N.C. GOP spokesman urges reporter to drop news story, citing Trump ties

Instead, the publication said it received a response from North Carolina GOP spokesman Matt Mercer, attempting to coerce ProPublica to kill the story.

“I’m sure you’re aware of our connections with the Trump Administration and I’m sure they would be interested in this matter,” Mercer said in an email that ProPublica published.

He added: “I would strongly suggest dropping this story,” underlining “strongly” and putting it in bold type.

After the story published, Mercer doubled down in a social media post, urging Trump to “feed ProPublica to the USAID wood chipper,” referring to the president’s termination of thousands in funding and grants from the foreign aid agency earlier this year.

While President Donald Trump and top administration officials have targeted media organizations for critical coverage of him or his policies, it is unusual for a state party official to explicitly leverage a relationship with the administration and express a willingness to retaliate toward news organizations.

It’s unclear if and how Trump would retaliate against ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that does not receive government funding and relies on private grants and donations.

A spokesperson for ProPublica defended the article.

“Our story speaks for itself. As a news organization, we reach out to the subjects of our reporting and include their responses. This is no exception. We reproduced precisely what Matt Mercer sent us in writing, including the bold and underlined format used in his message,” the spokesperson said in a statement to The Washington Post.

Spokespeople for the North Carolina Republican Party, Newby, the North Carolina Supreme Court communications team and the White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, said such intimidation tactics can silence journalists and critics, even if not frequently made or said on the record where it can be reported publicly.

“The statement that was made by the North Carolina GOP spokesperson is not the kind of statement that should be made in a democracy,” he said. “The fact that the press is being implicitly threatened with punishment by the executive branch is dangerous, and it’s dangerous even if the Trump administration doesn’t follow through.”

Nyhan pointed to a recent article by Alan Greenblatt, a longtime political journalist who recently resigned from his job, citing “management wary of offending Trump” or covering “controversial topics” to underscore the broader chilling effect of political retaliation to critical reporting.

Dave Heller, the deputy director of the Media Law Resource Center, said Mercer’s comments are not illegal but “a sad reflection of a toxic antagonism towards the press” and “made worse by the suggestion that the Trump administration — if not the president himself — can be summoned to chill reporters from doing their work.”

Since returning to office, Trump has ramped up his years-long conflicts with media outlets that he views are unfairly critical of him, filing numerous legal challenges and restricting press access to bend organizations to his will.

His administration banned the Associated Press from accessing to White House events due to its resistance to adopt Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America,” axed Voice of America and other government-funded news services aimed at overseas audiences, and slashed federal funds for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which contributes to outlets like NPR and PBS, in response to critical coverage of his administration.

The president has also personally sued several news organizations, including CBS News for $20 billion for what he claims was a deceptively edited interview to boost his 2024 rival, former vice president Kamala Harris.

In July, CBS’s parent company, Paramount, ultimately agreed to pay $16 million to settle that lawsuit.