Finding that the Pentagon “violated” his order, a federal judge scorched Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for returning press credentials to reporters while limiting their access.
“The curtailment of First Amendment rights is dangerous at any time, and even more so in a time of war,” U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman wrote in a 20-page ruling. “Suppression of political speech is the mark of an autocracy, not a democracy as the Framers recognized when they drafted the First Amendment.”
On March 20, Judge Friedman ordered the Pentagon to return press credentials to reporters who refused to sign onto a highly restrictive new policy, and Hegseth’s special advisor and fixer Tim Parlatore immediately announced his plans to circumvent the order by amending the policy.
“We used more words to say the same thing and to foreclose creative misinterpretations,” Parlatore openly told the New York Times, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit.
Calling the comment the “definition of contempt,” the newspaper asked the judge to enforce his order without explicitly requesting any sanctions.
As former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner and I discussed on Substack Live, Friedman responded with a fiery ruling but no path for finding the government in contempt.
“At some point, we’ve got to see contempt make a showing or else the Pete Hegseths of the world and others in Trump’s cabinet will just continue with impunity to violate court orders to the detriment of the rule of law, the Constitution and ultimately the American people,” Kirschner said.
Later in the conversation, we discussed the Trump Justice Department’s failed efforts to sue states for their voter roll data and the latest update in Newark Mayor Ras Baraka’s lawsuit against Alina Habba, who unsuccessfully tried to prosecute the mayor for trespassing.
All Rise News attended a hearing on Thursday in federal court in Newark, where no other reporter was present. Find out more about what happened in the video at the top of this newsletter.
If a court hearing of national significance takes place, and no reporter is there to witness it, what happens to our democracy?
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