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Our first story of 2026 revealed how a destructive new botnet called Kimwolf has infected more than two million devices by mass-compromising a vast number of unofficial Android TV streaming boxes. Today, we’ll dig through digital clues left behind by the hackers, network operators and services that appear to have benefitted from Kimwolf’s spread.
On Dec. 17, 2025, the Chinese security firm XLab published a deep dive on Kimwolf, which forces infected devices to participate in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and to relay abusive and malicious Internet traffic for so-called “residential proxy” services.
The software that turns one’s device into a residential proxy is often quietly bundled with mobile apps and games. Kimwolf specifically targeted residential proxy software that is factory installed on more than a thousand different models of unsanctioned Android TV streaming devices. Very quickly, the residential proxy’s Internet address starts funneling traffic that is linked to ad fraud, account takeover attempts and mass content scraping.
The XLab report explained its researchers found “definitive evidence” that the same cybercriminal actors and infrastructure were used to deploy both Kimwolf and the Aisuru botnet — an earlier version of Kimwolf that also enslaved devices for use in DDoS attacks and proxy services.
XLab said it suspected since October that Kimwolf and Aisuru had the same author(s) and operators, based in part on shared code changes over time. But it said those suspicions were confirmed on December 8 when it witnessed both botnet strains being distributed by the same Internet address at 93.95.112[.]59.
Image: XLab.
Public records show the Internet address range flagged by XLab is assigned to Lehi, Utah-based Resi Rack LLC. Resi Rack’s website bills the company as a “Premium Game Server Hosting Provider.” Meanwhile, Resi Rack’s ads on the Internet moneymaking forum BlackHatWorld refer to it as a “Premium Residential Proxy Hosting and Proxy Software Solutions Company.”
Resi Rack co-founder Cassidy Hales told KrebsOnSecurity his company received a notification on December 10 about Kimwolf using their network “that detailed what was being done by one of our customers leasing our servers.”
“When we received this email we took care of this issue immediately,” Hales wrote in response to an email requesting comment. “This is something we are very disappointed is now associated with our name and this was not the intention of our company whatsoever.”
The Resi Rack Internet address cited by XLab on December 8 came onto KrebsOnSecurity’s radar more than two weeks before that. Benjamin Brundage is founder of Synthient, a startup that tracks proxy services. In late October 2025, Brundage shared that the people selling various proxy services which benefitted from the Aisuru and Kimwolf botnets were doing so at a new Discord server called resi[.]to.
On November 24, 2025, a member of the resi-dot-to Discord channel shares an IP address responsible for proxying traffic over Android TV streaming boxes infected by the Kimwolf botnet.
When KrebsOnSecurity joined the resi[.]to Discord channel in late October as a silent lurker, the server had fewer than 150 members, including “Shox” — the nickname used by Resi Rack’s co-founder Mr. Hales — and his business partner “Linus,” who did not respond to requests for comment.
Other members of the resi[.]to Discord channel would periodically post new IP addresses that were responsible for proxying traffic over the Kimwolf botnet. As the screenshot from resi[.]to above shows, that Resi Rack Internet address flagged by XLab was used by Kimwolf to direct proxy traffic as far back as November 24, if not earlier. All told, Synthient said it tracked at least seven static Resi Rack IP addresses connected to Kimwolf proxy infrastructure between October and December 2025.
Neither of Resi Rack’s co-owners responded to follow-up questions. Both have been active in selling proxy services via Discord for nearly two years. According to a review of Discord messages indexed by the cyber intelligence firm Flashpoint, Shox and Linus spent much of 2024 selling static “ISP proxies” by routing various Internet address blocks at major U.S. Internet service providers.
In February 2025, AT&T announced that effective July 31, 2025, it would no longer originate routes for network blocks that are not owned and managed by AT&T (other major ISPs have since made similar moves). Less than a month later, Shox and Linus told customers they would soon cease offering static ISP proxies as a result of these policy changes.
Shox and Linux, talking about their decision to stop selling ISP proxies.
The stated owner of the resi[.]to Discord server went by the abbreviated username “D.” That initial appears to be short for the hacker handle “Dort,” a name that was invoked frequently throughout these Discord chats.
