Freedom of the Press

Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

Rümeysa Öztürk has been facing deportation for 227 days for co-writing an op-ed the government didn’t like, and the government hasn’t stopped targeting journalists for deportation. Read on for news from Illinois, our latest public records lawsuit, and how you can take action to protect journalism.

Enforce ICE restraining orders now

A federal judge in Chicago yesterday entered an order to stop federal immigration officers from targeting journalists and peaceful protesters, affirming journalists’ right to cover protests and their aftermath without being assaulted or arrested.

Judge Sara Ellis entered her ruling — which extended a similar prior order against Immigration and Customs Enforcement — in dramatic fashion, quoting everyone from Chicago journalist and poet Carl Sandburg to the Founding Fathers. But the real question is whether she’ll enforce the order when the feds violate it, as they surely will. After all, they violated the prior order repeatedly and egregiously.

Federal judges can fine and jail people who violate their orders. But they rarely use those powers, especially against the government. That needs to change when state thugs are tearing up the First Amendment on Chicago’s streets. We suspect Sandburg would agree.

Journalist Raven Geary of Unraveled Press summed it up at a press conference after the hearing: “If people think a reporter can’t be this opinionated, let them think that. I know what’s right and what’s wrong. I don’t feel an ounce of shame saying that this is wrong.”

Congratulations to Geary and the rest of the journalists and press organizations in Chicago and Los Angeles that are standing against those wrongs by taking the government to court and winning. Listen to Geary’s remarks here.

Journalists speak out about abductions from Gaza aid flotillas

We partnered with Defending Rights & Dissent to platform three U.S. journalists who were abducted from humanitarian flotillas bound for Gaza and detained by Israel.

They discussed the inaction from their own government in the aftermath of their abduction, shared their experiences while detained, and reflected on what drove them to take this risk while so many reporters are self-censoring.

We’ll have a write-up of the event soon, but it deserves to be seen in full. Watch it here.

FPF takes ICE to court over dangerous secrecy

We filed yet another Freedom of Information Act lawsuit this week — this time to uncover records on ICE’s efforts to curtail congressional access to immigration facilities.

“ICE loves to demand our papers but it seems they don’t like it as much when we demand theirs,” attorney Ginger Quintero-McCall of Free Information Group said.

If you are a FOIA lawyer who is interested in working with us pro bono or for a reduced fee on FOIA litigation, please email lauren@freedom.press.

Read more about our latest lawsuit here.

If Big Tech can’t withstand jawboning, how can individual journalists?

Last week, Sen. Ted Cruz convened yet another congressional hearing on Biden-era “jawboning” of Big Tech companies. The message: Government officials leaning on these multibillion-dollar conglomerates to influence the views they platform was akin to censorship.

Sure, the Biden administration’s conduct is worth scrutinizing and learning from. But if you accept the premise that gigantic tech companies are susceptible to soft pressure from a censorial government, doesn’t it go without saying that so are individual journalists who lack anything close to those resources?

We wrote about the numerous instances of “jawboning” of individual reporters during the current administration that Senate Republicans failed to address at their hearing. Read more here.

Tell lawmakers from both parties to oppose Tim Burke prosecution

Conservatives are outraged at Tucker Carlson for throwing softballs to neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes. But the Trump administration is continuing its predecessor’s prosecution of journalist Tim Burke for exposing Tucker Carlson whitewashing another antisemite — Ye, formerly known as Kanye West.

Lawmakers shouldn’t stand for this hypocrisy, regardless of political party. Tell them to speak up with our action center.

What we’re reading

FBI investigating recent incident involving feds in Evanston, tries to block city from releasing records (Evanston RoundTable). Apparently obstructing transparency at the federal level is no longer enough and the government now wants to meddle with municipal police departments’ responses to public records requests.

To preserve records, Homeland Security now relies on officials to take screenshots (The New York Times). The new policy “drastically increases the likelihood the agency isn’t complying with the Federal Records Act,” FPF’s Lauren Harper told the Times.

When your local reporter needs the same protection as a war correspondent (Poynter). Foreign war correspondents get “hostile environment training, security consultants, trauma counselors and legal teams. … Local newsrooms covering militarized federal operations in their own communities? Sometimes all we have is Google, group chats and each other.”

YouTube quietly erased more than 700 videos documenting Israeli human rights violations (The Intercept). “It is outrageous that YouTube is furthering the Trump administration’s agenda to remove evidence of human rights violations and war crimes from public view,” said Katherine Gallagher of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Plea to televise Charlie Kirk trial renews Senate talk of cameras in courtrooms (Courthouse News Service). It’s past time for cameras in courtrooms nationwide. None of the studies have ever substantiated whatever harms critics have claimed transparency would cause. Hopefully, the Kirk trial will make this a bipartisan issue.

When storytelling is called ‘terrorism’: How my friend and fellow journalist was targeted by ICE (The Barbed Wire). “The government is attempting to lay a foundation for dissenting political beliefs as grounds for terrorism. And people like Ya’akub — non-white [or] non-Christian — have been made its primary examples. Both journalists; like Mario Guevara … and civilians.”

Last week, Sen. Ted Cruz convened yet another congressional hearing on Biden-era “jawboning” of Big Tech companies. The message: Government officials leaning on these multibillion-dollar conglomerates to influence the views they platform was akin to censorship. Officials may not have formally ordered the companies to self-censor, but they didn’t have to – businesspeople know it’s in their economic interests to stay on the administration’s good side.

They’re not entirely wrong. Public officials are entitled to express their opinions about private speech, but it’s a different story when they lead speakers to believe they have no choice but to appease the government. At the same time the Biden administration was making asks of social platforms, the former president and other Democrats (and Republicans) pushed for repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the law that allows social media to exist.

It’s unlikely that the Biden administration intended its rhetoric around Section 230 to intimidate social media platforms into censorship. That said, it’s certainly possible companies made content decisions they otherwise wouldn’t have when requested by a government looking to legislate them out of existence. It’s something worth exploring and learning from.

But if you accept the premise — as I do — that gigantic tech companies with billions in the bank and armies of lawyers are susceptible to soft pressure from a censorial government, doesn’t it go without saying that so are individual journalists who lack anything close to those resources?

If it’s jawboning when Biden officials suggest Facebook take down anti-vaccine posts, isn’t it “jawboning” when a North Carolina GOP official tells ProPublica to kill a story, touting connections to the Trump administration? When the president calls for reporters to be fired for doing basic journalism, like reporting on leaks? When the White House and Pentagon condition access on helping them further official narratives? A good-faith conversation about jawboning can’t just ignore all of that.

Here are some more incidents Cruz and his colleagues have not held hearings about:

• A Department of Homeland Security official publicly accused a Chicago Tribune reporter of “interference” for the act of reporting where immigration enforcement was occurring. Journalism, in the government’s telling, constituted obstruction of justice. That certainly could lead others to tread cautiously when exercising their constitutional right to document law enforcement actions.
• Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard attacked Washington Post reporter Ellen Nakashima by name, suggesting her reporting methods — which is to say, calling government officials — were improper and reflected a media establishment “desperate to sabotage POTUS’s successful agenda.” Might that dissuade reporters from seeking comment from sources, or sources from providing such comment to reporters?
• When a journalist suggested people contact her on the encrypted messaging app Signal, an adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said she should be banned from Pentagon coverage. The Pentagon then attempted to exclude her from Hegseth’s trip to Singapore. Putting aside the irony of Hegseth’s team taking issue with Signal usage, it’s fair to assume journalists are less likely to suggest sources lawfully contact them via secure technologies if doing so leads to government threats and retaliation.
• Bill Essayli, a U.S. attorney in California, publicly called a reporter “a joke, not a journalist” for commenting on law enforcement policies for shooting at moving vehicles. Obviously, remarks from prosecutors carry unique weight and have significant potential to chill speech, particularly when prosecutors make clear that they don’t view a journalist as worthy of the First Amendment’s protections for their profession.

Sources wanting to expose wrongdoing ... will think twice about talking to journalists who are known targets of an out-of-control administration.

There are plenty more examples — and that doesn’t even get into all the targeting of news outlets, from major broadcast networks to community radio stations. They may have more resources than individual reporters, but they’re nowhere near as well positioned to withstand a major spike in legal bills and insurance premiums as big social media firms (who this administration also jawbones to censor constitutionally protected content).

And hovering over all of this is President Donald Trump himself, whose social media feed doubles as an intimidation campaign against reporters. Our Trump Anti-Press Social Media Tracker documents hundreds of posts targeting not only news outlets but individual journalists. It’s documented over 3,500 posts. Unlike Biden-era “jawboning,” threats like these come from the very top — people in a position to actually carry them out. And unlike Biden’s administration, Trump’s track record makes the threat of government retribution real, not hypothetical.

Trump views excessive criticism of him as “probably illegal.” He has made very clear his desire for journalists to be imprisoned, sued for billions, and assaulted for reasons completely untethered to the Constitution, and has surrounded himself with bootlicking stooges eager to carry out his whims. “Chilling” is an understatement for the effect when a sitting president — particularly an authoritarian one — threatens journalists for doing their job.

It’s not only that these journalists don’t have the resources of Meta, Alphabet, and the like. They also have much more to lose. Tech companies might get some bad PR based on how they handle government takedown requests, but it’s unlikely to significantly impact their bottom line, particularly when news content comprises a small fraction of their business.

But journalists don’t just host news content, they create it. Their whole careers depend on their reputations and the willingness of sources to trust them. Sources wanting to expose wrongdoing, who often talk to journalists at great personal risk and try to keep a low profile, will think twice about talking to journalists who are known targets of an out-of-control administration.

Other news outlets might be reluctant to hire someone who has been singled out by the world’s most powerful person and his lackeys. Editors and publishers — already spooked about publishing articles that might draw a SLAPP suit or worse from Trump — will be doubly hesitant when the article is written by someone already on the administration’s public blacklist.

Unlike Biden’s antics, the Trump administration has cut out the middleman by directly targeting the speech and speakers it doesn’t like. And it wields this power against people with a fraction of the resources to fight back. If that’s not jawboning, what is?

Award-winning journalist Cerise Castle has some history with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. In 2021, she chronicled how deputies formed violent gangs within the department. She then turned “A Tradition of Violence,” her 15-part series for Knock LA, into a podcast by the same name.

Perhaps that’s why the department was spooked when Castle submitted a Public Records Act request for names and official ID photographs of all sworn personnel, “excluding those in undercover assignments.” Or maybe the department was merely committed to following its routine practice of delaying and denying records requests.

In any case, the department produced the names of about 8,500 deputies but refused to produce any photographs except of the sheriff and his undersheriffs. They claimed that producing photographs of the deputies would violate their right to privacy and might endanger them in the future, if they ever go undercover.

