A federal judge in the United States ruled on Friday that a policy by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, restricting press access to its facilities, was illegal, finding that it violated the First Amendment and due process. Judge Paul Friedman of the Washington District Court held that this regulation gave the Pentagon excessively broad and arbitrary power to revoke press credentials without clear criteria or appeal mechanisms, according to the ruling shared by the court. In his ruling, the judge emphasized that the policy “lacks precise guidelines to ensure that journalists can perform their functions without risk of sanction,” which he considers a potential form of censorship. The ruling comes after the lawsuit filed by The New York Times against the Department of War over the restrictions imposed on journalists in October 2025. Hegseth had imposed restrictive rules such as limitations on physical access to facilities, use of sources, and proposed sanctions for requesting public interest information without authorization, even when it did not involve classified topics, causing most media outlets to relinquish their credentials because they refused to sign an agreement to comply with these restrictions. The ruling immediately blocks the enforcement of the most restrictive provisions of the policy and reaffirms the media's right to access public interest information within the Department of War. Last October, major U.S. media outlets, including journalists with over thirty years of career experience as Pentagon correspondents, turned in their credentials, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, the Reuters and Associated Press agencies, and television networks such as ABC News, CBS News, CNN and NBC News, including the conservative Fox News network, where Hegseth had worked as a commentator before being chosen by President Donald Trump for the position of head of the Pentagon in 2025. Instead, only conservative or right-leaning media outlets, such as the One American News network, or reporters from others like The Federalist or The Epoch Times, remained accredited at the Pentagon.
