Groups that advocate for reporters and Democratic senators roundly criticized the Justice Department’s move.
BEN JOHANSEN, Greg Svirnovskiy
“The National Press Club calls on the Justice Department to immediately withdraw these subpoenas and reaffirm a principle that has long distinguished the United States: a free and independent press serves the people, not the government,” National Press Club President Mark Schoeff Jr. said in a statement.
White House Correspondents’ Association President Weijia Jiang said the organization stands with the Times reporters, saying they were “targeted for doing their jobs to uphold the public’s right to know how its government operates.”
“The WHCA condemns any act of intimidation against journalists, including attempts to pressure them into revealing sources,” Jiang added.
And Stephen J. Adler, chair of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said, “When the public’s right to know is crushed, as the Trump Administration is trying to do with its subpoenas against The New York Times, all of us suffer irreparable harm, as does the freedom upon which this nation is built.”
Democrats in the Senate, too, took aim at the subpoenas. Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) panned them as “another slap in the face of the First Amendment from this administration and an attempt to silence journalists they don’t like” in a social media post.
“Reporters have the right and duty to report the truth,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote on X. “It’s not their fault his foreign-gifted plane is a national security threat.”
