Trump's Attemped Assault On The First Amendment

Trump's 'justice' department has handed down multiple counts of espionage against Wikileaks's publisher Julian Assange, the first time in American history that a disseminator of truthful information regarding military or governmental wrongdoing has been prosecuted for what has been common journalistic practice since the inception of our country.
This radically repressive step was presaged during the Bush/Chaney years with the prosecution and subsequent conviction of whistleblowers Thomas Drake and John Kiriakou (just to name two) who exposed respectively unwarranted surveillance of private citizens and CIA torture programs. Instead of reversing this trend, the Obama Administration greatly accelerated the practice of demonizing journalists and their sources by invoking the arcane 1917 Espionage Act more times than all prior administrations combined in an effort to suppress independent journalism by directly punishing sources of information thereby sending a chilling message to those attempting to inform the American people of the transgressions of their government.
With the indictment of Julian Assange, the Current Occupant has now expanded this practice of assaulting the first amendment  by actually making it a crime for publishers to expose malfeasance, corruption, wrongdoing, and international criminality by issuing stories based upon leaked classified material. In so doing, the Trump Administration is attempting to silence serious journalism as we have know it throughout our history. Taken to its logical conclusion, under this practice, the only permissible leaks of classified information will be those emanating from the government itself. Government controlled information is a central element to totalitarian rule where a free press is seen as antithetical to the interests of the state. Today's announcement moves us one step closer to this dark vision of America. The Fourth Estate is essential to our survival as a free nation; the prosecution of news agencies must be opposed with all the energy we, as a free people, can summon.
As a cruel and obscene irony, the attempt to make illegal the free dissemination of information grotesquely coincides with confirmed reports of Trump's serious contemplation of issuing pardons to accused war criminals, Edward Gallagher and Matt Golsteyn (as well as a former Blackwater mercenary).
As Dylan observed some time ago: 'it's not dark yet, but it's getting there'!