WGA rips Trump’s ‘authoritarian assault’ on free speech

More than 2,300 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) have signed an open letter denouncing recent actions by President Donald Trump and his administration, describing them as “an unprecedented, authoritarian assault.” The letter, backed by members from both WGA East and WGA West, includes prominent figures such as Spike Lee, Adam McKay, Ilana Glazer, Mike Schur, Liz Merriwether and Tony Gilroy.

WGA letter

At the center of the writers’ concerns are Trump’s legal and political maneuvers against the media. The letter criticizes the president for filing what it calls “baseless lawsuits” against news outlets that reported unfavorably about him, and then leveraging those cases into financial settlements. As an example, it points to Paramount Global’s recent agreement to pay Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over a CBS 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris, which Trump claimed was deceptively edited. The open letter also accuses Trump of retaliating against publications that reported critically on the White House, threatening to revoke broadcasters’ licenses, and repeatedly calling for the cancellation of television shows that mocked or criticized him.

WGA vs. Trump

Another major concern outlined in the letter is the administration’s targeting of public media. The writers point to Congressional Republicans’ cooperation with the White House to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which recently announced it was shutting down after federal funding was canceled. The letter claims this move was intended “to silence PBS and NPR.” The signatories further allege that the Federal Communications Commission, under Trump-appointed chairman Brendan Carr, conditioned its approval of the Skydance-Paramount merger on assurances that CBS would alter the ideological direction of its programming. According to the letter, days before the FCC approved the merger on July 24, Skydance’s general counsel promised Carr that the company would install an ombudsman at CBS to review complaints of bias and ensure “CBS’s editorial decision-making reflects the varied ideological perspectives of American viewers.” The letter states, “These are un-American attempts to restrict the kinds of stories and jokes that may be told, to silence criticism and dissent. … We don’t have a king, we have a president. And the president doesn’t get to pick what’s on television, in movie theaters, on stage, on our bookshelves or in the news.”

Overreach

The WGA members call on “our elected representatives and industry leaders to resist this overreach” and urge “our audiences” and “every single person ready to fight for a free and democratic future” to “raise their voice.” In response, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers defended the administration, pointing to reports that CBS’ The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was losing up to $40 million annually. “Any business with common sense would cancel the production of a failing product that loses $40 million annually — which is exactly what Colbert’s show was doing,” she said. “President Trump is right, everyday Americans don’t want to watch Colbert’s talentless, money-losing show. Protecting the First Amendment is a top priority to President Trump, which is why he signed an executive order on day one to stop federal censorship and protect freedom of speech.”

Trump’s executive order

The executive order, titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,” accused the Biden administration of “trampling free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties.” In June 2024, the Supreme Court rejected a Republican-led case that claimed the Biden White House illegally pressured social media companies to remove posts about COVID-19 and the 2020 election that had been deemed misinformation.

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