But the department’s rationale seemed suspect because it also refused to comply with separate requests for headshots of three deputies who have been convicted of serious felonies, fired, and obviously won’t be sent on any future undercover operations for the department.

Castle won her Los Angeles County Superior Court Public Records Act lawsuit in July, and the court ordered the department to release the deputy ID photographs. But now the county is appealing. Its objection to allowing the public to identify law enforcement officers is especially striking when Angelenos and others across the country are outraged by unidentified, masked federal immigration officers abducting their neighbors.

The timing is also particularly odd after the California Legislature just enacted Sen. Scott Wiener’s new law, the No Secret Police Act, barring law enforcement officers operating in the state from masking their faces when working in public, beginning on Jan. 1, 2026.

We spoke to Castle’s lawyer, Susan Seager, to learn more about the case and her client’s opposition to the county’s appeal.

What is the county’s basis for its opposition to producing pictures of law enforcement officers who operate in public and serve the public at the public’s expense?

They claim that no deputy will ever work undercover again because if a deputy’s photo is posted online, and if that deputy works undercover in the future, and if a “criminal” uses facial recognition technology, then that future undercover deputy will be recognized by criminals. But the court rejected this argument because it’s all speculation. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James Chalfant followed decisions by the California Supreme Court, such as Commission on Peace Officer Certification Standards and Training v. Superior Court, which held that ordinary police officers don’t have a right to privacy in their identities and mere “speculation” about safety risks to the general police force is not enough to block disclosure of public records containing individual police officers’ identities.

The top brass at the LA Sheriff’s Department don’t want their deputies to be accountable to the public they serve. The Sheriff’s Department fights all Public Records Act cases. It’s a knee-jerk reaction.

Have similar arguments been rejected by the courts before?

No. As far as I know, this is the first case where a court decided that official police department officer ID photos are disclosable under the Public Records Act. The city of LA and city of Santa Ana both voluntarily gave journalist Ben Camacho official police officer ID photos in response to his Public Records Act legal actions, but they did so before a court ruled on his request. The LAPD photos are now online for public use at Watch the Watchers.

It seems notable that LA County is pursuing this appeal so soon after the city of Los Angeles wasted its time and the taxpayers’ money, and embarrassed itself in the Camacho case. Why is the county repeating the city’s mistakes?

The problem is that both the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the Los Angeles City Council appear to be very hands-off on the litigation against them, including cases involving their sheriff’s department and police department, respectively. The elected officials seem to let their lawyers make all the decisions on litigation strategies, appeals, etc., without asking for any updates or to be involved in any decisions to appeal in cases against the government agencies. LA’s elected officials need to take more control over litigation involving their police officers. They need to stop wasting taxpayer money fighting Public Records Act cases like this, especially after a superior court orders the police agency to release the records.

Many people in Los Angeles and around the country have been outraged in recent months by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents wearing masks, and other efforts by the Trump administration to discourage and even criminalize identifying law enforcement officers. What do you make of LA County litigating the right to keep deputies’ identities secret against that backdrop?

LA deputies probably wish they could wear masks as well. And the top brass at the LA Sheriff’s Department don’t want their deputies to be accountable to the public they serve. The Sheriff’s Department fights all Public Records Act cases. It’s a knee-jerk reaction. And the lawyers hired by the county don’t care about public accountability — they are hired to fight and win.

What’s your theory about why the county is pursuing this? Where is the pressure coming from? Do they seriously believe that this is a meritorious appeal that they have a real chance of winning? Or do they just not care because taxpayers are funding it?

This is typical for the county of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. They fight all Public Records Act cases. In this case, there is extra pressure coming from the labor unions representing the deputies. The deputies’ labor unions actually joined in the case as intervenors, so we are fighting against the county and the labor unions.

If journalists are not able to obtain photos of law enforcement officers through public records requests, what kind of reporting will the public lose out on?

In the age of everyone carrying a smartphone and filming police, and posting images of police on social media or news sites, the public and the press can use those images to identify officers and investigate their past history. There may be instances where deputies use excessive force or threaten members of the public, but the victim doesn’t know the name of the deputy. Photographs help identify officers.

Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

It’s been 220 days since Rümeysa Öztürk was arrested for co-writing an op-ed the government didn’t like. Read on for news from California, Washington D.C. and Maryland as the government shutdown drags on.

Public records are for the public

When Wired made public records-based stories free, subscriptions went up.

When 404 Media published reporting that relied on the Freedom of Information Act without a paywall, new sources came forward.

Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) spoke to Wired Global Editorial Director and FPF board member Katie Drummond and 404 Media co-founder Joseph Cox about why giving the public access to public records reporting is good for journalism — and for business. Read more here.

Shutting down the government doesn’t shut down the First Amendment

It’s absurd and unconstitutional to exclude reporters from immigration hearings unless they get government permission to attend, especially when it’s impossible to obtain permission due to the government shutdown, and particularly when the current government despises First Amendment freedoms and will use any opportunity to evade transparency.

And yet that’s exactly what an immigration court in Maryland did this week. We wrote a detailed letter to the top judge at the courthouse explaining why they need to reverse course, both to comply with the law and for the sake of democracy. The next day, Capital News Service reported that the court had backed down and lifted the ban. Read the letter here.

No secret police in LA

Award-winning journalist Cerise Castle sued Los Angeles County in July and obtained a court order for the department to release the sheriff’s deputy ID photographs.

But now the county is appealing. Its objection to allowing the public to identify law enforcement officers is especially striking when Angelenos and others across the country are outraged by unidentified, masked federal immigration officers abducting their neighbors. It also comes on the heels of the city of Los Angeles embarrassing itself with its failed effort to sue a journalist for publishing officer photographs.

We connected with Castle’s lawyer, Susan Seager, to try to figure out what the department is thinking. Read more here.

Top three questions about the White House ballroom

FPF’s Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy Lauren Harper has lots of questions about the demolition of a section of the White House to construct a ballroom.

She wrote about three of them for our government secrecy site, The Classifieds: (1) Is there a budget? (2) Who are the donors, and what do they get in return? and (3) Where should we look for answers about what’s going on at the East Wing? Read more here.

A retired U.S. colonel has gone public with his concern that the Biden administration’s findings about the 2022 killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by the Israeli military were “soft-pedaled to appease Israel.” There has been “a miscarriage of justice,” he says.

The detention of Sami Hamdi by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement solely for his views while on a speaking tour in the U.S. is a blatant assault on free speech. These are the tactics of the thought police.

“As the press becomes more subservient and less independent, the firsthand knowledge needed to even stage a fight to get our mojo back is a whisper in the ether,” writes Brian Karem. That’s why veteran journalists who know how abnormal this all is need to be extra vocal these days.

It’s no time for gatekeeping. There aren’t enough traditional J-School trained journalists to adequately document every ICE abduction – let alone everything else going on. We appreciate everyone who is exercising their press freedom rights, no matter how they’re categorized.

When Wired published the contents of 911 calls coming from inside Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers, revealing shocking reports of overcrowding and sexual assault, the story wasn’t just harrowing. It was also freely available to anyone who wanted to read it.

And when 404 Media reported that law enforcement agents were tapping into a nationwide network of license plate readers — including one Texas officer who used the system to track a woman who’d self-administered an abortion — it made sure the news story and every record it was based on were unpaywalled.

Wired and 404 Media are two of the news organizations leading the way in removing paywalls for public records-based reporting. Recently, Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) sat down with Katie Drummond, global editorial director of Wired and an FPF board member; Joseph Cox, co-founder of 404 Media; and FPF’s Lauren Harper to discuss why reporting based on public records should be free.

Drummond, Cox, and Harper described how unpaywalling reporting based on records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act or other public records laws not only serves democracy but also strengthens journalism itself.

‘A very valuable public service’

For both Wired and 404 Media, the reasons for removing paywalls for public records-based reporting are self-evident.

“It’s a very valuable public service to make people aware of what tools and tactics are being deployed to monitor and surveil people,” said Drummond, speaking about some of Wired’s public records reporting. “They should know what’s sort of happening that they may not be aware of, and to be able, again, to make that available to our audience without a paywall is important.”

Similarly, Cox described how reporting based on public records can lead to real-world reforms, especially when it’s widely available to the public and lawmakers. For instance, 404 Media’s reporting on Flock Safety, the license plate reader company, didn’t just expose surveillance abuses. It also caused Flock to make “radical changes to its product” and triggered congressional investigations, Cox said.

Additionally, by making the reporting and records about Flock freely available, 404 Media helped other journalists. The free access “created this sort of wave of local media coverage where now local journalists are doing basically the same public records request, but for their own communities or towns or cities,” Cox said.

Free access to public records-based reporting at 404 Media “created this sort of wave of local media coverage where now local journalists are doing basically the same public records request, but for their own communities or towns or cities.”

Flagging new sources for future reporting

Free access to public records-based reporting also builds trust and relationships with readers and sources.

“There’s just something about being able to have a government document,” Cox said. “It’s real. You got it from the government through a FOIA request, or a lawsuit, or whatever, and you can then show that to readers. We don’t want to get in the way of that.”

Making this reporting and the records it’s based on free can also draw the attention of important sources for future reporting. Cox described how his reporting based on FOIA requests sends a signal to readers and sources that he’s interested in particular companies or topics.

Sources reading the free articles realize, Cox said, “‘Oh, this journalist is interested in Flock, in Palantir, or whatever it might be.’ And then, lo and behold, because we make it so easy for potential sources to reach us securely, on Signal or through other methods, we’ll probably end up getting a leak from one of those companies as well.”

Harper, who often writes about her FOIA requests for FPF, shared how publishing FOIA work openly can attract new sources and deepen reporting. “The more obvious I make my FOIA work, the more feedback I get from folks” about what to file future FOIA requests for, she explained.

That kind of transparency fuels better journalism, she said. “It is a virtuous cycle. The more we talk about and advertise FOIA, the better our FOIA requests become as a result.”

The economics of openness

Yet, the public records reporting that Wired and 404 Media have made freely available isn’t free to produce. Both news outlets rely on subscriptions and paywalls to fund their journalism.

As Drummond explained, “The FOIA process can often be labor-intensive, resource-intensive, time-consuming — all of the things that would increase your incentive to put a paywall up on that work,” she said.

But both Wired and 404 Media have found that removing paywalls for public records-based reporting is actually the better decision, financially.

“We made a calculated bet that our audience would show up for us when we did this,” Drummond said. “That bet paid off above and beyond what I could have possibly imagined.”

“That bet paid off above and beyond what I could have possibly imagined.”

After Wired announced it would unpaywall its public records-based stories, Drummond said it saw a “huge increase in subscribers” and received “hundreds of emails from people thanking us for doing it.” Far from hurting the bottom line, she said, “It has been additive to the business rather than taking anything away, from a financial point of view.”

