John,
Americans have a right to know what the Pentagon is doing in our name. Yet new restrictions pushed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threaten to choke off that access at the very moment when the President is declaring a “war from within” against states that did not vote for him.
Under these rules, reporters would need prior Pentagon approval before publishing -- even on unclassified information -- and sign gag pledges or risk losing their press credentials. This isn’t oversight. It’s censorship, designed to prevent Americans from getting the inside story of military policy, deployments, and decisions that shape lives at home and abroad.
If these rules stand, the flow of information about our armed forces will be filtered and sanitized by those in power, leaving the public in the dark. We’ll lose vital reporting on national security, military spending, the treatment of veterans, and the real impact of war on service members and their families. Once that window closes, it may never reopen.
Send your message to the nation’s leading news outlets: Stand united, refuse Pentagon censorship, and defend freedom of the press while we still can.
That’s why we must act now. News outlets across the country have a duty to resist: to refuse to sign away their independence, to reject gag orders, and to call out this policy for what it is -- an attempt to transform access into a weapon of censorship. Only a coordinated stand can preserve the press’s ability to inform the people.
This is part of a broader assault under President Trump, where the institutions and norms that once protected the First Amendment are being stripped away. Watchdogs are warning that U.S. press freedom can no longer be assumed. The Pentagon’s new policy crosses a red line by turning the people’s right to know into a privilege granted only on official terms.
The time to stop this is now. Tell our nation’s leading news outlets to stand united against Pentagon censorship and defend the First Amendment -- before Americans lose their view into the heart of military power.
-DFA AF Team
