An Administration at War With Itself, and With the Press
WASHINGTON — The spectacle unfolding in Washington is no longer defined by partisan confrontation alone. Increasingly, it is marked by something more destabilizing: an administration publicly fracturing under pressure, while simultaneously escalating its conflict with the institutions meant to scrutinize it.
In recent weeks, senior officials within President Donald J. Trump’s administration have begun turning on one another in full view of the public. The trigger was the fatal shooting of Alex Jeffrey Prey, a Veterans Affairs nurse killed by federal agents in Minneapolis — an incident that has become a flashpoint not only for civil rights concerns, but for the internal coherence of the administration itself.
At the center of the dispute are two of the president’s most powerful allies: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. Ms. Noem publicly suggested that she had been warned by Mr. Miller of an imminent threat involving Mr. Prey — a claim widely condemned as false and defamatory. Mr. Miller, in turn, denied responsibility, saying he had relayed information provided by agents on the ground and shifting blame to Customs and Border Protection and senior Border Patrol officials, including Gregory Bevino.
The result has been an extraordinary cascade of finger-pointing among officials who nominally serve the same president, advancing conflicting narratives about responsibility for a civilian death. Mr. Miller’s acknowledgment that there may have been a “breach of protocol” — while simultaneously disclaiming accountability — marked a rare public admission of error within an administration otherwise known for rigid message discipline.
Yet the internal conflict has coincided with a broader, more consequential battle: an intensifying confrontation between the Trump administration and the media.
On September 17, ABC News suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! indefinitely, following remarks by the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, who suggested that regulatory consequences could follow if networks failed to rein in critical programming. The next day, Mr. Carr publicly floated whether The View might also warrant scrutiny under the FCC’s Equal Opportunity Rule — despite the existence of a long-standing “bona fide news” exemption.
The implications were unmistakable. A federal regulator appeared to be signaling that political criticism could carry regulatory costs.
President Trump celebrated the suspension on social media. For press freedom advocates, the episode revived long-standing fears that the administration’s hostility toward critical media was shifting from rhetoric to enforcement.
The initial silence from The View — long one of the president’s most vocal television critics — only deepened those concerns. For two days, the show avoided the topic entirely, prompting speculation that even established broadcasters were engaging in preemptive self-censorship.
That interpretation changed abruptly on September 22, when Whoopi Goldberg opened the program with a defiant declaration: “No one silences us.”
Ms. Goldberg explained that the delay had been strategic, not fearful. Then she delivered a direct rebuke to the notion of government-press entanglement: while television shows may be canceled for editorial reasons, she said, “the government cannot apply pressure to force someone to be silenced.”
The moment resonated widely. Coming from a host on the same network that had just suspended one of its flagship programs, it was an unusually blunt acknowledgment of political pressure — and a reminder of the fragile boundary between regulatory authority and censorship.
Other voices soon followed. On Real Time, Bill Maher criticized the initial silence, suggesting it illustrated how intimidation can succeed even without explicit orders. Ana Navarro, drawing on her experience growing up under authoritarian regimes in Nicaragua, offered a starker warning: silencing high-profile critics is not the end goal, but the beginning. “First they come for the people with big platforms,” she said. “Then they come for everyone else.”
Meanwhile, the administration’s internal discord has only intensified. Allies of Mr. Miller have found themselves attacked by Republican state officials. His wife, Katie Miller, has publicly sparred with Florida State Senator Ileana Garcia. What once would have been handled quietly is now playing out in public, eroding the image of unity the White House has long tried to project.
All of this is unfolding as Congress edges toward a government shutdown, with disputes over health care funding and the Affordable Care Act unresolved. The prospect that active-duty military personnel could be required to serve without pay has added another layer of urgency — and unease.
Taken together, these events suggest an administration increasingly defined by reaction rather than strategy: reacting to tragedy with blame, to criticism with threats, and to dissent with pressure. The danger, historians of democratic backsliding warn, is not merely the punishment of critics, but the normalization of fear — the quiet decision, made in newsrooms and offices alike, to remain silent rather than risk retaliation.
In that sense, the most consequential conflict now confronting the Trump administration may not be with its political opponents, but with the foundational norms — institutional accountability, press independence, internal restraint — that sustain democratic governance itself.