Dort’s profile on resi dot to.
This “Dort” nickname came up in KrebsOnSecurity’s recent conversations with “Forky,” a Brazilian man who acknowledged being involved in the marketing of the Aisuru botnet at its inception in late 2024. But Forky vehemently denied having anything to do with a series of massive and record-smashing DDoS attacks in the latter half of 2025 that were blamed on Aisuru, saying the botnet by that point had been taken over by rivals.
Forky asserts that Dort is a resident of Canada and one of at least two individuals currently in control of the Aisuru/Kimwolf botnet. The other individual Forky named as an Aisuru/Kimwolf botmaster goes by the nickname “Snow.”
On January 2 — just hours after our story on Kimwolf was published — the historical chat records on resi[.]to were erased without warning and replaced by a profanity-laced message for Synthient’s founder. Minutes after that, the entire server disappeared.
Later that same day, several of the more active members of the now-defunct resi[.]to Discord server moved to a Telegram channel where they posted Brundage’s personal information, and generally complained about being unable to find reliable “bulletproof” hosting for their botnet.
Hilariously, a user by the name “Richard Remington” briefly appeared in the group’s Telegram server to post a crude “Happy New Year” sketch that claims Dort and Snow are now in control of 3.5 million devices infected by Aisuru and/or Kimwolf. Richard Remington’s Telegram account has since been deleted, but it previously stated its owner operates a website that caters to DDoS-for-hire or “stresser” services seeking to test their firepower.
Reports from both Synthient and XLab found that Kimwolf was used to deploy programs that turned infected systems into Internet traffic relays for multiple residential proxy services. Among those was a component that installed a software development kit (SDK) called ByteConnect, which is distributed by a provider known as Plainproxies.
ByteConnect says it specializes in “monetizing apps ethically and free,” while Plainproxies advertises the ability to provide content scraping companies with “unlimited” proxy pools. However, Synthient said that upon connecting to ByteConnect’s SDK they instead observed a mass influx of credential-stuffing attacks targeting email servers and popular online websites.
A search on LinkedIn finds the CEO of Plainproxies is Friedrich Kraft, whose resume says he is co-founder of ByteConnect Ltd. Public Internet routing records show Mr. Kraft also operates a hosting firm in Germany called 3XK Tech GmbH. Mr. Kraft did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.
In July 2025, Cloudflare reported that 3XK Tech (a.k.a. Drei-K-Tech) had become the Internet’s largest source of application-layer DDoS attacks. In November 2025, the security firm GreyNoise Intelligence found that Internet addresses on 3XK Tech were responsible for roughly three-quarters of the Internet scanning being done at the time for a newly discovered and critical vulnerability in security products made by Palo Alto Networks.
Source: Cloudflare’s Q2 2025 DDoS threat report.
LinkedIn has a profile for another Plainproxies employee, Julia Levi, who is listed as co-founder of ByteConnect. Ms. Levi did not respond to requests for comment. Her resume says she previously worked for two major proxy providers: Netnut Proxy Network, and Bright Data.
Synthient likewise said Plainproxies ignored their outreach, noting that the Byteconnect SDK continues to remain active on devices compromised by Kimwolf.
A post from the LinkedIn page of Plainproxies Chief Revenue Officer Julia Levi, explaining how the residential proxy business works.
Synthient’s January 2 report said another proxy provider heavily involved in the sale of Kimwolf proxies was Maskify, which currently advertises on multiple cybercrime forums that it has more than six million residential Internet addresses for rent.
Maskify prices its service at a rate of 30 cents per gigabyte of data relayed through their proxies. According to Synthient, that price range is insanely low and is far cheaper than any other proxy provider in business today.
“Synthient’s Research Team received screenshots from other proxy providers showing key Kimwolf actors attempting to offload proxy bandwidth in exchange for upfront cash,” the Synthient report noted. “This approach likely helped fuel early development, with associated members spending earnings on infrastructure and outsourced development tasks. Please note that resellers know precisely what they are selling; proxies at these prices are not ethically sourced.”
