The Daily Fuckup

A federal judge on April 9, 2026, said the Pentagon had not done what he ordered it to do three weeks earlier: restore press access under a policy that met constitutional limits. U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman found that the Defense Department’s revised credentialing rules still violated his March 20 ruling, which had already struck down key parts of the Pentagon’s earlier restrictions on reporters.

The decision came after the government and The New York Times returned to court over whether the Pentagon’s new interim policy satisfied the earlier order. The department said it had adjusted the rules. The newspaper said the changes were an attempt to keep the same access restrictions in place under a different label. Friedman agreed with the newspaper and said the department could not revive an unlawful policy by repackaging it.

At issue was whether the Pentagon had actually restored the seven reporters’ credentials and access rights the court had ordered reinstated, or whether the new policy kept the same limits in a slightly different form. Friedman said the revised rules still failed to comply with his March 20 directive. He did not use the April 9 order to reopen every part of the underlying case; he focused on the narrower question of obedience to the earlier ruling.

The fight began after reporters challenged the Pentagon’s 2025 credentialing policy, saying it burdened speech and due process rights. In December, the Times sued the Pentagon and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the rules. On March 20, Friedman sided with the newspaper and ordered the department to restore access. By April 9, the dispute had shifted from the legality of the original policy to the simpler question of whether the Pentagon had followed the judge’s instructions.

The answer, for now, was no. The court’s latest ruling means the department still faces a live compliance problem, even as other questions about Pentagon access remain unresolved.