Do ‘national security’ concerns trump the First Amendment?

This week, we dig into the Trump administration’s efforts to censor media outlets on national security grounds. Plus, Trump calls a report that his administration has weighed adding his name to the iconic Ford’s Theatre “a ridiculous lie.”

Do national security concerns trump the First Amendment? 

After Trump announced he had banned CNN, MSNOW and Politico from the White House due to claims of spreading “FAKE NEWS” — a term the president has long used to criticize coverage he doesn’t like — a judge ordered the White House last week to “immediately return, reinstate and restore” the journalists’ press credentials.

While the outlets now have their press access restored, the struggle is far from over — and the administration has doubled down on claims the censorship was a necessary step due to national security concerns. 

Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Sunday that the administration was justified to ban the outlets from the White House and Air Force One because “it is a privilege and not a right to be there” and that Trump was “sick and tired” of coverage the president considered inaccurate. 

Moreover, he claimed that “one-sided” news is a “national security problem.” 

“Misinformation coming out of the White House,” Blanche said during an interview on ABC’s This Week, “affects our relationship with our foreign partners. That affects our relationship with our foreign enemies.” 

Trump isn’t the first president to invoke national security to justify press censorship. Such tension has existed, the nonprofit Freedom Forum notes, “as long as there’s been a First Amendment.” 

The Supreme Court weighed in on the issue in a landmark 1971 case, after The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers — documents that revealed how the government misled the public about the Vietnam War. The Justices sided with the newspaper, finding that journalists can publish sensitive government materials if they serve the public interest. 

As the National Constitution Center notes, the case reaffirmed a core First Amendment principle: The right to “criticize the government and check abuses of power.” 

First Amendment advocates are skeptical that the latest censorship battle concerns national security. Among them is Nico Perrino, the executive vice president at the nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He said Blanche’s claims were absurd and “completely at odds with the First Amendment.” 

“I thought Trump’s election was supposed to rid us of the ‘misinformation’ police—not ratchet up their policing,” Perrino wrote on X. “And are we really supposed to pretend CNN and Politico are more ‘one-sided’ than Fox News and Breitbart, whose White House access was never in question?”

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