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Final month, as Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth blocked the liberate of video that captured deadly U.S. strikes off the Venezuelan soar, the Washington Post editorial board dedicated an op-ed to praising one more Trump Cupboard member, Attorney Favorite Pam Bondi, for limiting her office’s consideration of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “Bondi has chipped away at the doctrine with revised regulatory guidance this week, and diversified departments can apply her lead,” the paper wrote in its editorial, calling it “Pam Bondi’s welcome woke rollback.” This week, as President Donald Trump suggested the Civil Rights Act could possibly presumably merely were a mistake, Bondi unapologetically carried out a search warrant on Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s dwelling. 

“This past week, at the quiz of the Division of Battle, the Division of Justice and FBI carried out a search warrant at the dwelling of a Washington Post journalist who became as soon as obtaining and reporting labeled and illegally leaked files from a Pentagon contractor,” Bondi wrote on X. “The leaker is currently within the inspire of bars. I’m proud to work alongside Secretary Hegseth on this effort.” FBI Director Kash Patel also confirmed the search.  

The Post, citing an FBI affidavit, reported that regulations enforcement had focused Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a govt contractor in Maryland with a high secret safety clearance, for stealing “labeled intelligence experiences that were issue in his lunchbox and his basement.” Perez-Lugones is accused of the use of databases and repositories to remark, procure entry to and remark a labeled intelligence story connected to a foreign nation, and is supposed to absorb taken a screenshot of the story and printed it. 

As the Post’s “federal govt whisperer,” Natanson restful dispatches from whistleblowers internal the Trump administration and impressed of us to contact her by Signal, an encrypted messaging app designed to offer protection to the confidentiality that enables journalism to characteristic. (Hegseth himself leaked labeled militia strike files on Signal and shared these essential aspects with unauthorized of us, including his partner and brother.) Her most modern work integrated reporting detailing Trump’s militia motion in Venezuela that resulted within the capture of Nicolás Maduro, as properly as “the frantic world bustle to search out an procure away route” for the deposed president. Natanson became as soon as at her Virginia dwelling at the time of Wednesday’s search, and per the Post, FBI brokers seized her private laptop and mobile phone, alongside with a Garmin glance and work laptop. She is no longer accused of leaking anything, nor is she charged with against the law. Natanson did what journalists are alleged to stay: domesticate sources, evaluate files and story facts of public curiosity.

As the Glossy York Cases reported, it is “exceedingly uncommon” for federal brokers to search a reporter’s dwelling. Washington Post executive editor Matt Murray sent a memo to staffers on Wednesday stating the paper is “no longer a target” whereas acknowledging that “this unprecedented, aggressive motion is deeply concerning and raises profound questions and direct all the scheme in which by the constitutional protections for our work. The Washington Post has a lengthy ancient past of zealous give a increase to for sturdy press freedoms. The final institution stands by these freedoms and our work.” 

Bondi, for her allotment, did now not merely defend the raid. She notably went on Fox Files to brag about it. “I did a memo rescinding [former Attorney General Merrick] Garland’s memo announcing that newshounds will no longer be subpoenaed, that we’ll now not remark at newshounds’ phones,” she suggested Fox Files host Sean Hannity, without pushback. The felony real fashioned went on to order that the First Modification is a “bedrock precept” — straight earlier than explaining why she has chosen to omit it.

The raid on Natanson’s dwelling is a jarring step geared toward limiting news organizations’ capacity to amass files that the govt. needs concealed — however it’s no longer recent. What makes this moment especially grotesque is the hypocrisy.

The raid on Natanson’s dwelling is a jarring step geared toward limiting news organizations’ capacity to amass files that the govt. needs concealed — however it’s no longer recent. What makes this moment especially grotesque is the hypocrisy. Fox Files, whose personalities and viewers as soon as erupted in fury when the Obama Justice Division secretly bought phone files belonging to Fox reporter James Rosen and Associated Press journalists, is now providing duvet for a much more invasive act. ​​Twelve years within the past, the FBI accessed the cases of Rosen’s phone calls and two days of his emails as allotment of an investigation into his reporting on North Korean nuclear take a look at plans. 

