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In 'Troubling Escalation' Against Free Press, Pentagon Bans Reporters From Public Affairs Office
"Banning journalists from the press office in the Pentagon, where they worked professionally in previous administrations, is simply a sign that current DOD leadership fears accountability," said one reporter.
Jun 02, 2026
The Trump administration's "asinine attempts to silence objective journalism just hit a new low," said one press freedom advocate late Monday after the Pentagon announced that the US Department of Defense would mark its press office as a classified area, banning journalists from the space where they've previously talked openly with DOD officials.
Reporters on the military are currently largely banned from the building altogether as litigation is ongoing over the administration's requirement that journalists have an escort to move about the Pentagon, but the new policy means that should they be able to return, they would be even more limited in their access to public affairs officers whose job it is to keep the press and public informed.
"For multiple administrations, Pentagon reporters have used the press office to meet with public affairs officers and have open conversations about what America's armed services are doing in order to keep the public informed," said Ben Grazda, an advocacy manager for Reporters Without Borders North America.
Calling Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth "petulant" and pointing to his unsuccessful demand that journalists sign "loyalty pledges," Grazda added that "journalists will continue their tenacious reporting and hold the Pentagon accountable for the money, operations, and lives they impact every day."
The Washington Post reported that Pentagon speechwriters will be moved into the public affairs office, which will be equipped with the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRNet, which is used to transmit classified information.
“This is the most transparent war department in history. No amount of spin from the Fake News media will change that. The Pentagon Press Office has been redesignated as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility due to speechwriters from the Office of the Secretary of War sharing the facility," said Jose Valdez, the acting Defense Department press secretary, on social media on Monday, referring to Hegseth by the title he prefers.
Despite Valdez's claims, journalists referred to the decision as "Orwellian" and noted that Hegseth is further curtailing press access to the Pentagon as the US is mediating talks to end the war the US and Israel started against Iran in February.
The policy was also announced as The New York Times reported that Hegseth had blocked the promotions of nine Navy officers who had been selected by senior Navy admirals, appearing to "violate the rules governing a promotion system that is supposed to be apolitical and merit-based."
"Banning journalists from the press office in the Pentagon, where they worked professionally in previous administrations, is simply a sign that current DOD leadership fears accountability," said Times reporter Trip Gabriel.
The decision to close the press office to members of the press comes eight months after hundreds of journalists walked out of the Pentagon in protest of a new policy barring them from seeking information that the Trump administration had not authorized for release.
That policy was struck down by a federal court earlier this year, but the government has appealed the ruling.
The National Press Club called the Pentagon's newest policy "a remarkable and troubling escalation in the Defense Department’s ongoing effort to restrict independent reporting."
"This move does not occur in isolation," said Mark Schoeff Jr., a reporter at CQ Roll Call and president of the organization. "It follows a troubling pattern of escalating restrictions on Pentagon coverage, including efforts to limit journalists to pre-approved information, revoke credentials for routine reporting practices, and physically remove reporters from long-standing workspaces and access without an escort."
"Calling a press workspace ‘classified’ does not make the government more transparent," said Schoeff. "It creates yet another obstacle between journalists and the information Americans have a right to know, especially at a moment when the public needs clear, unfiltered information about the US military."
"Independent reporting on the US military is not optional," he added. "When journalists are pushed farther from the institutions they cover, the American people are left with less information, less transparency, and less oversight. Any effort to restrict that access should alarm everyone who values a free and informed society."
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Trump's New Medicaid Rule 'Designed to Ensure People Lose Healthcare,' Critics Warn
"Today’s announcement marks a grim step in America’s march towards a healthcare system that further restricts access to healthcare and creates barriers rather than delivering affordable healthcare to families."
Jun 02, 2026
The Trump administration on Monday unveiled a rule that is expected to push millions of low-income people off Medicaid by imposing complex bureaucratic barriers in the form of work reporting requirements, which have proven disastrous at the state level.
The rule, released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), marks a key step toward enacting the Republican budget reconciliation package that President Donald Trump signed into law last summer. That measure included around $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid, with new work requirements projected to account for nearly $330 billion of that total.
The new rule will dictate how states must implement the budget law's Medicaid work mandates and who is exempt from the requirements. States are already spending tens of millions of dollars hiring new staff and upgrading technology in preparation for the mandates taking effect next year.
Broadly, the Trump-GOP law requires adults without disabilities between the ages of 19 and 64 to demonstrate at least 80 hours of work, community service, or other "qualifying activities" per month to keep their Medicaid coverage.
Exemptions to the work reporting requirements include people who are pregnant, caregivers to children under the age of 14, or "medically frail." The CMS rule defines the latter category as those with "physical or behavioral health conditions that significantly impair their ability to consistently work or participate in other community engagement activities."
