President-elect Donald J. Trump on Wednesday instructed congressional Republicans to block the passage of a bipartisan federal shield bill intended to strengthen the ability of reporters to protect confidential sources, dealing a potentially fatal political blow to the measure — even though the Republican-controlled House had already passed it unanimously.
The call by Mr. Trump makes it less likely that the bill — the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act, or PRESS Act — would reach the Senate floor and be passed before the current session of Congress ends next month. Even one senator can hold up the bill, chewing up many hours of Senate floor time that could be spent on confirming judges or passing other legislation deemed to be a higher priority.
Mr. Trump issued the edict in a post on his Truth Social platform Wednesday afternoon. Citing a “PBS NewsHour” report about the federal shield legislation, he wrote: “REPUBLICANS MUST KILL THIS BILL!”
Mr. Trump has exhibited extreme hostility to mainstream news reporters, whom he has often referred to as “enemies of the people.” In his first term as president, he demanded a crackdown on leaks that eventually entailed secretly seizing the private communications of reporters, including some from The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN.
After those subpoenas came to light early in the Biden administration, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland issued a rule that banned prosecutors from using compulsory legal processes like subpoenas and search warrants to go after reporters’ information — including by asking third parties, like phone and email companies, to turn over their data — or to force them to testify about their sources. But a future administration could rescind that regulation.
The PRESS Act would codify such limits into law.
Trevor Timm, the co-founder and executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said he hoped Mr. Trump would reconsider, arguing that it would protect all journalists, including those who primarily reach conservative audiences.
“The PRESS Act protects conservative and independent journalists just as much as it does anyone in the mainstream press,” Mr. Timm said. “Democratic administrations abused their powers to spy on journalists many times. The bipartisan PRESS Act will stop government overreach and protect the First Amendment once and for all.”
Mr. Timm cited support for the bill by Republican allies of Mr. Trump like Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, and Senator Mike Lee of Utah, a Senate Judiciary Committee member.
Mr. Timm also noted that Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who is influential in Mr. Trump’s circle, endorsed the PRESS Act in an interview with Catherine Herridge, a former Fox News reporter facing fines for contempt of court over her refusal to identify her sources for stories about a scientist who was investigated by the F.B.I. for ties to the Chinese military. The scientist, who was not charged, has sued the government for allegedly disclosing private information about her from the investigation, leading to a subpoena to Ms. Herridge.
The legislation has had broad support across party lines, and passed the House without opposition in January. But it has been stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The committee, under the leadership of its chairman, Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, has primarily been focused on approving as many of President Biden’s judicial nominees as it can before the session ends and Republicans take over leadership of the chamber next year.
The bill has also run into skepticism from several Republican senators, which makes it harder to bring it up for quick passage or to attach it to some other bill, like the annual defense authorization act.
According to congressional staff, the bill’s primary adversary on the Judiciary Committee has been Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a hawkish Republican who gained public attention as an Army officer in 2006 while serving in Iraq by attacking The New York Times for its publication of an investigative article about a counterterrorism finances program. Another Republican committee member, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, is also said to have expressed some reservations.
Mr. Trump did not give a reason for his abrupt decision to weigh in against the PRESS Act, but some of his other allies have called for rolling back protections for press freedoms.
For example, Project 2025, the consortium of conservative think tanks that devised a detailed governing agenda for Mr. Trump before he won the election, included in the Justice Department chapter of its Mandate for Leadership that a second Trump administration should rescind the Garland regulation.
Kash Patel, a confidant of Mr. Trump, also threatened to target journalists for prosecution in a podcast in December hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former strategist.
“We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media,” Mr. Patel said last year. “Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.” He added: “We’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.”
A World War I-era law, the Espionage Act, makes it a crime to solicit or disclose national security secrets without authorization. While the law was written for spies gathering information for a foreign adversary, on its face it also would cover investigative journalism and the publication of information the government has deemed classified.
For most of the century since World War I, however, First Amendment norms kept prosecutors from trying to use that law to treat journalistic-style activities as a crime. But the Trump administration broke that taboo, bringing Espionage Act charges against the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing military and diplomatic documents in 2010 that were leaked by Chelsea Manning.
The Biden administration continued that case and won a conviction earlier this year in a plea deal, establishing a precedent that gathering and publishing information the government had deemed secret could be treated as a crime in the United States. For now, that precedent remains ambiguous, however; because Mr. Assange agreed to a deal, there was no appeal to test the constitutional legitimacy of applying the Espionage Act to publishing information.
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