For Cox, the same principle holds true: Transparency drives reader trust, and trust drives support. Every FOIA-based story on 404 Media’s website includes a short note explaining that it’s free but inviting readers to support the outlet’s work through a subscription or one-time donation.

“Look, we’re trying to run a business,” Cox said. “But we’re in it for the journalism. That’s literally why we wake up every single morning, to go write articles and put them on the internet.” He added, “And it does pay off, I think, journalistically, ethically, and businesswise as well.”

‘It’s very hard for me to think of a compelling reason not to do this’

If public records laws like FOIA are tools for public accountability, then journalism that relies on them should be public too. Simply put, “Public records belong to the public,” as Harper said. In a moment when the public’s access to government information is being increasingly curtailed, Wired and 404 Media are proving that openness isn’t just ethical — it’s effective.

Other news outlets should follow their lead. “It is of tremendous value for your audience,” said Drummond. “It’s very hard for me to think of a compelling reason not to do this.”

Cox echoed the sentiment: “There’s a public interest in getting those documents in front of more people. And there is, maybe counterintuitively, but there definitely is, a business benefit to it as well.”

Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

It’s been 213 days since Rümeysa Öztürk was arrested for co-writing an op-ed. Read on for news from Illinois and California, and tips on how to limit exposing your location.

Rights remain under attack by immigration officers

Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) is helping communities in California and Illinois fight back against attacks on the press during the recent immigration crackdowns. Our deputy director of advocacy, Adam Rose, joined the American Constitution Society, the Center for Media and Democracy, and Common Cause for a briefing about federal immigration officers’ recent attacks on the press, as well as efforts to fight back in court in both Chicago, Illinois, and Los Angeles, California. Journalists in both cities were able to obtain court injunctions ordering law enforcement to stop targeting the press. Rose is also the press freedom chair for the Los Angeles Press Club, one of the plaintiffs in the LA court case.

Unfortunately, those orders have not stopped U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s rampage against the First Amendment. Rose cited repeated violations of journalists’ rights during “No Kings” protests in LA this weekend, even after LA’s city council ordered lawyers to withdraw a ridiculous motion seeking to lift the injunction.

And yesterday, the Chicago plaintiffs filed a notice with the court that agents violated the order by assaulting and attempting to seize a phone from a bystander exercising her right to record their operations. Another notice flags video of top Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino tossing a tear gas canister into a crowd as if he’s throwing out a ceremonial first pitch. These are just a couple of several violations they’ve raised with the court.

Watch the panel here.

Help us fight for private prison transparency

ICE’s network of for-profit detention facilities is expanding rapidly under the Trump administration. Even though these private facilities hold human beings in federal custody under federal law, they operate in secret and are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. That needs to change.

Use our action center to tell your member of Congress that FOIA should apply to private facilities. And for more on FOIA — particularly, how to use it during a government shutdown — read the latest issue of our secrecy newsletter, The Classifieds.

Write to your member of Congress here.

Deported journalist speaks out from El Salvador

Earlier this month, the Trump administration deported journalist Mario Guevara following his June arrest while livestreaming a protest. The government proceeded with the deportation despite Guevara’s work permit and even though the baseless charges against him were dropped, arguing that his livestreaming law enforcement presents a “safety threat.”

This week, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a project of FPF, interviewed Guevara from El Salvador. “It’s not the way I want to come back to my country — deported like a criminal,” he told the Tracker’s Briana Erickson. “I was frustrated, but until the last minute, I still had the hope to stay in the United States because I believe in the justice of the country.

“I was the first one, but I don’t think I will be the only one,” he added.

Watch the interview here.

How to limit exposing your location

Not every journalist needs to worry about location tracking — but when it matters, it really matters.

Our digital security team’s latest guide helps you assess when location tracking risks apply to your work — and what steps you can take to mitigate those risks when they do. Read it here.

Upcoming events

Oct. 29: FPF’s Caitlin Vogus will join an online panel of experts to break down how the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission are targeting journalists and the First Amendment, and how to fight back. Register here for the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Future of Speech Online 2025, “Working the Refs” panel on Oct. 29 at 12:10 p.m. EDT.

That same day, join us for a conversation about making public records-based reporting free, featuring Vogus as well as our Chair on Government Secrecy Lauren Harper, in conversation with leadership at Wired and 404 Media, including Wired Global Editorial Director and FPF board member Katie Drummond. The event starts at 2 p.m. EDT; RSVP on Zoom here.

Oct. 30: Join an online discussion on Oct. 30 at 1 p.m. EDT about digital safety and legal rights for journalists reporting on immigration in the U.S., featuring FPF Director of Digital Security Harlo Holmes and several other experts from the U.S. Journalist Assistance Network. Register here.

The Pentagon’s demand that reporters surrender their right to publish news in exchange for access to press conferences is “a classic case of unconstitutional prior restraint,” FPF’s Seth Stern told CJR.

Yes, deleting those texts was a crime, but this reminds us of prosecuting Al Capone for tax evasion. The former police chief has done a lot worse, like illegally raiding the Marion County Record’s newsroom and its publisher’s home, likely resulting in co-owner Joan Meyer’s death.

Carlitos Ricardo Parias, who documented immigration raids, was shot during an altercation with immigration officers and is now in federal custody. FPF’s Rose explained to the Los Angeles Times that the First Amendment protects everyone’s right to record law enforcement, from journalists to cop watchers.

We shouldn’t have to guess what the law is. The Justice Department must release its memo authorizing these deadly strikes.

Censorship is bad for America and bad for business. When companies stifle free expression, customers will take their money elsewhere.

As protesters paint signs for another round of “No Kings” demonstrations this Saturday, journalists are getting ready in their own way: Charging camera batteries, notifying emergency contacts, and rinsing old tear gas off their shatter-resistant goggles.

At similar events since June, well over a hundred journalists have been injured, detained, or arrested by police. Now two cities — Los Angeles, California, and Chicago, Illinois — are expecting their largest protests since federal judges issued multiple rulings exempting the press from general dispersal orders and restricting law enforcement use of “less lethal” munitions.

Those are big wins on paper, but only if you know how to use them.

The law exists in two separate but unequal places: the court and the street. And you’ll never win a philosophical argument on a skirmish line.

Sure, you’re probably right. You’re armed with the First Amendment. But the average police officer is armed with a baton, handcuffs, body armor, tear gas, and at least a couple of guns. They may also be tired, overwhelmed, hungry, and see you standing between them and a bathroom break.

As they’ve been known to say, “You can beat the rap, but you can’t beat the ride.”

It’s no longer “Listen to me,” it’s ideally “Here’s a signed order from your boss.”

Covering a protest, an immigration raid, or an immigration hearing is no place to give up your rights. Instead, you can learn to invoke them more effectively.

The press is one of two professions (alongside religious practitioners) distinguished by its constitutionally guaranteed freedoms. Policing is the opposite, marked by rigid command structure and a sworn duty to enforce very specific codes and regulations.

But cops are supposed to be trained and held accountable by their department. They shouldn’t need reminding of the law they’re supposed to uphold. And it’s not the job of journalists to train them.

As professional communicators, journalists may find it more productive to translate conversations into the language of law enforcement.

For example, in California, it won’t get you very far to tell an officer you’re exempt from dispersal orders thanks to “Senate Bill 98.” You might be talking to a kid fresh out of the police academy or a detective pulled off desk duty to earn overtime. They have no idea what passed the statehouse four years ago. At best, they’re trained to speak in terms of “penal code.” Mentioning “Penal Code 409.7,” the statute established by that bill, might be your better ticket out of handcuffs. (This state law only applies to local law enforcement, not to federal operations like Immigration and Customs Enforcement or other Department of Homeland Security agencies.)

For journalists in the Chicago and Los Angeles areas, recent court rulings, including one for the LA Press Club in which I’m a plaintiff, have made things much clearer. Ideally you don’t need to print out 80 pages of preliminary injunctions. An officer will likely ignore that anyway, figuring it’s up to department lawyers to interpret. Instead, try to print the version of orders their boss(’s boss’s boss) was required to issue. The following list of PDFs are being updated as those materials are released by each agency, so use your judgment and print what might be applicable to your situation.

• Chicago-area temporary restraining order (Northern District of Illinois) (10/17/25)
  • As each DHS subsidiary agency provided their own cover sheet to personnel, it may be useful to print each of the following.
  • Federal Protective Service cover sheet
  • Immigration and Customs Enforcement cover sheet
  • Customs and Border Patrol cover sheet
  • Department of Justice cover sheet
• Los Angeles Police Department’s “Chief’s Notice” to all personnel (7/15/25)
  • This is an earlier version based on an initial TRO. It will be updated with a newer version based on a more recent preliminary injunction, which is even more favorable to press.
• LA-area preliminary injunction (Central District of California) (9/10/25)
  • DHS has not shared details on how this order was distributed. As a longer document, you may wish to only print the cover page along with pages 43 to 45, which contain the injunction itself.

This puts things in law enforcement terms — from the top of their command structure. It’s no longer “Listen to me,” it’s ideally “Here’s a signed order from your boss.”

You want a printed copy, since your phone could run out of battery, be lost, or shatter. And it’s never a good idea to hand your unlocked phone to police. Also, if you need to pull out these orders (or a press pass), state clearly what you’re reaching for before placing your hand in a pocket or bag. Officers don’t love those sorts of unannounced movements.

A piece of paper isn’t much of a shield from a raging officer swinging a baton and screaming, “Leave the area.” But if you can engage with them, you want to ensure the precious few words that they hear will resonate. And it bears repeating: Everyone has a boss.

Protests involve a lot of turnover on the front line, so you may never see the same officer twice. If possible, communicate early and often. Ask to meet a supervisor or public information officer during a calm moment, and get their name so you can ask for them if you have trouble later on.

Unfortunately, even a signed order from the chief isn’t always a “get out of jail free” card. After a temporary restraining order was issued against the LAPD this summer, officers still put several journalists in zip ties during a protest. Two lawyers who had won the TRO showed up with a copy of official paperwork instructing officers to leave press alone. After they handed it to the incident commander, police still drove two photojournalists away in the back of a squad car.

The LAPD later suggested those photographers were ”pretending to be media.” The pair’s credits include The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Business Insider, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and even a cover for Time magazine.

A federal judge later wrote of the LAPD, “The Court expresses no approval for this conduct. To the contrary, the evidence presented is disturbing and, at the very least, shows that Defendants violated the spirit if not the letter of the Court’s initial restraining order.”

Of course, the photojournalists beat the rap. But they didn’t beat the ride.

