A Trump-aligned influencer posted online that a reporter should be "taken off the plane by US Marshalls" when he landed back in the US. Then border patrol agents at Dulles airport did something remarkably close to exactly that. If you're looking for the part where this is fine and normal, keep looking.
The Setup: Loomer Tweets, Border Patrol Acts
Blumenthal did not accept that.
A Judge Who Is Not Buying It
What They Were Actually After
The Government's Convenient Escape Hatch
Where Things Stand
The Dingo Take
Laura Loomer posted that a reporter should be detained when his plane landed. Then he was flagged for secondary inspection when his plane landed. The government seized only his phones, not his laptop, not his cameras, specifically the devices most likely to contain source information. Then they handed them back the moment a court got involved and said the whole thing was moot. You are supposed to believe all of that is coincidence.
This is how authoritarian press suppression works in a country that still has a First Amendment and an active federal judiciary. You don't need to kick journalists out of the country. You don't need to formally declare them enemies of the state. You use the border. You use secondary inspection. You use the enormous gray area of what agents are technically allowed to do with your devices before you clear customs. You create enough fear, enough cost, enough uncertainty that the next reporter thinking about going to a country the administration dislikes does some quiet math about whether the story is worth it.
The good news, if there is any, is that Judge Brinkema didn't blink. She looked at what the government was arguing and essentially said: no, show your work. That's the judiciary doing exactly what it exists to do. Whether the government complies, stalls, or hides behind privilege claims for the next year is the next question. Blumenthal said this costs a lot. It does. That's also the point.
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