While Journalists Were Mad at Michelle Wolf, the Justice Department Was Found Quietly Deleting Refer
While Journalists Were Mad at Michelle Wolf, the Justice Department Was Found Quietly Deleting References to Press Freedom
Photo of Luke Darby
BY LUKE DARBY
11 hours ago
Donald Trump's path to the White House has given at least one key lesson to rank-and-file Republicans: They no longer have to pay lip service to mainstream, commonly held values that they actually abhor. Trump's cabinet in particular has leaned in to this particularly hard. Late last year, for example, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos got rid of more than 70 documents outlining rights for students with disabilities. In February, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services unveiled a new mission statement that's largely the same as the previous one, except for the removal of a phrase calling America "a nation of immigrants." Ben Carson's Department of Housing and Urban Development also updated its mission statement, deleting any anti-discrimination language and the agency's promise to create "strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all."
And now the Justice Department has overhauled its manual for federal investigators. This is the document that provides direction and priorities for federal prosecutors and DOJ lawyers across the country, and Jeff Sessions has overseen the first major changes to it in decades. According to BuzzFeed, the updated version lost all references to the department's work against racial gerrymandering, cut down entire sections about the limits of prosecutorial power, and added sections like one about fighting leaks.
But while some of the changes were publicly announced, like the new section on "respect for religious liberty," which is often a code word on the right for legalized anti-LGBT discrimination, the DOJ was very quiet about other changes. Like, for example, the deletion of an entire section titled "Need for Free Press and Public Trial." Per BuzzFeed:
The media contacts policy was updated in the manual in November. A subsection titled “Need for Free Press and Public Trial” was removed entirely. That section, which was included in versions of the manual at least as far back as 1988, according to DOJ archives, read as follows:
More:
https://www.gq.com/story/journalists-mad-wolf-justice-department-press-freedom
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