Attending a protest outside of LA or Chicago? You still have First Amendment rights, even if you don’t have a court order. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has been investigating and documenting serious violations in cities from New York to Portland, Oregon. If you experience or witness law enforcement violating press rights anywhere in the country, please send us tips and any available evidence to tips@pressfreedomtracker.us.

Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

It’s been two weeks since Atlanta journalist Mario Guevara was deported and 207 days since Rümeysa Öztürk was arrested for co-writing an op-ed. Read on for more about this weekend’s planned protests, actions you can take to protect journalists, and events you can catch us at this month.

When the law’s on your side but ICE doesn’t care

As protesters paint signs for another round of “No Kings” demonstrations this Saturday, journalists are getting ready in their own way: charging camera batteries, notifying emergency contacts, and rinsing old tear gas residue off their shatter-resistant goggles.

Two cities — Los Angeles, California, and Chicago, Illinois — are expecting their largest protests since federal judges issued multiple rulings exempting the press from general dispersal orders and restricting law enforcement’s use of “less lethal” munitions.

Those are big wins for journalists, but only if they know how to use them. Our new deputy director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), Adam Rose, wrote about how journalists can prepare for the weekend. Read more here.

Administration ignores flotilla abuses

Three U.S. journalists have been abducted from aid flotillas bound for Gaza and detained by Israel. All three reported experiencing or witnessing abuse and even torture.

Photojournalist Noa Avishag Schnall recalled, “I was hung from the metal shackles on my wrists and ankles and beaten in the stomach, back, face, ear and skull by a group of men and women guards, one of whom sat on my neck and face, blocking my airways … Our cell was awoken with threats of rape.”

Jewish Currents reporter Emily Wilder said she “announced … ‘I’m a journalist, I’m press.’ The woman to my left hissed, ‘We don’t give a fuck,’ and the other dug her nails into my scalp and pulled me by my hair across the port.”

In normal times, this would be a major scandal. We joined Defending Rights & Dissent and others in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio explaining what should be obvious — the U.S. shouldn’t sit silently as its ally assaults its journalists. Read it here.

First rule of Qatari jets? Don’t talk about Qatari jets

We sued the Trump administration for refusing to share its legal rationale for approving the president’s acceptance of a $400 million jet from the Qatari government, despite the Constitution saying he can’t do that. Now the administration wants to strike our complaint, claiming the background discussion of the gifted jet is “impertinent” and “scandalous.”

That’s rich, especially weeks after the president’s frivolous defamation lawsuit against The New York Times got dismissed for rambling on about how he was once on WrestleMania and “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” (he’s since filed an amended complaint).

Read about our response.

Public records expert: ‘We can do better’

If fewer newspapers exist to request public records, does the government become less transparent? That’s the question at the heart of “Dark Deserts,” a new research paper by David Cuillier of the Freedom of Information Project at the Brechner Center for Advancement of the First Amendment and law student Brett Posner-Ferdman.

Cuillier told us about what he and Posner-Ferdman found and what it means for the public’s right to know. Read the interview here.

Standing with student journalists

Last week we told you about the lawsuit filed by The Stanford Daily to stop the Trump administration’s unconstitutional and appalling push to deport foreign students who say or write things it doesn’t like.

This week we joined the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, the First Amendment Coalition, and others in a legal brief in support of that important lawsuit.

Read it here.

Congressional secrecy bill advances

The Senate passed Sens. Ted Cruz and Amy Klobuchar’s bill to protect themselves — but not you — from data broker abuses and otherwise allow federal lawmakers to censor the internet.

FPF’s Caitlin Vogus wrote for The Dallas Morning News about how the bill threatens journalism — for example, by stifling reporting on its co-sponsor vacationing while his constituents endure natural disasters. Read more here.

Tell the House to kill the bill.

Journalists told The Guardian, “the restrictions won’t stop the work, with some even saying they plan to take a more aggressive tack.” Good. The policy is highly unconstitutional, but it’s an opportunity to omit Pentagon lies and spin from reporting.

Rose, who is also press rights chair for the LA Press Club, said that “Instead of holding the department accountable, the city is spending even more money to hire an outside law firm so they can effectively beg a judge for permission to keep assaulting journalists for just doing their job.”

So much for Facebook’s renewed commitment to free speech. And so much for this administration’s condemnation of social media censorship.

A federal court blocked a ridiculous law that banned almost all speech on public college campuses in Texas at night, including student journalism. As we explained in the Houston Chronicle, free speech does not have a curfew.

Upcoming FPF events

Oct. 22: Join FPF’s Adam Rose and others on Oct. 22 at 3 p.m. EDT for an online conversation hosted by the American Constitution Society about the impact of federal law enforcement violence on your First Amendment rights. Register here.

Oct. 24: If you’re in Chicago and fortunate enough to not have to hide from ICE invaders, come to Northwestern for a panel on Oct. 24 at 10 a.m. CT featuring FPF Advocacy Director Seth Stern. We’ll discuss the numerous digital and physical challenges journalists are facing. Register here.

Oct. 29: FPF’s Caitlin Vogus will join an online panel of experts to break down how the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission are targeting journalists and the First Amendment and how to fight back. Register here for the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Future of Speech 2025, “Working the Refs” panel on Oct. 29 at 12:10 p.m. EDT.

That same day, join us for a conversation about making public records-based reporting free, featuring Vogus as well as our Chair on Government Secrecy Lauren Harper, in conversation with leadership at Wired and 404 Media, including Wired global editorial director and FPF board member Katie Drummond. The event starts at 2 p.m. EDT; RSVP on Zoom here.

Oct. 30: Join an online discussion on Oct. 30 at 1 p.m. EDT about digital safety and legal rights for journalists reporting on immigration in the U.S., featuring FPF Director of Digital Security Harlo Holmes and several other experts from the U.S. Journalist Assistance Network. Register here.

If fewer newspapers exist to request public records, does the government become less transparent? That’s the question at the heart of “Dark Deserts,” a new research paper by David Cuillier of the Freedom of Information Project at the Brechner Center for Advancement of the First Amendment and law student Brett Posner-Ferdman.

Cuillier, who’s taught more than 10,000 journalists, students, and citizens how to wrest public records from government agencies, told us about what he and Posner-Ferdman found and what it means for the public’s right to know.

Let’s start with the big finding of “Dark Deserts”: States with fewer local papers and weaker press associations are more likely to break public records laws. Why does that matter for everyday people?

This is incredibly important for all of us because we are reaching the transparency tipping point — where we will lose any effective ability to see what our governments are up to.

We know from research that public record laws directly lead to less corruption, cleaner drinking water, and safer restaurants. According to Stanford economist James Hamilton’s research, for every dollar spent on public records journalism, society benefits $287 in saved lives and more efficient government. Freedom of information ensures concrete benefits for all of us.

Yet, we are losing it very quickly. According to the Department of Justice’s own statistics, if you asked for a record in 2011, you would get it about 38% of the time. Now it’s down to 12%. We see the same downward trends in the states. What happens when it gets to 0%?

The death of transparency will affect all of us in the pocketbook, in the quality of government services we receive, and in the loss of liberties we hold sacred as Americans.

The death of transparency will affect all of us in the pocketbook, in the quality of government services we receive, and in the loss of liberties we hold sacred as Americans.

Surprisingly, you found that having more digital-only media outlets doesn’t result in better public records request compliance. Why do you think that is, and what advice would you give to digital outlets trying to hold government accountable?

It is difficult to know for sure. For one, there aren’t as many data points to effectively measure their effects as well as we would like. For example, the Institute for Nonprofit News membership stands at about 500 so far and there are 3,143 counties in the country. A strong, local, independent digital outlet might have an effect on local compliance with public record laws, but there probably aren’t enough to have an impact on state agencies.

Also, while many are doing great work, I suspect they have less influence at a statewide level than newspapers. A lot of digital-only outlets don’t have the funds to sue for public records. Also, my sense is that government officials don’t take digital-only media outlets as seriously, and that politicians are essentially blowing them off and not considering them “real” journalism. That is too bad, because many are doing better journalism than legacy media.

Digital-only outlets will need to double down on public records. And support organizations like Freedom of the Press Foundation, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, MuckRock, state FOI coalitions, and others can help.

Beyond subscribing to their community’s newspaper or supporting funding for journalism, what can people who care about press freedom and transparency do to encourage state governments to take their public record laws seriously?

Of course, write to your local city council, legislator, governor, and congressional representatives. They listen if enough people speak up. But everyone says that, right? And how many people actually act?

The solutions will take much more work than strongly worded letters. It’s time for other institutions to fill the gap. Nonprofits with an agenda are probably our last hope — American Oversight, Heritage Foundation, Judicial Watch, ACLU, League of Women Voters, etc. A new citizen-driven nonprofit in Jacksonville, “Nassau County DOGE,” has been pushing for public records. Environmental groups and those seeking police reform and rights for transgender Americans are pushing for records. Whatever your passion is, join an organization that will fight for your right to know.

The solutions will take much more work than strongly worded letters. It’s time for other institutions to fill the gap.

Then, we need strong coordinating bodies, such as state freedom of information coalitions, to help direct these energies toward real legislative reform and litigation. One thing I’ve noticed is that all it takes is one or two passionate people in a state to make a huge difference in freedom of information. It really is doable!

What states have the strongest public records law, and what sets them apart? If you had the power to rewrite public records laws, what’s the one thing you’d add or fix right away?

No state is perfect. But most of the studies indicate that the states with the best compliance overall with public record laws tend to be Washington, Idaho, Connecticut, and some others. The most effective changes to public records laws rely on four things.

First, we need mandatory attorney fee-shifting in every state, where agencies are required to cover the attorney fees of people who sue for public records and prevail. In the third of the states that have this, there are attorneys happy to sue on behalf of journalists and others, with the hope they will get paid.

Second, strong financial penalties for noncompliance are critically important. Washington is probably the most transparent state overall, because if an agency breaks the law, is sued, and loses, it can be forced to pay up to $100 per record per day that it dinged the requester around. That can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Third, elimination of search and redaction fees, which are abused terribly. There are some countries where no fees are charged at all, and it works very well. In reality, fees collect very little of the actual cost of administering public record laws — less than 1%-3% according to most studies. Yet, they are wielded by agencies to make people go away, particularly journalists.

Lastly, and probably most importantly, we need alternative enforcement mechanisms in addition to court. Not everyone can afford to hire an attorney and sue. We need independent information commissions in every state to enforce the law and punish bad agencies, as they have in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and in more than 51 nations across the planet.

You’re also a member of the federal Freedom of Information Act Advisory Committee. What’s something you’d fix in the federal FOIA?

So many fixes, so little time.

