Politics

Opinion: How press freedoms could fare under the second Trump administration

Published

1 year ago

December 26, 2024

Opinion: How press freedoms could fare under the second Trump administration

With Donald Trump set to return to the White House next year, there’s much speculation on how his second administration will affect press freedom. The short answer is that we don’t know, but prognosticators do have the benefit of an important dataset: his first term.

And, if that record is any indication, national security “leaks” to the press may be an area of tension between journalists and the new leadership at the Justice Department. If there is a chilling effect on sources coming forward with newsworthy information in the public interest, Americans will be less informed and the American government will be held less accountable.

Things have been quiet on that front for the last four years, but the first Trump administration inherited and expanded the Obama administration’s aggressive pursuit of sources who disclosed government secrets to the press.

And President-elect Trump has often decried national security leaks and called for aggressively investigating and prosecuting them.

It would be foolish for press advocates to discount the possibility of a repeat of his first term, and perhaps an escalation.

There are several federal laws that can be read to criminalize the public disclosure of national security secrets. The most prominent is the Espionage Act of 1917, a World War I-era law that was initially used against domestic opponents of the war but applies to the act of communicating, delivering or transmitting “information relating to the national defense,” a broad term, to anyone not entitled to receive it.

In other words, if someone were to anonymously slip a manila envelope under a reporter’s door with government secrets — even secrets that the public has a clear interest in knowing, such as the warrantless domestic wiretapping by the George W. Bush administration — the Justice Department has consistently claimed the authority to investigate and prosecute the source, as well as the journalist, under the Espionage Act. There is no “public interest” defense.

Historically, it hasn’t been used that way. For about 90 years, the Espionage Act was deployed against actual spies, not journalists’ sources. There are a few exceptions — most prominently the Pentagon Papers case, in which the government launched a failed prosecution against Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo — but source cases are in the single digits. And, while there were investigations involving journalists, no reporter or news outlet was ultimately prosecuted under the Espionage Act in that period.

The reason is simple. When the reporting is in the public interest, taking the leaker or journalist to court would be a “political firestorm,” as a federal appeals court judge put it in one of those few exceptions, a 1980s case involving a leak of classified photographs.

But the Bush and Obama administrations marked a shift in practice.

Under President George W. Bush, the Justice Department brought the first Espionage Act case other than Russo against individuals outside government, who had not sworn to protect government secrets. The Bush administration also featured the Valerie Plame case, which started as a leak investigation, in which Judith Miller of the New York Times spent 85 days in jail for refusing to identify a confidential source from her reporting about the run-up to the Iraq war. And the Bush Justice Department issued a subpoena in 2008 to force the New York Times’ James Risen to identify his source in another leak case, which the Obama administration pursued until 2015.

Then the Obama administration started to bring Espionage Act prosecutions against journalists’ sources in earnest. Depending on how you count, his administration brought 10 such cases. That is more than all other presidents combined.

Trump’s first term followed that trend. The Justice Department brought eight cases against journalist sources, including two under bank secrecy laws, as well as the Julian Assange case. The Assange case is complicated, but he was charged in part under the novel and dangerous legal theory that publishing secrets is a crime.

These cases can involve secret government demands for reporters’ notes; phone, email and text records; and correspondence with sources. That kind of snooping can reveal the constellation of a journalist’s sources beyond just the investigation in question and can give the government visibility into other stories the newsroom is investigating, including stories about the government. As Miller said when facing jail time: “If journalists cannot be trusted to keep confidences, then journalists cannot function and there cannot be a free press.”

The Justice Department during Trump’s first term turbocharged Obama-era approaches. In addition to seizing years of records from reporter Ali Watkins’ phone and email providers, a Customs and Border Protection agent threatened to reveal private information unless she identified her sources. Watkins was a reporter at Politico at the time of the questioning and was at the New York Times when she learned of the records seizure.

Then, in the early days of the Biden administration, we learned that the Justice Department in the last days of the Trump administration had authorized demands for phone and email records for eight reporters at CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post in three separate leak investigations. It did so without notifying those outlets in advance — to give them a chance to negotiate or challenge the demands — and the CNN and New York Times demands came with a gag order preventing newsroom lawyers from even alerting the reporters that they had been targeted.

The history of leak investigations under Presidents Bush, Obama and Trump shows that the threat to the free flow of information is bipartisan and spans administrations. President Biden’s term has been a notable exception, but a reprise may be coming.

