President Donald Trump has made suppressing speech he doesn’t like a governing priority. From his first days back in office he cast dissent as disloyalty, promising “retribution” against anyone who criticized, investigated, or resisted him. He then translated that promise into action through regulatory proceedings, lawsuits, clearance revocations, and restrictions on press access. There have been some speed bumps along the way—setbacks in court, corporate reversals under pressure—but the effort to limit what the press reports remains steady.

The mechanics of Trump’s campaign to muzzle the media were on display in the brief suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live! after a Kimmel monologue following the murder of Charlie Kirk prompted the chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to suggest that ABC affiliates that continued to air the show risked regulatory sanctions. They were evident in Trump’s $15 billion defamation suit against The New York Times and others for allegedly conspiring to portray him as corrupt, in a complaint so obviously written to advance a political narrative rather than to right a legal wrong that the court immediately threw it out as “decidedly improper and impermissible.” And they were reflected in the new press policy announced by the Department of Defense asking Pentagon reporters to acknowledge that soliciting information not pre-approved for public release is illegal and grounds for revocation of their press passes.

These moves—threatened...

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