Maskify did not respond to requests for comment.
The Maskify website. Image: Synthient.
Hours after our first Kimwolf story was published last week, the resi[.]to Discord server vanished, Synthient’s website was hit with a DDoS attack, and the Kimwolf botmasters took to doxing Brundage via their botnet.
The harassing messages appeared as text records uploaded to the Ethereum Name Service (ENS), a distributed system for supporting smart contracts deployed on the Ethereum blockchain. As documented by XLab, in mid-December the Kimwolf operators upgraded their infrastructure and began using ENS to better withstand the near-constant takedown efforts targeting the botnet’s control servers.
An ENS record used by the Kimwolf operators taunts security firms trying to take down the botnet’s control servers. Image: XLab.
By telling infected systems to seek out the Kimwolf control servers via ENS, even if the servers that the botmasters use to control the botnet are taken down the attacker only needs to update the ENS text record to reflect the new Internet address of the control server, and the infected devices will immediately know where to look for further instructions.
“This channel itself relies on the decentralized nature of blockchain, unregulated by Ethereum or other blockchain operators, and cannot be blocked,” XLab wrote.
The text records included in Kimwolf’s ENS instructions can also feature short messages, such as those that carried Brundage’s personal information. Other ENS text records associated with Kimwolf offered some sage advice: “If flagged, we encourage the TV box to be destroyed.”
An ENS record tied to the Kimwolf botnet advises, “If flagged, we encourage the TV box to be destroyed.”
Both Synthient and XLabs say Kimwolf targets a vast number of Android TV streaming box models, all of which have zero security protections, and many of which ship with proxy malware built in. Generally speaking, if you can send a data packet to one of these devices you can also seize administrative control over it.
If you own a TV box that matches one of these model names and/or numbers, please just rip it out of your network. If you encounter one of these devices on the network of a family member or friend, send them a link to this story (or to our January 2 story on Kimwolf) and explain that it’s not worth the potential hassle and harm created by keeping them plugged in.
A security architect with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) alleges that employees from Elon Musk‘s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) transferred gigabytes of sensitive data from agency case files in early March, using short-lived accounts configured to leave few traces of network activity. The NLRB whistleblower said the unusual large data outflows coincided with multiple blocked login attempts from an Internet address in Russia that tried to use valid credentials for a newly-created DOGE user account.
The cover letter from Berulis’s whistleblower statement, sent to the leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
The allegations came in an April 14 letter to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, signed by Daniel J. Berulis, a 38-year-old security architect at the NLRB.
NPR, which was the first to report on Berulis’s whistleblower complaint, says NLRB is a small, independent federal agency that investigates and adjudicates complaints about unfair labor practices, and stores “reams of potentially sensitive data, from confidential information about employees who want to form unions to proprietary business information.”
The complaint documents a one-month period beginning March 3, during which DOGE officials reportedly demanded the creation of all-powerful “tenant admin” accounts in NLRB systems that were to be exempted from network logging activity that would otherwise keep a detailed record of all actions taken by those accounts.
Berulis said the new DOGE accounts had unrestricted permission to read, copy, and alter information contained in NLRB databases. The new accounts also could restrict log visibility, delay retention, route logs elsewhere, or even remove them entirely — top-tier user privileges that neither Berulis nor his boss possessed.
Berulis writes that on March 3, a black SUV accompanied by a police escort arrived at his building — the NLRB headquarters in Southeast Washington, D.C. The DOGE staffers did not speak with Berulis or anyone else in NLRB’s IT staff, but instead met with the agency leadership.
“Our acting chief information officer told us not to adhere to standard operating procedure with the DOGE account creation, and there was to be no logs or records made of the accounts created for DOGE employees, who required the highest level of access,” Berulis wrote of their instructions after that meeting.
“We have built in roles that auditors can use and have used extensively in the past but would not give the ability to make changes or access subsystems without approval,” he continued. “The suggestion that they use these accounts was not open to discussion.”
Berulis found that on March 3 one of the DOGE accounts created an opaque, virtual environment known as a “container,” which can be used to build and run programs or scripts without revealing its activities to the rest of the world. Berulis said the container caught his attention because he polled his colleagues and found none of them had ever used containers within the NLRB network.