Gabe Rottman is the policy director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Politics

Video: Protests Against ICE in Minneapolis Continue Into Friday Night

Published

8 hours ago

January 11, 2026

Press Room

Video: Protests Against ICE in Minneapolis Continue Into Friday Night

new video loaded: Protests Against ICE in Minneapolis Continue Into Friday Night

transcript

Protests Against ICE in Minneapolis Continue Into Friday Night

Hundreds of protesters marched through downtown Minneapolis on Friday night. They stopped at several hotels along the way to blast music, bang drums and play instruments to try to disrupt the sleep of immigration agents who might be staying there. Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis said there were 29 arrests but that it was mostly a “peaceful protest.”

: The vast majority of people have done this right. We are so deeply appreciative of them. But we have seen a few incidents last night. Those incidents are being reviewed, but we wanted to again give the overarching theme of what we’re seeing, which is peaceful protest. And we wanted to say when that doesn’t happen, of course, there are consequences. We are a safe city. We will not counter Donald Trump’s chaos with our own brand of chaos here. We in Minneapolis are going to do this right.
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Hundreds of protesters marched through downtown Minneapolis on Friday night. They stopped at several hotels along the way to blast music, bang drums and play instruments to try to disrupt the sleep of immigration agents who might be staying there. Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis said there were 29 arrests but that it was mostly a “peaceful protest.”

By McKinnon de Kuyper

January 10, 2026

Politics

Trump says Venezuela has begun releasing political prisoners ‘in a BIG WAY’

Published

9 hours ago

January 11, 2026

Press Room

Trump says Venezuela has begun releasing political prisoners ‘in a BIG WAY’

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

President Donald Trump said Saturday that Venezuela has begun releasing political prisoners “in a BIG WAY,” crediting U.S. intervention for the move following last week’s American military operation in the country.

“Venezuela has started the process, in a BIG WAY, of releasing their political prisoners,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Thank you! I hope those prisoners will remember how lucky they got that the USA came along and did what had to be done.”

He added a warning directed at those being released: “I HOPE THEY NEVER FORGET! If they do, it will not be good for them.”

The president’s comments come one week after the United States launched Operation Absolute Resolve, a strike on Venezuela and capture of dictator Nicolás Maduro as well as his wife Cilia Flores, transporting them to the United States to face federal drug trafficking charges.

US WARNS AMERICANS TO LEAVE VENEZUELA IMMEDIATELY AS ARMED MILITIAS SET UP ROADBLOCKS

Government supporters in Venezuela rally in Caracas. (AP Photo)

Following the military operation, Trump said the U.S. intends to temporarily oversee Venezuela’s transition of power, asserting American involvement “until such time as a safe, proper and judicious transition” can take place and warning that U.S. forces stand ready to escalate if necessary.

At least 18 political prisoners were reported freed as of Saturday and there is no comprehensive public list of all expected releases, Reuters reported.

Maduro and Flores were transported to New York after their capture to face charges in U.S. federal court. The Pentagon has said that Operation Absolute Resolve involved more than 150 aircraft and months of planning.

TRUMP ADMIN SAYS MADURO CAPTURE REINFORCES ALIEN ENEMIES ACT REMOVALS

A demonstrator holding a Venezuelan flag sprays graffiti during a march in Mexico City on Santurday. (Alfredo Estrella / AFP via Getty Images)

Trump has said the U.S. intends to remain actively involved in Venezuela’s security, political transition and reconstruction of its oil infrastructure.

The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

President Donald Trump said Saturday that Venezuela has begun releasing political prisoners. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo)

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Fox News Digital’s Morgan Phillips and Greg Norman-Diamond contributed to this reporting.

Jasmine Baehr is a Breaking News Writer for Fox News Digital, where she covers politics, the military, faith and culture.

Politics

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth tours Long Beach rocket factory

Published

10 hours ago

January 11, 2026

Press Room

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth tours Long Beach rocket factory

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who is taking a tour of U.S. defense contractors, on Friday visited a Long Beach rocket maker, where he told workers they are key to President Trump’s vision of military supremacy.

Hegseth stopped by a manufacturing plant operated by Rocket Lab, an emerging company that builds satellites and provides small-satellite launch services for commercial and government customers.

Last month, the company was awarded an $805-million military contract, its largest to date, to build satellites for a network being developed for communications and detection of new threats, such as hypersonic missles.