The FOIA Advisory Committee, since its inception in 2014, has provided 67 recommendations to improve the law and process, yet the most substantive suggestions have mostly been ignored. Amendments every decade or so tweak the law but are insufficient in keeping up with increasing secrecy.

I’ve noticed that in Washington, D.C., there tends to be a culture of exceptionalism, that we are the king of democracy in the world and have the best law on the books. In reality, FOIA’s strength on paper is rated in the bottom half of the 140 nations that have public record laws — 78th, to be exact. That is embarrassing. So many improvements could be made if we swallow our pride and look to other countries for guidance.

FOIA’s strength on paper is rated in the bottom half of the 140 nations that have public record laws — 78th, to be exact. That is embarrassing.

For example, we need an independent agency with the power to enforce the law on behalf of citizens, like we see in dozens of other countries. We need stiff penalties — even firing and jail time — for intentional noncompliance of FOIA, as they have in Ghana, Barbuda, and Finland. We need direct funding of FOIA offices by Congress to carry out the FOIA mission, particularly now as agencies are gutting staff. We need better technology to search for records and redact. We need FOIA to be applied to all branches of government, and to private corporations that conduct taxpayer-funded business on behalf of the government, as in South Africa, Armenia, and Colombia.

A lot of people consider these ideas extreme, yet they are common in other countries. We can do better.

Press freedom wins in Chicago court, but fight continues

Chicago journalists won a big First Amendment victory Oct. 9, when a federal court temporarily curbed federal officers’ abuses at protests. But the fight isn’t over.

The order still allows officers to potentially remove journalists along with protesters, a serious threat to press freedom that must be fixed.

We also can’t rely on courts alone. Local officials must step up, especially to protect independent journalists, who’ve been the main targets of these violations.

That’s why Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) led a coalition letter urging the Broadview, Illinois, Police Department and Illinois State Police to investigate attacks on independent journalists covering protests.

Read more about the order here.

Strengthen presidential library transparency

A segment on “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” about corruption and secrecy surrounding presidential libraries cited FPF’s Lauren Harper, who has been warning about Trump’s purported library since before his inauguration.

Oliver is right. Secret donations to presidential libraries enable bribery, while public access to presidential records is at an all-time low. Use our action center tool to tell Congress to close the secrecy loopholes and increase transparency.

Write to your lawmakers here.

Army lawyer thinks journalists are stenographers

The Pentagon attempted to walk back its policy restricting reporters from publishing news the government doesn’t authorize. But the revised policy is still a nonstarter to which no journalist should agree.

Meanwhile, a nominee for general counsel for the Department of the Army, Charles L. Young III, effectively endorsed the unconstitutional restrictions during a Senate hearing this week, opining that the First Amendment authorizes the government to punish journalists for publishing information that it did not approve for public release.

That’s disqualifying. A journalist’s job isn’t to keep the government’s secrets. It’s to report news the government does not want reported.

Tell Congress to reject Young’s nomination.

State Department must stand up for journalists detained on flotillas

Israel continues to hold American journalists captured in international waters aboard aid flotillas. The latest are Jewish Currents reporter Emily Wilder and Drop Site News reporter Noa Avishag Schnall. Previously, Israel detained Drop Site News reporter Alex Colston, who has said he and other detainees were abused and denied medical care.

But the State Department is doing little if anything about these detainments, presumably because the journalists in question don’t agree with the administration’s policies. Lawmakers need to raise their voices and pressure the administration to do more.

Write to your member of Congress here.

Student journalists fight Trump’s anti-speech deportations

It’s not every day a student newspaper takes on the federal government. But that’s exactly what The Stanford Daily is doing.

The Daily sued Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in August over the Trump administration’s push to deport foreign students for exercising free speech, like writing op-eds and attending protests.

We spoke at the start of Stanford University’s fall term with Editor-in-Chief Greta Reich about why the Daily is fighting back. Read more here.

It’s time to end the SEC gag rule

We’ve written before about the unconstitutionality of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s “gag rule,” which bars those who settle with the SEC from talking to reporters, to protect the SEC’s reputation.

We shouldn’t need to say this, but the government doesn’t get to censor its critics to make itself look good. Last week, we filed a legal brief explaining to a federal appellate court why the ridiculous rule must be struck down. Read the brief here.

What we’re reading

ICE goes masked for a single reason (The New York Times). FPF’s Adam Rose tells the Times that immigration officers “seem to feel they can just willy-nilly shoot tear gas canisters at people and shoot them with foam rounds that can permanently maim people.”

The New York Times wins right to obtain info Musk wanted kept private (The New Republic). A court ruled that the public’s interest in knowing if Elon Musk has a security clearance and access to classified information outweighs any potential privacy interests.

Press Freedom Partnership newsletter (The Washington Post). “Journalists who are considering covering the story are going to think twice about it and stay home because they don’t want to be jailed and shot. It’s a major problem,” we told the Post about law enforcement targeting journalists covering anti-deportation protests in and around Chicago.

Journalism has become more challenging, for reporters and sources (Sentient). Sources have backed out of news stories — even seemingly uncontroversial ones — out of fear of being targeted by the Trump administration.

MAGA slams ‘fake news’ but embraces ‘The Benny Show’s’ misinformation (Straight Arrow News). “Plenty of past presidents would have loved to exclude serious journalists … and bring in the Benny Johnsons of their time. They just were under the impression that the public wouldn’t tolerate that,” we told Straight Arrow News. Now it’s up to the public to prove those past presidents right and the current one wrong.

A federal judge just reminded the government that the First Amendment still applies in Chicago.

On Oct. 9, Chicago journalists and protesters scored a major legal win, when Judge Sara Ellis issued a temporary restraining order reigning in federal officers’ repeated First Amendment violations at protests.

It’s a big victory for press freedom. The order prohibits arrests and use of physical force against journalists and restricts the use of dangerous crowd-control munitions. It defines “journalists” broadly, in a way that includes independent, freelance, and student reporters. It also enhances transparency by requiring federal officers to wear “visible identification,” like a unique serial number.

This order and similar rulings in Los Angeles last month are powerful reminders that journalists working together can vindicate their rights in the courts. They also highlight the crucial role that independent journalists and smaller news organizations play in defending press freedom. In both Chicago and Los Angeles, it’s been freelancers, community news outlets, local press clubs, and unions who’ve taken the lead, teaming up with protesters, legal observers, and clergy to take the government to court.

Unconstitutional dispersals of press still possible

But the fight isn’t over. The Chicago order unfortunately leaves open the possibility that, at least in some instances, federal officers may order journalists to leave areas where protests are being broken up or officers are attacking protesters.

Although the order prohibits dispersal of journalists from protests as a general matter, it also states that officers can “order” journalists to “change location to avoid disrupting law enforcement,” as long as they have “an objectively reasonable time to comply and an objectively reasonable opportunity to report and observe.” (In contrast, a similar order in Los Angeles states only that federal officers may “ask” journalists to change location.)

Federal officers are likely to use this as a loophole to continue to violently remove the press from protests, on the pretext that it’s necessary to avoid disruption. The order’s requirement that press must be able to continue to report and observe is also too lax; far better would have been an order specifically requiring that press be able to continue to see and hear the protest and law enforcement response.

Even when police can disperse protesters who break the law, the First Amendment doesn’t allow them to disperse journalists, too.

The weaker language around dispersals of journalists in the court’s order is a shame, especially for the public’s right to know. In recent days, Chicago journalists have been reporting about the violent tactics used by federal agents to disperse protests. If journalists can be ordered to leave alongside protesters, they can’t observe what’s happening or capture the images they need to keep the public informed.

It also makes dispersals more dangerous for protesters. As Unraveled Press noted, “Again and again, we’ve seen cops are most likely to get more violent with demonstrators when out of public view.” (Unraveled Press co-founder Raven Geary is a plaintiff in the Chicago lawsuit.) And while the court’s order prohibits dispersal orders aimed at peaceful protesters, if federal officers violate that order and also disperse the press to avoid a “disruption,” it will be much harder for the public to learn about it.

By declining to simply prohibit federal officers from dispersing the press, except when necessary to serve an essential government need such as public safety, the court also got the law wrong. Even when police can disperse protesters who break the law, the First Amendment doesn’t allow them to disperse journalists, too.

We’re not the only ones who say so. Just last year, the Department of Justice issued guidance stating as much:

“In the case of mass demonstrations, there may be situations—such as dispersal orders or curfews—where the police may reasonably limit public access. In these circumstances, to ensure that these limitations are narrowly tailored, the police may need to exempt reporters from these restrictions. …”

The DOJ also said so in a previous report, reprimanding the Minneapolis Police Department for its suppression of protesters and the press following George Floyd’s murder:

“The First Amendment requires that any restrictions on when, where, and how reporters gather information ‘leave open ample alternative channels’ for gathering the news. Blanket enforcement of dispersal orders and curfews against press violates this principle because they foreclose the press from reporting about what happens after the dispersal or curfew is issued, including how police enforce those orders.”

And in an important decision from 2020, the federal court of appeals in the 9th Circuit also disapproved of blanket dispersal orders being enforced against the press. That case arose from very similar circumstances to those today: federal authorities abusing the First Amendment while policing federal property during Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, Oregon.

In the 2020 case, the 9th Circuit affirmed a legal order that exempted journalists from general dispersal orders issued by the federal government. Journalists, it wrote, “cannot be punished for the violent acts of others.”

These authorities make it clear: Journalists cannot be ordered to move simply because it would be more convenient for officers. Journalists can only be dispersed if it’s essential to a compelling government interest, and only if they continue to have another vantage point from which they can see and hear what’s going on in order to report.

It’s frustrating that the court’s order leaves the door open for the government to evade this well-established principle. But the fight isn’t over. The court’s temporary restraining order is just a first step. When it issues a more permanent ruling, it will have another opportunity to get the prohibition on dispersing the press right.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Press freedom advocates were pleasantly surprised when police in Broadview, Illinois, announced plans to investigate federal immigration officers’ shooting of a local CBS News journalist with pepper balls, and when the Illinois State Police offered help.

But the same advocates were alarmed by subsequent reports of local police assisting federal agents rather than reining them in. They also questioned why widely reported attacks on independent journalists — who have made up a significant majority of those victimized by federal officers while covering the protests — were not being similarly investigated.

Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) led a letter demanding answers today, signed by over 20 local and national press freedom and civil liberties groups that came together to demand protection and justice for independent journalists risking their safety to inform the public.

“ICE’s violent attacks on journalists and others exercising their First Amendment rights, in Broadview and nationwide, should all be thoroughly investigated by the local authorities whose states and municipalities ICE has invaded. Any local law enforcement presence should be solely focused on mitigating the harm ICE is causing to our neighborhoods, our free press, and our Constitution, not on enabling more of it,” said Seth Stern, director of advocacy at FPF.

