A U.S. federal court is preparing to issue a written ruling in the coming weeks on whether Donald Trump can sell early access to his Truth Social posts through an application programming interface whose fees could reach $100,000 per month per subscriber. News organizations that filed the lawsuit say the service turns information related to the president’s work into a commercial product whose access is prioritized for entities able to pay.
Trump is the largest shareholder and controlling owner of Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social. According to the lawsuit, the value of the application programming interface derives from the fact that the posts may include announcements about military strikes, ceasefires, tariffs, immigration policies and major changes in the U.S. administration.
The Government’s Argument and the Comparison to Roosevelt’s Speeches
Justice Department attorney Brantley Mayers defended the model as a private commercial decision that does not involve a conflict. He compared Trump’s posts to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s radio addresses known as “fireside chats,” saying that the president’s account performs a public-service function without losing its commercial character.
But U.S. federal judge Paul Oetken objected to the comparison with a direct question: Roosevelt did not charge fees for his radio speeches. Mayers responded that owning radios in the 1930s and 1940s represented a barrier to access, just as some news organizations today cannot afford to pay between $60,000 and $100,000 for access to the Truth application programming interface.
It Is Not Merely a Matter of a Time Difference
During the hearing, Oetken asked whether delaying the public’s access to a post by a fraction of a second or less causes actual harm to journalism, noting that the difference may matter to algorithmic traders but be negligible to a human.
However, the plaintiffs say the value of the interface goes beyond being first by a matter of time. TMTG confirmed that major news organizations are in discussions to purchase access, while Nikhel Sus, chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), explained that the interface provides a machine-readable feed and a historical archive of all Trump’s posts. This allows organizations to maintain a more reliable record even if posts are later deleted.
What Could Change in Practice?
The core of the case is not merely the speed at which a post is transmitted, but the possibility of creating two classes of audiences for information published by a president in office: news organizations able to purchase a structured, archived feed, and the public, which relies on ordinary free access. The plaintiff organizations say this model could give paying newsrooms a direct advantage, while the Justice Department argues that TMTG made the decision commercially and separately from Trump.
The judge did not issue an immediate ruling and is expected to decide in writing whether to block the sale of access to the interface during Trump’s time in office. The ruling is also significant because there is no clear precedent for a U.S. president owning a media company that could profit from presidential announcements. The decision will determine whether the interface is treated as a private commercial service or as a channel connected to government information that must be made available on equal terms.