“This company, you right here, are front and center, as part of ensuring that we build an arsenal of freedom that America needs,” Hegseth told several hundred cheering workers. “The future of the battlefield starts right here with dominance of space.”

Founded in 2006 in New Zealand, the company makes a small rocket called Electron — which lay on its side near Hegseth — and is developing a larger one called Neutron. It moved to the U.S. a decade ago and opened its Long Beach headquaters in 2020.

Rocket Lab is among a new wave of companies that have revitalized Southern California’s aerospace and defense industry, which shed hundreds of thousands of jobs in the 1990s after the end of the Cold War. Large defense contractors such as Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin moved their headquarters to the East Coast.

Many of the new companies were founded by former employees of SpaceX, which was started by Elon Musk in 2002 and was based in the South Bay before moving to Texas in 2024. However, it retains major operations in Hawthorne.

Hegseth kicked off his tour Monday with a visit to a Newport News, Va., shipyard. The tour is described as “a call to action to revitalize America’s manufacturing might and re-energize the nation’s workforce.”

Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson, a Democrat who said he was not told of the event, said Hegseth’s visit shows how the city has flourished despite such setbacks as the closure of Boeing’s C-17 Globemaster III transport plant.

“Rocket Lab has really been a superstar in terms of our fast, growing and emerging space economy in Long Beach,” Richardson said. “This emergence of space is really the next stage of almost a century of innovation that’s really taking place here.”

Prior stops in the region included visits to Divergent, an advanced manufacturing company in aerospace and other industries, and Castelion, a hypersonic missile startup founded by former SpaceX employees. Both are based in Torrance.

The tour follows an overhaul of the Department of Defense’s procurement policy Hegseth announced in November. The policy seeks to speed up weapons development and acquisition by first finding capabilities in the commercial market before the government attempts to develop new systems.

Trump also issued an executive order Wednesday that aims to limit shareholder profits of defense contractors that do not meet production and budget goals by restricting stock buybacks and dividends.

Hegseth told the workers that the administration is trying to prod old-line defense contractors to be more innovative and spend more on development — touting Rocket Lab as the kind of company that will succeed, adding it had one of the “coolest factory floors” he had ever seen.

“I just want the best, and I want to ensure that the competition that exists is fair,” he said.

Hegseth’s visit comes as Trump has flexed the nation’s military muscles with the Jan. 3 abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who is now facing drug trafficking charges to which he has pleaded not guilty.

Hegseth in his speech cited Maduro’s capture as an example of the country’s newfound “deterrence in action.” Though Trump’s allies supported the action, legal experts and other critics have argued that the operation violated international and U.S. law.

Trump this week said he wants to radically boost U.S. military spending to $1.5 trillion in 2027 from $900 billion this year so he can build the “Dream Military.”

Hegseth told the workers it would be a “historic investment” that would ensure the U.S. is never challenged militarily.

Trump also posted on social media this week that executive salaries of defense companies should be capped at $5 million unless they speed up development and production of advanced weapons — in a dig at existing prime contractors.

However, the text of his Wednesday order caps salaries at current levels and ties future executive incentive compensation to delivery and production metrics.

Anduril Industries in Costa Mesa is one of the leading new defense companies in Southern California. The privately held maker of autonomous weapons systems closed a $2.5-billion funding round last year.

Founder Palmer Luckey told Bloomberg News he supported Trump’s moves to limit executive compensation in the defense sector, saying, “I pay myself $100,000 a year.” However, Luckey has a stake in Anduril, last valued by investors at $30.5 billion.

Peter Beck, the founder and chief executive of Rocket Lab, took a base salary of $575,000 in 2024 but with bonus and stock awards his total compensation reached $20.1 million, according to a securities filing. He also has a stake in the company, which has a market capitalization of about $45 billion.

Beck introduced Hegseth saying he was seeking to “reinvigorate the national industrial base and create a leaner, more effective Department of War, one that goes faster and leans on commercial companies just like ours.”

Rocket Lab boasts that its Electron rocket, which first launched in 2017, is the world’s leading small rocket and the second most frequently launched U.S. rocket behind SpaceX.

It has carried payloads for NASA, the U.S. Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office, aside from commercial customers.

The company employs 2,500 people across facilities in New Zealand, Canada and the U.S., including in Virginia, Colorado and Mississippi.

Rocket Lab shares closed at $84.84 on Friday, up 2%.