As noted, we now have a new suit on freedom of the press by 5 journalists and the ACLU.
www.commondreams.org/...
'Targeted by My Own Government': Journalists Sue Trump DHS Over 'Coordinated Attack' on Press Freedom
"This interference effectively prevented me and other journalists from carrying out our reporting at the U.S.-Mexico border."
by
Five journalists who were tracked, detained, and interrogated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for reporting on conditions at the southern border in 2018 and 2019 brought a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration Wednesday for what the ACLU called an "unprecedented, coordinated attack on the freedom of the press."
"When I saw my photo crossed out in a secret government database, I realized the secondary screening and interrogation wasn't random. I was being targeted by my own government for reporting on conditions at the border."
—Bing Guan, photojournalist
The national ACLU, joined by chapters in New York and California, filed the suit (pdf) in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York on behalf of Bing Guan, Go Nakamura, Mark Abramson, Kitra Cahana, and Ariana Drehsler. The five are all U.S. citizens who traveled to Mexico as professional photojournalists.
"A core principle of our democracy is the freedom of the press," Esha Bhandari, staff attorney with ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said in a statement. "That freedom is imperiled when the government uses the pretext of border screening to interrogate journalists who were simply doing their jobs."
The named defendants in the case are acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and the leaders of two agencies DHS oversees—Mark Morgan of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Matthew Albence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Imo, the timing of the suit could not be better, coming right on top of the wonderful testimony by Fiona Hill today, which was intended to make many contrasts:
--Truth and fiction;
--Lower-case democracy and republicanism versus an authoritarian president and his acolytes;
--A struggling but essential Ukrainian democracy versus Putin, Russia, and the poisoning of truth-tellers;
--Keepers of corrupt secrets versus heroes in the foreign service;
--Anti-humane monsters in our political government vs. members of the press seeking to uncover them;
--Energetic, brave press members who are willing to take risks, versus lazy media types who are perfectly happy to duck and cover under the umbrella of both siderism and their buddies on the right;
--As Hill noted so effectively, the difference between supporters of American policy and supporters of national and global political corruption.
--American leadership of global democracy, including freedom of the press, versus Trump’s support for anti-press authoritarianism.
--American global democratic leadership vs. America first selfishness and white nationalism.
And on and on and on.
This is one of the things that makes the timing of this lawsuit so great: coming on top of really effective hearings focused on foreign service heroes and military service heroes vs. Rethug political corruption, that gives the lie to so much Trumpian/Rethug behavior. The suit reminds Americans of the anti-humane, anti-democratic nature of that behavior. And, while the impeachment hearing may be short and narrow, there will be many more opportunities to capture “photographs” of criminal, anti-democratic behavior in future House hearings during 2020 running up to Election day—including child kidnapping and Trumpian/Rethug contempt for the press and the truth.
To my mind, a lot of what we will need between now and the election are exquisite “scripts,” such as the one about Rethugs letting Trump off the hook, and now the one about press freedom and the assaults from the right, and DHS vs. actual humane Americans. The best scripts will make wonderful fodder for town halls and debates in 2020. This seems right on that schedule.