A previous version of this story was originally published in April.

In his latest and most extreme effort to silence the press yet, President Donald Trump has banned multiple news outlets from the White House.

Trump and members of his administration have spent his second term in office ramping up personal attacks on journalists, attempting to strong-arm outlets in pursuit of favorable coverage and endeavoring to discredit reporting they don’t like.

From immature name calling to frivolous lawsuits, Trump has ushered in an unprecedented era of hostility against the press.

Let’s review some of the president’s most outrageous attempts to silence, intimidate and harass journalists.

The Trump administration over the weekend revoked access to the White House for CNN, MS NOW and Politico, prohibiting the outlets’ reporters from entering the grounds.

The unprecedented decision was met with a press boycott on Monday. There was no television press pool coverage of Trump after Fox News said it would halt all coverage of the president in solidarity with CNN. Other outlets, including HuffPost, refused to run photos of the president taken that day.

The press ban quickly backfired for the president when there was no audio of his speech Monday during a ribbon cutting ceremony on the South Lawn.

Unable to cope with a lack of press coverage, the administration Monday evening launched “Trump TV,” a 24/7 video stream dedicated to the president, which critics were quick to compare to state-run television in authoritarian countries like North Korea, Russia and China.

Trump on numerous occasions has threatened to revoke the broadcasting licenses of outlets whose coverage (or lack thereof) he deems unlikeable. By weaponizing the Federal Communications Commission, the president has come closer than ever to following through on that threat with Disney-owned ABC.

Amid the president’s demands in April that the network fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over a joke he made about the first lady, FCC Chair Brendan Carr, a close ally of Trump, ordered an unprecedented review of all broadcast licenses held by ABC-owned stations.

The incident came months after Trump demanded Kimmel be fired for his remarks on the late right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, leading ABC to pull the late-night show from the air for several days.

Earlier this month, Kimmel announced that ABC wasn’t running his recorded interview with Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico due to the administration’s threats, instead airing the segment on YouTube.

“His FCC has threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network, ABC, our affiliates, our local stations, based on simple, traditional editorial decisions, guest bookings it would seem they don’t like,” Kimmel said.

The network filed suit against the FCC this summer, alleging the administration “has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts.”

While the president has sneered several members of the White House press pool, CNN’s Chief White House Correspondent, Kaitlin Collins, has been a recurring subject of Trump’s vitriol.

After Collins received an award at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner in August, Trump made a transphobic joke comparing her to Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender media personality that was the subject of a conservative firestorm after she partnered with Bud Light beer.

Following his press ban announcement on Friday, the president shared a bizarre AI-generated video to social media that showed him putting Collins in a dumpster.

Just before midnight on Tuesday, Trump went on a social media rant about Collins and other reporters covering him at the United Nations General Assembly.

“All of the SLEAZEBAGS, like Third Rate ‘Reporter,’ Kaitlan Collins, of Fake News CNN, a truly unhappy person, said they weren’t going to be covering me,” he wrote. “Then why were they ranting and raving like Lunatics, in the Press Area, at the United Nations?”

His post continued: “Why was she there? She’s got a “TRUMP” addiction, and so does CNN and MSDNC. They’re all sick, treasonous, and demented!”

Trump has often verbally attacked Collins while she is asking him questions, including when he told her to smile after she asked him about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The president’s disdain for reporters is well-known, but his vitriol toward female journalists, in particular, has been extreme during his second term.

The president’s hostility toward women in the press room began ramping up last fall when he started making highly personal attacks on them when they asked him questions. Perhaps most infamously, in November, he scolded Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey, a veteran White House correspondent, with a jaw-dropping “Quiet, piggy!” and finger wag when she pressed him about Epstein.

Later that month, he slammed the female author of a New York Times story about him as “ugly” and a “third rate reporter,” saying absolutely nothing about the man who co-wrote the story.

In recent months, he’s excoriated female journalists, often to their faces, as a “disgrace,” “horrible,” “insubordinate,” “terrible,” “stupid and nasty.”

The administration in July issued subpoenas seeking phone records and grand jury testimony from New York Times journalists who reported on security concerns surrounding Trump’s Qatari-gifted Air Force One jet. But, the subpoenas were withdrawn just weeks later.

