Attorney General Pam Bondi distributed plans inside the Justice Department last week to scrap rules protecting journalists and their sources from surveillance and subpoenas over unflattering coverage and leaks. Bondi’s memo leaked to the press immediately.

“This Justice Department will not tolerate unauthorized disclosures that undermine President Trump’s policies, victimize government agencies, and cause harm to the American people,” reads the memo, citing recent leaks to the New York Times, Washington Post, and Reuters as examples of the kind of reporting that would no longer be tolerated. “I have concluded that it is necessary to rescind [former attorney general] Merrick Garland’s policies precluding the Department of Justice from seeking records and compelling testimony from members of the news media in order to identify and punish the source of improper leaks.”

Eliminating these rules is the latest signal of a looming threat to reporters, who could face subpoenas and search warrants for daring to publish information that President Donald Trump would prefer kept secret. Journalists who resist legal demands to disclose their sources could face fines or even jail time.

But it didn’t have to be this way.

Long before Trump was reelected on promises to punish disfavored reporters and outlets, free press advocates warned that the rescinded Justice Department rules were an inadequate shield. The Biden DOJ last revised the rules in 2022 in light of revelations about the first Trump administration’s spying on journalists to smoke out leakers. Along the way, even as it offered its own leaks to friendly outlets, the first Trump DOJ

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