“The violence and unlawful detainment of members of the press should concern us all. As demonstrations escalate, it’s imperative that authorities allow journalists to do their jobs of documenting what we are seeing on the ground. No one should have their First Amendment rights violated, especially journalists,” said Brandon Pope, president of NABJ-Chicago.

“The Chicago Journalists Association stands with journalists everywhere who are working to keep their communities informed,” the CJA board of directors said. “They should be free to exercise their First Amendment right to freedom of the press without intimidation, whether they’re fully employed by a news organization or practicing independently.”

You can read the letter here or below.

Please contact us if you would like further comment.

Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

After over 100 days in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, Mario Guevara was deported today. Read on for more about this and other press freedom abuses, and take a minute to tell your lawmakers to stand up for journalists victimized by ICE.

ICE is on a violent rampage against the press

Federal immigration officers reportedly promised a “shitshow” last weekend in response to criticism from the mayor of Broadview, Illinois, who didn’t appreciate her city being invaded. They delivered, and journalists were well represented among their victims.

One journalist, Steve Held, was arrested. Others, including Held’s reporting partner at Unraveled Press, Raven Geary, were shot in the face with pepper ball rounds. According to lawyers on the scene, the protests the reporters were covering were peaceful and uneventful until ICE officers decided to unleash chaos.

A few days later at an immigration court in New York City, where ICE agents have been trying to intimidate journalists for months, agents assaulted at least three journalists, one of whom couldn’t get up and had to be hospitalized. You can read what we told Chicago’s The Triibe about the Broadview attacks and New York’s amNY about the New York ones.

More importantly, you can tell your lawmakers to speak out against ICE’s abuses using our new, easy-to-use action center. Take action here.

Journalist Mario Guevara deported to El Salvador

After months of hard-fought battles in both the court of law and the court of public opinion, the Trump administration deported journalist Mario Guevara today. This case wasn’t about immigration paperwork — Guevara had a work permit, and the administration argued in court that Guevara’s reporting on protests posed a national security risk.

“The only thing that journalists like Guevara threaten is the government’s chokehold on information it doesn’t want the public to know. That’s why he’s being deported and why federal agents are assaulting and arresting journalists around the country,” FPF’s Seth Stern said after Guevara’s family announced his deportation.

Read the statement here.

Guilty of journalism in Kentucky

Student journalist Lucas Griffith was convicted of one count of failure to disperse and fined $50 plus court costs after a jury trial on Thursday.

That’s unconstitutional — even the U.S. Department of Justice recognizes journalists’ right to cover how law enforcement disperses protesters.

But it also shows what a giant waste of taxpayer funds it is to prosecute journalists for doing their jobs. Before the trial, we led a coalition letter from press freedom advocates and journalism professors objecting to the charges. Read it here.

FPF and 404 Media sue DHS

FPF and 404 Media filed a lawsuit against multiple parts of the U.S. government, including the Department of Homeland Security, demanding they hand over a copy of an agreement that shares the personal data of nearly 80 million Medicaid patients with ICE.

It’s just one of several recent lawsuits we’ve filed under the Freedom of Information Act. We also surpassed 200 FOIAs filed in 2025 this week. Subscribe to The Classifieds newsletter for more on our FOIA work.

Read more from 404 Media.

FCC censorship moves from prime time to prison

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr has taken a lot of heat for his “mafioso”-style extortion of ABC over Jimmy Kimmel’s show. But his latest censorship effort is even more dangerous. It could strip those inside America’s most secretive institutions — its prisons — of a tool that has proved extremely effective in exposing abuses.

We partnered with The Intercept to publish incarcerated journalist and FPF columnist Jeremy Busby’s response to the FCC’s efforts to allow prisons to “jam” cell phones. Busby used a contraband phone to expose and force reform of horrific conditions in Texas prisons during the pandemic. Read his article here.

Photography is not a hate crime

The arrest of Alexa Wilkinson on hate crime charges for photographing vandalism at The New York Times building has prompted hair splitting about whether they’re a journalist. It’s giving us flashbacks to the pointless obsession over whether Julian Assange was a journalist, and not whether his prosecution endangered press freedom.

Stern explains that regardless of how we categorize Wilkinson’s work, the charges set dangerous precedents that threaten the constitutional protections journalists depend on to do their jobs. Read more here.

FPF welcomes Adam Rose to bolster local advocacy

FPF is excited to welcome Adam Rose as the new deputy director of our advocacy team. Adam will primarily focus on protecting press freedom at the local level, where we have seen a sharp increase in arrests and assaults of journalists all around the country — many of which have not made national headlines.

Adam comes to FPF after serving as the chief operating officer of Starling Lab for Data Integrity and as the press rights chair of the Los Angeles Press Club, where he has been a tireless advocate for the press freedom rights of journalists in the LA area. He successfully lobbied for a California law that prohibits police from arresting or intentionally interfering with journalists as they cover protests. Most recently, as a plaintiff in multiple press freedom-related lawsuits, his efforts have resulted in landmark federal court orders against both the Department of Homeland Security and Los Angeles Police Department for violating the rights of the press. Read more here.

“This decision does real damage to bedrock principles of press freedom, and we urge the Court of Appeals to re-hear this case with a full panel of judges,” FPF’s Trevor Timm said.

“That somebody might use the app to break the law doesn’t mean the app can be banned,” Stern told BBC. After the interview, news broke that the administration successfully pressured Apple to pull the app.

This dismissal is nonsense. FPF’s Caitlin Vogus explained why in the Salt Lake Tribune earlier this year.

A U.S. journalist was on board. The U.S. Department of State should be all over this and it should be headline news. Neither is likely, because the government considers critics of Israel terrorists and the media often shuns reporters who oppose slaughtering their Palestinian colleagues.

The arrest of Alexa Wilkinson on felony hate crime charges for photographing vandalism at the New York Times building has prompted hairsplitting about whether they’re a journalist. The New York Times explained that Wilkinson’s “lawyers described them as a journalist, but did not name any publications for which Mx. Wilkinson works.”

Wilkinson certainly has a track record as a journalist. Whether the content they were charged for is journalism or PR is, I suppose, up for debate. But should we even bother debating it? Regardless of how we categorize Wilkinson’s work, the charges set dangerous precedents that threaten the constitutional protections journalists depend on to do their jobs.

As we all learned — or should have learned — from the Julian Assange prosecution, obsessing over whether a particular defendant meets someone’s arbitrary definition of journalist is a waste of time. What that case left us with at the end of the day is a Trump administration armed with a bipartisan consensus that routine journalistic acts, like talking to sources, obtaining government secrets, and publishing them, can be prosecuted as a felony under the Espionage Act. Those who change their tune when the next defendant is someone they like better than Assange will be easily discredited by their hypocrisy.

The same dangers apply when Wilkinson’s photography is treated as a hate crime. Wilkinson’s case stems from a July protest in which activists doused the Times headquarters in red paint and spray-painted “NYT lies, Gaza dies” on its windows. In addition to charging the vandals, New York prosecutors charged Wilkinson, who photographed the scene, with aggravated harassment as a hate crime.

New York authorities should be combating these cynical attempts to use antisemitism to justify authoritarianism. Instead, they’re fueling the trend.

But there was no hate crime. Vandalizing a building to protest perceived pro-Israel bias in news coverage is a political statement, not an antisemitic one. The vandalism may well be illegal, and we condemn it, as news outlets large and small are under increased threat in this charged political environment. We even documented the vandalism itself in our U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

But labeling actions that criticize a newspaper’s editorial decisions as a hate crime conflates political views with bigotry. Many journalists object to Israel’s slaughter of their peers in Gaza — and the U.S. media’s relative silence about it — for reasons having nothing to do with anyone’s religion. And many Jews themselves oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza and object to coverage they view as excusing or normalizing Israel’s conduct.

I’m one of those Jews, and I think what’s antisemitic is to assume that we monolithically share the politics of Benjamin Netanyahu and his ilk, who I consider the worst thing to happen to Judaism since the 1940s. As the saying goes, one day everyone will have been against this. When that time comes, efforts to conflate anti-Israel or anti-genocide views with antisemitism will leave Jews holding the bag for Israel’s reprehensible actions, America’s role in supporting them, and whatever blowback follows. That’s when the real antisemitism will start.

New York authorities should be combating these cynical attempts to use antisemitism to justify authoritarianism. Instead, they’re fueling the trend. Wilkinson’s case, in a blue state, legitimizes the Trump administration’s un-American actions, like its efforts to deport Mahmoud Khalil over his criticisms of Israel and Rümeysa Öztürk for co-writing an op-ed arguing for boycotts of Israeli products. The administration baselessly argues that their constitutionally protected speech constitutes support for Hamas and threatens national security. And several Republican attorneys general have floated the idea that reporting critical of Israel could be punished as support for terrorism. Wilkinson’s case only gives cover to those advancing these absurd arguments.

Israel showed us exactly where equating speech with violence leads. Last month, Israel killed 31 journalists in airstrikes on newspaper offices in Yemen — the deadliest single attack on the press in 16 years, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Israel has justified the strikes by characterizing the targeted outlets as publishing “terrorist” propaganda.

Should we debate whether those massacred in Yemen (or Gaza) followed the Associated Press Stylebook or strictly adhered to journalistic codes of ethics? Or should we just acknowledge that militaries shouldn’t blow people to bits over what they say and write, regardless of whether it’s bad journalism or even propaganda?

Should we debate whether those massacred in Yemen (or Gaza)...adhered to journalistic codes of ethics? Or should we just acknowledge that militaries shouldn’t blow people to bits over what they write?

Even setting aside the hate crime charge, Wilkinson’s case has broader implications for the press that don’t hinge on whether they’re a card-carrying journalist. The complaint against Wilkinson reportedly emphasizes not just the photographs they took but also social media posts criticizing Times staff and alleged foreknowledge of the vandalism. This suggests prosecutors view Wilkinson as complicit in alleged crimes because of proximity or sympathy to those who committed them and awareness of their plans.

But objectivity is not a precondition for constitutional protection. It’s a relatively recently developed journalistic norm — with its share of critics — that would have been seen as ridiculous when the First Amendment was written.

As for embedding and foreknowledge, journalists routinely embed with groups whose members commit illegal acts. For example, the Israeli army, which, according to the United Nations, is committing genocide. Domestically, police reporters ride along with officers who may use excessive force. Investigative journalists cultivate sources involved in criminal activity. If foreknowledge of illegal acts or presence when they occur makes one legally complicit, journalism as we know it becomes impossible.

And for those concerned about journalistic ethics and objectivity, what impact do you think it’ll have if reporters are allowed to embed with government-approved lawbreakers, like soldiers and police, but not dissidents? Will that result in “fair and balanced” coverage?

