President-elect Donald Trump, at the time the GOP nominee, participates in a Fox News Town Hall with Sean Hannity at the New Holland Arena on Sept. 4, 2024, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — An effort to pass a sweeping measure aimed at protecting press freedoms was struck down in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday night.

The journalism shield law — which would limit the federal government’s ability to force disclosure of journalists’ sources — drew strong objections from President-elect Donald Trump, who’s had a rather rocky relationship with the press.

Arkansas GOP Sen. Tom Cotton blocked Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden’s request for unanimous consent to pass the bill, calling the legislation “a threat to U.S. national security and an insult to basic fairness in the principle of equality before the law.”

Though the U.S. House passed its version of the bill through voice vote earlier this year, Trump in November urged congressional Republicans “must kill this bill.”

Reaching unanimous consent — a process to fast-track the passage of bills in the Senate — appeared extremely unlikely given Trump’s sway in the Senate GOP conference.

Cotton, who’s the incoming Senate GOP conference chair, said the measure would “turn reporters into a protected class — free to hold, share and publish highly classified and dangerous information that no other American is allowed to possess.”

He also said the bill would turn the Senate “into the active accomplice of deep-state leakers, traitors and criminals, along with the America-hating and fame-hungry journalists who helped them out.”

Bipartisan backing

Wyden introduced companion legislation to the House bill in June 2023. GOP Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, along with Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, co-sponsored the bill.

Wyden dubbed the bill “so common sense” and said past administrations on both sides of the aisle have “exploited the lack of a federal shield law to curtail the freedom of the press and in some cases, even jailed journalists who refused to break their journalistic ethics and reveal their sources.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer expressed strong support of the bill and his desire to get it to the president’s desk.

“No democracy can survive without a free and open and thriving press,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.

The legislation would establish “appropriate limits on the federally compelled disclosure of information obtained as part of engaging in journalism” and would limit federal law enforcement surveillance of journalists.

Dozens of news media organizations and press advocacy groups have pushed for the legislation’s passage, with press rights organizations voicing concerns about Trump’s incoming return to the Oval Office amid the threats he’s made against journalists.

A U.S. law that would force the Chinese parent company of social media giant TikTok to either sell the service or face a U.S. ban is constitutional, a panel of federal appeals judges ruled Friday. In this 2020 photo illustration, the TikTok app is displayed on an Apple iPhone.  (Photo Illustration by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The law Congress passed this year to force the Chinese parent company of social media giant TikTok to either sell the service or face a U.S. ban is constitutional, a panel of federal appeals judges ruled Friday.

The order from a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals preserves the bipartisan law President Joe Biden signed in April forcing ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, to cease operations in the United States over concerns the platform’s data gathering could be obtained and used by the Chinese Communist Party.

TikTok, ByteDance and a handful of users sued the administration to block enforcement of the law, saying it violated the First Amendment right to free speech and other rights.

The panel on Friday rejected that argument, saying that although the short-form videos produced on the service constitute speech and the shuttering of U.S. operations would limit that speech, that was the result of the Chinese government’s “hybrid commercial threat to U.S. national security,” not the U.S. government’s actions.

“The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States,” Senior Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg wrote for the panel. “Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”

Ginsburg, who was appointed to the court by Republican President Ronald Reagan, and Neomi Rao, a Donald Trump appointee, formed the court’s main opinion. Chief Judge Sri Srinavasan, whom Democrat Barack Obama appointed, wrote a concurring opinion.

TikTok has the option to appeal Friday’s ruling to the full D.C. Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court. The law is set to go into effect Jan. 19, the day before Trump — who has said he opposes the law even after trying his own TikTok ban during his first presidency — retakes office.

Free speech concerns

Those challenging the law are likely to appeal directly to the Supreme Court and to seek an emergency temporary stay, “given the urgency of the situation,” Jacob Huebert, who represents a plaintiff in the case, said in a Friday interview.

Huebert is the president of Liberty Justice Center, a nonprofit that has litigated high-profile free-speech cases and is representing the libertarian news and commentary channel BASEDPolitics in the TikTok case, arguing that the law unconstitutionally restricts the channel’s reach to its intended audience of Gen Z users.

The government’s national security argument should not have overridden the First Amendment concerns, Huebert said.

“This national security justification that the court relied so heavily on isn’t enough,” he said.

The law would set a dangerous precedent that could be applied in the future to other social media, he added.

“It should trouble you regardless of what you think about TikTok or China in particular because it’s really a threat to Americans’ free speech rights online, across the board,” Huebert said.

Bill sponsors from both parties praise ruling

The bipartisan leaders of the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, where the bill was introduced, cheered the decision Friday in a joint statement.

“Today’s ruling is a victory for the American people and TikTok users, and a loss for the Chinese Communist Party, which will no longer be able to exploit ByteDance’s control over TikTok to undermine our sovereignty, surveil our citizens, and threaten our national security,” Chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, wrote. “I am optimistic that President Trump will facilitate an American takeover of TikTok to allow its continued use in the United States and I look forward to welcoming the app in America under new ownership.”

Ranking Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois said there is no solution other than a sale of TikTok.

“With today’s opinion, all three branches of government have reached the same conclusion: ByteDance is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, and TikTok’s ownership by ByteDance is a national security threat that cannot be mitigated through any other means than divestiture,” he said. “Every day that TikTok remains under the Chinese Communist Party’s control is a day that our security is at risk.”