Berulis said he also noticed that early the next morning — between approximately 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. EST on Tuesday, March 4 — there was a large increase in outgoing traffic from the agency. He said it took several days of investigating with his colleagues to determine that one of the new accounts had transferred approximately 10 gigabytes worth of data from the NLRB’s NxGen case management system.
Berulis said neither he nor his co-workers had the necessary network access rights to review which files were touched or transferred — or even where they went. But his complaint notes the NxGen database contains sensitive information on unions, ongoing legal cases, and corporate secrets.
“I also don’t know if the data was only 10gb in total or whether or not they were consolidated and compressed prior,” Berulis told the senators. “This opens up the possibility that even more data was exfiltrated. Regardless, that kind of spike is extremely unusual because data almost never directly leaves NLRB’s databases.”
Berulis said he and his colleagues grew even more alarmed when they noticed nearly two dozen login attempts from a Russian Internet address (83.149.30,186) that presented valid login credentials for a DOGE employee account — one that had been created just minutes earlier. Berulis said those attempts were all blocked thanks to rules in place that prohibit logins from non-U.S. locations.
“Whoever was attempting to log in was using one of the newly created accounts that were used in the other DOGE related activities and it appeared they had the correct username and password due to the authentication flow only stopping them due to our no-out-of-country logins policy activating,” Berulis wrote. “There were more than 20 such attempts, and what is particularly concerning is that many of these login attempts occurred within 15 minutes of the accounts being created by DOGE engineers.”
According to Berulis, the naming structure of one Microsoft user account connected to the suspicious activity suggested it had been created and later deleted for DOGE use in the NLRB’s cloud systems: “DogeSA_2d5c3e0446f9@nlrb.microsoft.com.” He also found other new Microsoft cloud administrator accounts with nonstandard usernames, including “Whitesox, Chicago M.” and “Dancehall, Jamaica R.”
A screenshot shared by Berulis showing the suspicious user accounts.
On March 5, Berulis documented that a large section of logs for recently created network resources were missing, and a network watcher in Microsoft Azure was set to the “off” state, meaning it was no longer collecting and recording data like it should have.
Berulis said he discovered someone had downloaded three external code libraries from GitHub that neither NLRB nor its contractors ever use. A “readme” file in one of the code bundles explained it was created to rotate connections through a large pool of cloud Internet addresses that serve “as a proxy to generate pseudo-infinite IPs for web scraping and brute forcing.” Brute force attacks involve automated login attempts that try many credential combinations in rapid sequence.
The complaint alleges that by March 17 it became clear the NLRB no longer had the resources or network access needed to fully investigate the odd activity from the DOGE accounts, and that on March 24, the agency’s associate chief information officer had agreed the matter should be reported to US-CERT. Operated by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), US-CERT provides on-site cyber incident response capabilities to federal and state agencies.
But Berulis said that between April 3 and 4, he and the associate CIO were informed that “instructions had come down to drop the US-CERT reporting and investigation and we were directed not to move forward or create an official report.” Berulis said it was at this point he decided to go public with his findings.
An email from Daniel Berulis to his colleagues dated March 28, referencing the unexplained traffic spike earlier in the month and the unauthorized changing of security controls for user accounts.
Tim Bearese, the NLRB’s acting press secretary, told NPR that DOGE neither requested nor received access to its systems, and that “the agency conducted an investigation after Berulis raised his concerns but ‘determined that no breach of agency systems occurred.'” The NLRB did not respond to questions from KrebsOnSecurity.
Nevertheless, Berulis has shared a number of supporting screenshots showing agency email discussions about the unexplained account activity attributed to the DOGE accounts, as well as NLRB security alerts from Microsoft about network anomalies observed during the timeframes described.
As CNN reported last month, the NLRB has been effectively hobbled since President Trump fired three board members, leaving the agency without the quorum it needs to function.
“Despite its limitations, the agency had become a thorn in the side of some of the richest and most powerful people in the nation — notably Elon Musk, Trump’s key supporter both financially and arguably politically,” CNN wrote.
