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    Trump has managed to spin Signalgate as a media lapse, not a major security breach | Andrew Roth

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    When it comes to Trump-era scandals, the shameless responses to “Signalgate”, in which top administration officials discussing details of an impending strike in Yemen in a group chat without noticing the presence of a prominent journalist, should set alarm bells ringing for its brazenness and incompetence.In a particularly jaw-dropping exchange, Tulsi Gabbard, the United States’ director of national intelligence, was forced to backtrack during a house hearing after she had said that there had been no specific information in the Signal chat about an impending military strike. Then, the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg published the chat in full, contradicting Gabbard’s remarks that no classified data or weapons systems had been mentioned in the chat.“My answer yesterday was based on my recollection, or the lack thereof, on the details that were posted there,” said Gabbard. “What was shared today reflects the fact that I was not directly involved with that part of the Signal chat.”Then there was the US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth who – staring straight down the camera – baldly stated: “Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that.” The next day, Goldberg revealed that Hegseth himself had texted the precise timing of the attacks and the weapons systems to be used, specifically F-18 jets and MQ-9 drones.And Michael Waltz, the White House national security adviser, was left scrambling on live television as he was quizzed by a Fox News anchor on how Goldberg’s number had ended up on his phone. “You’ve never talked to him before so how is the number on your phone?” asked conservative television anchor Laura Ingraham. “It gets sucked in,” Waltz, a former congressman and army special forces soldier, replied – without explaining how a number can get “sucked in” to a phone.But despite all this, no one is really taking the prospects of an investigation seriously. At heart, this is about politics – and the fact is that Democrats simply don’t have the votes or the sway to deliver a body blow to the administration at this point.It’s unlikely that anyone will be punished. Donald Trump has told his aides that he doesn’t want to give the Atlantic a scalp, and vice-president JD Vance responded forcefully during a trip to Greenland on Friday: “If you think you’re going to force the president of the United States to fire anybody you’ve got another think coming … I’m the vice-president saying it here on Friday: we are standing behind our entire national security team.”For decades, national security was broadly seen as the last bastion of bipartisanship in Washington, an area where Democrats and Republicans put aside their differences for a general consensus on supporting the national interest. Members of Congress on the intelligence and foreign affairs committees often maintained cordial relationships. There was also an understanding that big scandals could jump the partisan line, and lead to serious repercussions even with tensions between the parties at their highest.Scooter Libby, once chief of staff to vice-president Dick Cheney, was sentenced to prison after an investigation into the leak of the identity of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. The Department of Justice under Barack Obama launched more Espionage Act investigations for leaking sensitive information than all previous administrations combined.And the FBI, of course, launched a years-long investigation into Hillary Clinton for keeping emails on a home computer server that ultimately may have helped sway the elections. “It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity,” Clinton wrote in a New York Times op-ed on Friday. “We’re all shocked – shocked! – that President Trump and his team don’t actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws … What’s much worse is that top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat. That’s dangerous. And it’s just dumb.”Observers have remarked that the scandal would have been far greater if it had taken place at a lower level in the intelligence community. Mid-level officers and defence officials would all face far harsher blowback if they were caught divulging the kind of information that Hegseth sent into the chat, including the specific timing of the strikes and the weapons systems to be used.But the Trump administration believes that it can simply divert and divide public attention until there is a new scandal. That may be a winning strategy. Trump is to introduce tariffs this week that will probably dominate the news agenda for weeks. And his deputies are out on cable news every day, pushing back at the media for covering the scandal and suggesting that Goldberg somehow sneaked his way into the chat rather than being added directly by Waltz, the national security adviser.“They have treated this as a media event to be spun rather than a grievous error to be rectified,” wrote Phil Klay, a military veteran and guest columnist for the New York Times. The early indications are that the Trump administration will skate through this scandal, crossing into new territory in Washington where even a major security leak can be repainted as the fault of the media for covering it. More

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      Farage reportedly met Cummings for ‘friendly chat about the general scene’

