The New York Times is suing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth over the Pentagon’s new restrictions on press access, which require journalists to pledge to only report on pre-approved information.
The lawsuit from the Times is set to be filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., and will name Hegseth, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell and the Department of Defense as defendants, CNN reports.
The newspaper is seeking to overturn the Pentagon requirements, introduced in October, that reporters must hand over their press passes if they do not agree to the new terms, arguing that they are unconstitutional in preventing the Fourth Estate from holding the executive branch of government to account.
“The policy is an attempt to exert control over reporting the government dislikes, in violation of a free press’ right to seek information under their First and Fifth Amendment rights protected by the Constitution,” New York Times Company spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander said. “The Times intends to vigorously defend against the violation of these rights, just as we have long done throughout administrations opposed to scrutiny and accountability.”
The Pentagon is expected to oppose those arguments on national security grounds, the same basis on which the restrictions were originally introduced.
Earlier this week, the DOD’s press briefing room welcomed a number of new faces to replace the traditional pool reporters it had banished for refusing to comply, with spokesperson Kingsley Wilson happy to take questions on camera, something she had not done previously.
Their number included former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, once nominated to be U.S. attorney general and now an anchor with One America News Network, as well as MAGA influencers Laura Loomer, Jack Posobiec, and James O’Keefe.
Loomer, for one, took to X to boast that she had assumed ownership of a desk that had previously belonged to Washington Post military affairs reporter Dan Lamothe, only for RedState’s RC Maxwell and right-wing content creators Cam Higby and Lance Johnston to make precisely the same claim.
“Y’all are going to have to work this one out for yourselves,” Lamothe replied to them. “By my count, I’ve got at least two or three desks left at the Pentagon. Lost count.”
None of the inductees to Hegseth’s “new press corps” have prior experience of covering the U.S. military but the Pentagon’s activities will still be reported on by more established outlets, albeit at one remove.
Parnell derided the journalists who handed in their passes rather than adhere to the new rules, claiming that they “chose to self-deport” and “will not be missed.”
The Pentagon Press Association said it was “encouraged” by the Times’s bid to “step up and defend press freedom.” The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press said Thursday it was likewise lending its support.
“The Pentagon’s press access policy is unlawful because it gives government officials unchecked power over who gets a credential and who doesn’t, something the First Amendment prohibits,” Gabe Rottman, the committee’s vice president of policy, said.
“The public needs independent journalism and the reporters who deliver it back in the Pentagon at a time of heightened scrutiny of the department’s actions.”
Trevor Timm, executive director for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said: “In an era where news networks seem to be caving to Trump’s censorious tactics left and right, it’s refreshing to see The New York Times leading by example and sticking up for the First Amendment in court.
“An attack on any journalist’s rights is an attack on all. And the only way to put an end to the Trump administration’s multipronged assault on press freedom is for every news outlet to fight back at every opportunity. We urge other news outlets to follow the Times’s lead.
“These days, the government has countless platforms of its own to tell the public what it wants it to know. A free and independent press isn’t needed for that. The Constitution guarantees one anyway precisely because the public needs the information the government does not want it to know.
“The Pentagon’s absurd access pledge has been an affront to the First Amendment since the first day they proposed it. And we look forward to a federal judge throwing it out with the trash, where it belongs.”
