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freedom of the press foundation
Groups Warn Trump Appointee Against Turning US Attorney's Office Into 'DOGE Defense Squad'
"Does Ed Martin follow the Constitution or Elon Musk?"
Feb 05, 2025
A coalition of civil society groups on Tuesday criticized the Trump-appointed interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia for rushing to the defense of the Department of Government Efficiency after the commission's billionaire leader, Elon Musk, accused a social media user of committing a crime by posting the names of engineers aiding the takeover of federal agencies.
In a letter to Edward Martin, whom President Donald Trump appointed just minutes after his inauguration last month, more than 30 advocacy organizations wrote that "as an experienced attorney holding such an important public position, you must be aware that it is not a crime for anyone... to identify individuals openly conducting government work that is of the utmost public concern."
The coalition, which includes the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Demand Progress Education Fund, noted that Wired earlier this week published the names of six young engineers working for Musk at DOGE, which has swiftly and lawlessly infiltrated key federal agencies.
The engineers Wired named are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran.
Following publication of the Wired story, Martin sent a letter to Musk stating that "some of the staff at DOGE has been targeted publicly" and encouraging the world's richest man to "utilize me and my staff to assist in protecting the DOGE work and the DOGE workers."
Martin subsequently issued a statement declaring that an "initial review of the evidence presented to us indicates that certain individuals and/or groups have committed acts that appear to violate the law in targeting DOGE employees."
"We are in contact with FBI and other law enforcement partners to proceed rapidly," Martin added. "We also have our prosecutors preparing."
"A public servant should not abdicate their First Amendment duties and use their office to target and intimidate journalists and peaceful protesters at the behest of the world's richest man."
Seth Stern, director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement that "there's nothing more central to the First Amendment than the press and public's right to criticize those carrying out controversial government work, harshly and by name."
"A sitting U.S. attorney threatening to prosecute this constitutionally protected conduct is highly alarming—even un-American," said Stern. "So are his threats against those who may protest DOGE. If Martin does not understand why such threats are so problematic, he should not be serving in such an important position in our government. He should clarify that he did not intend to threaten to prosecute people who named DOGE employees and that, going forward, he will not assert dubious legal positions to curry favor with Musk or President Trump."
Emily Peterson-Cassin, corporate power director at the Demand Progress Education Fund, added that "it would be deeply alarming for Martin to turn the office of the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia into a DOGE defense squad."
"A public servant should not abdicate their First Amendment duties and use their office to target and intimidate journalists and peaceful protesters at the behest of the world's richest man," Peterson-Cassin added. "Martin has already shown willingness to retaliate against public servants by firing January 6th prosecutors, so we need straight answers. Does Ed Martin follow the Constitution or Elon Musk?"
In their letter on Tuesday, the civil society organizations called on Martin to "identify the specific 'targeting' of DOGE staff" referenced in his message to Musk and "publicly commit to not investigate or prosecute journalists or others for reporting on or publishing names of government workers and their work activities."
The letter also urges Martin to "acknowledge that criticism of DOGE staffers by name and peaceful protests of DOGE's work are protected by the First Amendment."
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Lawmakers, Civil Society Groups Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban
"Banning this social media platform would trample on the constitutional rights of over 170 million Americans."
Dec 27, 2024
Update (December 28):
On Friday evening, President-elect Donald Trump filed a brief with the Supreme Court that took no position on whether a ban on TikTok would violate First Amendment rights. Instead, he wrote that he has "consummate deal-making expertise," and as president would be able to "negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the government."
Trump touted his understanding of social media, noting that he has 14.7 million followers on TikTok. He also said the timing of the impending ban—one day before he takes office–interferes with his "ability to manage the United States’ foreign policy and to pursue a resolution" that will preserve the app in the United States and protect national security.
Earlier:
Ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court's scheduled hearing on social media company TikTok's appeal regarding a ban on the popular platform, three bipartisan lawmakers were among the First Amendment advocates who filed amicus briefs in support of the app on Friday.
Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) were joined by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) in asking the court to grant TikTok an emergency injunction to block the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act from banning the app on January 19 unless the platform's Chinese parent company sells its stake by then.
The law and its ban on TikTok would "deprive millions of Americans of their First Amendment rights," said the lawmakers.
"The TikTok ban does not survive First Amendment scrutiny," Markey, Paul, and Khanna added. "Its principal justification—preventing covert content manipulation by the Chinese government—reflects a desire to control the content on the TikTok platform and in any event could be achieved through a less restrictive alternative."