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      Nigel Farage has reportedly met Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s adviser turned nemesis, after the Vote Leave founder suggested voters should back Reform UK at the local elections.Cummings, who was once a sworn enemy of Farage during the EU referendum as he battled to keep control of the leave campaign, is reported to have met the Reform leader to discuss Whitehall changes, which allies said was the strongest sign yet that Farage was taking seriously the idea of becoming prime minister.Cummings and Farage were at odds for years in the run-up to the referendum and during Cummings’s time at No 10, with Farage calling him a “horrible, nasty little man”. Cummings’s Vote Leave won the official campaign designation during the referendum.According to the Sunday Times, the pair met recently for a “friendly chat about the general scene” including subjects such as US politics, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, as well as “how No 10 and the Cabinet Office really work, about the catastrophe of the Tory party and about what Reform has to do to replace the Tories”. A Reform spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.Cummings was said to be in advanced talks to launch his own new party – the Start-Up party – but in February he posted on X that he believed voters should now back Reform UK.Asked by one X user on Sunday who he would vote for at the next general election, Cummings wrote: “Dunno yet but obviously everyone should vote Reform this spring … No downsides, just upsides.”In a post on his Substack, Cummings claimed Britain needed a significant political realignment including a merger of the Conservatives with Reform. He wrote: “Shove out Kemi [Badenoch] ASAP, take over Tories, get Trump/Elon to facilitate a merger with Reform, tip in a third force of elite talent and mass energy so voters see an essentially new political force whose essence is a decisive break with 1992-2024 … break the coalition supporting [Keir] Starmer, take over No 10, do regime change.”Farage’s party is on course for a number of gains at the local elections in May, including potentially winning control of eight local councils, according to Electoral Calculus.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNevertheless, Reform has been in turmoil for the past fortnight due to a significant rift between Farage and Rupert Lowe, one of his former MPs who has been thrown out of the party in a battle over bullying allegations and referred to the police. Lowe had criticised Farage in a Daily Mail interview and since claimed he had been censored by the party on immigration issues. More

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      AP files amended complaint against White House over press pool ban

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      The Associated Press amended its complaint against the Trump administration on Monday, including in its epigraph a punchy quote from an anonymous White House adviser: “The AP and the White House Correspondents Association wanted to f–k around. Now it’s finding out time.”The unnamed White House adviser’s quote came about during an exchange on 25 February 2025 and was first reported by Axios last week.The Associated Press filed its lawsuit against the Trump administration on 21 February, after the White House restricted its journalists from attending presidential events.The decision by the White House came in response to the news agency’s refusal to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” following an executive order issued by Donald Trump that renamed the body of water in the US.The AP claims that the actions of the Trump administration violate both the first and fifth amendments of the US constitution and is an unconstitutional effort by the White House to control speech.The lawsuit names three White House officials as defendants: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich, and chief of staff Susan Wiles.Last week, the federal judge overseeing the case, who was appointed by Trump, denied a request from AP to immediately restore full access to presidential events for its journalists.The judge acknowledged that existing case law “is uniformly unhelpful to the White House”, described the White House’s ban on AP journalists as “problematic” and indicated that the issue needed more exploration before a ruling can be made.Trump administration lawyers have argued in court filings that the AP does not have a constitutional right to what they called “special media access to the president”.On Monday, the AP amended its complaint, nearly doubling the size of the document from 18 pages to 32, and once again asked the federal judge to reinstate its access to the press pool during specific presidential events.“As the DC Circuit has made clear, journalists’ ‘first amendment interest’ in access to the White House, at events both large and small, ‘undoubtedly qualifies as liberty which may not be denied without due process of law under the fifth amendment,’” the amended complaint states.“The AP’s liberty interest in access is rooted in the First Amendment’s free speech and press guarantees and its related protections for news gathering.”The AP also highlighted and cited recent and ongoing instances of AP journalists being denied access and pointed out the recent decision from the White House to take control over which news organizations and reporters are allowed into the presidential press pool covering Trump.The complaint states that “rather than heed this Court’s warning that precedent ‘is uniformly unhelpful’ to the government”, the White House has “instead retaliated against the AP further” by abandoning the press pool system and “again barring the AP from the very same spaces – both small and large – that are at issue in this lawsuit.”“The AP’s journalists are also banned from larger events – including press conferences with the President and other world leaders” it adds. “The AP’s journalists, despite signing up in advance, are turned away”, and the result is that “the AP’s press credentials now provide its journalists less access to the White House than the same press credentials provide to all other members of the White House press corps.”The next hearing in this case is scheduled for 20 March. More