Both Amazon and Musk’s SpaceX have been suing the NLRB over complaints the agency filed in disputes about workers’ rights and union organizing, arguing that the NLRB’s very existence is unconstitutional. On March 5, a U.S. appeals court unanimously rejected Musk’s claim that the NLRB’s structure somehow violates the Constitution.
Berulis shared screenshots with KrebsOnSecurity showing that on the day the NPR published its story about his claims (April 14), the deputy CIO at NLRB sent an email stating that administrative control had been removed from all employee accounts. Meaning, suddenly none of the IT employees at the agency could do their jobs properly anymore, Berulis said.
An email from the NLRB’s associate chief information officer Eric Marks, notifying employees they will lose security administrator privileges.
Berulis shared a screenshot of an agency-wide email dated April 16 from NLRB director Lasharn Hamilton saying DOGE officials had requested a meeting, and reiterating claims that the agency had no prior “official” contact with any DOGE personnel. The message informed NLRB employees that two DOGE representatives would be detailed to the agency part-time for several months.
An email from the NLRB Director Lasharn Hamilton on April 16, stating that the agency previously had no contact with DOGE personnel.
Berulis told KrebsOnSecurity he was in the process of filing a support ticket with Microsoft to request more information about the DOGE accounts when his network administrator access was restricted. Now, he’s hoping lawmakers will ask Microsoft to provide more information about what really happened with the accounts.
“That would give us way more insight,” he said. “Microsoft has to be able to see the picture better than we can. That’s my goal, anyway.”
Berulis’s attorney told lawmakers that on April 7, while his client and legal team were preparing the whistleblower complaint, someone physically taped a threatening note to Mr. Berulis’s home door with photographs — taken via drone — of him walking in his neighborhood.
“The threatening note made clear reference to this very disclosure he was preparing for you, as the proper oversight authority,” reads a preface by Berulis’s attorney Andrew P. Bakaj. “While we do not know specifically who did this, we can only speculate that it involved someone with the ability to access NLRB systems.”
Berulis said the response from friends, colleagues and even the public has been largely supportive, and that he doesn’t regret his decision to come forward.
“I didn’t expect the letter on my door or the pushback from [agency] leaders,” he said. “If I had to do it over, would I do it again? Yes, because it wasn’t really even a choice the first time.”
For now, Mr. Berulis is taking some paid family leave from the NLRB. Which is just as well, he said, considering he was stripped of the tools needed to do his job at the agency.
“They came in and took full administrative control and locked everyone out, and said limited permission will be assigned on a need basis going forward” Berulis said of the DOGE employees. “We can’t really do anything, so we’re literally getting paid to count ceiling tiles.”
Further reading: Berulis’s complaint (PDF).
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” -U.S. Constitution, First Amendment.
Image: Shutterstock, zimmytws.
In an address to Congress this month, President Trump claimed he had “brought free speech back to America.” But barely two months into his second term, the president has waged an unprecedented attack on the First Amendment rights of journalists, students, universities, government workers, lawyers and judges.
This story explores a slew of recent actions by the Trump administration that threaten to undermine all five pillars of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees freedoms concerning speech, religion, the media, the right to assembly, and the right to petition the government and seek redress for wrongs.
The right to petition allows citizens to communicate with the government, whether to complain, request action, or share viewpoints — without fear of reprisal. But that right is being assaulted by this administration on multiple levels. For starters, many GOP lawmakers are now heeding their leadership’s advice to stay away from local town hall meetings and avoid the wrath of constituents affected by the administration’s many federal budget and workforce cuts.
Another example: President Trump recently fired most of the people involved in processing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for government agencies. FOIA is an indispensable tool used by journalists and the public to request government records, and to hold leaders accountable.
The biggest story by far this week was the bombshell from The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, who recounted how he was inadvertently added to a Signal group chat with National Security Advisor Michael Waltz and 16 other Trump administration officials discussing plans for an upcoming attack on Yemen.
