President Donald Trump's contentious relationship with news organizations has led to a host of disputes and legal battles, the latest a lawsuit accusing the BBC of defamation and deceptive and unfair trade practices. The president is seeking $10 billion in damages from the British broadcaster.
The lawsuit filed Monday accuses the BBC of “splicing together two entirely separate parts of President Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021” in order to ”intentionally misrepresent the meaning of what President Trump said.” It calls the BBC's “false” depiction of Trump “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
The BBC apologized to Trump last month over the edit of the Jan. 6 speech. But the publicly funded broadcaster rejected claims it had defamed him.
Here's a look at key moments in Trump fights with the media in his second term:
ABC indefinitely suspended the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” show in September following criticism of comments the host made over the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. It then returned the show to the air less than a week later.
Trump celebrated the suspension of the veteran late-night comic and his frequent critic, calling it “great news for America.”
The network pulled Kimmel after his monologue included a reference to the Kirk's shooting and compared Trump’s grief to “how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, said his agency had a strong case for holding Kimmel, ABC and its parent company Walt Disney Co., accountable for spreading misinformation.
Late-night hosts Jon Stewart, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert all expressed solidarity with Kimmel. Hundreds of other entertainment luminaries signed a letter circulated by the American Civil Liberties Union that called ABC’s move “a dark moment for freedom of speech in our nation.”
Trump filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times that targets four journalists for a book and three articles published within a two-month period before the 2024 election.
A Florida federal judge tossed the suit, saying it was overly long and was full of “tedious and burdensome” language that had no bearing on the legal case, but he gave Trump's legal team 28 days to file an amended complaint. The revised lawsuit was filed in October.
The Times called the lawsuit meritless and an attempt to discourage independent reporting.
Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp owns the paper. The move came a day after the Journal published a story reporting on his ties to financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The article described a sexually suggestive letter that the newspaper says bore Trump’s name and was included in a 2003 album compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday.
The Justice Department had earlier asked a federal court to unseal grand jury transcripts in Epstein’s sex trafficking case. The Trump administration had announced it would not be releasing additional files from the case.
CBS announced it would cancel “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” next May. Colbert is one of Trump’s most prominent and persistent late-night critics. CBS said the show was canceled for financial reasons, not for content. However, the announcement came three days after Colbert criticized a settlement between Trump and CBS parent company Paramount Global over a “60 Minutes” story.
Paramount Global decided to pay Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit regarding editing of a CBS’ “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris in October 2024. At the time Harris was the Democratic candidate for president.
Trump’s lawyers claimed he suffered “mental anguish” following the interview and sued for $20 billion. The company was hoping to put the issue to rest as it sought administration approval of a merger. Paramount, which owns CBS, said the money will go to Trump’s future presidential library and to pay his legal fees.
Trump signed an executive order aimed at slashing public subsidies to PBS and NPR and alleged “bias” in the broadcasters’ reporting. His order instructed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other federal agencies “to cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS” and further requires that they work to root out indirect sources of public financing for the news organizations.
Later that month, NPR and three of its local stations sued Trump, arguing that the order violated their free speech and relies on an authority that he does not have. This summer, Congress approved eliminating $1.1 billion allocated to public broadcasting.
Trump decided to remove the AP from the White House press pool. That meant AP journalists no longer would have access to the Oval Office, Air Force One and other events not open to a full press corps. The move was in retaliation for AP’s decision not to follow his lead in changing the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America in all instances.
The AP Stylebook calls for referring to the body of water by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump chose. The reasoning is that AP disseminates news around the world and must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.
The wire service later sued Trump and a district court sided with the AP in April, affirming on First Amendment grounds that the government cannot punish the news organization for the content of its speech. A federal appeals court in June stayed that decision.
ABC News agreed to pay $15 million toward Trump’s presidential library as part of a defamation lawsuit settlement over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable of raping writer E. Jean Carroll. The network also agreed to pay $1 million in legal fees.
The settlement agreement described ABC’s presidential library payment as a “charitable contribution.”
Trump sued ABC and Stephanopoulos in a Miami federal court in March 2024 after the network aired the segment in which Stephanopoulos repeatedly misstated the verdicts in Carroll’s two lawsuits against Trump. Neither verdict involved a finding of rape as defined under New York law.
President Donald Trump speaks during a Mexican Border Defense Medal presentation in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
On a recent December day, Mark Latino and a handful of his workers spun sheets of vinyl into tinsel for Christmas tree branches. They worked on a custom-made machine that’s nearly a century old, churning out strands of bright silver tinsel along its 35-foot (10-meter) length.
Latino is the CEO of Lee Display, a Fairfield, California-based company that his great-grandfather founded in 1902. Back then, it specialized in handmade velvet and silk flowers for hats. Now, it's one of the only companies in the United States that still makes artificial Christmas trees, producing around 10,000 each year.
Tariffs shone a twinkling light this year on fake Christmas trees — and the extent to which America depends on other countries for its plastic fir trees.