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      Outcry as White House starts dictating which journalists can access Trump

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      The Trump administration announced it will take control of the White House press pool, stripping the independent White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) of its longstanding role in deciding which journalists have access to the president in intimate settings.The move has immediately triggered an impassioned response from members of the media – including a Fox News correspondent who called it a “short-sighted decision”.The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, made the announcement during Tuesday’s press briefing, framing the move as democratizing access to the president.“A group of DC-based journalists, the White House Correspondents’ Association, has long dictated which journalists get to ask questions of the president of the United States,” Leavitt said.“Not any more. Today, I was proud to announce that we are giving the power back to the people.”The announcement upended more than 70 years of protocol of journalists – not government officials – determining which rotating reporters travel with the president on Air Force One and cover events in the Oval Office or Roosevelt Room.“Moving forward, the White House press pool will be determined by the White House press team,” Leavitt said. She added that while legacy outlets would still be included, the administration would be “offering the privilege to well-deserving outlets who have never been allowed to share in this awesome responsibility” – notably podcasters and rightwing media.As the media reeled from the attack on the press pool, the three main wire services that routinely report on the US presidency released a joint statement protesting Donald Trump’s decision to bar the Associated Press from official events.Reuters and Bloomberg News joined AP in decrying Trump’s move to restrict AP’s access to the president. The top editors of each of the wires said the unprecedented action had threatened the principle of open reporting and would harm the spread of reliable information to individuals, communities, businesses and global financial markets.“It is essential in a democracy for the public to have access to news about their government from an independent, free press,” the three editors said.The standoff between Trump and AP began on 14 February when the White House announced it was indefinitely barring AP reporters from the Oval Office and Air Force One. Officials said the step had been taken to punish AP for refusing to amend its style guide to change the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”, as Trump had dictated.AP immediately sued over the restriction, but on Monday a federal judge declined to restore the wire service’s access to presidential events in the short term. Another hearing in the case, which is ongoing, is scheduled for next month.The White House wasted no time implementing the new policy over the composition of the press pool, ejecting a HuffPost reporter from Wednesday’s press pool rotation and removing Reuters from its traditional spot – just one day after the announcement. Also on Wednesday morning, Trump mused on legal action against journalists and publishers in a Truth Social post.“At some point I am going to sue some of these dishonest authors and book publishers, or even media in general, to find out whether or not these ‘anonymous sources’ even exist,” Trump posted, adding: “maybe we will create some NICE NEW LAW!!!”The announcement triggered immediate alarm among journalists who argue that the role of the WHCA is to make sure Americans who use any of the major mediums – including radio, television, print, wires and photography – are able to get the same access to Trump’s world.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This move does not give the power back to the people – it gives power to the White House,” posted Jacqui Heinrich, a Fox News senior White House correspondent and WHCA board member. “The WHCA is democratically elected by the full-time White House press corps.”Heinrich added: “WHCA has determined pools for decades because only representatives FROM our outlets can determine resources all those outlets have – such as staffing – in order to get the President’s message out to the largest possible audience, no matter the day or hour.”In a separate missive on X, Heinrich also pointed out the press corps “from across a broad spectrum of tv, radio, print, stills, wires and new media” cover the White House full-time.“This is a short-sighted decision, and it will feel a lot different when a future Democratic administration kicks out conservative-leaning outlets and other critical voices,” she wrote.The WHCA president, Eugene Daniels, said the move “tears at the independence of a free press in the United States” and “suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president”. He noted the White House did not consult with the WHCA before making the announcement.Later on Wednesday, the White House denied reporters from Reuters and other news organizations access to Trump’s first cabinet meeting in keeping with the administration’s new policy regarding media coverage.The White House denied access to an Associated Press photographer and three reporters from Reuters, HuffPost and Der Tagesspiegel, a German newspaper. More

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      White House says it will decide which news outlets cover Trump

