When the deeply divided U.S. House of Representatives passes major legislation, unanimous votes are virtually impossible. If a bill has real consequences, someone in the room will undoubtedly have a problem with it for some reason.
But in January, when House Republican leaders agreed to bring the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act — or PRESS Act — to the floor, it passed without objection. Any member of the left, right or center could have resisted, but no one did.
That’s likely because the legislation seemed to be one of the least controversial bills of the year. The basic idea behind this effort was simple: Early in Attorney General Merrick Garland’s tenure, he created a policy that prohibited federal prosecutors from going after journalists’ private information or forcing them to testify about their confidential sources.
The PRESS Act would simply codify existing policies into federal law, creating a permanent shield law for media professionals.
The legislation was authored by a Democrat and a Republican, and had an equal number of Democratic and Republican co-sponsors in the House of Representatives. For those who assumed that bipartisan policymaking was simply impossible in 2024, especially in the House, this one bill offered at least some evidence to the contrary.
That is, until this week. De Heuvel reported:
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) blocked a federal shield bill that would protect journalists from revealing their sources and material to the government. In the Senate on Tuesday, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked for unanimous consent for the Senate to pass the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act, known as the PRESS Act, and Cotton objected.
By way of explanation, the Arkansas Republican told his Senate colleagues: “The liberal media doesn’t deserve more protection.”
The argument was so absurd that it seems unlikely that Cotton actually believed it.
When I spoke with my MSNBC colleague Lisa Rubin about the measure, she noted: “The irony of Senator Cotton’s response yesterday is that the most prominent recent examples of alleged investigative or prosecutorial dominance against the media involve journalists who are not are known as liberals. .”
Whether Cotton appreciates it or not, the PRESS Act is not merely a progressive endeavor. Tucker Carlson, for example, has been as eager to tout the bill as anyone on the left.
Additionally, the bill has three co-sponsors in the Senate — two of whom are Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
While we’re at it, let’s not forget that this is an idea with a long Republican pedigree: as far back as 2005, then-Rep. Indiana’s Mike Pence — more than a decade before he became vice president — advocated similar legislation after reporter Judith Miller was jailed as part of the investigation into who revealed Valerie Plame’s identity.
But if Cotton’s official statement is simply too silly to take seriously, why? did the Arkansans derail the PRESS Act? It could very well be because Donald Trump told him to.
In fact, it was just a few weeks ago when the Republican president-elect issued an online edict stating that Republican senators MUST “KILL” the legislation.
As we discussed shortly afterwards, it wasn’t entirely clear why. One possible explanation was that Trump made a detailed and thoughtful analysis of the bill and was concerned about how the policy would be implemented. The much more likely explanation was that Trump saw a headline about protecting journalists, remembered that he hates the free press, and reflexively responded without doing any research or even taking the time to understand the bill at its most basic level .
Regardless, the new president called for the repeal of the bipartisan measure — and Cotton played his role, despite the bill’s support from the right.
It is still possible that the Senate could reconsider the legislation before the lame-duck session ends, but given the limited number of days remaining and the to-do list of the outgoing Democratic majority in the Senate, Cotton (and Trump) will likely succeed. killing one of the most bipartisan bills of the year.
This message updates our related previous reporting.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
