‘REPUBLICANS MUST KILL THIS BILL!’: Trump is prepared to strip journalists’ rights
Many industries and governmental departments will be deeply affected by Donald Trump’s second presidential term. Journalists are one of the groups on high alert, as Trump has already made clear throughout the campaign trail that he considers the press “the enemy of the people.” So perhaps it’s no surprise that Trump wants Republicans to kill a bill that protects journalists and their sources from government intervention.
The drama revolves around the rather heavy-handedly named Protect Reporters From Exploitative State Spying Act (or PRESS Act for short; see what they did there?). The bill would turn a rule already at play within the State Department into federal law: government prosecutors cannot force journalists to reveal their sources. It would also put a cap on the government’s ability to seize a journalist’s data without their knowledge.
“REPUBLICANS MUST KILL THIS BILL!” Trump wrote Wednesday, November 20 on his right-wing social media website, Truth Social.
The PRESS Act passed the House of Representatives unanimously back in January. But now, it’s being held up in the Senate, because our government works efficiently and well. The bill has Republication sponsors in the Senate but is reportedly being stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee by Republican Senator Tom Cotton.
Still, Trump isn’t exactly known for his detailed knowledge of the actual workings of government. Knowing Trump, he found out about the PRESS Act either through one of his advisors or because someone talked about it on TV.
I’ll let you guess which one.
The importance of the PRESS Act
In his Truth Social post, Trump posted a link to a segment that aired on PBS NewsHour—which almost certainly confirms that he found out about this bill because he saw it on TV. The segment featured an interview in which the CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Jodie Ginsberg, appealed to the Senate to pass the PRESS Act.
“We know that Trump is interested in going after whistleblowers, people who leak. And it’s absolutely essential that they are protected,” Ginsberg said.
Of course, she’s dead on. More than it even protects journalists, the primary objective of the PRESS Act is to protect their sources. Weakened protection for whistleblowers is very bad news when up against an administration as vindictive as Trump’s is sure to be. Earlier this week, Trump’s buddy Elon Musk pitted his millions of X followers against a random government worker for no real reason other than he deemed her job “fake.”
If the PRESS Act doesn’t go into law, sources may stop coming forward for fear of retribution—either from their job, the GOP’s wrathful social media apparatus, or both. That means more important stories that don’t get reported. An environment in which stories are being covered up because of fear does not sound like one where Freedom of the Press is alive and well.
But of course, that’s exactly what Trump and his followers want. For all the complaints of “Fake News,” what they really want is no news. Or, at least, no news which makes them look bad. An ironic point of view mere days after Trump’s Attorney General pick, Matt Gaetz, dropped out of the race soon after CNN reported that he’d had sex with an underage girl twice and asked Gaetz for clarification.
Hopefully, the Senate will grow a spine and pass the law before Trump’s inauguration in January. Feel free to write your Senator directly and pressure them to do so. It’s nice to think they could be held accountable for their actions—or, rather, lack thereof.
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