Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Attorney General Pam Bondi are leading the charge to restrict the First Amendment under the current administration, but they faced a major rebuke this week. Fox News, Hegseth’s former employer, joined ABC News, CNN, NBC, and CBS in a mass rejection of his new Pentagon rules.
Unprecedented Restrictions
The new rules, which critics call “Soviet-style restrictions,” prohibit credentialed journalists from obtaining any information—even unclassified material—that is not explicitly authorized by the Defense Department. Violators risk immediately losing their credentials. The joint statement from the media outlets condemned the policy as unprecedented and a threat to press freedom, noting that it severely limits what they are allowed to publish about the Pentagon. President Donald Trump and Hegseth defended the policy, but the mass refusal, which included conservative outlets like Newsmax, means Hegseth now risks excluding virtually the entire press corps from the nation’s largest federal institution.
Backlash and Resilience
The administration’s overall campaign to target disfavored speech is meeting increasing resistance. Republican Senator Ted Cruz publicly objected to the administration’s attempt to punish comedian Jimmy Kimmel, calling the regulatory threat “dangerous as hell.” Attorney General Bondi was forced to quickly abandon a push to target “hate speech” after facing resistance from conservatives who cited long-standing Supreme Court precedent protecting it. Furthermore, the administration has faced judicial rebuke for targeting critics. A Republican-nominated judge called the administration’s actions against pro-Palestinian activists a “full-throated assault on the First Amendment” intended “to strike fear” into people. Polling confirms the public’s concern: nearly 8 in 10 Americans believe the U.S. government has gone “too far” in restricting free speech.
What The Author Thinks
The Trump administration’s politically driven decision to implement “Reductions in Force” during a government shutdown is a profound, cynical act of weaponizing federal employment for political gain. By permanently dismantling agencies and targeting those perceived as “Democrat-oriented,” the administration transforms a temporary budgetary crisis into a permanent ideological restructuring of the civil service. This action demonstrates a strategic disregard for the legal and ethical separation of the federal workforce from partisan politics, confirming that for this administration, punishing political opposition through bureaucratic means is prioritized over the consistent delivery of essential public services.
Featured image credit: Rubaitul Azad via Unsplash
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