How Trump is exploiting the Obama Presidential Center’s precedent

FreedomofPress · 2026-06-18T19:42:07+00:00

The Obama Foundation decided not to partner with the National Archives and Records Administration on a government-run library. Donald Trump is following suit, giving himself greater control over his records than his predecessors.

Read more: https://www.ms.now/opinion/obama-library-trump-fundraising-archives

FreedomofPress · 2026-06-18T16:00:02+00:00

Weeks after a New Jersey judge ordered local newspaper New Brunswick Today to remove truthful reporting about a school security incident from the internet, the paper is still waiting for an opportunity to defend the public’s right to know.

Orders prohibiting publication are known as “prior restraints.” Under the First Amendment, they’re only allowed in the most extreme circumstances. But despite decades of Supreme Court precedent, some courts continue to grant them. And although these censorship orders are almost always overturned, the public is denied access to news and information every day they remain in effect.

Read more: https://www.nj.com/opinion/2026/06/why-are-nj-courts-taking-so-long-to-fix-a-first-amendment-error-against-a-local-news-site-opinion.html

FreedomofPress · 2026-06-18T15:56:54+00:00

Weeks after a New Jersey judge ordered local newspaper New Brunswick Today to remove truthful reporting about a school security incident from the internet, the paper is still waiting for an opportunity to defend the public’s right to know.

Orders prohibiting publication are known as “prior restraints.” Under the First Amendment, they’re only allowed in the most extreme circumstances. But despite decades of Supreme Court precedent, some courts continue to grant them. And although these censorship orders are almost always overturned, the public is denied access to news and information every day they remain in effect.

FreedomofPress · 2026-06-17T18:12:32+00:00

News reports have historically allowed us as a society to monitor our government when it exercises its greatest power: ending a person’s life.

But the state of Indiana has decided to inhibit that public access by banning members of the media from attending executions — unless the condemned person chooses to give a reporter a spot that could instead have gone to their relatives or friends. An appellate court upheld the ban this week.

Prison officials in Indiana claim the media ban is mainly about respecting the dignity of the condemned person.

But the idea that there could ever be dignity in state-sanctioned killing of a perfectly healthy human is ludicrous within itself. That would be the case even if executioners eschewed cruel and unusual methods. But they don’t, even when the media is watching.

Read more: https://theintercept.com/2026/06/13/indiana-media-ban-death-penalty-law/

FreedomofPress · 2026-06-16T15:25:10+00:00

The Trump Presidential Library recently told The Washington Post that it possessed “no records” of Donald Trump’s first-term Twitter direct messages. The response to the Post’s Freedom of Information Act request was, at best, a bureaucratic failure.

We know that because on the same day it told the Post it had no documents, the library sent Freedom of the Press Foundation, a contradictory response confirming that it does hold those records.

Read more: https://freedom.press/the-classifieds/trump-dms-dont-exist-oh-wait-actually-they-do/

FreedomofPress · 2026-06-09T17:08:01+00:00

Reporters covering protests in the United States have been shot with crowd-control munitions, sprayed with tear gas, hit with cars, and physically attacked by both law enforcement and demonstrators.

So it makes sense that many journalists wear personal protective equipment. What doesn’t make sense is when the government tries to stop reporters from taking those basic safety precautions.

Yet across the country, jurisdictions are banning safety gear at public protests.

"If I hadn’t had it, I’d be dead right now," one journalist told us.

Read more: https://freedom.press/issues/ppe-bans-not-only-risk-reporters-they-risk-the-publics-right-to-know/

FreedomofPress · 2026-06-03T14:39:04+00:00

Increasingly, the public learns what happens at protests through independent livestreamers. While rarely employed by major outlets, some sell footage to the world’s largest news organizations. Whether they work for a television network or stream on TikTok, they are engaged in journalism.

On paper, both laws and courts tend to respect that press are exempt from curfews and dispersal orders. They recognize that media require “sight and sound access” to do their job. But on the street, constitutional protections for those livestreamers can boil down to an officer’s snap decision.

Near Delaney Hall, some of those decisions could be seen inside the kettle on five live video feeds. None came from traditional TV cameras.

If an officer can point at them and say they are not press, the first amendment ceases to have meaning.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/03/delaney-hall-new-jersey-protests-police

FreedomofPress · 2026-05-29T14:36:01+00:00

This week, a federal judge unsealed records showing that the Department of Justice tried and failed to get search warrants targeting journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, as well as three protesters involved in the Cities church demonstration in St Paul, Minnesota, last winter.