One overlooked aspect of Goldberg’s incredible account is that by planning and coordinating the attack on Signal — which features messages that can auto-delete after a short time — administration officials were evidently seeking a way to avoid creating a lasting (and potentially FOIA-able) record of their deliberations.
“Intentional or not, use of Signal in this context was an act of erasure—because without Jeffrey Goldberg being accidentally added to the list, the general public would never have any record of these communications or any way to know they even occurred,” Tony Bradley wrote this week at Forbes.
Petitioning the government, particularly when it ignores your requests, often requires challenging federal agencies in court. But that becomes far more difficult if the most competent law firms start to shy away from cases that may involve crossing the president and his administration.
On March 22, the president issued a memorandum that directs heads of the Justice and Homeland Security Departments to “seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable and vexatious litigation against the United States,” or in matters that come before federal agencies.
The POTUS recently issued several executive orders railing against specific law firms with attorneys who worked legal cases against him. On Friday, the president announced that the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meager & Flom had agreed to provide $100 million in pro bono work on issues that he supports.
Trump issued another order naming the firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, which ultimately agreed to pledge $40 million in pro bono legal services to the president’s causes.
Other Trump executive orders targeted law firms Jenner & Block and WilmerHale, both of which have attorneys that worked with special counsel Robert Mueller on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. But this week, two federal judges in separate rulings froze parts of those orders.
“There is no doubt this retaliatory action chills speech and legal advocacy, and that is qualified as a constitutional harm,” wrote Judge Richard Leon, who ruled against the executive order targeting WilmerHale.
President Trump recently took the extraordinary step of calling for the impeachment of federal judges who rule against the administration. Trump called U.S. District Judge James Boasberg a “Radical Left Lunatic” and urged he be removed from office for blocking deportation of Venezuelan alleged gang members under a rarely invoked wartime legal authority.
In a rare public rebuke to a sitting president, U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts issued a statement on March 18 pointing out that “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”
The U.S. Constitution provides that judges can be removed from office only through impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate. The Constitution also states that judges’ salaries cannot be reduced while they are in office.
Undeterred, House Speaker Mike Johnson this week suggested the administration could still use the power of its purse to keep courts in line, and even floated the idea of wholesale eliminating federal courts.
“We do have authority over the federal courts as you know,” Johnson said. “We can eliminate an entire district court. We have power of funding over the courts, and all these other things. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and Congress is going to act, so stay tuned for that.”
President Trump has taken a number of actions to discourage lawful demonstrations at universities and colleges across the country, threatening to cut federal funding for any college that supports protests he deems “illegal.”
A Trump executive order in January outlined a broad federal crackdown on what he called “the explosion of antisemitism” on U.S. college campuses. This administration has asserted that foreign students who are lawfully in the United States on visas do not enjoy the same free speech or due process rights as citizens.
Reuters reports that the acting civil rights director at the Department of Education on March 10 sent letters to 60 educational institutions warning they could lose federal funding if they don’t do more to combat anti-semitism. On March 20, Trump issued an order calling for the closure of the Education Department.
Meanwhile, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have been detaining and trying to deport pro-Palestinian students who are legally in the United States. The administration is targeting students and academics who spoke out against Israel’s attacks on Gaza, or who were active in campus protests against U.S. support for the attacks. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters Thursday that at least 300 foreign students have seen their visas revoked under President Trump, a far higher number than was previously known.
In his first term, Trump threatened to use the national guard or the U.S. military to deal with protesters, and in campaigning for re-election he promised to revisit the idea.
“I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within,” Trump told Fox News in October 2024. “We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the big — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”
This term, Trump acted swiftly to remove the top judicial advocates in the armed forces who would almost certainly push back on any request by the president to use U.S. soldiers in an effort to quell public protests, or to arrest and detain immigrants. In late February, the president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired the top legal officers for the military services — those responsible for ensuring the Uniform Code of Military Justice is followed by commanders.
Military.com warns that the purge “sets an alarming precedent for a crucial job in the military, as President Donald Trump has mused about using the military in unorthodox and potentially illegal ways.” Hegseth told reporters the removals were necessary because he didn’t want them to pose any “roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief.”
