Media Must Cover BreakThrough Attack as Press Freedom Crisis

The same week the DOJ was forced to withdraw its subpoenas of New York Times journalists, the House Ways and Means Committee quietly subpoenaed BreakThrough News, a left-wing outlet critical of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, along with two affiliated nonprofits. The committee claims it's a tax probe into funding from a U.S. citizen living in Shanghai — but its own prior correspondence never cited financial illegality, focusing instead on BreakThrough's coverage of ICE and Israel and its ties to a lawfully organized domestic political party. BreakThrough's attorney called the committee "a modern-day HUAC." The Freedom of the Press Foundation was blunt: the government is targeting outlets it knows it can harass without the blowback that comes from going after the New York Times.

That is precisely the problem. Press freedom that only protects popular, well-funded outlets with armies of lawyers is not press freedom — it is a privilege. The First Amendment was written specifically to protect journalism the government disapproves of. Favorable coverage of foreign adversaries, radical labor politics, anti-ICE reporting — all of it is constitutionally protected speech, regardless of who funds it or what the government thinks of its politics.

We call on the media to cover the subpoenaing of BreakThrough News with the same urgency and solidarity it brought to the New York Times story. The administration's strategy is transparent: start at the margins, where the blowback is smaller, and work inward. If journalists wait until the targets are outlets they recognize as their own, it will be too late. The public deserves a press corps that understands press freedom is indivisible — or it isn't freedom at all.