TL;DR
The Pentagon's Correspondents' Corridor is still closed two weeks after Judge Friedman called the replacement press policy Kafkaesque.
MSM Perspective
New York Times and press freedom groups push for new court order after Pentagon circumvents ruling with tighter restrictions.
X Perspective
The Pentagon responded to a court loss by making press access worse, and the judge who called it Kafka can't figure out what to do about that either.
As covered in this paper's earlier account of the Pentagon press access dispute, the sequence of events is straightforward in outline and disorienting in its particulars.
In October 2025, the Defense Department instituted a restrictive new media access policy, removing the press credentials of seven New York Times journalists. The New York Times sued. On March 20, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman vacated key provisions of the policy and ordered the Pentagon to immediately restore those credentials.
The Pentagon's response was to close the Correspondents' Corridor entirely.
The Correspondents' Corridor — a working press area inside the Pentagon where journalists have had semi-permanent workspaces for decades — was shuttered effective March 23. In its place, the Defense Department announced it would establish "a new and improved press workspace in an annex facility" and impose escorted access requirements for all journalists moving through Pentagon buildings. The reporters whom the judge had specifically ordered to be reinstated were, as the Columbia Journalism Review reported, not reinstated to the corridor they had worked in; they were banished, along with the entire press corps, to a different location with different access rules.
On March 30, Judge Friedman heard additional arguments on whether this response constituted compliance with his order. His frustration was evident in the questions he asked from the bench. "Is this Kafka?" he said at one point, after reading a New York Times declaration describing reporters' difficulty navigating the new access requirements. At another point, Bloomberg Law reported, he invoked Catch-22. He did not issue a new order from the bench. He requested additional briefing.
That briefing has been submitted. A new ruling has not yet come.
The Trump administration has announced it will appeal Friedman's initial ruling. Pending that appeal, it is technically complying with the letter of his order — the Times journalists have press credentials — while operating a press access regime that the journalists describe as making meaningful reporting impossible. You are reinstated, but the corridor is closed. You can access the building, but only with an escort. You cannot work where you worked; you must work where we say.
Hannah Arendt wrote about the banality of bureaucratic obstruction — the way that institutions, when they cannot openly defy a rule, will comply with it in ways that hollow it out from the inside. The Pentagon did not defy Judge Friedman's order. It closed the hallway.
What changes next depends on whether the judge decides that formal compliance with the letter of his ruling is sufficient, or whether the purpose of the ruling — press access — must also be fulfilled. The National Press Club, which has condemned the corridor closure, is watching. The press corps is waiting. The escort requirements remain in effect.
-- ANNA WEBER, Berlin
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