Pass the Daniel Ellsberg Act!
Dear Friend of Press Freedom,
Another journalist, Estefany Rodríguez, sits in Immigration and Customs Enforcement lockup amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on press freedom. Read on for more about how you can help free Rodríguez and support a new bill to reform the Espionage Act.
Tell Congress to protect journalists and whistleblowers
This week, Rep. Rashida Tlaib introduced the Daniel Ellsberg Press Freedom and Whistleblower Protection Act to reform the archaic Espionage Act and stop prosecutors from treating reporters and their sources like spies. We’re honored that the bill is named after our late co-founder, Ellsberg, the legendary Pentagon Papers whistleblower and former Espionage Act defendant.
For decades, the Espionage Act has been used to chill national security reporting. The first Trump administration used it to charge WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange — a prosecution that shamefully continued under President Joe Biden. Now, the Trump administration is arguing that journalists violate the law when they report government secrets.
Use our new action center to tell your members of Congress to support the Ellsberg Act.
Watch our online event introducing the Ellsberg Act
We also co-hosted an online event announcing the bill featuring Tlaib, Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Executive Director Trevor Timm, FPF’s Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy Lauren Harper, Ellsberg’s son Robert Ellsberg, and Defending Rights & Dissent Policy Director Chip Gibbons.
Free Estefany Rodríguez from ICE
Nashville, Tennessee, journalist Estefany Rodríguez was arrested by federal immigration agents on flimsy “gotcha” charges last week. Her lawyers say she was targeted because she reported critically about the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
It wouldn’t surprise us, given the administration’s horrendous record of targeting immigrants over constitutionally protected speech. Needless arrests of noncitizen journalists silence the very reporters best positioned to cover ICE’s impact on their communities.
Use our action center to tell lawmakers to help free Rodríguez.
The Oscars in solitary confinement
Footage captured by Raoul Poole, Robert Earl Council, and Melvin Ray using contraband cell phones to circumvent prison censorship is the centerpiece of HBO’s “The Alabama Solution,” which is up for an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature this weekend.
But while the academy deliberated, the three individuals who made the film possible sat in extreme solitary confinement.
FPF Chief of Advocacy Seth Stern, along with incarcerated journalist and FPF columnist Jeremy Busby and Corinne Shanahan of the Institute to End Mass Incarceration, wrote for Inquest that “the United States may sometimes protect those who expose tyranny abroad (at least when the tyrants are geopolitical adversaries), but those who shine a light on abuses back home are on their own.”
Judge’s rebuke of DOJ in journalist raid case exposes bigger problem
A judge who approved the search warrant for the raid of Washington Post journalist Hannah Natanson’s home has recently chastised prosecutors for failing to tell him about a federal law that limits such raids, the Privacy Protection Act of 1980.
But Judge William Porter’s rebuke sparked a debate: Isn’t it the judge’s job to know the law himself? FPF Senior Adviser Caitlin Vogus explains that the answer is more complicated than it may seem.
Appeals court picks the wrong constitutional emergency
A federal appeals court last week vacated an order from an already dismissed lawsuit that had limited the Department of Homeland Security’s tactics against journalists and protesters in the Chicago area.
Stern wrote for the Chicago Tribune that if appellate courts are looking for rulings to vacate unasked, they should focus on those that facilitate censorship and impunity, rather than those that restrain tear gas and rubber bullets.
Filming federal agents in the field
Most guidance for journalists on filming federal agents — which can be deadly these days — is aimed at those in newsrooms with resources. Yet many independent and freelance journalists are working on the ground right now without such institutional support.
Our digital security team spoke with two such independent journalists about how they approach filming federal officers.
What we're reading
DHS ousts CBP privacy officers who questioned ‘illegal’ orders
The department’s retaliation against Freedom of Information Act officers for making lawful releases is a blatant abuse of power.
Pentagon bars press photographers over ‘unflattering’ Hegseth photos
Are we supposed to believe Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth when he says he restricts press access for national security? Hegseth only cares about his own image, and all of his censorship should be taken in that context.
Inside the legal defense of Georgia Fort and Don Lemon
The government’s claims in the Lemon and Fort cases that prosecutors are “the arbiters of journalistic practice” is deeply chilling, as Joel Simon writes.
DOJ attorney faces complaint for saying Chicago-area protests were led by ‘terrorist organizations’
FPF filed this complaint because fabricating a violent terrorist invasion of an American city to justify suppressing First Amendment rights is “an effort to subvert the rule of law,” Stern explains.