The disturbing indictment against journalist Tim Burke reportedly arises in part from Burke’s dissemination of outtakes from a 2022 Tucker Carlson interview with Ye. Federal prosecutors accuse Burke of “scouring” the internet for news and failing to obtain express authorization before accessing information posted on public websites. Requiring journalists to get permission to report news is, obviously, problematic. Read more in our newsletter.

Next week, the High Court in London will consider whether Julian Assange should be extradited to the United States to face charges under the Espionage Act for obtaining government secrets from a source and publishing them. Even if you don’t like Assange, or don’t think he’s a journalist, his case poses an existential threat to the First Amendment rights of the journalists you do like.

Former IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn received the maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment on Monday, after pleading guilty to leaking Donald Trump’s returns to The New York Times. Littlejohn also leaked a tranche of ultrawealthy Americans’ tax documents to ProPublica. It’s sadly ironic that Littlejohn is being harshly punished for exposing billionaire tax evasion while billionaire tax evaders themselves continue to be afforded leniency by the judiciary.

The Senate is dangerously close to passing a bill that would allow intelligence agencies to essentially “institute a spy draft” and order everyone from dentists to plumbers to surveil their patients and customers’ communications. The RISAA would also allow the government to order commercial landlords who rent space to media outlets, or contractors who service newsrooms, to help it spy on American journalists’ communications with foreign sources.

Veteran journalist Catherine Herridge threw her full support behind the PRESS Act, the federal bill to put an end to surveillance and subpoenas to force journalists to out their sources, during Congressional testimony on April 11, 2024.

Just a few months into 2024, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has documented four arrests or detentions of journalists covering protests in New York, Tennessee, and California. These arrests violate journalists’ rights, and they undermine the right of the public to learn about newsworthy events happening in their communities. They also show the disturbing and stubborn persistence of a system of policing that either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about First Amendment rights.

On Tuesday, the High Court in London granted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange another hearing on his extradition to the United States, averting — at least temporarily — a press freedom catastrophe. While we’re glad that Assange isn’t being immediately extradited, the threat to journalists from the Espionage Act charges against him remains.

President Biden has said that journalism isn’t a crime. But the DOJ seems to think otherwise

The Supreme Court seems to understand the First Amendment limits on government coercion of speech — except when it comes to national security

Will the Trump administration use the Espionage Act to prosecute reporters?