John Konrad, a former ship captain and current social-media personality, became one of the new members of the Pentagon’s reshaped press corps earlier this year. On Wednesday, he updated his Twitter followers about his latest reporting. “[Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth answered my questions,” he wrote in a short post. “It’s off the record so no details but I am very pleased with his leadership!”
Konrad is among the flood of right-wing media figures to get access to the Pentagon after Hegseth and his allies ejected legitimate reporters and news outlets from the Department of Defense’s headquarters earlier this year. The Pentagon’s new credential policy imposes a series of arbitrary requirements that sharply limit journalists’ ability to do their jobs.
On Thursday, one of those outlets took Hegseth to court over the restrictions. The New York Times and one of its reporters sued Hegseth and the Department of Defense in federal court to challenge the new press-credential policy, arguing that it violates the First Amendment’s protections for newsgathering and reporting.
“Through the Policy, Pentagon officials have dealt to themselves the power to suspend and eventually revoke journalists’ [press badges] for publishing stories that Pentagon leadership may perceive as unfavorable or unflattering, in direct contravention of Supreme Court precedent,” the Times said in its 97-page complaint.
A Pentagon press credential is not required to cover the military per se; the Times and other major news outlets have continued to report on the Pentagon’s actions and policies since October. What it does provide is access to the Pentagon itself—the physical structure, not the metonym—where reporters can take part in briefings, ask questions at press conferences, or even interact with Pentagon officials in the hallways.
Among the new reasons that a reporter could lose their Pentagon press credential is if they receive, publish, or “[solicit]” any “unauthorized” material, even if that material is not formally classified as secret in any way. According to the Times, Pentagon officials have signaled that they will interpret “solicitation” as broadly as possible.
“The Pentagon has made clear that lawful, routine newsgathering techniques—asking questions of government employees and interviewing them for stories—whether on or off Pentagon grounds could, in the Department’s view, ‘constitute a solicitation that could lead to revocation’ of their [credentials],” the Times claimed in its complaint. “But such communications are a core journalistic practice and a public good—the kind of basic source work that led to some of the most important news stories in history, including the Pentagon Papers.”
The result of the policy, which went into effect in mid-October, appears to reflect its intent. Major news organizations have been driven from the Pentagon rather than agree to terms that could compromise their journalistic independence. In their place, the Trump administration has credentialed a wave of pro-MAGA and pro-Trump media outlets and personalities.
Konrad, to his credit, appears to be much more journalistic than some of his newfound colleagues. Other members of the newly credentialed Pentagon press corps include MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a fervent Trump booster; the National Pulse’s Raheem Kassan, who has described his publication as “basically an industry mag/site for MAGA world;” former Project Veritas activist and right-wing stunt interviewer James O’Keefe; and so on. Disgraced former congressman Matt Gaetz was even seen at a recent briefing.
The turnover comes at a fraught moment for the Pentagon and for Hegseth himself. The secretary of defense is under a rare moment of bipartisan scrutiny on Capitol Hill for his role in a series of Caribbean boat strikes. The Pentagon has justified the strikes by claiming they were part of anti-drug operations; critics have described them as illegal without congressional authorization and, in some cases, as potential war crimes.
There is no shortage of questions for reporters to ask. Who exactly ordered the killing of two survivors of a boat strike in the Caribbean in September, and why? Why is it “seditious” for Arizona Senator Mark Kelly and other lawmakers to remind troops to not follow illegal orders when Hegseth made similar assertions in 2016? Why is the Pentagon pursuing policies that will disproportionately drive Black soldiers out of the military?
At the crux of the lawsuit is that the Pentagon is engaging in viewpoint discrimination, which is generally forbidden by the First Amendment. Defense Department officials are not required to give out any press credentials at all, nor must they grant access to the Pentagon building itself. The CIA, for obvious reasons, does not have an on-site press corps at Langley, for example. Once access is granted, however, the Times argued it must comply with the First Amendment.
As is their habit, Trump officials have made the Times’s job fairly easy when it comes to proving intent. “Indeed, Department officials have made clear their viewpoint discriminatory aim in promulgating and implementing the Policy,” the Times explained. “Department officials have publicly derided journalists who declined to sign the Acknowledgement as ‘activists’ and ‘propagandists’ who spread ‘lies […] to the American people,’ while praising individuals approved to receive [credentials] under the Policy as free from ‘a biased agenda.’”
The Pentagon’s up-is-down narrative only underscores its goal: to replace an independent and skeptical press corps with a group of supine loyalists who, the administration apparently hopes, will uncritically distribute whatever they are told or face swift revocation of access. This would be a troubling shift for any of the official press corps in D.C., but it is particularly disturbing for the military in a constitutional republic. Fortunately, the First Amendment is made of sterner stuff than that.
