Years ago, when I announced that I was leaving my job as editor of The Texas Observer to run for political office, I had to admit that into politics is the only downward career move one can make from journalism!

But being a both a journalist and a politician does hone in one’s ability to detect the smell of BS – and we Americans are presently getting a noxious blast of that stench from our warmongering Department of Defense.

The vast, trillion-dollar Pentagon is the ultimate Big Brother bureaucracy, literally empowered to compel thousands of Americans to die in foolish military misadventures cooked up by political partisans and profiteering corporate contractors. That’s why it’s so alarming that Trump’s “Project 2025” autocrats are now rushing to slam an iron door of censorship on reporters trying to inform us commoners about the militaristic schemes and corporate fraud that come from inside this government fortress.

In the name of defending freedom, Trump’s palace guards are banning media outlets that displease his royal highness. Also, “Pretty Boy Pete Hegseth,” Trump’s made-for-TV Pentagon honcho, has even decreed that reporters must be tightly monitored by military escorts while doing interviews, reviewing documents, and otherwise exorcising the essential Constitutional rights of our nation’s free press.

The good news is that rather than kowtowing to the autocrats, dozens of media organizations have told Pete to stuff it, choosing to do old-school outsider digging into this insider war machine.

Meanwhile, the “Project 2025” authoritarians hail their clamp down on free press rights by touting their “fresh relationship” with what they call their “new Pentagon press corps.” Right – it’s their partisan press corps, not ours.

Do something!

Our friends over at Free Press have launched a newsletter, “Pressing Issues,” to cover the future of media—and advocate for the freedoms we need in journalism. Check it out at pressingissues.org.

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