It's the Senate's last chance to pass the PRESS Act
The PRESS Act would protect a journalist's sources, and gained unanimous bipartisan support when passed by the House in January.
Folks in America: Your senators only have a few weeks left to pass the PRESS Act, a federal “shield” bill that the House passed with unanimous, bipartisan support in January but has been waiting in the Senate for a final vote ever since.
The PRESS Act, if passed into law, would enshrine nationwide protections for journalists across the United States from forcibly having to identify or give up their confidential sources (except in emergency cases, like to prevent an act of terrorism). The bill also grants other protections, such as limiting what records the government can secretly take from journalists or their email or phone provider that could identify their sources — again, with a narrow set of exceptions for emergency threats.
Lawmakers have been pushing to pass federal protections for journalists in the PRESS Act for the past year, citing recent U.S. government abuses, including the secret seizure of phone records from journalists who worked for CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post at the request of the Justice Department under the Trump administration. As noted last week by The Verge, protections for journalists and their sources will become increasingly relevant in a second Trump term.
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