The backlash became as soon as instantaneous and bipartisan. Even progressives who disagreed with Fox Files on practically every thing rushed to Rosen’s protection, notion that an assault on one journalist’s freedom is an assault on all of our liberties. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post described the Rosen affair as a flagrant assault on civil liberties. Andrew Napolitano, then a Fox Files just appropriate contributor, referred to as the govt.’s claims — that recurring reporting skills constituted prison habits — unprecedented. The criticism forced Attorney Favorite Eric Holder to state regret and resulted in recent Justice Division insurance policies sharply limiting investigations of journalists, recognizing that focusing on newshounds to identify sources corrodes the First Modification itself. 

Those protections were later reaffirmed below President Joe Biden. However Trump rescinded them, and Bondi is now the use of that reversal exactly as critics warned she would.

As corrupt as Rosen’s remedy became as soon as, this week’s FBI raid is clearly an escalation by the Trump administration. In the Rosen case, investigators won procure entry to to phone files and emails by subpoenas. Natanson continued an early morning raid with federal brokers performing a physical search of her dwelling and confiscating her private gadgets. Here’s the stuff of authoritarian regimes, no longer a functioning democracy that claims to fancy freedom of the press.

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Even after Trump’s rollback of stronger press protections, Justice Division policy serene claims that search warrants or subpoenas directed at journalists must serene be a closing resort after all sensible different manner are exhausted. Furthermore, the tips sought by the govt. needs to be “crucial.” That is why press freedom advocates are sounding alarms. Bruce Brown of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press referred to as physical searches of newshounds’ homes and gadgets “a couple of of basically the most invasive investigative steps regulations enforcement can rob,” warning that they endanger confidential sources a long way past any single case.

The raid on Hannah Natanson’s dwelling is allotment of a broader marketing campaign in opposition to the media. Trump has lengthy made sure that he needs to prosecute newshounds for publishing leaked files. He has referred to as the press “the enemy of the of us” so usually that the phrase has lost its shock price, which is itself a victory for him. The authoritarian playbook is properly established: Prosecute sources who leak embarrassing files. Raid newshounds’ homes to identify these sources. Express that national safety justifies secrecy, even when the particular motive is political protection. Rely on partisan division to forestall unified opposition. Reward media shops that offer duvet whereas punishing these that support independence. 

Each and each step normalizes the next, until practices that can as soon as absorb provoked universal outrage turn into licensed as routine.

Composed, start air of the editorial online page, the Washington Post has no longer relented in its reporting on the Trump administration, in particular concerning Hegseth’s warfare on the press. This week, the paper reported that the lengthy-working militia newspaper Stars and Stripes’ editorial independence could possibly possibly be in question because recent job applicants “are being requested how they’d give a increase to the president’s policy priorities.”

Yet the Post’s possession adds one more layer of tragedy. The newspaper that after symbolized resistance to presidential overreach when it revealed the Pentagon Papers and uncovered Watergate now appears to be like wanting to reward its respectability to an authoritarian project. The silence from Jeff Bezos, the Post’s publisher, has been deafening. For the explanation that paper declined to endorse a presidential candidate within the 2024 election, a switch widely interpreted as an are trying and support a long way from angering Trump, the editorial online page has drifted rightward, as if moderation and deference could possibly presumably aquire protection. That illusion now deserves to be shattered. All of Bezos’ wealth and all of Amazon’s lobbying muscle did now not prevent federal brokers from rifling by his employee’s dwelling. 

The United States’s elites seem incapable of realizing that authoritarian energy would now not reward appeasement. It exploits weakness and interprets accommodation as an invitation to demand more. Every concession made within the hope of warding off warfare turns into merely the baseline from which the next assault is launched. The Washington Post cannot aquire its technique out of being focused. Fox Files cannot offer protection to itself by providing propaganda duvet for attacks on its opponents. In due course, the leopard comes for everyone who imagined they could possibly merely feed it and remain staunch.

Cybersecurity expert

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