Two business days remain. The Justice Department has until end of business Monday, May 18, to notice an appeal of Judge Anthony Trenga's May 4 Privacy Protection Act order in the Hannah Natanson case. Saturday's docket shows no such filing. [1]

The paper's Friday brief said the docket moved while the deadline did not, distinguishing the May 13 status conference from the only filing that would change the case's trajectory: a notice of appeal to the Fourth Circuit. That distinction holds. CourtListener's docket through Saturday still shows housekeeping rather than the precedent vehicle. [1]

Trenga's underlying order blocked the government from searching the Washington Post reporter's seized devices under its proposed protocol and preserved court-led review. [2] The Washington Post's account of the original search at Natanson's home established the factual record. [3] None of that record changes by Sunday. Only a filing changes the case.

The choice now is binary. Either DOJ files Monday and asks the Fourth Circuit to define how the Privacy Protection Act applies to reporter devices in a leak investigation, or it does not and Trenga's district ruling becomes the working law for the next warrant of this kind. The clock is the only part of this story with teeth, and it stops Monday.

-- SAMUEL CRANE, Washington