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      The White House said it will take control over which news organizations and reporters are allowed into the presidential press pool covering Donald Trump.“The White House press team in this administration will determine who gets to enjoy the very privileged and limited access in spaces such as Air Force One and the Oval Office,” the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing on Tuesday.The announcement came a day after the Trump administration won a temporary ruling allowing it to bar the Associated Press (AP) in retaliation for the outlet’s decision to resist Trump’s demand to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”.The White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), an independent association made up of members of the media, traditionally coordinates rotating pool coverage of more than a dozen journalists allowed access to the president in smaller settings.Leavitt asserted that the WHCA “should no longer have a monopoly” of press access at the White House and that “legacy media outlets who have been here for years will still participate in the pool, but new voices are going to be welcomed in as well”.After Trump signed an executive order last month directing the US interior department to change the Gulf of Mexico’s name, the AP said it would continue to use the gulf’s long-established name in stories while also acknowledging Trump’s efforts to change it.In response, the White House banned AP journalists from accessing the Oval Office and Air Force One, accusing the news agency of “irresponsible and dishonest reporting”.The US district judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, denied a request by the AP on Monday to restore its access to the Oval Office, Air Force One and events held at the White House.The news agency had argued that the decision to block its reporters violates the US constitution’s first amendment protections against government abridgment of speech by trying to dictate the language they use in reporting the news.Leavitt celebrated the judge’s ruling and said the White House wants “more outlets and new outlets to cover the press pool”. “It’s beyond time the White House press pool reflects the media habits of the American people in 2025,” she added.In a statement, the WHCA said the decision “tears at the independence of a free press in the United States”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president. In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps,” the organization’s president, Eugene Daniels, said.“For generations, the working journalists elected to lead the White House Correspondents’ Association board have consistently expanded the WHCA’s membership and its pool rotations to facilitate the inclusion of new and emerging outlets.”The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press called it “a drastic change in how the public obtains information about its government.“The White House press pool exists to serve the public, not the presidency,” the group’s president, Bruce Brown, said in a statement. More

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      The ‘Gulf of America’ feud is about something bigger: Trump wants to control the media | Margaret Sullivan

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      It might seem like a small matter, just a disagreement over whether a body of water should be called one name or another.But it’s really about much bigger things: Trump-style intimidation, a clear violation of the first amendment – and the extent to which news organizations will stick together in each other’s defense, or will comply with the powerful for the sake of their own access.Even more broadly, it is about Donald Trump’s wide-ranging effort to control the media and be able to spread propaganda and interfere with the flow of accurate information.The disagreement started soon after the president decided unilaterally that the Gulf of Mexico was to be called the Gulf of America. The executive order was one more display of Trump’s capricious and imperious way of doing things; his first month has been a relentless exercise in chaos and norm-destruction.After the Associated Press, the global news organization, decided to stick with using the long-established name which makes sense to its international readership, the Trump White House determined that punishment was in order.An AP reporter was barred from a White House press event, and since then, things have only escalated. More AP reporters barred from briefings and from the president’s plane. Access denied.What’s happening is ugly. In the US, the government doesn’t get to dictate the language journalists use in their stories. There’s a little thing called the first amendment to the US constitution that prohibits this. But the Trump administration, as usual, has its own – often unconstitutional and sometimes illegal – ideas.The actions against the AP are “retribution, plain and simple, and a shameful attempt to bully the press into ideological compliance”, said Tim Richardson of PEN America.On Thursday, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press sent a letter to the White House signed by 30 news organizations, and the White House Correspondents Association is similarly registering its displeasure.But letters – even signed by many and ever so strongly worded – are easy to ignore. The solution, if there is one, will require more forceful measures: lawsuits and journalistic solidarity that might include a widespread boycotting of White House press briefings.After all, compliance is a slippery slope. What happens, for example, when Trump proclaims that Ukraine is no longer Ukraine, but to be simply called Russia? Do news organizations politely accept the rewriting of history?“What do the media do then,” queried the longtime environmental journalist Andrew Revkin, “agree to those terms so they can stay in the briefing room?”Why stop there? How about declaring by fiat that the Washington monument is now to be called the Trump monument? Why not chisel another presidential face onto Mount Rushmore and call it Mount Donald?The great renaming has begun, and George Orwell would understand exactly what’s going on.A few days ago, a media leader I admire – Jim Friedlich, the CEO of the Lenfest Institute, a non-profit organization that owns the Philadelphia Inquirer – proposed a notion that deserves serious consideration. There should be, he wrote, a “NATO for News,” in which every legitimate news organization formally pledges to defend the others. This happens now, from time to time, but Friedlich has something more deliberate in mind, he wrote in the Inquirer.All of this is happening within a larger and quite alarming anti-press context.Trump’s sidekick Elon Musk recently fantasized about a “long prison sentence” for journalists on CBS’s 60 Minutes, which has been under fire for its (normal and conventional) editing of a pre-election interview with Kamala Harris.Trump has sued the Pulitzer prize board for statements in defense of its awards to the Washington Post and the New York Times for their coverage of Trump’s relationship with Russia; he’s sued the Des Moines Register over a pre-election public opinion poll. And the Pentagon recently tossed eight traditional news organizations from office spaces to make room for pro-Maga outlets.“The Trump administration has decided that it will actively wield access as a tool to reshape the media landscape in its favor,” Oliver Darcy wrote in his media newsletter, Status. It surely will also use more legal threats and actions.Given that we’re only a month into this brave new world, some unity and stiff-spined resolve are very much in order.That won’t be easy. Getting journalists together is like herding pigeons. And no journalist wants to lose access to sources and to being where news is made. But in this era, it couldn’t be more important to push back hard.The free press may be going down, but if so, we should go down swinging.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      AP excoriates White House barring of reporters as ‘alarming precedent’

