Overview
- The court issued a preliminary injunction that stops the Defense Department from enforcing its rule requiring reporters to be accompanied inside the Pentagon while The New York Times’ lawsuit goes forward.
- Judge Paul L. Friedman said the policy likely violates the First Amendment and called the Pentagon’s national-security justification “facially dubious.”
- Friedman pointed to public remarks by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth as strong evidence of a retaliatory motive for the restrictions.
- The Pentagon said it will appeal and argued that unescorted access helped produce repeated unauthorized disclosures of operational plans and intelligence.
- The dispute traces back to an October 2025 policy that tightened press rules, led to the closure of the long-standing Correspondents’ Corridor, and has produced an ongoing sequence of court rulings and appeals to watch next.