The Pentagon under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has imposed new media rules designed to control what reporters can learn about the Iran war — and a federal judge has already struck down the first version as unconstitutional.
The original policy required reporters to sign documents stating they would “not seek information from Pentagon employees.” The New York Times sued in December 2025. On March 20, 2026, Judge Paul L. Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia vacated the challenged provisions of the policy as unconstitutional, finding that its “true purpose and practical effect” was “to weed out disfavored journalists” and replace them with news entities the department considered “on board and willing to serve”: “That is viewpoint discrimination, full stop.” The judge found the rules gave the Pentagon “unbridled discretion” over who gets credentials and violated both the First Amendment and Fifth Amendment due process rights.
Two days later, on March 23, the Pentagon issued a revised policy that the NYT calls “brazen” defiance of the court order. The new rules: reporters with press credentials are barred from entering the Pentagon without an escort; promising anonymity to sources is “presumptively evidence” that a reporter is violating policy; and reporters are prohibited from seeking to “intentionally induce the disclosure of unauthorized information, even if it's unclassified.”
Lead attorney Ted Boutrous put it plainly: “In a time of war and running up to elections, people need as much information as they can get” about Pentagon policies and military operations. The NYT filed a motion to compel compliance on March 24.
On April 10, the same federal judge — U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman — found the Pentagon was still violating his earlier order. After the first ruling voided Hegseth's restrictive press policy, the Pentagon tried to evade it with new rules requiring all reporters to have escorts. The judge called it a “blatant attempt to circumvent a lawful order” and warned: “Suppression of political speech is the mark of an autocracy, not a democracy.”
The timing is critical. This is happening during an active, unauthorized war with Iran where the Pentagon is considering 10,000 additional ground troops, has bombed schools with untested missiles, and is weighing an operation to seize uranium from underground nuclear facilities. The public's right to know what is being done in their name — and with their money — is exactly what the First Amendment protects.
Correction (October 27, 2026): this entry dated the ruling March 21, 2026. The opinion, ECF 35 in New York Times Co. v. Department of Defense, was filed March 20, 2026, and is now cited; the Reuters citation in this entry is dated March 21. The ruling is now described in the opinion's own words (the entry had quoted “authorized information,” a phrase the opinion does not use). A CNN link dated March 24 that no longer resolved was replaced with CNN's April 9 report on the second ruling.