The president calls for reporters to face treason charges — punishable by death — while the FCC threatens to pull broadcast licenses over war coverage, a federal judge strikes down the Pentagon's press restrictions as unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court lets stand a ruling that a journalist can be arrested for asking a public official a question.
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We’ve crossed into territory that really has no precedent in America: in the span of these past two weeks, the president of the United States called for reporters to be charged with treason — a crime punishable by death — for covering his war in ways he didn’t like. The FCC chair threatened to revoke broadcast licenses over war coverage the administration deemed unfavorable. The Pentagon, after losing a landmark First Amendment case, retaliated by closing the press corridor journalists have used for decades – and then banishing reporters to an unbuilt annex outside the building. And the Supreme Court refused to hear the 2019 case of a citizen journalist arrested by Texas police for simply asking a public official a question, leaving a ruling in place that gives law enforcement a roadmap for criminalizing routine reporting.
On March 15, President Trump posted a nearly 400-word rant on Truth Social accusing media outlets of working “in close coordination” with Iran and demanding that news organizations “be brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information.” Treason is punishable by death under federal law. Trump specifically attacked the Wall Street Journal for reporting that five U.S. Air Force refueling planes were struck during an Iranian missile strike in Saudi Arabia — reporting he called “false” without substantively refuting it. Aboard Air Force One, Trump called a reporter “a very obnoxious person” for asking why he was deploying 5,000 additional Marines. Senator Ed Markey warned in a letter that the administration is engaged in a “blatant attempt to muzzle the free press” if outlets don’t align their coverage with “Trump’s preferred narrative.” The Committee to Protect Journalists called the threats “direct attacks on the First Amendment and part of a deliberate march toward authoritarianism.”
On March 14, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr warned broadcasters that they could lose their licenses if they didn’t “correct course” on Iran coverage, posting on X that “broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.” Trump endorsed Carr’s threat the following day, calling media organizations “Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic.” FIRE’s Will Creeley called it “outrageous,” noting that Carr himself said in 2019 that “the FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech.” Senator Chris Murphy responded: “We aren’t on the verge of a totalitarian takeover. WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF IT.”
On March 20, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman ruled in favor of the New York Times, striking down the Pentagon’s press credentialing policy as unconstitutional. The policy, implemented last September, had required reporters to pledge not to gather information unless Pentagon officials authorized its release — a restriction that extended to unclassified material. The judge wrote that the First Amendment was designed to empower the press to publish “free of any official proscription” and that the policy was designed to weed out “disfavored journalists” and replace them with those “on board and willing to serve” the government. Three days later, rather than comply, the Pentagon announced it was closing “Correspondents’ Corridor” — the workspace reporters have used for decades — and would eventually relocate journalists to an annex outside the building. The Pentagon also issued a revised policy that the Times immediately called “contemptuously defying” the court order, arguing the new language merely “use[s] more words to say the same thing.” The Pentagon Press Association called the moves “a clear violation of the letter and spirit” of the ruling.
On March 23, a group of veteran Voice of America journalists filed a new lawsuit against Kari Lake alleging she violated federal law by turning the taxpayer-funded international broadcaster into a vehicle for pro-Trump messaging — particularly during the Iran war. The suit, which also names acting CEO Michael Rigas, alleges that after Lake slashed VOA from 49 language services to six, she infused what remained with a pro-Trump editorial line: the Persian-language service broadcast an hour-long glowing retrospective on Trump’s first year back in office, Lake herself appeared in a five-minute segment praising the president, and a USAGM executive overseeing the Persian service spoke directly to the camera urging Iranians to continue protesting while identifying their interests with Trump’s agenda. The lawsuit alleges these actions violated the statutory “firewall” Congress established to protect VOA’s editorial independence from political interference. The plaintiffs include the former acting director of VOA’s central news division, the director of VOA’s South and Central Asia division, and a Russian-language journalist deemed a foreign agent by the Putin regime for her work. PEN America and Reporters Without Borders joined the suit.
