Trump Admin Shows Commitment To Transparency With Government-Wide Gag Order
Speech so free they'll jail you for it.
“The Most Transparent Administration in History!” the White House screamed in March of 2025. Congratulating themselves for openness has been a constant refrain of the second Trump administration, even as they vow to lock up “leakers” and take a Sharpie to the Presidential Records Act. This week, they’re promoting “transparency” by rolling out a government-wide non-disclosure agreement subjecting current and former federal employees to civil suits and criminal prosecution if they reveal any “nonpublic” information about their service.
Trump tried this gambit in his first term. It wound up with the Department of Justice suing an aide because she told the world that Melania said “who gives a fuck about Christmas stuff.” It was a gross violation of the First Amendment then, and it’s a gross violation of the First Amendment now.
Beta testing
The first Trump White House was hilariously leaky. It was common for salacious details of a meeting to appear on the New York Times home page before the participants had even left the room. And so in early 2017, “David Dennison” turned to a solution he’d relied on in his previous life: non-disclosure agreements subjecting “leakers” to draconian financial penalties if they revealed information they learned in government service.
White House Counsel Don McGahn privately conceded that the contracts were unenforceable. While NDAs are routine in the private sector, the government doesn’t “own” information — it belongs to the American people. But McGahn dutifully foisted them on White House staff anyway to placate his boss. By 2019, incoming interns were signing what was effectively a gag order as part of their “ethics training.”
Signers agreed to permanently protect “any and all information furnished to me by the Government,” “information about the First Family,” and “other information about which I may become aware during the course of performance.” They promised to clear “all materials and statements” with government officials prior to public dissemination.
Perhaps cognizant that these NDAs weren’t worth the paper they were written on, Trump regularly doled out “consulting” contracts to high-level staffers leaving government service — gigs for which they’d have to sign a new NDA promising not to criticize him.
