| Friend,
In the Trump 2.0 era, media conglomerates aren’t just reporting news but making it as well: Companies including Paramount1 (which owns CBS) and Disney2 (which owns ABC) have earned headlines for capitulating to an authoritarian White House.
The nation’s largest telecommunications companies are getting in on the action too. Recently, following the president’s hateful executive orders on the issue,3AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon abandoned prior commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in hopes of winning approval of various mergers, acquisitions and other regulatory requests before federal agencies: - In a July 8 letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, T-Mobile announced that it has scrapped all DEI initiatives,4 as it looks to the agency to greenlight its proposed acquisitions. Earlier this year, T-Mobile “dissolved” its partnership with several civil-rights organizations it had worked with on inclusive corporate-governance practices.5
- In May, the FCC blessed a Verizon merger, noting that it was conditioned on Verizon promising to end its own DEI programs.6
- In March, AT&T ended its DEI-focused employee training and cut off funding for the Trevor Project,7 a suicide-prevention group for LGBTQIA+ youth, and Turn Up the Love, a series of Pride events that partners with musical artists.
While many U.S. media institutions curried favor with political figures during previous administrations, these companies’ surrender to the tyranny of Trumpism poses an existential crisis of an entirely different scale — one that cuts to the core of our democracy.
We expect our media to act as a check on abuses of power. Instead, too many companies are enabling the Trump regime even as it does everything it can to undermine the First Amendment. That large telecommunications companies have joined the cowardly capitulations of other corporate giants exposes the deep structural rot at the root of our entire media system.
As the Trump administration — with the help of a compliant FCC — attempts to roll back limits to media consolidation,8 it’s worth recognizing that bigger media isn’t better for the American people and our democracy.
Thank you,
Tim and the rest of us at Free Press
P.S. Help Free Press keep fighting to hold telecom companies accountable with a donation today.
1. “Paramount Settles Trump Lawsuit Over Kamala Harris Interview on '60 Minutes' for $16 Million,” Reuters, July 2, 2025 2. “ABC to Pay $15 Million to Settle a Defamation Suit Brought by Trump,” The New York Times, Dec. 17, 2024 3. “Trump’s Executive Orders on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Explained,” The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Feb. 2, 2015 4. “The FCC Is Pressuring Companies to Drop D.E.I. It’s Succeeding, Too,” The New York Times, July 11, 2025 5. “T-Mobile Drops DEI Councils It Consulted for Governance Advice,” Bloomberg Law, Jan. 31, 2025 6. “FCC Approves Verizon-Frontier Merger,” Office of Chairman Brendan Carr, May 16, 2025 7. “AT&T Drops Pronoun Pins, Cancels Pride Programs in DEI Unwind,” Bloomberg, March 7, 2025 8. “FCC Seeks Public Comments on Changing Broadcast Ownership Rules,” TVTech, June 19, 2025  |