Prices for fake trees rose 10% to 15% this year due to the new import taxes, according to the American Christmas Tree Association, a trade group. Tree sellers cut their orders and paid higher tariffs for the stock they brought in.
Despite those issues, tree companies say they aren’t likely to shift large-scale production back to the U.S. after decades in Asia. Fake trees are labor-intensive and require holiday lights and other components the U.S. doesn’t make, said Chris Butler, CEO of the National Tree Co., which sells more than 1 million artificial trees each year.
Americans are also very price-sensitive when it comes to holiday décor, Butler said.
“Putting a ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ sticker on the box won’t do any good if it’s twice as expensive,” Butler said. “If it’s 20% more expensive, it won’t sell.”
About 80% of the U.S. residents who put up a Christmas tree this year planned to use a fake one, according to the American Christmas Tree Association. That percentage has been unchanged for at least 15 years.
Mac Harman, the founder and CEO of Balsam Brands, which sells hundreds of thousands of Balsam Hill trees each year, said Americans like to set up their trees on Thanksgiving and leave them up for weeks, which dries out fresh-cut trees. Others prefer fake trees because they’re allergic to the mold spores on real trees, he said.
Americans also like convenience; 80% of the fake trees sold each year have the lights already strung on them, Butler said.
That preference is one reason artificial tree production shifted away from the U.S., first to Thailand in the early 1990s and to China about a decade later. Winding lights around the branches is time-consuming and tedious, Harman said.
“Where are we going to get 15,000 people in America who want to string lights on Christmas trees?” Harman said.
It takes an hour or two to make an artificial Christmas tree, from molding and cutting the needles to tying branches together and attaching the lights, Butler said. Workers in China, where 90% of fake trees are made, are paid $1.50 to $2 per hour, he said.
Harman said the workers who wrap the lights on Balsam Hill's trees are so efficient “it's like watching an Olympian.”
One of Balsam Brands’ Chinese partners employs 15,000 to 20,000 people; another in Indonesia has up to 10,000, he said. Many are seasonal workers, since orders for Christmas décor slow down between October and February.
Balsam Brands, which is based in Redwood City, California, studied whether it could make faux trees in Ohio during the first Trump administration, when President Donald Trump threatened -– but eventually delayed –- tariffs on imported Christmas décor, Harman said.
The company hired consultants and considered automating some work. But it concluded a tree that currently sells for $800 would cost $3,000 if it was made in the U.S. Harman said Balsam couldn’t even find a U.S. company to make the pair of gloves it includes in each box for fluffing out branches.
Lee Display employs three or four people for most of the year, adding more during the holiday rush to help with installations and displays. About half its business is making custom displays for companies such as Macy’s, while the other half is selling directly to consumers.
Latino said he likes that he can produce an order quickly instead of waiting for it to ship from overseas.
“You have more control over it. I like to think that everything here is either my fault or my mistake or my careful planning and skill,” he said.
The tariffs still affected Lee Display. Latino's son James, who leads business development and marketing, said the company didn’t import lights or decorations from China this year and relied on items it already had in stock. It's getting low on lights, so next year it will have to pay more to import them, he said.
Some artificial tree companies are branching out so they’re less reliant on China. National Tree Co., which is based in Cranford, New Jersey, moved some manufacturing to Cambodia in 2024, and could source all its trees from outside China by next year if it wanted to, Butler said.
But diversifying their suppliers didn't make those companies immune from the impact of tariffs either. In April, the Trump administration threatened a 49% tariff against products from Cambodia. That rate was eventually reduced to 19%. Tariffs on artificial trees from China also bounced around but now average 20%, according to the American Christmas Tree Association.
Butler said his company imported fewer trees this year and also raised prices by 10%. He said he used a lot of the money to offer customer discounts since demand was weak because of consumer worries about the economy.
“It’s a discretionary item. People say, ‘I can wait one more year,’” Butler said.
Balsam Brands cut its workforce by 10%, canceled travel, froze raises and even stopped serving lunch in the office once a week to absorb the impact of tariffs, Harman said. It also raised tree prices by 10%.
Harman said his sales are down 5% to 10% this year in the U.S. but up 10% or more in Germany, Australia, Canada and France. That tells him tariffs have decreased U.S. demand.
“If a merry Christmas is measured in how many decorations people put up, by that measure it's going to be a slightly less merry Christmas,” he said.
AP Video Journalist Terry Chea contributed from Fairfield, California.
Anjali Bisaria shops for an artificial Christmas tree at the Balsam Hill outlet store in Burlingame, Calif. on Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)
Mac Harman, founder and CEO of Balsam Hill, looks at artificial Christmas trees at the company's outlet store in Burlingame, Calif. on Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)
Juan Gonzalez assembles an artificial Christmas wreath at Lee Display's warehouse, in Fairfield, Calif., Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)
Mark Latino, CEO of Lee Display, works with a machine that makes tinsel brush for artificial Christmas trees at the company's warehouse, in Fairfield, Calif., Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)
Melissa Webb assembles an artificial Christmas tree at Lee Display's warehouse, in Fairfield, Calif., Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)
