Last Week in Censorship: June 29-July 5, 2025
The Trump administration threatens to prosecute CNN for reporting on an ICE tracking app, and forces Penn to retroactively strip a transgender swimmer's records.
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Last week marked a new low in the Trump administration's assault on both press freedom and institutional autonomy. Officials threatened criminal prosecution of CNN for the basic act of journalism—reporting on a publicly available app—while wielding federal funding as a weapon to force the University of Pennsylvania into retroactive compliance with policies that didn't exist when contested actions occurred.
Suppressing Press Freedom
CNN faces prosecution for reporting on ICE tracking app. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that the government is "working with the Department of Justice to see if we can prosecute them for that," referring to the cable channel’s reporting on ICEBlock, an iPhone app that allows users to anonymously report immigration raids. Attorney General Pam Bondi separately toldFox News, "We are looking at him, and he better watch out," referring to the app's developer, Joshua Aaron. The app surged to #1 on Apple's App Store following the administration's criticism, growing from 20,000 to over 100,000 users as the government's attacks backfired spectacularly. CNN noted that there is "nothing illegal about reporting the existence of this or any other app," highlighting the administration's continued expansion of what it considers criminal speech.
State-Sponsored Intimidation, Propaganda, and Unwinding Civil Rights Protections
Under federal pressure, the University of Pennsylvania rescinds transgender swimmer's records and bans trans athletes. The Education Department concluded that Penn violated Title IX by allowing Lia Thomas to compete on the women's swim team during 2021-2022, despite the university following NCAA rules at the time. Under threat of losing $175 million in federal funding, the Ivy League school agreed to retroactively strip Thomas of her records, restore titles to athletes who lost to her, and send personalized apology letters to those swimmers. The university also committed to adopt "biology-based" definitions of male and female and to ban "males from competing in female athletic programs." The case demonstrates how the administration is retroactively punishing institutions for policies that were legal when implemented, using federal funding to enforce ideological compliance.