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Attorney General Pam<\/span> Bondi distributed plans inside the Justice Department last week to scrap rules protecting journalists and their sources from surveillance and subpoenas over unflattering coverage and leaks. Bondi\u2019s memo leaked to the press immediately<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis Justice Department will not tolerate unauthorized disclosures that undermine President Trump\u2019s policies, victimize government agencies, and cause harm to the American people,\u201d reads the memo<\/a>, citing recent leaks to the New York Times, Washington Post, and Reuters as examples of the kind of reporting that would no longer be tolerated. \u201cI have concluded that it is necessary to rescind [former attorney general] Merrick Garland\u2019s policies precluding the Department of Justice from seeking records and compelling testimony from members of the news media in order to identify and punish the source of improper leaks.\u201d<\/p>\n Eliminating these rules is the latest signal of a looming threat to reporters, who could face subpoenas and search warrants for daring to publish information that President Donald Trump would prefer kept secret. Journalists who resist legal demands to disclose their sources could face fines or even jail time.<\/p>\n But it didn\u2019t have to be this way.<\/p>\n Long before Trump was reelected on promises to punish disfavored reporters and outlets, free press advocates warned<\/a> that the rescinded Justice Department rules were an inadequate shield. The Biden DOJ last revised the rules<\/a> in 2022 in light of revelations about the first Trump administration\u2019s spying on journalists to smoke out leakers. Along the way, even as it offered its own leaks<\/a> to friendly outlets, the first Trump DOJ routinely ignored<\/a> prior versions of the rules, which are not enforceable in court.\u00a0<\/p>\n Last year, Senate Democrats had a clear opportunity to make basic protections for journalists a matter of binding federal law, rather than mere policy that could be undone with a vendetta-laced memo. Following years of debate over the proper scope of a federal shield law for reporters, the PRESS Act<\/a> unanimously passed the House of Representatives and had a bipartisan roster of Senate sponsors, including Republican Lindsay Graham of South Carolina.<\/p>\n Then Democratic leaders blew it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n For months, they let the PRESS Act sit in the Senate Judiciary committee without a hearing, even though that committee\u2019s chair, Dick Durbin, D-Ill., was the bill\u2019s co-sponsor.<\/p>\n After the election, Trump demanded that Republicans kill the bill<\/a>. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., swore the PRESS Act was a top priority for his last weeks as Senate majority leader. But neither he nor Durbin put any apparent effort into moving the bill forward, either on its own or as part of must-pass legislation like the defense budget. They offered statements of reassurance and support for the press, but no action.<\/p>\n In mid-December, with time running out, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the PRESS Act\u2019s lead sponsor, tried to advance<\/a> it himself, bringing the bill to the Senate floor on a motion to enact it by unanimous consent. A single Republican, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, blocked it with a grandstanding speech<\/a> about the evils of leaks and \u201cAmerica-hating and fame-hungry journalists,\u201d as he\u2019d done<\/a> with prior versions of the PRESS Act.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone predicted this would happen in a second Trump administration, yet politicians in a position to prevent it prioritized empty rhetoric over putting up a meaningful fight.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Despite the predictable opposition, Senate Democrats had no strategic plan to counter it \u2014 other than a speech by Schumer<\/a> \u2014 and the PRESS Act died at the end of the session. Durbin\u2019s office blamed the PRESS Act\u2019s failure on Cotton\u2019s obstruction but did not answer why Durbin allowed the bill to stall in his committee. Durbin recently announced<\/a> that he is retiring after more than four decades in Congress. Schumer\u2019s office did not respond to The Intercept\u2019s questions.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery Democrat who put the PRESS Act on the back burner when they had the opportunity to pass a bipartisan bill codifying journalist-source confidentiality should be ashamed,\u201d said Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, in a statement after Bondi\u2019s memo came out.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone predicted this would happen in a second Trump administration, yet politicians in a position to prevent it prioritized empty rhetoric over putting up a meaningful fight.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n