President Donald Trump salutes as he attends a military parade commemorating the Army”s 250th anniversary, coinciding with his 79th birthday, Saturday, June 14, 2025, in Washington, as Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and first lady Melania Trump, watch. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson).
After the New York Times succeeded last month in smacking down Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s press restrictions as yet another violation of the First Amendment, the newspaper told a court that the government quickly issued a new policy rather than complying. Now the judge is lashing out at the “dangerous” game being played with a free press “in a time of war.”
The first lines of U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman’s 20-page opinion on Thursday were dedicated to the text of the First Amendment and the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent declaration that it “is no word game.”
The Bill Clinton-appointed judge recounted how on March 20 he agreed that the Pentagon Facility Alternate Credentials or PFACs were “exactly the type of speech- and press-restrictive scheme that the Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit have recognized violates the First Amendment.”
When the Times brought the suit in December, it complained that as the Defense Department was rebranding itself as the Department of War, it was shutting out press it deemed hostile and filling the void with cheerleaders for the administration.
The paper of record noted that Mike Lindell, a 2020 election conspiracy theorist and pillow mogul, and other avowed supporters of President Donald Trump had press access at the Pentagon, but not the Times and media organizations that refused to sign loyalty pledges not to report information to the public that hadn’t been approved by the Defense Department, even if that information is unclassified.
Rather than signing on, many journalists exited the Pentagon in October and forfeited their badges. Several conservative media organizations followed suit in refusing to sign a policy that contemplated expulsion or more serious penalties for reporting, such as being branded a “security or safety risk.”
Friedman sided with the Times on March 20 and blocked the “unconstitutional” policy, but the government’s answer was to create a “new” policy that included an “abrupt closure of the Correspondents’ Corridor” and a “ban on credentialed journalists traveling unescorted through the Pentagon[.]”
The Trump administration, stating its belief that Friedman’s order contained “mischaracterizations” about its PFACs, called the new language “targeted clarifications.”
That backfired, as the judge instead saw the move as “a blatant attempt to circumvent a lawful order[.]”
“At bottom, the defendants ask this Court to hold that so long as the Department does not reinstate the exact words of the Challenged Provisions, and so long as it restores The Times’ reporters’ physical credentials, it has done enough,” Friedman said Thursday. “If the Department immediately uses new words to do the same thing? Too bad. The plaintiffs need to start over while the Court stands idly by. If the Department immediately takes steps to undermine the purpose of the reporters’ credentials, namely, entry to the Pentagon? Again, too bad. The Court need not embrace such a narrow interpretation of its authority and permit such a blatant attempt to circumvent a lawful order of the Court to succeed.”
Like the judge who derailed Hegseth’s quest to punish Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., for telling service members they can “refuse illegal orders,” Friedman said the “Constitution demands better” of the secretary.
“The Court cannot conclude this Opinion without noting once again what this case is really about: the attempt by the Secretary of Defense to dictate the information received by the American people, to control the message so that the public hears and sees only what the Secretary and the Trump Administration want them to hear and see,” the judge concluded.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell reacted to the ruling by claiming the administration “has at all times complied” and “intends to appeal.”
“[I]t reinstated the PFACs of every journalist identified in the Order and issued a materially revised policy that addressed every concern the Court identified in its March 20 Opinion,” Parnell posted. “The Department remains committed to press access at the Pentagon while fulfilling its statutory obligation to ensure the safe and secure operation of the Pentagon Reservation.”
