No more fitting tribute exists of Sunshine Week, the annual tribute to open government, than a judge’s refusal to let Pete Hegseth manipulate the Pentagon press.

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman said the policy he struck down favored journalists “willing to publish only stories that are favorable or spoon-fed” by Department of Defense leaders.

Hegseth’s aim was to make the Pentagon press a house organ for the Trump administration. The proof was in what took place after legitimate reporters turned in their passes and left the building last fall rather than fall in line.

In their place, the Pentagon handed press credentials to bizarre right-wing sycophants such as Laura Loomer, the Floridian whose hushed suspicions to Trump try to get people fired; “MyPillow Guy” Mike Lindell, who fabricates stolen election conspiracies; and Matt Gaetz, the ex-Florida congressman, too toxic to be confirmed as attorney general.

Stop the suppression

“A primary purpose of the First Amendment is to enable the press to publish what it will and the public to read what it chooses, free of any official proscription,” Friedman wrote. “Those who drafted the First Amendment believed that the nation’s security requires a free press and an informed people and that such security is endangered by governmental suppression of political speech. That principle has preserved the nation’s security for almost 250 years. It must not be abandoned now.”

The nation that endures partly because of that principle owes a debt of gratitude to the New York Times, which filed a First Amendment lawsuit in Friedman’s court. The judge also found a violation of the Fifth Amendment, because “any newsgathering and reporting not blessed by the Department” would become “a potential basis for the denial, suspension, or revocation” of journalistic access.

True to form, the Pentagon plans an appeal. But Friedman should not pause his ruling and no higher court should suspend it while the appeal plays out — especially not now.

“The Court recognizes that national security must be protected, the security of our troops must be protected, and war plans must be protected,” the judge wrote. “But especially in light of the country’s recent incursion into Venezuela and its ongoing war with Iran, it is more important than ever that the public have access to information from a variety of perspectives about what its government is doing — so that the public can support government policies, if it wants to support them; protest, if it wants to protest; and decide based on full, complete, and open information who they are going to vote for in the next election. As Justice Brandeis correctly observed, ‘sunlight is the most powerful of all disinfectants.’”

Friedman left intact a part of Hegseth’s edict requiring reporters to have escorts near his office and certain other parts of the sprawling building.

Few rays of sunshine

The ruling was on the next-to-last day of Sunshine Week, an event coordinated by the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida, and supported by more than 100 organizations and publishers.

Rays of sunshine are rare. Trump’s war on the media is relentless. Gov. Ron DeSantis runs the most secretive administration in Florida history.

Records requests filed under Florida’s public records law routinely go unanswered, or meet with exorbitant fee demands. In the just-ended legislative session, the Senate refused to enforce compliance by not considering a House-passed bill (HB 437).

The highly-secretive U.S. attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba in 1961, known as the Bay of Pigs, ended disastrously. Our history abounds with examples of the importance of the First Amendment.

President Kennedy regretted having persuaded the New York Times to withhold what it knew of the Bay of Pigs invasion, which ended disastrously in 1961.

The Pentagon Papers, stamped “Top Secret,” told of how successive administrations led the U.S. deeper into a Vietnam war that tore the nation apart in the 1960s.

Millions of Jeffrey Epstein documents forced open by Congress exposed a staggering story, still not fully told, of the government’s multiyear failure to protect children from a wealthy, well-connected sexual predator.

The bane of every dictator

Freedom of the press is the bane of every dictator.

In his classic work, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, journalist William L. Shirer described what Hitler did: “Every morning the editors of the Berlin daily newspapers and the correspondents of those published elsewhere in the Reich gathered at the Propaganda Ministry to be told by Dr. (Paul) Goebbels or by one of his aides what news to print and suppress, how to write the news and headline it, what campaigns to call off or institute and what editorials were desired for the day. In case of any misunderstanding a daily written directive was furnished along with the oral instructions.”

Pete Hegseth’s directive was not so blatant. But it was on the same slippery slope.

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The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

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