Advocates warned that the rule will force many sick people off coverage. The rule states that people with HIV/AIDS, end-stage renal disease, and cancer would not necessarily be exempt from the work reporting requirements.
According to The New York Times, "states had expected that people with certain serious diagnoses would qualify for the exception, and they had been developing ways to match applications with existing medical records to identify most such people automatically."
"Nebraska’s Medicaid program, which began enforcing a work requirement last month, developed a list of exempted conditions that is nearly 300 pages long," the Times reported. "The state will now need to adjust."
"When these requirements go into effect at the beginning of next year, it’s going to be a complete train wreck for America."
Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA, said Monday that "far from protecting the vulnerable, this guidance significantly raises the barrier for demonstrating medical frailty, meaning many patients in the middle of treatment will have the new hassle of proving their condition, over and over, with any mistake or gap being penalized by the loss of their healthcare and coverage."
"Through this rule," said Wright, "CMS is requiring duplicative documentation and prohibiting states from taking full advantage of consumer-friendly tools like self-attestation."
During the first year of the work reporting requirements, which are set to take effect nationwide in January 2027, people will be allowed to attest in Medicaid applications that they meet one of the exemptions, according to administration officials.
"Beginning in 2028, states will be expected to verify the exemptions," NBC News reported. "The temporary flexibility, the officials said, is intended to give states time to build systems that can verify exemptions using claims data and other records."
The advocacy group Protect Our Care warned that the new rule "creates a labyrinth of paperwork, reporting mandates, and rigid eligibility rules designed to ensure people lose healthcare, even when they should qualify to keep it."
“Instead of lowering costs or making care more accessible, Republicans are weaponizing government bureaucracy against the American people," said Brad Woodhouse, the president of Protect Our Care. "They are betting that if they make the process confusing and exhausting enough, millions of people will fall through the cracks and lose the care they depend on to survive. Hospitals will suffer, providers will be pushed further to the brink, and families across the country will pay the price while Republicans once again put wealthy donors and corporate greed ahead of the health and well-being of everyday Americans.”
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has projected that, over the next decade, the Trump-GOP work reporting requirements will push nearly 3 million people off Medicaid.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement that the CMS rule "is the dark heart of the Republican plan to kick millions of working Americans and their children off their health insurance by placing a mountain of paperwork in front of them."
"These barriers are designed to prevent Americans from getting affordable healthcare, while providing a profit bonanza for the corporate consultants who get paid millions to build bureaucratic booby traps," Wyden added. "The Republican plan for healthcare is to kick people when they are down, making sick people sicker and hard times even harder. When these requirements go into effect at the beginning of next year, it’s going to be a complete train wreck for America, and not just for the Americans caught in the bureaucratic maze Republicans have created: Every community will be left with worse healthcare."
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As Detained Immigrants Strike Against 'Chaos and Cruelty,' Advocates Demand 'Not Another Dime for ICE'
"Americans want real accountability and reform, and there is no version in Congress that reins in ICE and addresses the abuses we are witnessing," said the head of America's Voice.
Jun 01, 2026
With US senators returning to Capitol Hill on Monday after a Memorial Day recess, Republicans are working to get a second budget reconciliation package to President Donald Trump's desk—and critics of his mass deportation campaign continue to push back against giving immigration enforcement agencies $72 billion.
Much of that money would go to the US Department of Homeland Security and two of its agencies, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Trump's deportation agenda notably got over $170 billion in last year's budget reconciliation package, dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Since Trump signed that legislation last summer, he has deployed federal agents to various communities across the country, including Chicago and the Twin Cities, where they were documented violating the rights of US citizens and immigrants alike—even killing Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
Immigrants who have been caught up in such operations have often been held in "inhumane conditions" at detention centers. For example, according to a lawsuit filed last week, a tent encampment at the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso, Texas "has become notorious for flagrant human rights abuses that people endure during their detention—they are confined to windowless enclosures in tents and suffer egregious physical abuse by guards; abhorrent medical and mental health care, including for people with chronic conditions like cancer and HIV; indiscriminate use of solitary confinement to punish and silence victims of guard abuse; and other flagrant constitutional violations, including exposure to measles, tuberculosis, and other diseases."
"Not even a year in, there already have been three reported deaths at Camp East Montana," the complaint notes. "In one case, a man was beaten to death after asking for his asthma medication—a death the medical examiner later ruled a homicide. A fourth man died shortly after being released from Camp East Montana, where he had been denied the chemotherapy that he needed to treat his cancer."
Overall, from Trump's return to office early last year to late April, ICE has reported more than 50 detainee deaths. An Associated Press investigation published last week found that at least 10 of them, all men, died by suicide.
"Not another dime for ICE—not while children are locked in trailer prisons, detainees are on hunger strike, and protesters are being pepper-sprayed for demanding basic decency," Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the group America's Voice, said in a Monday statement.
