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Duckworth, Hirono Introduce WARRIOR Act to Codify Women's Right to Serve in Combat
Rise in US preteen suicide rate alarms mental health experts
Duckworth Joins Warren, Lawmakers in Investigating Reports that DoD Failed to Provide Sufficient Care for Servicemembers Injured in Iranian Strike
Rod Stewart helps raise $1.7 million for Stevie Van Zandt’s TeachRock non-profit
‘Inappropriate, anti-social behavior’: Cars litter sidewalk on stretch of Gravois in St Louis
August 4th Vote Megathread
Granite City Man Charged With Financially Exploiting Disabled Victim
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July 31 in History: From Russia's 1914 Mobilization to Apollo 15's Lunar Rover
Princesstårta
State lawmakers of both parties say it’s time to rethink America’s fragile childcare system
The former St. Agnes Church (Benton Park) in Infrared.
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Man killed near Tower Grove Park in dispute between St. Louis contractors
Homicide Investigating Tower Grove South Shooting
Homicide Detectives are investigating a shooting that left one man dead and another man injured on July 30, 2026 in the Tower Grove South neighborhood.
The post Homicide Investigating Tower Grove South Shooting appeared first on St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.
When families question a death investigation, getting a second autopsy can be complicated
FPF urges Congress not to rubber-stamp Pentagon secrecy
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Washington, D.C., July 31, 2026 — In a direct blow to public oversight, the Department of Defense is pushing a proposal to exempt “controlled unclassified information” from the Freedom of Information Act. If successful, the change would allow the agency to unilaterally hide millions of files from taxpayers, service members, and open-records laws — potentially forever.
That’s why a broad coalition of transparency organizations, press freedom advocates, and watchdog groups today sent a joint letter to lawmakers urging Congress to reject the Pentagon’s secrecy grab.
The following statement can be attributed to Lauren Harper, FPF’s Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy:
“The Pentagon is already too secretive, and the last thing it needs is a rubber stamp to hide unclassified records under the guise of national security. This is especially true at a time when the military is conducting potentially unlawful lethal strikes, trying to muddy the number of U.S. casualties of military operations overseas, and attacking the press, whistleblowers, and the public’s right to know.
“The dangers of this are hard to overstate, given the rampant abuse of controlled unclassified information markings across the department. This antidemocratic proposal is also entirely unnecessary, since FOIA already contains robust exemptions to shield both properly classified material and sensitive unclassified data.
“We don’t need the Pentagon hiding more information from FOIA. We need it to actually respond to public records requests, we need it to stop harassing journalists for doing their job, and we need it to be transparent and accountable to the public, service members, and their families.”
Please contact us if you would like further comment, and read the letters below.
Jay Clayton is a threat to press freedom
Dear Friend of Press Freedom:
Investigative journalist Catherine Herridge has, by our count, paid at least $8,800 in fines for refusing to reveal a confidential source. In the meantime, the Senate confirmed Jay Clayton as director of national intelligence even though his former prosecutorial office issued politically motivated subpoenas targeting New York Times reporters and their relatives for embarrassing the president, and then he apparently lied to Congress about it. Read on for more.
As DNI, Jay Clayton is a threat to press freedom
Earlier this week we wrote about the false and misleading congressional testimony by then-prosecutor Jay Clayton — President Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence — that his team had followed Justice Department guidelines in issuing subpoenas targeting New York Times reporters who wrote about Trump’s unsafe Qatari vanity plane.
But the Senate confirmed Clayton anyway, meaning that America’s intelligence apparatus will be led by someone willing to issue harassing subpoenas targeting journalists and their relatives in violation of both internal policies and applicable law, and then try to cover up obvious abuses.
Our executive director, Trevor Timm, said that with Clayton now confirmed, “it’s more important than ever for Congress to pass a federal shield law like the PRESS Act to protect journalists from these kinds of legal abuses and prevent episodes like this from ever happening again.”
Attacks on radical outlets endanger all journalism
The House Ways and Means Committee last week subpoenaed BreakThrough News, a left-wing outlet with deep ties to the Party for Socialism and Liberation that is highly critical of the United States and Israel, along with two other nonprofits with similar ideologies, The People’s Forum and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Earlier this month, border agents seized phones from Max Blumenthal of the similarly controversial outlet The Grayzone.
There is no question that BreakThrough News and The Grayzone are both well outside the American mainstream, and both have been accused of carrying water for U.S. adversaries. But as Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Chief of Advocacy Seth Stern wrote for The Intercept, that makes it more important to protect their First Amendment rights, not less.
Carr stops pretending license renewals aren’t about speech
When Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr first ordered an early review of licenses held by ABC affiliates, he said it was because of diversity, equity, and inclusion concerns. That the order came right after Trump feigned outrage over a joke by ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel was just a coincidence, he said.
Carr was obviously full of it, and now he’s no longer pretending. After Trump complained about ABC not airing his recent speech about the 2020 election, Carr indicated that ABC’s constitutionally protected decision would factor into the license review.
How a Trump national security memo threatens journalists, sources
The national security presidential memorandum known as NSPM-7 has been widely criticized by civil liberties groups for authorizing the government to investigate individuals and organizations using vague and overbroad labels like “anti-fascism” and “domestic terrorism.” But relatively little attention has been paid to the way the policy could be used against news outlets, journalists, and their confidential sources.
Earlier this month, we held a panel discussion about how NSPM-7 silences free speech and how it could be used to target freedom of the press, featuring Chip Gibbons of Defending Rights & Dissent, Faiza Patel of the Brennan Center, and investigative journalist Daniel Boguslaw.
What we’re reading Protester targeted by DOJ over phone-wiping ‘duress’ passcode FPF Digital Security DigestFederal prosecutors are going after an Atlanta-based protester, allegedly in connection with the use of a “duress” passcode that wiped his phone during a border search. Read about border security risks and what you can do about them.
Judge weighs lawsuit over Asheville Blade reporter arrests Asheville Citizen TimesOfficials in Asheville, North Carolina, should be held accountable for arresting reporters they don’t like for doing their jobs. It is absurd for the city to suggest that it’s illegal to cover newsworthy events happening in plain sight at a public park, let alone that punishing reporters for doing so is a sensible use of prosecutorial discretion.
Californians have a right to know about 911 calls from ICE detention centers CalMattersThe public deserves to know what’s happening inside privately run detention centers. We’re proud to support California’s SB 423, a bill that would give journalists better tools to cover immigration detention.
Pentagon, under Trump, Hegseth, draws tighter curtain around Iran war The HillThe American public, as well as members of the military and their families, “have a fundamental right to see what the costs of the Iran war are,” FPF Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy Lauren Harper told The Hill.
Former FCC chairs and officials call agency’s early review of ABC licenses ‘an assault on free speech disguised as regulatory process’ DeadlineCarr’s censorship continues to draw bipartisan condemnation, with FCC chairs from the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations among those calling out his unconstitutional antics.
Limiting foreign journalist visas could boomerang on American media The Washington PostThe Trump administration’s new rules requiring foreign journalists to reapply for visas every eight months risk “limiting global visibility into what happens here and creating problems for America’s foreign correspondents,” writes the Post’s editorial board.
Trump’s education department leaves mountain of public records requests unaddressed The 74If the Department of Government Efficiency is “stonewalling the inspector general’s office, it’s an extremely safe bet that they’re absolutely ignoring FOIA officers who are asking for information,” Harper said.
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