President Trump has sued a number of U.S. news outlets, including 60 Minutes, CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times and other smaller media organizations for unflattering coverage.
In a $10 billion lawsuit against 60 Minutes and its parent Paramount, Trump claims they selectively edited an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris prior to the 2024 election. The TV news show last month published transcripts of the interview at the heart of the dispute, but Paramount is reportedly considering a settlement to avoid potentially damaging its chances of winning the administration’s approval for a pending multibillion-dollar merger.
The president sued The Des Moines Register and its parent company, Gannett, for publishing a poll showing Trump trailing Harris in the 2024 presidential election in Iowa (a state that went for Trump). The POTUS also is suing the Pulitzer Prize board over 2018 awards given to The New York Times and The Washington Post for their coverage of purported Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Whether or not any of the president’s lawsuits against news organizations have merit or succeed is almost beside the point. The strategy behind suing the media is to make reporters and newsrooms think twice about criticizing or challenging the president and his administration. The president also knows some media outlets will find it more expedient to settle.
Trump also sued ABC News and George Stephanopoulos for stating that the president had been found liable for “rape” in a civil case [Trump was found liable of sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll]. ABC parent Disney settled that claim by agreeing to donate $15 million to the Trump Presidential Library.
Following the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Facebook blocked President Trump’s account. Trump sued Meta, and after the president’s victory in 2024 Meta settled and agreed to pay Trump $25 million: $22 million would go to his presidential library, and the rest to legal fees. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also announced Facebook and Instagram would get rid of fact-checkers and rely instead on reader-submitted “community notes” to debunk disinformation on the social media platform.
Brendan Carr, the president’s pick to run the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has pledged to “dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans.” But on January 22, 2025, the FCC reopened complaints against ABC, CBS and NBC over their coverage of the 2024 election. The previous FCC chair had dismissed the complaints as attacks on the First Amendment and an attempt to weaponize the agency for political purposes.
According to Reuters, the complaints call for an investigation into how ABC News moderated the pre-election TV debate between Trump and Biden, and appearances of then-Vice President Harris on 60 Minutes and on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.”
Since then, the FCC has opened investigations into NPR and PBS, alleging that they are breaking sponsorship rules. The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), a think tank based in Washington, D.C., noted that the FCC is also investigating KCBS in San Francisco for reporting on the location of federal immigration authorities.
“Even if these investigations are ultimately closed without action, the mere fact of opening them – and the implicit threat to the news stations’ license to operate – can have the effect of deterring the press from news coverage that the Administration dislikes,” the CDT’s Kate Ruane observed.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to “open up” libel laws, with the goal of making it easier to sue media organizations for unfavorable coverage. But this week, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge brought by Trump donor and Las Vegas casino magnate Steve Wynn to overturn the landmark 1964 decision in New York Times v. Sullivan, which insulates the press from libel suits over good-faith criticism of public figures.
The president also has insisted on picking which reporters and news outlets should be allowed to cover White House events and participate in the press pool that trails the president. He barred the Associated Press from the White House and Air Force One over their refusal to call the Gulf of Mexico by another name.
And the Defense Department has ordered a number of top media outlets to vacate their spots at the Pentagon, including CNN, The Hill, The Washington Post, The New York Times, NBC News, Politico and National Public Radio.
“Incoming media outlets include the New York Post, Breitbart, the Washington Examiner, the Free Press, the Daily Caller, Newsmax, the Huffington Post and One America News Network, most of whom are seen as conservative or favoring Republican President Donald Trump,” Reuters reported.
Shortly after Trump took office again in January 2025, the administration began circulating lists of hundreds of words that government staff and agencies shall not use in their reports and communications.
The Brookings Institution notes that in moving to comply with this anti-speech directive, federal agencies have purged countless taxpayer-funded data sets from a swathe of government websites, including data on crime, sexual orientation, gender, education, climate, and global development.
The New York Times reports that in the past two months, hundreds of terabytes of digital resources analyzing data have been taken off government websites.
“While in many cases the underlying data still exists, the tools that make it possible for the public and researchers to use that data have been removed,” The Times wrote.
