack at “Indistinct Chatter.”