On March 23, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case of Priscilla Villarreal, a Texas citizen journalist arrested in 2017 for asking a police officer to confirm the identities of a suicide victim and a car accident victim, which she then published on Facebook. The 5th Circuit had granted the arresting officers qualified immunity, ruling they didn’t have to predict the Texas law they used was unconstitutional. Justice Sotomayor wrote a 15-page dissent calling the denial a “grave error,” writing that the case “implicates one of the most basic journalistic practices of them all: asking sources within the government for information.” She warned that the 5th Circuit’s rule “creates a perverse scheme in which officials can arrest someone for protected activity, decline to appeal a trial court’s decision declaring the statute unconstitutional, and use qualified immunity to avoid liability by citing back to that statute.” FIRE, which represented Villarreal, said the ruling “only shines more light on the need for the court to revisit how qualified immunity applies in free speech cases.”
On March 19, two former FBI special agents filed a lawsuit against FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi, alleging they were fired solely because they had been assigned to “Arctic Frost” — the investigation into Donald Trump’s prior efforts overturn the 2020 election. The agents, identified as John Doe 1 and John Doe 2, say they played largely administrative and supporting roles and had exemplary records. One was informed of his firing on Halloween while preparing to go trick-or-treating with his children; the other had just briefed Patel himself on a separate fraud investigation. Their termination letters cited “poor judgment and a lack of impartiality leading to the political weaponization of the government.” Their filing includes arguments that the firings violated the agents’ First Amendment rights (because the terminations were based on perceived political beliefs) and Fifth Amendment rights (because they received no notice, hearing, or opportunity to appeal). Trump has publicly called the Arctic Frost agents “total scum” and ordered Patel to “get them out, NOW!” The FBI Agents Association, which represents more than 14,000 active and former special agents, sharply criticized the removals.
On March 26, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Pentagon from designating AI company Anthropic a “supply chain risk” and halting Trump’s directive banning federal agencies from using its technology. In a 43-page ruling, Lin wrote that “nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government.” She found that the government’s actions constituted “classic illegal First Amendment retaliation” — punishing Anthropic for publicly insisting its AI models not be used for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon had previously praised Anthropic as a partner, Lin noted, but turned against the company only after it “brought public scrutiny to the government’s contracting position.”
It’s a fair bet that the Trump administration will keep appealing this one for as long as they can, with Pentagon Undersecretary Emil Michael posting on X that the supply chain designation remains “in full force and effect.”
Two landmark judicial rulings in a single week offered the clearest evidence yet that the courts are willing to draw increasingly clear constitutional boundaries around press freedom and corporate speech — even in wartime, and even against this administration. Judge Friedman’s ruling striking down the Pentagon’s press policy didn’t just block one rule — it established that the government cannot condition press access on a journalist’s willingness to censor themselves, writing that the principle of a free press “has preserved the nation’s security for almost 250 years” and “must not be abandoned now.”
And Judge Lin’s injunction blocking the Anthropic blacklisting explicitly named the government’s conduct as First Amendment retaliation, rejecting the argument that simply disagreeing with the Pentagon (or any executive agency) makes an American company a national security threat.
Together, these rulings represent the judiciary’s strongest pushback yet against the administration’s theory that criticism of government policy is itself a form of disloyalty. The FBI agents suing Patel are adding to a growing record of career civil servants who refused to be silent. The FBI Agents Association’s public criticism shows institutional resistance forming within the bureau itself. And Justice Sotomayor’s 15-page dissent in the Villarreal case — warning that the 5th Circuit’s rule gives law enforcement a roadmap for arresting journalists — ensures the issue will return to the court.
Meanwhile, the new VOA propaganda lawsuit shows that the journalists who built that institution are not ceding it quietly — they are using the courts to hold the line between public broadcasting and state media, even as their colleagues remain on administrative leave.
And just this last Saturday, an estimated eight to nine million Americans — in more than 3,300 events across all 50 states — took to the streets for the third “No Kings” protest, making it the largest single-day demonstration in American history. Marchers filled Times Square, crossed Memorial Bridge in Washington, and rallied in conservative strongholds from Southern Pines, North Carolina, to Kotzebue, Alaska. In New York, the NYPD reported zero protest-related arrests among tens of thousands of marchers.
The administration has spent immense energy threatening reporters with treason, revoking broadcast licenses, and closing off ways for the public to get information on what their government is doing. And the American people, unfazed, responded once again by showing up for the country, for their neighbors, and for our freedom.
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