Donald Trump is sued for putting a $100,000 paywall on his Truth Social posts

This article was published on August 13, 2026 Turning a sitting president’s official posts into a five-figure monthly subscription is a novel test of whether government speech can be paywalled at all. President Donald Trump delivering his first official State of the Union address of his second term before a joint session of Congress The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation have sued President Donald Trump over a Trump Media service that sells paid early access to his Truth Social posts, arguing that a sitting president should not be allowed to put a price on his own official words. The service, called Truth API, gives paying subscribers a faster feed of the president’s posts. Trump Media’s interim chief executive, Kevin McGurn, unveiled it in July, and TNW previously reported that the company had pitched traders a $100,000 feed of the president’s Truth Social output. Access reportedly runs from about $60,000 to $100,000 a month, positioning the president’s musings as a premium data product for hedge funds and traders keen to react to a market-moving post before everyone else does. The lawsuit was filed on 12 August in the Southern District of New York, one of the busie