The bill was introduced in March by then-Chair Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican who has since left Congress, and Krishnamoorthi.

It has dozens of co-sponsors from each party and passed the House 352-65. The Senate cleared the bill in April as part of a larger funding package.

President-elect Donald Trump speaks at a House Republican Conference meeting at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill on Nov. 13, 2024 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Allison Robbert-Pool/Getty Images)

President-elect Donald Trump ordered congressional Republicans on Wednesday to block a broadly popular bill to protect press freedoms, likely ending any chance of the U.S. Senate clearing the legislation.

The measure would limit federal law enforcement surveillance of journalists and the government’s ability to force disclosure of journalists’ sources, codifying regulations the Department of Justice has put in place under President Joe Biden.

The House Judiciary Committee unanimously approved it last year and it passed the House by voice vote in January.

“REPUBLICANS MUST KILL THIS BILL!” Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social, in all capital letters on Wednesday, linking to a PBS segment about the measure.

Substantial floor time is generally required in the Senate to bypass the process that allows a single member to hold up the chamber’s business. With Democrats prioritizing confirmation of Biden’s judicial nominees before they lose their majority in January, it is unlikely they would bring a vote on the measure without the unanimous consent of all 100 senators.

Trump’s influence within the Senate Republican Conference makes reaching unanimous consent exceedingly unlikely.

The bill’s House sponsor, California Republican Kevin Kiley, accepted the bill’s defeat in a statement Thursday.

“Based on the feedback we’ve received from Senators and President Trump, it’s clear we have work to do to achieve consensus on this issue,” he said. “I’m looking forward to working with the new Administration on a great many areas of common ground as we begin a new era of American prosperity.”

A Kiley spokesperson declined to provide further details about senators’ feedback on the measure. A spokesperson for U.S. Senate Judiciary ranking Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina did not respond to a message seeking comment.

In the House, 19 members from both parties, including Republicans Barry Moore of Alabama, Darrell Issa of California, Russell Fry of South Carolina and Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota and Democrats Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Ted Lieu of California and Rashida Tlaib and Dan Kildee of Michigan, signed on as cosponsors.

Protection for local journalists

Jon Schleuss, the president of The NewsGuild-CWA, a national journalists’ union that has supported the bill, noted in a Thursday statement it would protect news sources across the political spectrum.

“Americans would not know about the corruption of former Democratic Senator Bob Menendez or former Republican Representative George Santos without the hard work of local journalists holding power to account,” he said. “All of us depend on journalism, especially local journalism, to shine a light and protect Americans from threats, both foreign and domestic. The PRESS Act protects all voices: news sources, whistleblowers and the journalists they talk to from media outlets across the spectrum.”

In a Thursday statement to States Newsroom, Gabe Rottman, policy director at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, called the bill a “reasonable and common-sense measure” that enjoyed broad bipartisan support.

“Its passage would put an end to actions the Justice Department has taken under past administrations of both parties to target reporters’ confidential communications when investigating and prosecuting disclosures of government information,” he wrote. “We urge Congress to recognize that there is still a need for a legislative remedy here.”

Press advocacy groups have expressed worries about Trump’s return to the White House, citing a record in his first term that included surveillance of and legal threats against journalists and news organizations.

Seeking retribution

In the closing days of the presidential race, Trump fantasized aloud about reporters being shot.

Press freedom groups also worry that Trump’s promises to use the federal bureaucracy to seek retribution against perceived enemies would extend to journalists.

“In his second term, Trump will make good on these anti-press threats to try to destroy any news outlet, journalist, or whistleblower who criticizes or opposes him,” Seth Stern, the director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, wrote in a Nov. 6 blog post.

Stern added that Trump would “almost certainly repeal” the protections against surveillance the Department of Justice had put in place during President Joe Biden’s term.

Bascom Hall, University of Wisconsin-Madison. (Ron Cogswell | used by permission of the photographer)

The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents on Friday fired former UW-La Crosse chancellor Joe Gow from the school’s faculty over his controversial pornographic videos. 

Gow had previously been fired from his position as chancellor after the videos, posted to a number of porn sites and sometimes featuring adult film stars, were uncovered, but retained his tenured faculty position and had planned to teach. The decision on Friday ends a drawn-out disciplinary process over the videos. 

The board’s action sets up a potential lawsuit against the system on First Amendment grounds. After the meeting, Gow called the Regents hypocrites. 

“We might as well take down that famous plaque on the front of Bascom Hall because the people who fired me today aren’t a Board of Regents — they’re a Board of Hypocrites,” Gow said referring to a plaque at UW-Madison commemorating the board’s defense of a socialist faculty member in the 1890s. “They have zero credibility on free speech and expression.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which regularly defends campus speech, has taken up Gow’s cause. 

“In a major blow to academic freedom and faculty free speech rights, the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents has terminated tenured Professor Joe Gow for producing sexually explicit content off hours,” FIRE’s faculty legal defense counsel Zach Greenberg said in a statement. “FIRE has said time and time again: public universities cannot sacrifice the First Amendment to protect their reputations. We’re disappointed UW caved to donors and politicians by throwing a tenured professor under the bus.”