After passing the Republican-led House of Representatives with unanimous support in January, the PRESS Act failed to pass in the Senate on unanimous consent, with Republican Senators blocking an effort by Democrats to get the legislation signed into law – just days after President-elect Donald Trump announced he opposed the bill.
The Protect Reporters from Exploitive State Spying (PRESS) Act would protect journalists against government surveillance and the forced disclosure of their confidential sources.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke in support of the PRESS Act, calling the provisions “common sense” and “more important now than ever before,” and Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon called for unanimous consent to pass it. The attempt was immediately blocked by Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who said that the bill threatened U.S. national security and its passage would turn the Senate “into the active accomplice of deep-state leakers, traitors and criminals, along with the America-hating and fame-hungry journalists who help them out.”
All major free press advocacy groups, including Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP), Defending Rights & Dissent (DRaD), and others, support the bill and have redoubled their efforts to pass it before the end of the lame-duck session.
In the wake of the failed vote, FPF has called out the Democrats saying they have had all year to pass the bill, and called on them to use the opportunity to build momentum for more meaningful action and pass it, even by cutting their holidays short. Commenting on an investigation that revealed the DOJ’s failure to comply with the internal guidelines restricting its use of investigative tools to seize journalists’ records, RCFP’s executive director Bruce D. Brown, said that a “reasonable, common-sense law to protect reporters and their sources” is needed “to prevent government interference with the free flow of information to the public.”
It is still possible to pass the PRESS Act through the Senate with just 60 votes.