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      The executive editor of the Associated Press sent a letter to the White House on Wednesday criticizing its decision to block two of its journalists from attending press events on Tuesday after the outlet refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America”.“I write on behalf of The Associated Press, an independent global news organization that reaches billions of people every day, to object in the strongest possible terms to the actions taken by the Trump administration against AP yesterday,” Julie Pace, the AP’s executive editor, wrote in the letter addressed to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff.“The issue here is free speech – a fundamental pillar of American democracy and a value of the utmost importance to all Americans, regardless of political persuasion, occupation or industry.”Pace said that on Tuesday, the White House barred AP journalists from attending two press events with Donald Trump, “following an apparent complaint over AP’s editorial decisions regarding the Gulf of Mexico, which President Trump renamed the Gulf of America”.The Associated Press said in a January style guide update that they would continuing referring to the body of water that borders both the US and Mexico “by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen”.The agency stated that Trump’s order to change the name only carried authority within the US, and that other countries including Mexico did not have to recognize the name change.“The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years,” the AP wrote, adding that “as a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences”.Pace said that during a meeting on Tuesday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, informed an AP reporter that AP’s access to the “Oval Office would be restricted if AP did not immediately align its editorial standards with President Trump’s executive order”.When AP did not accede to the demands, Pace said, White House staff blocked an AP reporter from attending an executive order signing at the Oval Office and, later, another AP reporter from attending a press event in the Diplomatic Reception Room.“The actions taken by the White House were plainly intended to punish the AP for the content of its speech,” Pace wrote. “It is among the most basic tenets for the First Amendment that government cannot retaliate against the public or the press for what they say.”She added: “This is viewpoint discrimination based on a news organization’s editorial choices and a clear violation of the First Amendment.”Pace said that as of Wednesday, it was not clear whether the White House intended to impose these access restrictions against AP reporters on an ongoing basis, and urged the administration to “end this practice”.The “fundamental role of the press is to serve as the public’s eyes and ears”, she said, adding that “when journalists are blocked from doing their job, it is the American public who suffers”.It also sets an “alarming precedent”, she said, that has the potential to affect every news outlet and, in turn, “severely limit the public’s right to know what is happening inside their government”.The AP, she wrote, is “prepared to vigorously defend its constitutional rights and protest the infringement on the public’s right to independent news coverage of their government and elected officials”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Wednesday, Leavitt was asked which White House official made the decision to bar the AP reporters from the events.Leavitt said: “It is a privilege to cover this White House” and “nobody has the right to go into the Oval Office and ask the president of the United States questions. That’s an invitation that is given.”“We reserve the right to decide who gets to go into the Oval Office,” Leavitt told the press briefing room.“If we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable and it is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America, and I am not sure why news outlets don’t want to call it that, but that is what it is.“It is very important to this administration that we get that right,” she added.The Guardian has contacted the White House for additional comment. More

