A group of 14 Senate Democrats is set to introduce a bill Thursday to reverse Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s restrictions on media access inside the Pentagon, arguing the administration is denying the public vital information about the Iran war.
Led by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), the bill would restore reporters’ access to areas of the Pentagon that credentialed journalists could enter before the Trump administration’s 2025 restrictions, including the “Correspondent’s Corridor,” a workspace for journalists since 1972. The bill hasn’t previously been reported.
“Well, it’s a free country, and they’re not acting like it,” Schatz told NOTUS. “Especially in a time of war … a vigorous and adversarial press gets to question why we’re at war, what the theory of victory is, how much it’s going to cost, what our strategy is — and none of that has been explained to the public.”
The measure is unlikely to advance in the Republican-controlled Congress, and President Donald Trump could veto it if it did. But ahead of November’s midterm elections, the legislation offers an early glimpse of how Democrats could challenge one of the administration’s most contentious transparency fights if they regain power. The bill’s introduction also comes as the Pentagon is battling over the restrictions in court.
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The bill’s co-sponsors include Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee’s top Democrat; Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Sens. Tim Kaine of Virginia, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and Jacky Rosen, all senior Senate Armed Services members, also signed on.
“Freedom of the press is enshrined in everything that we do in our democracy, and it is absolutely abhorrent to me what they’re doing with limiting press access and driving out the press from the Pentagon,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois), a co-sponsor and SASC member, told NOTUS. “You don’t do that unless you’re trying to hide something.”
Duckworth said Democrats are using the bill to “plant a flag” for future efforts to rein in what she called the administration’s “horrific attacks on our democracy.”
The legislation follows actions from Hegseth that led to the ouster of the Pentagon’s resident press corps, including requiring journalists to be escorted through much of the building, relocating major news organizations from their longtime office space and imposing new credentialing rules.
The Pentagon didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Hegseth, who has not held a press briefing in three months, and Trump have been openly hostile to journalists reporting on national security. In the wake of a Washington Post report that he grilled Hegseth over munitions shortages during a closed-door meeting, Trump denied the shortages in a Thursday social media post and threatened that leakers of “treasonous statements are being hunted down,” and “Long term jail sentences will be sought!”
The Justice Department last month sent subpoenas to compel testimony from New York Times reporters who wrote about security concerns involving the new Air Force One before withdrawing them. In January, the FBI raided a Washington Post reporter’s home as part of an investigation into a Pentagon contractor the administration said had illegally retained classified documents.
The Pentagon policies prompted two lawsuits by The New York Times, which argued the restrictions violated the First Amendment. The administration has defended the measures as necessary to protect classified information.
A federal judge last month ordered the Defense Department to temporarily halt the requirement that journalists be accompanied by an official escort.
Schatz’s bill argues the restrictions broke with decades of bipartisan practice. If enacted, it would restore press access that existed before Hegseth initiated the restrictions, restore unescorted access for credentialed reporters, and ensure that security reviews for Pentagon credentials are conducted by career officials in the Pentagon Force Protection Agency rather than political appointees.
It would also bar future defense secretaries from changing press workspaces, access areas or credentialing rules without first consulting the House and Senate Armed Services committees.
Former CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr, now with USC Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, said the restrictions fundamentally changed how reporters can gather information in response to breaking news and made spontaneous newsgathering nearly impossible. Wartime, she said, makes open access even more important.
“Americans want to know every single day what the troops are up to, what they’re being asked to do, and do they have the equipment and the training to do what they’re being asked to do?” she said. “And that comes from having the press corps there on site to be able to do the reporting to answer those questions.”
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