President Trump’s White House is finally doing what plenty of Americans figured should’ve happened a long time ago: telling federal employees to stop treating sensitive government business like cocktail-party gossip for their favorite reporters at The New York Times and The Washington Post.
The administration is rolling out a proposed government-wide nondisclosure agreement that would require federal workers to keep “Confidential Government Information” under wraps instead of leaking internal deliberations to the press like disgruntled extras from a bad D.C. drama series.
According to the draft proposal from the Office of Personnel Management, the crackdown would apply to “all non-public, confidential, or proprietary information” tied to agency operations — including personnel issues, procurement details and sensitive policy discussions still under review.
In other words: maybe don’t text reporters about classified raids before the helicopters even land.
The move comes after a string of embarrassing and potentially dangerous leaks that infuriated the administration. Among them were disclosures to the Times and WaPo about the US operation in Venezuela targeting strongman Nicolás Maduro before the mission was completed.
The draft memo bluntly warns that those leaks “put the lives of members of the armed forces at risk,” noting that news outlets allegedly delayed publication because they feared jeopardizing US troops.
That’s quite the admission from media organizations that usually behave as if “national security concerns” are just annoying speed bumps on the road to Pulitzer glory.
The administration also pointed to another stunning breach earlier this year involving the release of personal information belonging to roughly 4,500 ICE employees — including nearly 2,000 frontline enforcement officers. Names, addresses, phone numbers and job titles reportedly ended up exposed after a federal employee leaked the information. Anti-ICE activists practically got handed a government-produced target list.
The proposed NDA system would still allow legally protected whistleblower complaints involving fraud, abuse or misconduct. But critics on the left are already hyperventilating that requiring federal bureaucrats to keep internal government information confidential is somehow authoritarian — which is rich considering Washington runs on secrecy whenever it benefits the administrative state.
The policy would go through a 30-day review period before agencies decide whether to adopt it. And notably, the proposal would not apply to outside contractors, despite several high-profile leaks in recent years coming from that crowd.
The Washington Post legal experts noted that federal whistleblower laws still place limits on how far any NDA can go.
Still, after years of anonymous “senior officials” running to legacy media outlets every time they dislike Trump policy, the White House appears ready to send a simple message to the federal workforce: if you want to freelance as a resistance blogger, don’t do it on the taxpayers’ dime.