Last year, Trump’s Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into watchdog outlet Media Matters for America in connection with its court battle with then-Trump ally Elon Musk, who’d accused the group of orchestrating advertiser boycotts of X.

Media Matters said last summer that it had racked up $15 million in legal fees to defend itself against the FTC probe, Musk’s lawsuit and another investigation by Republican state attorneys general, forcing it to slash staff, scale back its criticism of Musk and the FTC, and contemplate shutting down entirely.

Then, in January, federal agents arrested independent journalist and former CNN host Don Lemon over his coverage in a Minnesota church of a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Lemon was charged with conspiracy and interfering with the First Amendment rights of the church’s congregants. Agents also arrested independent journalist Georgia Fort.

That same month, the FBI raided the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson, seizing both her personal and work laptops, her phone and her watch. A month prior, she’d co-bylined a deep dive on how Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency and the White House “broke the federal government.” The raid came after then-Attorney General Pam Bondi rolled back a policy banning the use of search warrants and subpoenas to seize reporting materials.

The Trump administration has filed numerous lawsuits against media outlets over reporting the president deems unflattering, often seeking massive damages in the millions and even billions.

Some of the biggest sums he demanded came in lawsuits against The Wall Street Journal ($10 billion) and The New York Times ($15 billion). The courts tossed out both of those cases, with the judge in the Times case accusing Trump of using lawsuits as “a megaphone for public relations.” A $10 billion lawsuit he filed against the BBC is set to go to trial next year.

Trump also filed lawsuits against CNN, the Des Moines Register (which was dismissed Wednesday) and the Pulitzer Board for awarding prizes to coverage of Trump’s Russia scandal. And, Trump’s FBI Director Kash Patel sued The Atlantic in April for reporting on allegations he was behaving erratically and abusing alcohol, demanding $250 million.

Trump has successfully gotten some media operations to settle with him, nabbing $15 million from ABC shortly before he started his second term and $16 million from Paramount last summer.

The month after Trump started his second term, press secretary Karoline Leavitt rolled out a new policy for press coverage access, ending a decades-long system in which the White House Correspondents’ Association determined the rotation of reporters who fill spots dedicated for radio, television, print and wire service reporters each day.

Instead, she said, the White House would take control so that it could ensure newer outlets had access, but it quickly became clear the White House could potentially use its newfound control over press scheduling to retaliate against outlets.

Hours after the announcement, the White House kicked Dáte and a Reuters reporter out of their spots in the pool. Axios ― an outlet focused on brief, straightforward coverage ― and two right-wing outlets ― The Blaze and Newsmax ― were given spots that day instead.

The timing was suspicious. Weeks earlier, Dáte had sparred with Trump aboard Air Force One.

HuffPost’s removal from the rotation came on the heels of Trump’s spat with The Associated Press over its decision to continue calling the Gulf of Mexico by its long-standing name instead of using Trump’s new moniker: “the Gulf of America.”

The move outraged Trump, prompting the White House to bar the AP from several coverage events. So the AP sued, setting off a back-and-forth legal battle.

Later in 2025, Trump’s Defense Department announced that if reporters wanted to keep press access to the Pentagon, they must agree to a series of demands, including an agreement not to obtain any information not expressly allowed by the Defense Department. HuffPost, along with several other news outlets, refused to comply, and a judge overturned the policy last month.

In October, when HuffPost White House Correspondent S.V. Dáte reached out to administration spokespeople with an innocuous question about who chose Budapest as the site for a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Leavitt refused to answer. Instead, she replied with a bizarre schoolyard joke.

“Your mom did,” she retorted.

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung had more to add shortly after: “Your mom,” he repeated.

Leavitt fired off a round of insults when Dáte asked if she thought the “your mom” quip was funny.

“It’s funny to me that you actually consider yourself a journal [sic],” she wrote back. “You are a far left hack who nobody takes seriously, including your colleagues in the media, they just don’t tell you that to your face. Stop texting me your disingenuous, biased, and bullshit questions.”

In one of her first public appearances since leaving the job last month, Leavitt complained about having to interact with the press.

“Let me just say, it feels much better speaking to a stadium full of patriots than a briefing room full of journalists,” she said at the GOP’s midterm convention earlier this month, taking the stage after a montage of her fighting with reporters played for attendees.

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