--- title: "A judge in Manhattan weighs whether a president may sell the first second of his words" description: "The Justice Department likened Trump’s paid Truth Social feed to FDR’s fireside chats. The judge pointed out that Roosevelt never charged" author: "Jan Sokol" published: 2026-10-08T20:53:01Z modified: 2026-10-09T09:31:41Z url: https://rews.cc/a/a-judge-in-manhattan-weighs-whether-a-president-may-sell-the-6adc62 language: en tags: ["trump", "law", "politics", "truth-social", "first-amendment", "us"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # A judge in Manhattan weighs whether a president may sell the first second of his words *The Justice Department likened Trump’s paid Truth Social feed to FDR’s fireside chats. The judge pointed out that Roosevelt never charged* By Jan Sokol · October 8, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/a-judge-in-manhattan-weighs-whether-a-president-may-sell-the-6adc62 ## In brief - A federal judge in Manhattan is weighing whether Trump Media can sell early access to Trump’s Truth Social posts - Truth API launched Aug 1 and costs $60,000 to $100,000 a month; it has reportedly signed up more than 10 customers - The Intercept and Freedom of the Press Foundation sued Aug 12, citing the First and Fifth Amendments and the Presidential Records Act - The DOJ compared the posts to FDR’s fireside chats; Judge Oetken replied that Roosevelt didn’t charge for them - Oetken questioned how much harm a split-second delay causes; a ruling is expected within weeks On Wednesday, in a federal courtroom in Manhattan, the United States government defended something no earlier administration had ever had to defend: the idea that a president’s words may reach some citizens slightly before everyone else, as long as someone pays. The thing being argued over is a data feed. Truth API is sold by Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, and Donald Trump is that company’s largest stakeholder and majority owner. The feed’s value, [as Ashley Belanger reported for *Ars Technica*](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/10/judge-weighs-if-trump-can-charge-100k-for-early-access-to-truth-social-posts/), comes largely from the fact that its most important author is the president. Judge Paul Oetken is likely to decide within the next few weeks whether Trump can become the first president to profit personally from selling early access to government information. ## The price of a head start The service [went live on August 1](https://www.euronews.com/business/2026/08/13/what-is-truth-api-the-100000-feed-that-has-landed-trump-a-lawsuit). Wall Street firms pay between $60,000 and $100,000 a month for early access to market-moving posts from the platform’s most-followed accounts. At the top rate, one subscriber pays $1.2 million a year. According to [Yale Law School’s account of the case](https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/clinic-files-preliminary-injunction-against-paid-truth-api-service), the service has reportedly signed up more than 10 customers already. Consider what those posts contain. Military strikes have been announced on Trump’s feed, along with ceasefires, tariffs, immigration policies and major changes inside his administration. Once, news like this came through press secretaries, briefing rooms and wire services. Now it comes from a private company’s servers, and that company has set a price on the moment of arrival. ## The suit The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation sued on August 12 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. They are represented by Yale’s Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic, together with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the Public Integrity Project and Altshuler Berzon LLP. [Straight Arrow News reported](https://san.com/cc/lawsuit-challenges-trumps-100k-a-month-truth-social-early-access-fee/) that the defendants include Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Daniel Scavino, and his executive assistant, Natalie J. Harp. The news groups say the fees violate the First Amendment and the Presidential Records Act, because they create tiers of access to government information in posts that Trump does not technically own. They also invoke the Fifth Amendment, which in their words bars the government from “charging unreasonable sums that cannot be justified to offset the cost of the government benefit, and granting preferential access to crucial government information for arbitrary and irrational reasons.” Their motion for a preliminary injunction asks the court to stop Truth API from giving early access to posts. Annie Chabel of The Intercept summed up the case in one line: “The First Amendment doesn’t have a paywall, and we’re not going to let him build one.” ## The radio and the poor Brantley Mayers, a civil attorney at the Justice Department, told the court there was no conflict of any kind. According to [Courthouse News](https://www.courthousenews.com/doj-defends-trump-charging-100k-for-early-access-to-truth-social-posts/), he compared Trump’s posts to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s evening radio addresses, the fireside chats. On this account the president’s feed is an unvarnished public service, not a grab for profit. He also argued that the decision to charge was not Trump’s but a “completely private commercial decision” made by the media company. The judge cut him off before he could go further. > “Well, President Roosevelt didn’t charge money for his fireside chats, did he?” Mayers did not back down. He conceded that Roosevelt charged nothing, but said there were similar “barriers to entry” then. Some Americans in the 1930s and 1940s could not afford a radio, he argued, just as some news organizations today cannot afford $60,000 to $100,000 a month for the API. The argument deserves a moment’s thought. It sets the poverty of a Depression-era household, which no president invoiced, beside a monthly fee charged by a company the president controls. Governments have always been tempted to describe a toll they collect as one more fact of life, like the weather. Here the toll came with a price list. ## A fraction of a second The plaintiffs did not get everything their own way. Courthouse News reported that Oetken seemed doubtful about the harm the news organizations claim, because the feed gives no exclusive access, only access that may arrive a fraction of a second sooner. “It’s a negligible delay to a human being,” he said. Ars put the question in the same terms: does a delay of about a second harm the press? The Intercept’s lawyers asked the court to bar Trump from making initial public announcements on Truth Social for as long as the API is running. The judge recognised that the arrangement might be discriminatory, since it creates “two classes of people,” one with instant access to the president’s statements and one without. But he doubted that he had the power to tell a president where he may speak. “There hasn’t really been anything like this case,” he said from the bench. He may be right about that. A human being might not notice a second. Trading desks are not human beings, and they are the customers the feed was sold to. Those customers pay up to $100,000 a month, which suggests the second is worth something to them. The same week, in Washington, another federal judge [signalled he would extend a block](https://rews.cc/a/judge-signals-he-will-extend-block-on-trump-s-white-house-ba-71bc02) on the administration’s ban of CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House. Courts are now being asked, case by case, who gets near the president’s words and on what terms. In Manhattan the terms are written down, at $60,000 to $100,000 a month. Oetken’s ruling is expected within weeks.