Less than a week after Donald Trump threatened to jail reporters and publishers for reporting the news like the draft Supreme Court decision revoking body autonomy, Attorney General Merrick Garland signed a department policy officially revoking a Trump DOJ dictate to use subpoenas, court orders, warrants and other legal weapons to seize reporters’ phone records, notes and emails to track possible sources of stories, the New York Times reports.
“These regulations recognize the crucial role that a free and independent press plays in our democracy,” Garland said in a statement. “Because freedom of the press requires that members of the news media have the freedom to investigate and report the news, the new regulations are intended to provide enhanced protection to members of the news media from certain law enforcement tools and actions that might unreasonably impair news gathering.”
At a cult rally Saturday, Trump said that reporters and publishers who used confidential sources to do things like report on the draft Supreme Court decision to revoke the Roe precedent should be jailed until they’re prison raped enough to turn over the information. ““And they say ‘We’re not gonna tell you.’ They say ‘That’s OK, you’re going to jail.’ And when this person realizes he’s going to be the bride of another prisoner very shortly, he will say ‘I’d very much like to tell you exactly who that leaker is!’”