The New York Times sues the Pentagon a second time over Hegseth’s media restrictions

Key points

• The New York Times sued the Defense Department on Monday (May 18, 2026) for the second time in five months, arguing that a requirement that journalists be escorted while on Pentagon grounds violates the First Amendment.
• The escort policy is “an unconstitutional attempt by the Pentagon to prevent independent reporting on military affairs,” a Times spokesman, Charlie Stadtlander, said in an email to The Associated Press.
• “As we have said before: Americans deserve visibility into how their government is being run, and the actions the military is taking in their name and with their tax dollars,” he said.
• On X, Defense Department spokesperson Sean Parnell called the Times’ latest lawsuit “nothing more than an attempt to remove the barriers to them getting their hands on classified information.” The Times lawsuit is another salvo in what has become an escalating tension between the U.S.
• media and the second Trump administration, which...