TL;DR
Three federal judges have now ruled against Hegseth's press exclusion policy — and three times he has not complied.
MSM Perspective
USA Today reports the third ruling adds to an accumulating record of Pentagon defiance of federal court orders.
X Perspective
X is calling this a constitutional crisis in slow motion, noting that non-compliance after three rulings is no longer an oversight.
A third federal judge ruled Monday that the Pentagon's exclusion of specific news outlets from press briefings and embeds violates the First Amendment — and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has declined to restore access [1].
The pattern is now three rulings and zero compliance. The first ruling came in February, when a district court found the blanket exclusion of outlets deemed "unfriendly" unconstitutional. Hegseth's office characterized the order as narrow. The second ruling in March extended the injunction and clarified its scope. Hegseth's office characterized the extension as procedural.
Monday's ruling came from a separate circuit and removed the ambiguity [1]. The court found violations of both the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act. It ordered the Pentagon to restore access within 72 hours.
The administration has not signaled it will comply. Press briefings as of Wednesday morning remained closed to the excluded outlets. The White House has not addressed the rulings publicly.
The excluded outlets include The New York Times, The Washington Post, and three wire services — the organizations whose access to military operations has historically been treated as a baseline condition, not a favor [1].
Wartime press restrictions have precedent. Selective exclusion of named outlets as punishment for coverage does not. The distinction is what three courts have now affirmed, and what the Pentagon has now three times declined to act on.
-- MAYA CALLOWAY, New York
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