Your opinion about Wilkinson’s work won’t change the trajectory of our democracy. But prosecutors in America’s biggest city validating the Trump administration’s criminalization of dissent very well might. Every journalist — and everyone who depends on journalism to hold power to account — should be alarmed.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Atlanta-area journalist Mario Guevara’s family announced today that he will be deported to El Salvador tomorrow, after spending more than 100 days in detention.

Guevara was initially arrested on June 14 while reporting on a “No Kings” protest near Atlanta. Although the charges against him were dropped, the government argued during deportation proceedings that his filming of law enforcement activities — a constitutionally protected activity — created a threat to public safety.

The following statement can be attributed to Seth Stern, director of advocacy of Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF):

“Mario Guevara was ripped from his family and community because the Trump administration punishes journalists to protect its own power.

“The only thing that journalists like Guevara threaten is the government’s chokehold on information it doesn’t want the public to know. That’s why he’s being deported and why federal agents are assaulting and arresting journalists around the country.

“The full impact on our freedom of speech may never be known. But what is certain is that Guevara’s deportation sends a chilling message to other journalists: Tell the truth, and the state will come for you.

“This is unconstitutional, un-American, and wrong. It’s an assault on the First Amendment, and it won’t stop until we all fight back by speaking out.”

Before today’s news, more than 100 writers, journalists, and scholars signed a letter calling for his immediate release. For more about Guevara’s case, visit https://freedomformario.com/.

Please contact us if you would like further comment.

It’s not every day a student newspaper takes on the federal government. But that’s exactly what The Stanford Daily is doing.

Backed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the Daily sued Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in August over the Trump administration’s push to deport foreign students for exercising free speech, like writing op-eds and attending protests. The suit argues the administration’s actions violate the First Amendment by retaliating against foreign students for protected speech and chill press freedom by discouraging them from speaking to and writing for the Daily.

We spoke at the start of Stanford University’s fall term with Greta Reich, editor-in-chief of the Daily and president of Stanford Daily Publishing Corp., which operates the paper, about why the Daily is fighting back, even as many corporate media outlets stay silent or capitulate.

Why did The Stanford Daily decide to take this issue to court?

We decided to take this issue to court because we believe legal action would be best for the Daily. Our mission as an independent student paper is to represent the voices of the Stanford community. We cannot fulfill this mission to the fullest extent when a significant portion of students on our campus and in our newsroom are afraid to speak up. The decision ultimately came down to whether or not we felt we could handle the potential negative ramifications of a public suit against the government in order to stay true to our mission. We decided that we could, and we’re hoping for the best outcome.

What happens to your reporting when international students are afraid to talk to your reporters, or when staff quit or avoid covering certain stories because they’re worried about government retaliation?

As we said in our letter from the editors on the lawsuit, fear of government retaliation directly impacts the quality of the Daily’s work.

With every resignation, declined assignment, and refusal to speak on the record, we actively miss out on covering an entire group of students’ voices — as well as the many events and stories on campus that benefit from an international student’s perspective. We are simply not able to conduct our business when speech is chilled like this.

Journalism, and especially student journalism, depends on members of a community not only being able to speak on the record but actively wanting to, at least at times. When an entire subsection of the student population doesn’t feel comfortable speaking with or writing for the Daily, we can’t know what stories are being lost.

When an entire subsection of the student population doesn’t feel comfortable speaking with or writing for the Daily, we can’t know what stories are being lost.

How have people on campus responded to the lawsuit so far?

We only returned to campus this week, so I don’t think I’ve seen every reaction yet, but so far the biggest response has been curiosity. Many of my peers, both in and outside of the Daily, have questions about how the lawsuit is going.

In speaking more in depth with some students throughout the summer and hearing feedback on various social platforms, I know there is a somewhat mixed reaction, though I think it skews positive. Some students, understandably, are concerned about the attention the suit will draw to Stanford as a university. Others have expressed excitement about action being taken to protect First Amendment rights.

I hope that as the suit progresses, students, alumni, faculty, and community members will feel comfortable sharing any opinion with us — we want to hear what people have to say!

How does it feel to stand up for the First Amendment as student journalists when some in corporate media are utterly failing to do so?

It feels great! As student journalists, we definitely face a different set of obstacles and constraints than those in corporate media do. I think that, in a way, these different constraints give us the freedom to take actions like these (though it would be exciting to see more publications taking action too). I am incredibly grateful for all of the support I’ve received from professional journalists and mentors in corporate media, who have reached out with kind words for the Daily. It is not taken for granted one bit.

What outcome are you hoping for, both in terms of the law, but also inspiring student journalists or impacting the national conversation about press freedom?

In terms of the law, we are obviously hoping for the lawsuit to create a real change in how noncitizens are treated with respect to the First Amendment. Whether working for or speaking to our newspaper, no one should fear deportation for what they have to say. In any scenario, I hope those who hear about this lawsuit consider what it means to have a free press and why fear tactics like those the government is currently using have such an impact on it. A central tenet of my education at Stanford has been to form and express my thoughts and opinions with agility. The ability to state these thoughts and opinions publicly is not only being threatened but actively taken away.

And to other student journalists: I am constantly inspired by you and your work, and I hope you are getting through this year with support and engagement from your staff and readers.

When ABC suspended “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” last week following a shakedown from the Trump administration, celebrities, free speech advocates, and ordinary Americans voiced their outrage. They were right to sound the alarm — and it (mostly) worked. Kimmel’s back on the air.

But where is that same outrage against the government’s effort to deport Mario Guevara, an Atlanta-area journalist with a work visa who has lawfully resided in the U.S. for 20-plus years? His only “offense” is informing the public of protests against the government.

This week, a final removal order was issued against Guevara, who was arrested (with the baseless criminal charges since dropped) while livestreaming a July “No Kings” protest in Georgia. He might not have a late-night comedy show, but his right to report news is every bit as important as Kimmel’s right to tell jokes.

The stakes in Guevara’s case — both for him and for the country — are even higher than in the Kimmel fiasco that has dominated headlines. Guevara could be deported at any moment, likely to his birthplace, El Salvador, which he fled decades ago to escape political persecution.

Despite the extremely serious constitutional implications of Kimmel’s case, his worst-case scenario was moving from prime time to a podcast. There is no telling what fate might await Guevara if he’s thrown out of the country.

And if that happens, the chilling effect on journalists — particularly noncitizen ones, even those like Guevara with legal status — will be impossible to measure. After all, we only know what news we hear. We don’t know what news we don’t hear because journalists didn’t report it out of fear for their safety or freedom.

Kimmel‘s worst-case scenario was moving from prime time to a podcast. There is no telling what fate might await Guevara.

Kimmel’s professional peers — famous comedians and other celebrities — might feel relieved that Kimmel ultimately got his show back. But most journalists (or comedians, for that matter) aren’t famous and don’t have a Rolodex of Hollywood A-listers ready to come to their defense. Kimmel’s win offers them little comfort.

Independent journalists like Guevara also don’t have money for lawyers, lobbyists, or PR firms to make their case to judges, politicians, or the public (although fortunately, organizations like the ACLU, Free Press, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and others have stepped up).

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr tried to manufacture plausible deniability in Kimmel’s case, arguing that it wasn’t his public ultimatum but pressure from local audiences that led ABC and its affiliates to pull Kimmel. That’s nonsense, but in Guevara’s case — much like the case against Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University student facing removal for co-writing an op-ed critical of Israel — the government is hardly attempting to hide its agenda.

The federal government seeks to deport Guevara — despite his work visa and despite local prosecutors dropping their case against him for livestreaming in public — because, to them, his reporting makes him an “undesirable.” How did journalism, the only career protected by the Constitution, become a disfavored profession in America?

Guevara’s reporting often focused on immigration enforcement abuses. That earns him no friends in a government that considers U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to be secret police. From seeking to punish social media users who identify ICE agents to investigating radio stations that report on ICE raids to threatening whistleblowers who undermine the official narrative, the administration has made every effort to intimidate those who speak the truth about its immigration policy.

The secrecy is by no means limited to ICE — while Kimmel’s show was in limbo and Guevara wrote letters from his cramped jail cell, the Pentagon announced it would force reporters to pledge to only report authorized information.

What this administration cannot seem to comprehend is that the First Amendment exists for the sole purpose of protecting the right to publish information the government does not want published. There would be no need for a constitutional right to publish what the government wants. Everyone loves free speech when the speaker is on their side.

Guevara is exactly who the constitution was intended to protect — and his retaliatory deportation is exactly the kind of authoritarian censorship it was intended to prevent.

Kimmel will be all right with or without ABC, and with or without you. That doesn’t mean not to protest efforts to censor him — the FCC’s antics are unconstitutional, un-American, and fully deserving of contempt. Carr should be fired and disbarred, and the corporations that caved to him should be ashamed.

But free speech is not only for celebrities. The real battles for our rights are not fought in television studios and theme parks but at protests and in citizen journalists’ home newsrooms. And these days, in detention centers and immigration courts.

Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

It’s now been over 100 days since journalist Mario Guevara has been imprisoned for covering a protest, and Rümeysa Öztürk has faced deportation for nearly 200 days over an op-ed the government didn’t like. Read on for why cases like these deserve as much outrage as the Federal Communications Commission’s latest attempt at silencing free speech.

Journalist facing deportation deserves same energy as Kimmel

When ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! last week following a shakedown from the Trump administration, celebrities, free speech advocates, and ordinary Americans voiced their outrage. They were right to sound the alarm — and it (mostly) worked. Kimmel’s back on the air.

But where is that same outrage against the government’s effort to deport Mario Guevara, an Atlanta-area journalist who has lawfully resided in the U.S. for 20-plus years? His only “offense” is informing the public of protests against the government, but he faces imminent deportation.

Speaking of Kimmel, our advocacy director, Seth Stern, went on the “Legal AF” podcast on the MeidasTouch network to talk about our supplement to our July attorney disciplinary complaint against FCC Chair Brendan Carr. Read more about Guevara’s case here.

How noncitizen journalists can prepare for ICE

The immediate priority is getting Guevara’s case dropped, but we also don’t want there to be any more baseless deportation cases against journalists. Many newsrooms — not to mention freelancers — have little experience dealing with immigration authorities, though. Luckily, we know people who do.

We hosted a panel discussion featuring immigration lawyers, civil rights advocates, and journalists to talk about what to do when a journalist is detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement — and what must happen before that day ever comes. Read about it and watch it here.

Pentagon seeks to control the press

The Pentagon faced bipartisan backlash for its ridiculous policy requiring journalists to agree not to obtain or report “unauthorized” information. We called them out in The New York Times, CNN, The Intercept, and elsewhere. Stern also discussed the disturbing move on NPR’s Los Angeles affiliate, KCRW, and FPF’s Lauren Harper discussed this and other threats to press freedom on NPR’s 1A.

