Dear friend of press freedom,
A judge ordered Rümeysa Öztürk’s release today. But it's still the 45th day she spent incarcerated by the U.S. government for writing an op-ed. Hopefully this shameful chapter in First Amendment history is nearing a close. Other press freedom news below.
Memo obtained by FPF shows DOJ’s new anti-press policy is based on lies
Last week, we argued that Attorney General Pam Bondi’s reversal of her predecessor’s policy restricting subpoenas of journalists will help President Donald Trump lie to the public.
This week we proved it. A memorandum released following a public records request by Lauren Harper, our Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy, confirmed prior reports that U.S. intelligence agencies don’t believe Trump’s claims that Venezuela’s government controls the Tren de Aragua gang. Bondi’s memo cited that same reporting as an example of damaging fake news that results from leaks.
As it turns out, the journalists who reported the intelligence agencies’ position got it exactly right, and the leaks in question only damaged Trump’s reputation by exposing the deception behind his invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to ship Venezuelans to gulags in El Salvador. What better way to further our late co-founder’s legacy than exposing presidential lies to justify atrocities abroad? Read our press release and the New York Times report.
Attacks on law firms and nonprofits endanger the press
It doesn’t take a law degree to see that Trump’s attacks on law firms and nonprofits could also do irreparable harm to press freedom.
To learn more about what’s at stake, we spoke to legendary First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams; general counsel for The Intercept, David Bralow; and Albert Sellars, partner Kendra Albert. Read about and watch the conversation here.
Ed Martin should be disbarred
Ed Martin, interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, was mostly in the news for palling around with white supremacists when Trump pulled his nomination for the permanent job as top prosecutor in Washington. But he’s also spent his career making a mockery of the ethical rules governing attorneys.
That’s why Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) and Demand Progress filed a comprehensive disciplinary complaint against Martin. As our Advocacy Director Seth Stern explained, Martin’s antics, like sending “bogus letters and tweets to intimidate people exercising First Amendment rights and his threats to target news outlets President Trump dislikes, should disqualify him from practicing law, full stop.” Read more here.
Lights, camera, national security crisis!
Trump’s recent announcement that he plans to impose a 100% tariff on movies made outside the United States has created more confusion than the ending of “Inception.”
What is Trump talking about when he claims that making movies abroad threatens national security? When Trump claims to be protecting the homeland from foreign adversaries, he is often actually protecting his own false narratives from domestic scrutiny. Read more here.
Administration seeks to appoint itself the sole arbiter of truth
Trump’s vilification of the press should be seen in the context of his larger agenda to discredit any arbiter of fact and fiction that has not kissed the ring.
The goal is to make Trump’s “alternative facts” the only facts. That’s why the administration is going after not only journalists, but everyone from prestigious universities in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to small medical journals in Glenview, Illinois. Read Stern’s op-ed in the Daily Beast here.
What does Fullerton, California, have to hide?
We joined First Amendment Coalition in a letter objecting to a ban on newspaper distribution in government buildings by the city of Fullerton, California.
As the letter explains, “The ban sends the message … that the city is hostile to the free press and discourages criticism of its policies, preferring that residents only read government-approved messaging.” Read the letter here.
What we’re reading
Fear and intimidation at Newark airport (Al Jazeera). A Palestinian-American journalist was interrogated at the border about her reporting, but she refuses to stay silent. Journalists must continue to speak up about these abuses.
Jury orders NSO to pay $167 million for hacking WhatsApp users (Ars Technica). NSO Group has a long history of helping dictators and authoritarians spy on journalists and activists. Hopefully, this multimillion-dollar verdict will finally get their attention.
Montana governor signs landmark bill, as state becomes the 37th to enact anti-SLAPP protections (Institute for Free Speech). Legislatures in red and blue states alike understand there’s nothing partisan about protecting journalists, activists, and everyone else from anti-speech lawfare.
Takeaways from AFPC-USA’s 2025 World Press Freedom Day panel (The Association of Foreign Press Correspondents USA). FPF’s Seth Stern’s “remarks painted a stark picture of press freedom under direct political attack. He warned that without structural protections, the First Amendment itself is being tested, and norms that were once assumed unbreakable are now being shattered.”
A student journalist covered a pro-Palestine protest. Soon, her graduation came under threat (Columbia Journalism Review). Columbia hit a new moral low by targeting a student journalist for her reporting on a pro-Palestinian sit-in before changing course. Lesson learned? Nope. The university then stooped even lower by suspending student journalists for covering protests.
