Free Press Action Fund

Free Press Action has opposed the use of zero carbon nuclear energy. ³

Activitism

Free Press Action Fund, the advocacy arm of Free Press, organizes rallies, protests, activist training, and town-hall meetings while also coordinating petition drives, calling campaigns to lawmakers, and other events to influence public debate.⁴⁵⁶⁷

In 2021, in support of Free Press’s Future of Journalism campaign, Free Press Action Fund submitted written testimony to the House of Representatives asking Congress to condition media subsidies on outlets hiring ethnic minorities and increasing reporting on local news and ethnic minorities.⁸

Net Neutrality

In 2017, Free Press Action Fund participated in a campaign to lobby the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) against repealing net neutrality. It helped generate comments to the FCC with other left-of-center groups like the ACLU, the Center for Media Justice, CREDO Action, Color of Change, Common Cause, Demand Progress, Popular Resistance, Daily Kos, Fight for the Future, and the Nation to protest outside of the FCC’s headquarters.⁹

After net neutrality was repealed, Free Press Action Fund coordinated more protests with Demand Progress and Fight for the Future outside of Senate offices to advocate for a reinstatement of the federal regulatory regime while also hosting a petition drive urging Congress to reinstate the Obama-era regulations.¹⁰¹¹

Sinclair Broadcast Group and Tribune Media Merger

Free Press Action Fund claimed that in 2018 one of its greatest achievements was stopping a proposed merger between Sinclair Broadcast Group and Tribune Media.¹² Free Press Action Fund had been attacking the right-of-center Sinclair Broadcast Group as purveyors of ”propaganda” since 2004,¹³ organizing protests at the FCC¹⁴ and at the headquarters of Sinclair Broadcast Group¹⁵ as well filing petitions and legal challenges against the merger.¹⁶

T-Mobile and Sprint Merger

Free Press Action Fund lobbied the FCC to block the proposed merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, labelling the joining of the two companies as an action that would ”cut the cord for people of color.”¹⁷¹⁸ Adult activists of Free Press Action Fund went so far as to hold small protests dressed as pirates, witches, scarecrows and in other costumes in front of T-Mobile and Sprint storefronts across the country.¹⁹

Anti-Free Speech Activism

In 2018, Free Press Action Fund led in the creation of an organization called Change the Terms, which seeks to attack free speech activities online.²⁰ Free Press Action Fund seeks to target what it defines as ”hate speech” and ”extremism” online together with left-of-center activist groups Center for American Progress, Color of Change, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, a controversial organization with a long-history of labeling conventional right-of-center groups, particularly social-conservative groups such as the Family Research Council and Alliance Defending Freedom, as “hate groups” and equating them to violent extremists.²⁰²¹

In July 2021, Free Press Action Fund co-CEO Jessica Gonzalez published a press release calling on legislators to enact policy that would censor so-called misinformation following a warning from the Biden administration’s Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. The warning claimed that online “misinformation” related to COVID-19 has resulted in people dying from following false information, assuming that individuals should not be trusted to make their own decisions.²²

Opposition to Nuclear Energy

In May of 2021, Free Press Action was one of 715 groups and businesses listed as a co-signer on a letter to the leadership of the U.S. House and Senate that referred to nuclear energy as a “dirty” form of energy production and a “significant” source of pollution. The letter asked federal lawmakers to reduce carbon emissions by creating a “renewable electricity standard” that promoted production of weather dependent power sources such as wind turbines and solar panels, but did not promote low carbon natural gas and zero carbon nuclear energy. ³

Nuclear power plants produce no carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions, and as of 2021 accounted for 19 percent of American electricity production—the largest source of zero carbon electricity in the United States. ²³ An October 2018 proposal from The Nature Conservancy noted that zero-carbon nuclear plants produced 7.8 percent of total world energy output and recommended reducing carbon emissions by increasing nuclear capacity to 33 percent of total world energy output. ²⁴

#NoKings Protests

In June 2025, Free Press Action Fund participated in organizing or supporting protests branded under the “#NoKings” banner, a national day of demonstrations positioned as a defense of democratic norms against Donald Trump. These events were part of a larger mobilization involving over 70 Democratic Party affiliates and allied organizations across at least 19 U.S. states and multiple international locations, according to publicly available event listings on Mobilize.us, a Democratic Party-aligned organizing platform. ^{25 26}

Leadership

Craig Aaron  has worked as co-CEO of Free Press and Free Press Action since 2020 and has led both organizations since 2011.²⁷ Aaron is a former reporter for Congress Watch, a division of the left-wing organization Public Citizen.²⁸²⁹ He was also previously managing editor of the socialist magazine In These Times.²⁹

In 2020, Jessica J. Gonzalez was named co-CEO of Free Press Action Fund and Free Press, alongside Craig Aaron. She previously served as an attorney and is listed as a cofounder of Change the Terms.²⁷²²

Financials

According to its 2023 990 form, Free Press Action Fund reported a revenue of $1,368,578, expenses of $966,746, and total assets of $1,558,486. ³⁰