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      The Guardian view on Trump’s threat to the media: time to pass the Press Act

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      Fears of a press crackdown under Donald Trump’s second term deepened with his nomination of Kash Patel as FBI director – given his calls for retribution against journalists. Yet a rare chance to protect press freedom has emerged. The bipartisan Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (Press) Act, the strongest press freedom legislation in US history, is on the brink of a vote. While President-elect Trump has urged Republicans to block it, the Senate could still deliver it to Joe Biden before the lame-duck session ends in January.The Press Act would ban secret government demands for journalists’ communications from tech giants such as Google or Verizon and protect reporters from jail for refusing to reveal sources. For investigative reporters to do their jobs – holding government officials to account for corruption and wrongdoing – they need to be able to protect the confidentiality of their sources. With courts recently weakening already-imperilled “reporter’s privilege” protections, this bill would finally give journalists in the US federal protections comparable to those afforded to other relationships where confidentiality is paramount, such as lawyers and clients, doctors and patients, and spouses.The bill has something for both Democrats and Republicans to like. The Press Act’s broad and nonpartisan definition of “journalist” takes into account the modern media landscape: you don’t have to work full-time for a mainstream media organisation to be covered. Freelancers, independent reporters writing Substack newsletters and even journalists posting primarily to social networks such as X would be included. It protects right-leaning journalists just as much as anyone at the New York Times or the Guardian.It also has commonsense national security exceptions (like preventing a terrorist attack or an imminent threat of violence) without diluting the bill’s strong protections. It’s worth remembering that Democratic administrations have abused their powers to go after the first amendment rights of journalists just as much as Republicans. The Obama administration brought a record number of prosecutions against whistleblowers, and was implicated in several government spying scandals, including secretly targeting journalists at the Associated Press and Fox News.Even the Biden administration, before reversing course after public outrage, continued pursuing at least some of the surveillance orders against news outlets that the first Trump administration initiated. That’s why, in an age of extreme political polarisation, the Press Act is about as bipartisan as it gets. The House passed the bill early in 2024 unanimously, with several prominent Republicans publicly touting its importance. The bill also has powerful co-sponsors in the Senate, ranging from Democrats such as Ron Wyden and Dick Durbin, the judiciary committee chair, to Trump-supporting Republicans like Mike Lee and Lindsey Graham.Even the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson supports the bill, as he made clear in a recent interview he did with the former Fox News and CBS reporter Catherine Herridge, who was subpoenaed to reveal a source for a story she wrote several years ago. She was recently in front of the DC court of appeals, where her lawyers argued that forcing reporters to reveal their sources in court sends a chilling effect to countless others around the country. For the bill to pass, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, must make it a priority. The lame-duck session is only a few weeks long; if senators don’t act now, we may not have this opportunity for another decade or more.

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Trump’s wild threats put press freedom in the crosshairs in second term

