The Daily Fuckup

A federal judge said Thursday that the Pentagon is still violating his earlier order restoring reporters’ access to the building, handing the Defense Department another loss in a fast-moving fight over press restrictions. U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman said the department’s revised policy did not bring it into compliance with his March 20 ruling, which had blocked key parts of the new access rules.

Friedman’s March order said the Pentagon could not enforce provisions that limited journalists’ access after they refused to agree to the new terms. He also ordered the department to restore access for reporters whose credentials had been pulled under the policy. In a follow-up ruling on April 9, he said the Pentagon had not fixed the problem with its revisions.

The dispute centers on who gets to move through the Pentagon and under what conditions. Reporters who declined to accept the new policy lost access to parts of the building, and the department later put forward a revised version that the plaintiffs said still kept the same limits in place. Friedman agreed that the changes did not satisfy his earlier order.

The case has now moved from a challenge to the policy itself to a compliance fight over how the Pentagon is carrying out the court’s instructions. That puts the department in the position of having to show not just that it changed the rules, but that the changes actually restored the access the court said had been unlawfully restricted.

The ruling adds pressure on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the department as they defend the revised policy in court. For now, the judge’s message was straightforward: the Pentagon’s latest version still falls short of what he ordered in March, and the access fight is not over.