As her group detailed:
Detainees at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey are on a hunger and labor strike, now in its fifth day, citing reported infestations, inadequate medical care, and no air conditioning, with protests outside met by masked ICE agents deploying pepper spray and tasers. At the Desert View Annex in Adelanto, California, at least 20 detainees launched a hunger strike citing a lack of medical care, unsafe drinking water, and mold. At Dilley, Texas, more than 6,300 children have been detained since the start of Trump's second term in facilities described by those inside as a trailer prison, with lights on 24 hours a day and children as young as two months old among those held. Meanwhile, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has threatened to halt processing of international travelers at Newark Airport amid the ongoing dispute with New Jersey officials over conditions at Delaney Hall.
Following protests on Friday and Saturday nights at Delaney Hall, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka imposed a curfew from 9:00 pm to 6:00 am ET. Multiple people who did not comply with it on Sunday night were arrested.
CBS News reported that as the curfew took effect, "a warning was issued to the protesters who had gathered outside the zone. Thirteen minutes later, state police in riot gear rushed toward the crowd. Officers on horses came in from the other side, surrounding the crowd and herding them away into a standoff."
Discussing the New Jersey demonstrations during an interview on Fox News, Mullin claimed that "they're not just exercising their First Amendment" rights; "these are violent protesters that are there to injure everybody—that's even bystanders."
A DHS spokesperson said in a Monday statement to Fox News Digital that "RIOTERS WILL NOT SLOW US DOWN."
"The perimeter around Delaney Hall is FULLY closed... No rioters breached the perimeter last night. Our ICE operations continue undeterred," the spokesperson added. "ANYONE who attempts to obstruct law enforcement or disrupt our operations will be prosecuted and face justice."
Meanwhile, the Communications Workers of America (CWA), District 1, directed attention to those inside the facility, saying in a Monday statement that it "stands in full solidarity with the people detained at Delaney Hall in Newark who have laid down their labor and refused their meals to demand dignity, safety, and freedom."
As CWA District 1 detailed:
Make no mistake: This is a labor struggle. The people held inside Delaney Hall are forced to cook meals, clean the floors, and keep the facility running—for as little as one dollar a day. These workers are on strike to protest the unconscionable conditions they are forced to endure and the basic due process they are entitled to, but have been denied.
While the private contractors who operate these detention centers bank millions, the workers who sustain them are denied the most basic protection and respect. When workers in those conditions organize, withhold their labor, and act together to demand better, they are doing what working people have always done to win justice. We recognize a strike when we see one.
The labor movement was built on the principle that no person should be exploited, silenced, or treated as less than human because of who they are or where they come from. The demands coming from inside Delaney Hall—an end to medical neglect, an end to exploitative labor, the release of the elderly, the young, and the sick, and the restoration of basic due process—are the same demands for dignity, equity, and justice that animate our own fight every day. An injury to one is an injury to all.
We honor the courage of the strikers and of the families and community members standing watch outside the facility, and we defend their right to peaceful protest. And we condemn in the strongest terms the escalation and violence by ICE and state police against people peacefully exercising their constitutional rights.
Cárdenas of America's Voice called out Trump, Mullin, and Stephen Miller, the president's White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, who is infamous for pushing the family separation policy during his first term.
"The Trump-Miller mass purge machine is running unchecked, and Mullin isn't bringing accountability," Cárdenas said Monday. "Instead, this administration continues draining resources from real public safety, separating American-born children from their parents, and spending millions on masked agents while American families are unable to make ends meet."
"The Senate has a clear choice to make: Side with the chaos and cruelty or listen to the American people," she continued. "Poll after poll reveals that the public resoundingly rejects masked and armed agents inflicting random violence against immigrants and Americans alike."
"Americans want real accountability and reform, and there is no version in Congress that reins in ICE and addresses the abuses we are witnessing," she stressed. "This administration has made clear that reform is not on the table. Congress should not give them another dime to prove it."
Both chambers of Congress are narrowly controlled by Republicans, but efforts by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to advance immigration enforcement legislation have been hampered by Trump's controversial $1.776 billion slush fund for insurrectionists. However, as of Monday, after losses in court, the Trump administration is backing off its push for the fund for now, meaning the bill may soon move forward on Capitol Hill.
"I can't think of a less appropriate time to pour another $72 billion into ICE and CBP—especially without requiring meaningful reforms or accountability measures," Bridget Moix, a leader at Quaker organizations including Friends Committee on National Legislation, FCNL Education Fund, and Friends Place on Capitol Hill, wrote Friday for Religion News Service.
"As Quakers, we reject the false choice between security and human dignity," Moix added. "True safety cannot be built through fear, cruelty, or unchecked power. Lasting security comes from thriving communities, functioning institutions, economic opportunity, and respect for human rights."
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