The law was signed by President Joe Biden in April over the objections of First Amendment advocates, and a federal appeals court upheld the ban earlier this month. The Supreme Court then agreed to hear TikTok's challenge.
The ACLU, the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), and the Freedom of the Press Foundation were among several civil liberties groups that also filed a amicus brief on Friday, arguing that the government has not presented sufficient evidence that the app, which is used by 170 million Americans, causes "ongoing or imminent harm."
Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the ACLU's National Security Project, said the government's attempt to ban Americans from using TikTok, which some creators use to share commentary on geopolitical events as well as weighing in on pop culture and creating humorous videos, is "extraordinary and unprecedented."
"This social media platform has allowed people around the world to tell their own stories in key moments of social upheaval, war, and natural disaster while reaching immense global audiences," Toomey said.
TikTok, he said, is "a unique forum for expression online—and the connections and community that so many have built there cannot be easily replaced. TikTok creators can't simply transfer their audiences and followers to another app, and TikTok users can't simply reassemble the many voices they've discovered on the platform."
At CDT, Free Expression Project director Kate Ruane said the groups' amicus brief "makes clear that national security interests do not diminish protections afforded by the First Amendment and that courts must impose the same rigorous standards to laws that restrict speech."
"It further argues that the D.C. Circuit misapplied strict scrutiny when it failed to significantly examine the government's vague and nonspecific national security justifications for enacting the statute," said Ruane. "In light of the law's sweeping ban on free expression, the coalition's brief argues that the court should block implementation of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act."
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Arrests of US Journalists Surged in 2024 Amid Crackdown on Gaza Protests
Police use of "catch-and-release" tactics is particularly worrying for press freedom advocates, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.
Dec 12, 2024
Arrests and detainments of journalists in the United States surged in 2024 compared to the year prior, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a project of the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
The tracker reports that journalists were arrested or detained by police at least 48 times this year—eclipsing the number of arrests that took place in the previous two years combined, and constituting the third highest number of yearly arrests and detentions since the project began cataloging press freedom violations in 2017. 2020, however, still stands as far and away the year with the most arrests and detentions.
The 48 arrests and detentions this year is also part of a larger list of "press freedom incidents" that the tracker documents, including things like equipment damage, equipment seizure, and assault.
While a year with a high number of protests typically leads to more arrests, "it was protests in response to the Israel-Gaza war that caused this year's uptick," according to the tracker.
The vast majority of the arrests and detainments out of the total 48 were linked to these sorts of demonstrations, and it was protests at Columbia University's Manhattan campus that were the site of this year's largest detainment of journalists.
The report also recounts the story of Roni Jacobson, a freelance reporter whose experience on the last day of 2023 was a harbinger of press freedom incidents to come in 2024. Jacobson was on assignment to cover a pro-Palestinian demonstration for the New York Daily News on December 31, 2023 when she was told to leave by police because she didn't have city-issued press credentials with her. She recounted that she accidentally bumped into an officer and was arrested. She was held overnight at a precinct and then released after the charges against her, which included disorderly conduct, were dropped.
Even five arrests that the tracker deems "election-related" took place at protests that were "at least partially if not entirely focused on the Israel-Gaza war." Three of those election-related arrests took place at protests happening around the Democratic National Convention in August.
One police force in particular bears responsibility for this year's crackdown: Nearly 50% of the arrests of journalists this year were at the hands of the New York Police Department (NYPD). Many of those taken into custody had their charges dropped quickly, but the tracker notes that the NYPD's use of "catch-and-release" tactics was particularly worrying to press freedom advocates.
Two photojournalists, Josh Pacheco and Olga Federova, were detained four times this year in both New York City and Chicago while photographing protests. They were both "assaulted and arrested and [had] their equipment damaged" while documenting police clearing a student encampment at Manhattan's Fashion Institute of Technology; however, they were released the next day and told their arrests had been voided.
"While [we are] glad that some common sense prevailed by the NYPD not charging these two photographers with any crime, we are very concerned that they are perfecting 'catch-and-release' to an art form,” Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, told the tracker.
"The fact that they took two photojournalists off the street, preventing them from making any more images or transmitting the ones they already had on a matter of extreme public concern, is very disturbing," he said.
Besides covering protests, 2024 also saw the continued practice of "criminally charging journalists for standard journalistic practices," according to the tracker. For example, one investigative journalist in Los Angeles was repeatedly threatened with arrest while attempting to cover a homeless encampment sweep in the city, and then was detained in October, though he was let go without charges.
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