There just seems to be no floor when it comes to the stupidity and overreach of Trump and Hegseth. U.S. District Court Judge Paul Friedman is now just the latest person to point that out to them. Friedman ruled Friday that the Pentagon’s restrictive
press access policy is unlawful and ordered the Department of Defense to reinstate press credentials for affected journalists.
In his ruling, Friedman found that the policy — which allowed officials to revoke credentials from reporters who sought or published unauthorized information — violated the First Amendment and granted the government overly broad authority to control access to the press corps.
If you're a Republican and you're reading this, you might well be inclined to regard this as yet more partisan blather from that poor liberal LafayetteBear. But consider the policy that Hegseth was trying to enforce here. The news article linked at the end of this post articulates it pretty succinctly:
The policy, introduced last year under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, required reporters covering the Pentagon to agree not to obtain or report on information that had not been officially cleared for release — even if the material was unclassified. Critics argued the rules amounted to censorship and would punish routine news-gathering practices.
Under the guidelines, journalists risked losing credentials for conduct deemed a security risk, including attempts to access nonpublic information, a provision that alarmed major news organizations and press freedom groups.
Nearly every major U.S. news outlet, including Fox News, refused to sign the policy when it was introduced, with many forfeiting their Pentagon credentials in protest.
In Friday’s decision, Friedman sided with media organizations that argued the policy imposed unconstitutional conditions on access. He said the policy also violated the Fifth Amendment because “it provides no way for journalists to know how they may do their jobs without losing their credentials.”
I have not read Friedman's full opinion and, frankly, don't understand how this policy violated Fifth Amendment due process protections, since journalists WOULD, in fact, "know how they may do their jobs without losing their credentials." They could simply submit their proposed news reports or columns to the Pentagon for its review and approval prior to publishing said reports or columns. But that would quite clearly constitute what First Amendment legal scholars call a "prior restraint" of speech.
A "Prior Restraint" is a form of government censorship that prohibits speech or other expression
before it can take place, generally deemed a violation of the First Amendment. Instead of punishing speech after publication, it stops communication from occurring entirely, often via injunctions, licensing, or pre-publication review. Prior restraints are generally deemed to be the most pernicious of First Amendment infringements, and the easiest to challenge in the courts.
This one was a no brainer. If members of the press could be forced to submit their proposed news reports and columns to the Pentagon for its approval prior to their publication, they would essentially be reduced to the status of Pentagon spokespersons. Nothing critical of the Pentagon or its policies or initiatives (whether they were sound or unsound) would ever be published. That is obviously not how a free press operates. If this policy was limited to classified information, it would be a tad more defensible. But it would not work even then, since it would almost surely lead to the DoD designating virtually everything as "classified."
Trump and Hegseth certainly have no shortage of lawyers working for them. I'm wondering if either of them even bothered to ask one of those lawyers about that policy before putting it in place. Any law student (at least any law student who has had a class in Constitutional Law) could have told them this policy would not pass legal muster. For Chrissake ...
Here's the link to the full article:
https://www.ms.now/news/judge-rules-pentagon-press-policy-unconstitutional