First, President Donald Trump tried to downplay the policy. Now, in a letter responding to an inquiry from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, officials are trying to walk it back. Unfortunately, the response offers little reassurance that the Pentagon’s intentions are anything but censorial, and doubles down on restricting routine constitutionally protected newsgathering. Read more here.

Drop charges against Cincinnati journalists

Jury trials of journalists arrested while reporting news are exceedingly rare in the United States, but the next two are coming next week unless prosecutors come to their senses.

Journalists Madeline Fening and Lucas Griffith, both of whom were arrested while covering a protest on July 17 for Cincinnati-based CityBeat, are set to be tried Sept. 30 and Oct. 2, respectively. In an unfortunate irony, the protest was in opposition to the recently dropped immigration case against Ayman Soliman, who himself fled Egypt to escape persecution for his journalism. We led a letter to prosecutors from rights organizations and local journalism professors urging them to drop the baseless charges. Read more here.

Proposed ‘safety’ bill would undermine accountability for lawmakers

FPF’s Caitlin Vogus writes for The Minnesota Star Tribune that a bill sponsored by Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Ted Cruz to protect lawmakers won’t fully stop data brokers from trafficking their personal information but will stop journalists and watchdogs from holding them accountable.

Use our action center tool to tell Congress to reject this bill.

Police records must stay public in California

A searchable public database known as the Police Records Access Project has made public for the first time more than 1.5 million pages of previously secret records about the use of force and misconduct by California police officers.

The California legislature, however, is trying to put police misconduct back under wraps. This month, it passed AB 1178, a new bill that would make it harder for the public to access these records. The bill is awaiting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature or veto. Read more here.

What we’re reading

Urgent ideas for defending press freedom in Gaza (Columbia Journalism School). Columbia followed up on last month’s important article in Columbia Journalism Review with a discussion about finding creative ways to help journalists in Gaza despite anti-press regimes both here and in Israel. FPF Executive Director Trevor Timm and board member and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Azmat Khan were both on the panel.

Israel killed 31 journalists in Yemen strike, press freedom group says (The Washington Post). It’s not just Gaza. The Committee to Protect Journalists says the strike in Yemen was “the deadliest strike on journalists in the Middle East” it has documented to date.

Letter from ICE detention facility (The Bitter Southerner). Guevara recounts the harrowing details of his detention in an Atlanta federal prison. You can also read his son’s plea for his release.

Investors rejoice over looming TikTok deal despite political concerns (Al Jazeera). Days after Trump said frequent criticism of his administration should be illegal, he is finalizing plans to steer control of TikTok to his billionaire friends. “It would be naive to think they won’t censor Trump’s critics while boosting content that pleases him,” Stern said.

It’s 2025. Do you know how secure your newsroom is? (Neiman Lab). “What’s really important is that sources know where to reach you in a way that helps them stay secure,” FPF’s Davis Erin Anderson said.

Trump signs order labeling antifa ‘domestic terrorist organization’ (The Hill). Trump’s executive orders on domestic terrorism and threats to use racketeering laws against protest movements can and will be used to threaten journalists and sources. Journalists who cover “antifa” or report on ICE must now risk being accused of terrorism.

Judge strikes down Trump’s $15 billion suit against The New York Times (The Washington Post). We’re glad a judge tossed this ridiculous lawsuit, but the attorneys behind it should have been sanctioned.

The Pentagon faced bipartisan backlash for its ridiculous policy requiring journalists to agree not to obtain or report “unauthorized” information. Now, in a response to an inquiry from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, officials are trying to walk it back.

They claim the rules were intended to restrict Pentagon staffers from giving unauthorized information to journalists, not to restrict journalists from printing “unsolicited” tips they’re given. We’re not buying it. We commend RCFP for getting the Pentagon to elaborate on the policy — but, despite lots of legalese and doublespeak, its clarifications are mostly meaningless.

As an initial matter, a policy solely aimed at government employees would not need to be distributed to or acknowledged by journalists. To the extent that the government is permitted to keep information secret, the Supreme Court says that’s the government’s responsibility — officials aren’t entitled to shift the burden to reporters to keep their secrets for them. Even crediting the Pentagon’s explanation, the memo was clearly intended to do exactly that. It sends a message to the press, and that message is “tread carefully.”

Nor can the government restrict the press to publishing unsolicited tips. News doesn’t fall from the sky into reporters’ laps. Reporters are entitled to ask questions, cultivate sources, and seek out news (otherwise known as reporting), as long as they don’t break the law in doing so. That’s the job description — they’re journalists, not stenographers.

Journalists should not agree to this ridiculous policy in exchange for … what, exactly? The honor of being lied to at news conferences?

The Pentagon’s position seems to draw from the Supreme Court case Bartnicki v. Vopper, which held that journalists can obtain information given to them by sources that obtained it illegally as long as the journalists didn’t themselves participate in the illegality. By soliciting information from sources, the Pentagon’s reasoning apparently goes, journalists participate in the sources’ violations of Pentagon policy.

But nothing in Bartnicki limits constitutional protection to unsolicited information — the only exception it acknowledges is when journalists participate in a source’s illegal acts (in that case, an unlawful wiretap). There is no analogous underlying illegality here.

The whole purpose of the First Amendment is so that the government can’t stop journalists from publishing what the government does not want published. We wouldn’t need a constitutional right to publish what the government authorizes to be released — the government would have no reason to try to prevent that.

That’s the fundamental point that seems entirely lost on this administration. The press exists to hold it accountable, not to keep its secrets or do its bidding.

The other point Pentagon officials are missing – as their response to RCFP makes clear — is that they’re not entitled to scream “national security” like magic words when they want the First Amendment to disappear. The response, disturbingly, reserves the right for the administration to unilaterally deem reporting a national security danger after the fact and punish reporters for it.

But as the Pentagon Papers case made extremely clear, that’s not how it works: “The word ‘security’ is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment.” And that was a case involving a specific set of documents alleged to pose a danger — not a vague reservation of rights to declare hypothetical documents a threat.

Of course, an administration headed by a president who just called upholstered furniture a national security threat cannot be trusted to invoke national security responsibly. It has claimed the right to deport journalists, activists, and op-ed writers who disagree with, or merely report or comment on its policies. The president has said that when officials want a journalist to give up sources, they can just “tell the reporter, ‘National security’.”

The Trump administration considers anything that threatens to harm its reputation or expose its lies (or, apparently, makes office chairs more comfortable) a threat to national security. It considers the First Amendment and free press themselves threats to national security.

The Pentagon is essentially shifting its position from, “You can’t report anything we didn’t authorize you to report” to “You can’t report anything we didn’t authorize you to report unless we decide after the fact in our sole discretion that it’s OK.” That should not provide much comfort to journalists. They certainly should not agree to this ridiculous policy in exchange for … what, exactly? The honor of being lied to at news conferences?

A searchable public database known as the Police Records Access Project has made public for the first time more than 1.5 million pages of previously secret records about the use of force and misconduct by California police officers.

The California Reporting Project, a collaboration between news outlets, universities, and civil society organizations, began collecting and organizing the documents after the passage of SB 1421, a landmark law that made them public records. The law was expanded in 2021 to give the public even greater access.

Now, however, the California legislature is beginning to reverse course. This month, it passed AB 1178, a new bill that would make it harder for the public to access police misconduct records. The bill is awaiting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature or veto.

We spoke to journalist Lisa Pickoff-White, who is the director of research at the California Reporting Project, about what the CRP has accomplished so far and what AB 1178 could mean for transparency and accountability.

What are some of the most impactful stories journalists in the CRP have published using these records?

The project had impact from the beginning. A district attorney dropped charges against a woman who was wrongly arrested for allegedly misusing 911, after an investigation into one of the first cases released under SB 1421.

Reporters documented where departments failed to investigate police killings, found a homicide detective whose dishonesty upended criminal cases, and uncovered a pattern of excessive force at a state prison. We identified 22 people who died after officers held them face down, including two people who died after a state law banning the practice.

The governor is expected to sign a law barring agencies from using secret deals to conceal misconduct, prompted by an investigation exposing how 163 departments signed “clean-record agreements.”

What were some of the biggest challenges in collecting, reviewing, and standardizing these records and launching the database?

Obtaining records continues to be a major challenge. Just days before SB 1421 took effect, Inglewood destroyed records, for instance. In August, we sued San Joaquin County over the cost of autopsy reports related to deaths caused by law enforcement officers. We’ve made more than 3,500 record requests and maintain relationships with hundreds of agencies.

Once we have the records, assembling them is a challenge. There’s no standard police report, and we receive a great variety of files, from PDFs to surveillance video. We built tools to extract information, which researchers use to match files into a case. Then we reextract information from each case, some of which is published, and then also used to help us identify places where we need more records.

Now that the database is public, what should journalists know about using it? How has the public responded to the database since it launched?

So far, people have searched our archive more than 1 million times. We’ve heard from people who have lost loved ones to police violence that this database makes it easier to access records.

Expanding the search can help. Multiple agencies may have records about the same incident. If an officer shoots and kills someone, the police, the district attorney, and the medical examiner or coroner may hold records. A review board may have files. The state attorney general could investigate. Sometimes, agencies also investigate cases for each other; a local sheriff may investigate a shooting for a police department.

Officers can also appeal disciplinary charges. If you’re looking at a misconduct case, it might also be worth searching local administrative agencies or the state personnel board.

A new bill awaiting the signature or veto of Gov. Newsom, AB 1178, could lead to more redactions when officers claim their duties require anonymity. What would it mean for transparency and accountability if misconduct records become harder for the press and the public to obtain?

Without AB 1178, agencies can already redact the names of undercover officers. Our records show that agencies across the state continue to improperly redact the names of officers. Meanwhile, the bill’s authors have yet to cite any harm that’s come from releasing the names of officers involved in use-of-force and misconduct incidents.

Our reporting, and other investigations, revealed that agencies can and do hire officers who previously violated policies. These officers are more likely to receive complaints again. For instance, Derek Chauvin had 18 prior complaints in the Minneapolis Police Department, two of which led to discipline, before killing George Floyd.

What lessons can journalists and advocates in other states learn from CRP’s work?

There is a vast amount of work to do and collaboration is the key to doing it. More than 100 reporters have worked on the project for the last seven years, and we needed people with a wide range of expertise to make requests, build tools, and report.

That mix of skills allowed us to build tools to spot the gaps between what cases agencies disclose and incidents listed in other data sources about shootings and sustained complaints. We’ve gained thousands of cases through this kind of check. Having a group of people with request aptitude, coding ability, and domain knowledge allowed us to identify what we needed and the incremental steps to take to get it.