Trump Turns Pentagon Into Department of War on First Amendment

Ari Paul

NBC News (9/20/25): "Journalists who cover the Defense Department at the Pentagon can no longer gather or report information, even if it is unclassified, unless it’s been authorized for release by the government."

The Trump administration has said it will require Pentagon reporters to “pledge they won’t gather any information—even unclassified—that hasn’t been expressly authorized for release, and will revoke the press credentials of those who do not obey,” the Washington Post (9/19/25) reported. It added that even being in possession of “confidential or unauthorized information, under the new rules, would be grounds for a journalist’s press pass to be revoked.”

The National Press Club (NBC, 9/20/25) called the rules "a direct assault on independent journalism at the very place where independent scrutiny matters most: the US military.’” Even right-wing provocateur James O'Keefe (The Hill, 9/20/25) came out against the restrictions, saying the US government "should not be asking us to obey.”

Other Trump loyalists stood with the government decision. “For too long, the halls of the Pentagon have been treated like a playground for journalists hungry for gossip, leaks and half-truths,” long-time Republican activist Ken Blackwell said on Facebook (9/20/25). He added that “reporters have strutted around the building like they owned it.”

The authoritarian impulse

James Risen (Intercept, 1/3/18): " The Obama administration used my case to destroy the legal underpinnings of the reporter’s privilege in the 4th Circuit.... That will make it easier for Donald Trump and the presidents who come after him to conduct an even more draconian assault on press freedom in the United States."

The US government has always been aggressive when it comes to undermining the press’s ability to obtain government information, especially when it pertains to national security. The pooling system for frontline correspondents in the first US war against Iraq in 1990–91 has long been considered one of the most draconian acts of wartime censorship in recent US imperial memory. The US under the elder President George Bush regularly detained press who dared to report on the war independently and without the restraint of government minders (New York Times, 2/12/91; Human Rights Watch, 2/27/91).

This authoritarian impulse only accelerated in the post-9/11 age (Extra!, 9/11). The Justice Department under then-President Barack Obama obtained “two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for the Associated Press,” AP (5/13/13) reported, in an apparent “investigation into who may have leaked information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot.”

Former New York Times journalist James Risen (Intercept, 1/3/18) documented his ordeal with the Obama and George W. Bush administrations, which took legal action against him to force him to release sources:

My case was part of a broader crackdown on reporters and whistleblowers that had begun during the presidency of George W. Bush and continued far more aggressively under the Obama administration, which had already prosecuted more leak cases than all previous administrations combined. Obama officials seemed determined to use criminal leak investigations to limit reporting on national security. But the crackdown on leaks only applied to low-level dissenters; top officials caught up in leak investigations, like former CIA Director David Petraeus, were still treated with kid gloves.

Full-throttle attack

Donald Trump (USA Today, 9/18/25): "They give me only bad publicity or press.... I would think maybe their license should be taken away."

The new Trump directive transcends this already anti-democratic tradition of suppressing national security and military information, and takes the nation into new authoritarian and absurd territory.

For one thing, telling Pentagon reporters to avoid unreleased information is like telling a fish to avoid water. Recall that top Trump administration officials accidentally included Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg in a Signal chat about an attack on Yemen. To quote Mark Wahlberg from The Departed, “Unfortunately, this shithole has more fuckin’ leaks than the Iraqi navy.”

Now the Pentagon is saying it will only credential reporters if they promise to be stenographers for the department’s press team, regurgitating press releases and spokesperson talking points, and avoid independent interviews and investigations. This is happening as the White House has iced out reporters from the AP for not relabeling an international body of water at the president's directive (FAIR.org, 2/18/25), while bringing administration sycophants like Brian Glenn and Tim Pool into the presidential press herd.

Journalist access is only one piece of the Trump administration's full-throttle attack on the free press. The president “said overwhelming negative coverage of him by television networks should be grounds for the Federal Communications Commission to revoke broadcast licenses” (USA Today, 9/18/25). He threatened ABC’s Jon Karl, saying the attorney general will “probably go after people like you, because you treat me so unfairly” (Deadline, 9/16/25). More television and online new outlets are coming under the ownership umbrella of Trump allies (FAIR.org, 9/19/25).

Imperial bellicosity

Independent (7/15/25): "Trump’s airstrikes in Yemen have reportedly killed as many civilians within the eight-week bombing campaign as in the previous two decades of US attacks targeting militants in the country."

It is especially chilling that this directive came from the Pentagon. The US has the most powerful military in the world, and it is the taxpayer’s largest expense after Social Security. Despite assurances from right-wing media that Trump would be a peace president (Compact, 4/7/23), he is in fact delivering a ferocious brand of imperial bellicosity.

Trump carried out nearly as many airstrikes in the first six months of his second term as the hawkish Joe Biden did in four years (Independent, 7/15/25). Almost as many civilians were killed in his attacks on Yemen as were previously killed in two decades of strikes against that nation (Airwars, 6/17/25).

Trump dropped 14 of the world's biggest non-nuclear bombs on Iran, weapons that had never been used against an enemy before. He boasted of using the military to murder supposed Venezuelan drug smugglers, hundreds of miles from US shores. He resumed shipments of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, even as he encouraged Tel Aviv to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza (Guardian, 1/26/25).

Meanwhile, he's deployed the military domestically, vowing to use it to carry out mass deportations , renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War, firing top officers who disagree with him.

If there's ever been a time when we need an independent press keeping a close eye on the military, and listening to dissenting voices, it's now.

Resisting Pentagon dictates

Reuters (9/21/25): "Any effort by the US government to limit journalists’ ability to cover the news undermines fundamental First Amendment protections and constrains the free flow of information that is critical to informed public debate."

Thankfully, some news organizations are speaking out against the Pentagon's new edict (Reuters, 9/21/25; CNN, 9/22/25). The New York Times called it an "attempt to throttle the public’s right to understand what their government is doing"; the Washington Post said that "any attempt to control messaging and curb access by the government is counter to the First Amendment and against the public interest."

All major news organizations can and should fight this, in the public and in court; a ban on reporting any unauthorized information clearly violates the First Amendment, and any prior restraint is regarded as constitutionally suspicious.

News outlets should also bear in mind that reporting on the military does not necessarily require being physically present in the Pentagon. As the brave correspondents showed who defied the US military’s patronizing pooling system in the Gulf War, some of the best reporting is done outside official channels. An independent press corps with no physical access to the Pentagon is infinitely more valuable to democracy than a press corps that has pledged to only report officially sanctioned news.