On Jan. 27, Trump issued a memo (PDF) that paused all federally funded programs pending a review of those programs for alignment with the administration’s priorities. Among those was ensuring that no funding goes toward advancing “Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies.”
According to the CDT, this order is a blatant attempt to force government grantees to cease engaging in speech that the current administration dislikes, including speech about the benefits of diversity, climate change, and LGBTQ issues.
“The First Amendment does not permit the government to discriminate against grantees because it does not like some of the viewpoints they espouse,” the CDT’s Ruane wrote. “Indeed, those groups that are challenging the constitutionality of the order argued as much in their complaint, and have won an injunction blocking its implementation.”
On January 20, the same day Trump issued an executive order on free speech, the president also issued an executive order titled “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid,” which froze funding for programs run by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Among those were programs designed to empower civil society and human rights groups, journalists and others responding to digital repression and Internet shutdowns.
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), this includes many freedom technologies that use cryptography, fight censorship, protect freedom of speech, privacy and anonymity for millions of people around the world.
“While the State Department has issued some limited waivers, so far those waivers do not seem to cover the open source internet freedom technologies,” the EFF wrote about the USAID disruptions. “As a result, many of these projects have to stop or severely curtail their work, lay off talented workers, and stop or slow further development.”
On March 14, the president signed another executive order that effectively gutted the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees or funds media outlets including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America (VOA). The USAGM also oversees Radio Free Asia, which supporters say has been one of the most reliable tools used by the government to combat Chinese propaganda.
But this week, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, temporarily blocked USAGM’s closure by the administration.
“RFE/RL has, for decades, operated as one of the organizations that Congress has statutorily designated to carry out this policy,” Lamberth wrote in a 10-page opinion. “The leadership of USAGM cannot, with one sentence of reasoning offering virtually no explanation, force RFE/RL to shut down — even if the President has told them to do so.”
The Trump administration rescinded a decades-old policy that instructed officers not to take immigration enforcement actions in or near “sensitive” or “protected” places, such as churches, schools, and hospitals.
That directive was immediately challenged in a case brought by a group of Quakers, Baptists and Sikhs, who argued the policy reversal was keeping people from attending services for fear of being arrested on civil immigration violations. On Feb. 24, a federal judge agreed and blocked ICE agents from entering churches or targeting migrants nearby.
The president’s executive order allegedly addressing antisemitism came with a fact sheet that described college campuses as “infested” with “terrorists” and “jihadists.” Multiple faith groups expressed alarm over the order, saying it attempts to weaponize antisemitism and promote “dehumanizing anti-immigrant policies.”
The president also announced the creation of a “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias,” to be led by Attorney General Pam Bondi. Never mind that Christianity is easily the largest faith in America and that Christians are well-represented in Congress.
The Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, a Baptist minister and head of the progressive Interfaith Alliance, issued a statement accusing Trump of hypocrisy in claiming to champion religion by creating the task force.
“From allowing immigration raids in churches, to targeting faith-based charities, to suppressing religious diversity, the Trump Administration’s aggressive government overreach is infringing on religious freedom in a way we haven’t seen for generations,” Raushenbush said.
A statement from Americans United for Separation of Church and State said the task force could lead to religious persecution of those with other faiths.
“Rather than protecting religious beliefs, this task force will misuse religious freedom to justify bigotry, discrimination, and the subversion of our civil rights laws,” said Rachel Laser, the group’s president and CEO.
Where is President Trump going with all these blatant attacks on the First Amendment? The president has made no secret of his affection for autocratic leaders and “strongmen” around the world, and he is particularly enamored with Hungary’s far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort twice in the past year.
A March 15 essay in The Atlantic by Hungarian investigative journalist András Pethő recounts how Orbán rose to power by consolidating control over the courts, and by building his own media universe while simultaneously placing a stranglehold on the independent press.
“As I watch from afar what’s happening to the free press in the United States during the first weeks of Trump’s second presidency — the verbal bullying, the legal harassment, the buckling by media owners in the face of threats — it all looks very familiar,” Pethő wrote. “The MAGA authorities have learned Orbán’s lessons well.”
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