Today, six people went to court over something every reader has a stake in: the right to hear what the White House would rather nobody asked. In a new lawsuit, the Knight First Amendment Institute and Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic argue that expelling reporters over coverage the president dislikes violates the public’s right to independent reporting. The case, Roth v. Trump, puts the people receiving the news at the center of the fight. When a reporter gets shut out, the rest of us lose a way to see inside.
That matters because a government allowed to select its own witnesses can make almost anything look successful. The president gets a microphone, the public gets a bill, and anyone asking why those two things don’t match is apparently ruining the atmosphere. I would prefer a few difficult questions before we all agree the emperor’s new economic plan looks lovely.
Here on the Homefront, yesterday I decided to work in the yard while my husband laid down with the baby. There were several large logs leaning against our big Douglas fir, roughly eight feet long, and I decided they needed to be somewhere else. This is the sort of decision that feels perfectly reasonable until you are halfway through physically carrying out your own suggestion.
I moved them. When I went to set down the last one, it hit the ground, rolled, and an offshoot whacked me in the head. So now I have a nice bloody shiner. I’m okay, but apparently the yard would like me to submit future landscaping proposals in writing.
Then it started raining, which meant hurrying to put away everything that shouldn’t get wet. By the time I finished, the kids were ready for lunch. Motherhood is very good at reminding you that whatever dramatic thing has just happened, someone still needs a sandwich.
After all of that, we went back outside and fixed the heat pump. It’s finally working. We did it. Actual warm air is coming out of the thing we purchased specifically for that purpose, and after the amount of troubleshooting involved, I feel this should qualify us for some kind of honorary degree. Or at least an uninterrupted evening in a warm house.
This week is spirit week for the kids, and today was yee-haw day. They dressed up like little cowboys and cowgirls, and it was the most adorable thing I ever did see. Sweet babies. There is a lot wrong with the world, but the small people in Western wear are doing their part.
My husband and I also appear to be coming down with another crud, although it may just be allergies arriving with the first real rain. We shall see. I would like to respectfully decline any additional illnesses. Our household has already completed the sampler.
Back in the world of people who can hold a press conference about their accomplishments, today’s lawsuit asks for protection broader than restoring one outlet’s access. The plaintiffs want an injunction protecting the White House press corps from retaliation and preserving the public’s access to its reporting. Those are the arguments they are bringing to court, with the outcome still ahead.
The principle is worth defending even when you dislike the publication involved. We all have news coverage we find irritating. Having an opinion about a reporter doesn’t entitle a president to make that reporter’s access depend on keeping him pleased. Public information can’t become a loyalty reward.
Most of us can’t leave work, arrange childcare, fly to Washington, and personally ask a cabinet secretary what happened to a program our family depends on. We need people who can get into the room, ask follow-up questions, and check an official answer against something beyond the official’s satisfaction with it. Independence is what makes that work useful.
Consider the view from the gas pump. According to the Associated Press, regular gasoline averages $4.29 a gallon nationally today, up from $2.98 before the Iran war; diesel averages $6.35. At Saturday’s Georgia rally, Trump celebrated oil profits: “We’re making a freaking fortune.” He also acknowledged that advisers had warned him against saying it because people were paying more.
I would like the definition of “we” included on the receipt.
For a family calculating whether there is enough left after groceries to fill the tank, somebody else’s magnificent earnings are not much of a consolation. Reporting should help us examine that difference. Whose income is rising? Whose expenses are rising? What decisions contributed to either? Those are useful questions even when the answers interfere with a victory speech.
There is something hopeful to carry into the week, too. Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won Sunday’s presidential runoff against Flávio Bolsonaro, taking about 51.8 percent of the vote. Bolsonaro is seeking to have the result annulled over an extension of voting hours; the president of the electoral court says the extension did not affect the outcome.
That’s a victory with more work attached. I think we can recognize both. An election can give people a reason to breathe again without making every institution secure or every danger disappear. The possibility of change is still worth the effort of organizing for it, and a result is still worth defending after the celebrations end.
With eight days until our own Election Day, I want us to hold on to that possibility. We need independent reporting so we can understand the choices in front of us. We need to keep asking who benefits when an official announces that everything is wonderful. And we need to use the power we have while we have it.
There are children dressing up for spirit week in the middle of all this, growing into whatever country we leave them. They deserve adults who keep paying attention, even when we’re tired, even when the news is ugly, and even when the yard has recently punched one of us in the face.
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This week’s progress includes a working heat pump, which means your resident writer can now be politically overheated in a temperature-controlled room. Thank you for helping us keep doing this work and building a home around it.
Take care of yourselves today. I will be giving the remaining logs some space.
So sorry to hear that you were attacked by a felled tree, Shanley, migawd!
Yeah, I heard Trump too, and assumed he meant that Trump, Inc. is "making a freking fortune" off the Iran War. Not his audience, and for sure, not the rest of us!
"Spirit Week" sounds like fun! Please tell us more....