The Republican-majority U.S. House voted earlier this year to pass the PRESS Act, legislation that would protect reporters from being spied on by the government, and from being threatened with jail time to force them to testify against their sources.
But, you see, soon-to-be-president Donald Trump opposes the PRESS Act, for no stated reason – he merely posted on social media three weeks ago, “REPUBLICANS MUST KILL THIS BILL.”
Enter Tom Cotton, Republican senator/Trump water-carrier from Arkansas.
Cotton said in a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday that the legislation would turn the Senate “into the active accomplice of Deep State leakers, traitors and criminals, along with the America-hating and fame-hungry journalists who help them out.”
Cotton is a tinfoil hat guy.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader for the next couple of weeks, is just your average Democrat – bereft of intestinal fortitude, more focused on preserving the archaic, like the filibuster, than doing anything of substance.
Schumer, in remarks on the Senate floor on Tuesday, called the PRESS Act “common sense” and said the bill is “more important now than ever before when we’ve heard so many in the incoming administration talk about going after the press one way or another.”
But he has other priorities, and because of those other priorities, the PRESS Act was left to get through the Senate on a unanimous consent vote, which failed because Tom Cotton is good at his job, which is, not asking how high? when Donald Trump says the word jump.
“We need more than speeches about the PRESS Act’s importance. We need action,” said Seth Stern, the director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
“Senate Democrats had all year to move this bipartisan bill and now time is running out,” Stern said. “Leader Schumer needs to get the PRESS Act into law — whether by attaching it to a year-end legislative package or bringing it to the floor on its own — even if it means shortening lawmakers’ holiday break. Hopefully, today was a preview of more meaningful action to come.”
Fat chance of “meaningful action” actually happening.
Video: Senate GOP blocks the PRESS Act
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Chris Graham