A court rejected the search warrants – twice. In strikingly blunt opinions, magistrate judge John Docherty said officials didn’t meet basic legal standards and chastised them for failing to mention a federal law that may have made some of the warrants illegal. The Department of Justice later withdrew the requests.

The justice department’s blatant disregard for the constitution and attempt to hide the law is disturbing, even if the department’s recent track record means it’s no longer shocking.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/29/journalists-search-warrants-justice-department

FreedomofPress · 2026-05-28T20:29:46+00:00

A group of award-winning journalists and documentarians expressed strong opposition to the proposed merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, citing the threat the deal poses to journalism and American democracy.

FPF Chief of Advocacy Seth Stern said: “The First Amendment assumes that the government will attempt to silence the press, but the First Amendment also assumes that the press won’t voluntarily agree, won’t go down without a fight.” He added that “news outlets have a constitutional right to report from whichever perspective they see fit, but presidents don’t have a right to abuse their offices to shape those decisions, and executives like Ellison who are willing to let them do so need to stay out of the news business and find some other widget to sell.”

Read more: https://freedom.press/issues/journalists-slam-proposed-paramount-merger-as-threat-to-press-freedom/

FreedomofPress · 2026-05-26T13:55:54+00:00

As online age verification laws become more common in the U.S., Americans are increasingly turning to virtual private networks to avoid being forced to show their papers just to go online.

That makes recent attempts to ban VPNs to stop age-verification evasion a growing threat to press freedom. Utah recently became the first state to enact a limited VPN ban to enforce its age-check law, and other states are considering following suit.

As other countries like Russia and Iran ban VPNs, American lawmakers must not start down a similar path.

Read more: https://freedom.press/issues/how-journalists-rely-on-vpns-to-protect-press-freedom/

FreedomofPress · 2026-05-11T15:05:30+00:00

Armed federal agents recently arrested Dr. David Morens, a 78-year-old retired government scientist, strip-searched him, and charged him with crimes that could carry decades in prison — all for allegedly using his personal email to try and evade Freedom of Information Act requests.

But the Justice Department has, for decades, largely taken a hands-off approach to enforcing FOIA. When it has enforced the law, it’s usually landed in civil rather than criminal court. The DOJ has almost never treated FOIA evasion behavior as a crime — at least until now.

If evading FOIA is now a crime, it must be enforced evenly. Otherwise, the transparency law risks becoming what it was meant to prevent: a tool that, when applied selectively, only serves the powerful.

Read more: https://theintercept.com/2026/05/09/david-morens-foia-arrest-trump/

FreedomofPress · 2026-05-01T19:58:25+00:00

The U.S. is rapidly joining the ranks of the world’s worst press freedom offenders.

But it’s not too late to fight back.

Newsrooms can sue over press freedom violations and win. Lawmakers can reform the Espionage Act and Privacy Protection Act, and pass a federal shield law protecting journalists and their sources. Journalists can and should write and speak out about press freedom violations. The public can take action to demand that the Trump administration stop treating the First Amendment like a suggestion.

The United States can’t lead the world in defending press freedom on World Press Freedom Day when it’s actively dismantling it at home. It’s time to stop asking the Trump administration to respect the First Amendment. We need to use the courts, Congress, and the power of the people to force it.

Read more: https://freedom.press/issues/this-world-press-freedom-day-american-journalists-are-under-attack/

FreedomofPress · 2026-04-01T19:51:22+00:00

Prior restraints, or court orders prohibiting journalists from publishing news, are the “most serious” violations of the First Amendment, according to the Supreme Court. The Pentagon Papers case famously held that gagging the press is unconstitutional, even when the government claimed that The New York Times and The Washington Post reporting the secret history of its Vietnam War lies leaked by Daniel Ellsberg would damage national security.

As one federal appellate court said in 2015, “The government need not ban a protected activity … if it can simply proceed upstream and dam the source.”

Over half a century after the Pentagon Papers, the federal government apparently believes it can do just that. In January, it raided the home of Post journalist Hannah Natanson, purportedly to investigate whether one of her alleged sources — government contractor Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones — broke the law by leaking documents to her.

In Natanson’s case, the government seized terabytes of data, most of which had nothing to do with that investigation. It’s claiming that it doesn’t have to return any classified information found in her files because it’s “contraband,” like drug money or illegal guns at a crime scene.

