bet88 There’s Still Time for the Senate to Support the First Amendment

Donald Trump’s private lawsuits against ABC Newsbet88, CBS News and most recently The Des Moines Register are only the first phase of his promised battle to “straighten out the press.” Once he gets back in office next month, a far more troubling phase will begin: his promised effort to use government power to force reporters to reveal their sources for national security articles he doesn’t like.

Trump hasn’t been the least bit reticent about his plans. He has repeatedly said that reporters whose work relies on confidential government sources should simply be tossed in jail until they reveal the names of their contacts. The threat of prison rape, he says, will end journalistic stubbornness once and for all. The crudeness of that particular fantasy says a lot about Trump’s cast of mind, and it also shows how little he understands about the importance that reporters place on confidentiality. But the fights he is promising are real, and the financial costs could be ruinous for small or nonprofit news organizations.

Most important, the threats that federal agents will dig through phone records and use surveillance and brutality to find leakers will make it far more difficult for whistle-blowers to tell the truth about government abuses. Trump has already made it clear that fear will be one of the principal tools he uses to reshape Washington in his image. In particular, the fear of prosecution and investigation will be explicitly used to prevent exposure of corruption, incompetence or improper use of power.

The plaintiffs — who include Wendy Davis, a former Democratic state senator, along with a Biden campaign staff member and the bus driver — also testified, saying that the rolling road protest had been frightening and intimidating.

His lawyers admitted that he had carried out the shooting, but they said he was so unwell at the time that he could not know that what he was doing was wrong.

That’s why the Senate should have passed the Press Act, a bill that would protect reporters from being forced by a court to reveal their sources of information. The measure had already unanimously passed the House, but on Nov. 20, Trump issued a social media edict demanding that “Republicans must kill this bill!”

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