Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson
“The recent all-out assault on free speech by the Trump administration and its allies has some of my friends in the business grumbling about the fact that the United States has no national ‘shield law’ giving journalists certain kinds of legal protections …. The most recent attempt to pass such a law failed in the Senate last year, not because Senate Republicans thought through the issue carefully but because Donald Trump demanded it be killed. Trump probably does not understand the law, but he knows he hates journalists. … a federal shield law (there are many state-level versions) was a bad idea before Donald Trump and it is a bad idea now — not because of the proposed shield or shields per se, but because it raises the question of who is to be protected by such a law and implies a government power to make that decision.” (09/23/25)
https://thedispatch.com/article/shield-law-journalism-free-speech/