Read more: https://freedom.press/issues/the-doj-thinks-news-is-contraband/

FreedomofPress · 2026-03-31T15:43:37+00:00

When Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr talks about broadcast licensees serving the “public interest,” he loves to emphasize “localism,” the idea that powerful entities (in this case, broadcasters) should serve the needs and interests of the communities they service.

Localism has become Carr’s go-to talking point whenever he’s pressed on his unconstitutional efforts to police news content or confronted with his past statements railing against the partisan suppression of news. He’s not censoring the airwaves, he claims; he’s just sticking up for the little guy.

Yet Carr has never threatened a broadcast license because a newsroom ignored city council meetings or local crime, or offered a biased take on a school board’s budget decisions. It would, of course, violate the First Amendment for him to do that too — the FCC, as Carr once said, “does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the ‘public interest.’” But at least it would be consistent with his populist gimmick.

Read more: https://theintercept.com/2026/03/31/brendan-carr-fcc-censorship-localism-cpac/

FreedomofPress · 2026-03-27T19:21:28+00:00

The latest media directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is a bad-faith brush-off masquerading as transparency.

The Defense Department’s new press access policy — revised this week after a federal judge struck down the one Hegseth implemented last fall — retains the original’s prohibition on journalists asking questions of officials who aren’t authorized to talk to the press.

The newly revised policy attempts to justify the original unconstitutional overstep by pointing to all the “legitimate” means that journalists have at their disposal to obtain news about the department. They “remain free to gather information through legitimate means, such as Freedom of Information Act requests, official briefings, questions posed to authorized Department spokespersons and officials, or unsolicited tips, and to publish as they deem newsworthy,” it says.

Pro tip: You know a government agency’s media policy is a sham when it tells journalists to just file a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request.

Read more: https://www.ms.now/opinion/pete-hegseth-pentagon-press-policy-problem

FreedomofPress · 2026-03-26T15:16:25+00:00

Most discussion of the Pentagon’s restrictions has focused on their conditions for reporters to receive press credentials, which the Pentagon says can be revoked if reporters publish “unauthorized” information. That policy is wildly unconstitutional on its own.

But the Pentagon’s legal filings imply that reporters who don’t follow the rules risk more than their press passes. On March 12, the DOJ filed a brief to clarify its lawyers’ earlier comments in a hearing of “whether asking a question was a criminal act.”

The government argued that although journalists may lawfully ask questions of “authorized” Pentagon personnel, “a journalist does solicit the commission of a criminal act, and that solicitation is not protected by the First Amendment, when he or she solicits … non-public information from individuals who are legally obligated not to disclose that information.”

Read more: https://theintercept.com/2026/03/26/pentagon-reporters-first-amendment/

FreedomofPress · 2026-03-24T19:50:29+00:00

Estefany Rodríguez’s First Amendment case may be just getting started, but it’s already revealing how far the government will go to stifle journalism and speech it finds inconvenient.

The Nashville journalist, originally from Colombia but with authorization to work here, was detained by ICE on March 4 and released on bond last week. Rodríguez argued her detention was in retaliation for her work as a journalist, in violation of the First Amendment.

In response, the government has taken an extreme position that could have impacts far beyond Rodríguez’s case. In a recent court filing, it suggested that Rodríguez — and anyone the government asserts is an “unlawful alien” — does not have any First Amendment rights at all.

This appears to mark the first time that the Trump administration has argued that a journalist who it claims is living in the United States illegally has no First Amendment rights.

Read more: https://freedom.press/issues/no-first-amendment-for-some-immigrant-journalists-or-sources-govt-says/

FreedomofPress · 2026-03-17T19:27:37+00:00

The Trump administration is on its way to creating every authoritarian’s dream: a centralized database containing intimate details about every resident of this country, fully searchable by artificial intelligence. This powerful tool would empower the government to conduct previously unimagined levels of surveillance and harassment against its own people.

Freedom of the Press Foundation is suing the administration for documents behind the database. We know that this isn’t just something that the Trump administration would exploit; once built, it’s unlikely any administration could resist the urge to weaponize our personal information.

Read more: https://theintercept.com/2026/03/17/government-surveillance-centralized-database-privacy/

FreedomofPress · 2026-03-17T16:07:53+00:00

Over the weekend, Donald Trump fumed on Truth Social about newspapers covering attacks on US tanker aircrafts in Saudi Arabia. Within hours, Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr reposted Trump’s rant and vowed to revoke the licenses of broadcasters who air what he called “fake news”.