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      Donald Trump could have an easier time limiting press freedom in his second term in the White House after a campaign marked by virulent rhetoric towards journalists and calls for punishing television networks and prosecuting journalists and their sources, legal scholars and journalism advocacy groups warn.Aside from worries about Trump’s demonization of the press inciting violence against journalists, free press advocates appear to be most alarmed by Trump’s call for the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to revoke TV networks’ broadcast licenses and talk of jailing journalists who refuse to reveal anonymous sources.Still, despite a conservative majority on the supreme court and likely Republican control of the House and Senate, those same people also say that America’s robust first amendment protections and a legislative proposal and technology to protect sources mean that a diminished press under Trump is not a certainty.“My big-picture concern is that Trump is going to do exactly what he has been telling us that he wants to do, which is that he is going to punish his critics,” said Heidi Kitrosser, a Northwestern University law professor.Kitrosser added: “He is going to punish people who dissent from his approach to things, people who criticize him and also, perhaps more importantly, investigative journalists and their sources who are not offering opinions but are exposing facts that he finds embarrassing or inconvenient.”Trump has long said journalists deliver “fake news” and are the “enemy of the people”, but since leaving office in 2021 he has used more violent language. At a 2022 rally in Texas, Trump suggested that the threat of rape in prison could compel a journalist to reveal their sources.“When this person realizes that he is going to be the bride of another prisoner shortly, he will say, ‘I’d very much like to tell you exactly who that was,’” Trump said.At a recent campaign rally, Trump also said that given where the press was located at the event, if someone were to try to assassinate him, the person “would have to shoot through the fake news, and I don’t mind that so much”.Kash Patel, who could be appointed as acting attorney general or head of the CIA, frequently talks of the “deep state” and told the far-right Trump ally Steve Bannon in a podcast interview: “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media … We’re going to come after you.”Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said it was “entirely possible that [Trump] is just bloviating”.In his earlier campaigns and first term in office, Trump “was on the campaign trail calling them names and riling up crowds, but he was not actively saying, ‘I want to throw them in jail,’” Timm said.Trump also posted on Twitter during his first term about revoking broadcasters’ licenses when they put out “fake news”.After the tweets, Ajit Pai, then the FCC chair appointed by Trump, said: “I believe in the first amendment.”View image in fullscreen“Under the law, the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on a particular newscast,” Pai explained.But Trump and his supporters talked more about revoking the licenses during his second run for the White House. CNN reported in October that Trump had over the last two years said at least 15 times that the government should take such actions.After a 60 Minutes interview in October that contained an answer from Kamala Harris about the war in Gaza that differed from her response in a trailer for the interview, Trump called CBS a “threat to democracy” and said its license should be revoked.An FCC commissioner appointed by Trump recently also said that NBC could lose its license for having Harris appear on Saturday Night Live before the election and not giving equal time to Trump.Another Trump-appointed FCC commissioner said it “would not be inappropriate for the commission” to investigate the complaint about the 60 Minutes interview.“That is even more disturbing, because it means that it’s not just Trump wildly spewing off the cuff. It means that two of the five current FCC chairs might be amenable to this argument,” Timm said.Still, it is unlikely that the FCC would be able to revoke a broadcaster’s license before the end of Trump’s term, according to Andrew Jay Schwartzman, senior counselor for the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe commission only revokes a license when a broadcaster goes off the air, Schwartzman said. The government agency could then take back the spectrum licensed to the station in case someone else would like to use it.The commission could deny a license renewal, but none are up for renewal until June 2028, and the commission would not be able to even decide to hold a hearing on a renewal before the end of Trump’s second term in office, Schwartzman said.As to cracking down on whistleblowers and journalists, Trump could use the Espionage Act, which allows the government to pursue people who share information with journalists related to national security, Kitrosser said.Barack Obama was also aggressive in his use of the law to prosecute whistleblowers during his presidency.Kitrosser said she was “very, very disturbed” by Obama’s crackdown on media sources.But the difference between the Obama administration’s effort and Trump’s call for prosecuting journalists and sources who leak information is that Trump has repeatedly said: “He does not think that criticism of him, criticism of judges that he appoints, criticism of his policies … should be protected,” Kitrosser said. “Not to protect national security, but to protect himself, and I think that is really the fundamental difference between Obama and Trump.”The Trump administration will probably have an easier time pursuing sources than journalists.“I think courts will be more receptive to the argument that the first amendment bars media prosecutions of journalists under the Espionage Act than they have been receptive to those claims by media sources,” Kitrosser said.To protect sources, journalists could also start to rely more on encryption communication tools like Signal in a second Trump term. The Freedom of the Press Foundation has urged journalists to start using such technology.The organization is also lobbying for the passage of the Press Act, which would prohibit the federal government from compelling journalists to disclose certain protected information, except in limited circumstances such as to prevent terrorism or imminent violence, and from spying on journalists through their technology providers.The House passed the bill unanimously. Three Republican senators have also sponsored the legislation, but it has stalled in committee because of a small group of Republicans, including Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who argued the bill would “open a floodgate of leaks damaging to law enforcement and our nation’s security”.“Too many journalists are little more than leftwing activists who are, at best, ambivalent about America and who are cavalier about our security and the truth,” Cotton wrote in a statement explaining his opposition.Timm, of the Press Foundation, said he was unsure whether the Senate would pass the legislation before Joe Biden leaves office.“The Democrats in the lame duck session are really going to have to prioritize it because when the Senate changes hands and the White House changes hands, there is probably little to no chance that this bill would pass,” Timm said. “It’s now or never for protecting journalists’ rights.” More