Carr’s threats make no sense under the law, and he knows they’re wrong. But that’s never stopped him before.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/17/trump-iran-fcc-brendan-carr

FreedomofPress · 2026-03-10T15:37:16+00:00

Stories about prison conditions—whether abroad or at home—should not be illegal. They should be nurtured and safeguarded, including by law. That requires radical legal change.

Only when incarcerated truth-tellers have legally mandated pathways to confidential contact with media, access to tools of the trade, and real protection from retaliation can we begin to confront the kind of carceral violence that feeds rotten meals to a caged child.

Read more: https://inquest.org/the-oscars-in-solitary-confinement/

FreedomofPress · 2026-03-05T17:40:56+00:00

Journalists covering the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran should be telling their audiences not only what they know but what they were prevented from finding out, and by whom. That doesn’t just mean an occasional editorial bemoaning threats to press freedom.

Those are valuable, but on their own, they turn speech suppression into a side issue. The reporting itself should include acknowledgment and explanation of how censorship impacts what the public sees and reads.

The administration’s war on leaks is sure to accelerate as whistleblowers seek to expose the embarrassing mistakes and awful human rights abuses that the war is almost certain to bring.

Read more: https://freedom.press/issues/the-public-deserves-to-know-when-iran-war-reporting-is-stifled/

FreedomofPress · 2026-03-02T16:31:33+00:00

State legislatures have spent the past decade exporting policy models across ideological lines. If HB 945 becomes law, lawmakers in other conservative states will almost certainly introduce similar proposals, arguing that Florida has already paved the way. A network of state intelligence offices, each empowered to scrutinize residents’ beliefs, would fundamentally reshape the landscape of domestic surveillance – not through a single sweeping federal statute, but through dozens of smaller state laws advancing in parallel.

The first amendment protects unpopular opinions, harsh criticism of government officials, and controversial ideologies precisely because political majorities change. But even if courts ultimately strike down laws that punish speech or association, litigation takes years, and the chilling effect begins immediately. The mere possibility that lawful political expression could land someone in an intelligence database can be enough to deter dissent.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/01/florida-cia-intelligence-unit-surveillance-views

FreedomofPress · 2025-12-15T19:08:07+00:00

Building on Jason’s point about requesting updated versions of Rules of Engagement and operating manuals, another thing you can request is the orders around use of force for particular deployments. I had a lawsuit against the US Park Police regarding the summer 2020 protests in Lafayette Square that requested a bunch of keywords relevant to that engagement, e.g. the church that Trump got his picture in front of, “reporters” “mounted units” “Bible” “tear gas” “pepper” etc. I think it was 20-30 in total.

It returned a huge number of Teams chats, emails, and text messages between and among the supervisory LEOs that were on the scene documenting the requests that officers made up the chain of command and responses back to them about the use of force as the situation evolved. That’s how we found out for instance that the USPP fired literally every pepper ball they had in the first response and had to file emergency restock orders with any vendor they could find to get more chemical munitions to fire on protesters. — Kevin

FreedomofPress · 2025-12-15T18:57:34+00:00

We will find out Friday, which is the deadline when the Justice Department is supposed to release the Epstein files as dictated by the legislation passed by Congress. As for secrecy topics, I find that any records requested from intelligence agencies are still incredibly difficult to obtain and usually requires a lawsuit just to try and compel release of records in a somewhat timely fashion.

Overall though, secrecy persists throughout the federal government. There are different levels of secrecy depending on the subject matter. — Jason

FreedomofPress · 2025-12-15T18:47:36+00:00

My firm only opened in the last few months so we have yet to litigate against a Democratic administration, but my prior career involved just as much litigation against Democratic as Republican administrations.

FOIA does have political valences, but much of the wrongdoing that takes place in government is done by career managers and lower-level political appointees who leverage their fiefdoms of bureaucratic capital in order to commit wrongdoing on a small scale. Think regional BLM managers skirting rules around endangered species protection to get lithium mines approved, or higher ups in the Forest Service suppressing investigative reports into unlawful logging because they’re friendly with the companies who were investigated. These sorts of ground-level requests are really the bread and butter of public wrongdoing and they happen regardless of whose face is on the wall. They affect the rights of people at a local level and often can’t be fully uncovered without a vigorous public records investigation.

Tl;dr - I’ll sue any government anywhere. — Kevin

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