 So we've got an update with regard to the Julian Assange case, and unfortunately what we all kind of expected would happen did in fact end up happening because Donald Trump's administration is in fact pursuing Julian Assange further. His Justice Department is indicting him, and as Charlie Savage and Adam Goldman of the New York Times report, Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks leader, has been indicted on 70 new counts of violating the Espionage Act for his role in publishing classified military and diplomatic documents in 2010, the Justice Department announced on Thursday, a novel case that raises profound First Amendment issues. The new charges were part of a superseding indictment obtained by the Trump administration that significantly expanded the legal case against Mr. Assange, who is already fighting extradition proceedings in London based on an earlier hacking-related count brought by federal prosecutors in Northern Virginia. The Justice Department's decision to pursue Espionage Act charges signals a dramatic escalation under President Trump to crack down on leaks of classified information and aims squarely at First Amendment protections for journalists. Most recently, law enforcement officials charged a former intelligence analyst with giving classified documents to the Intercept, a national security news website. Legal scholars believe that prosecuting reporters over their work would violate the First Amendment, but the prospect has not yet been tested in court because the government had never charged a journalist under the Espionage Act. The Obama administration considered charging Mr. Assange under the Espionage Act, but never did out of concerns that such a case could chill traditional journalism. This is unprecedented. No other administration has charged a journalist under the Espionage Act. It's why Obama, even though he wanted to probably prosecute Julian Assange because Julian Assange exposed war crimes. Chelsea Manning gave WikiLeaks this information that showed how our government was committing war crimes, and Julian Assange published this when Obama was president. So if anyone wanted to prosecute Julian Assange, it probably was Barack Obama. But even him, someone who was aggressively going after whistleblowers, decided to not take it here where he went after a journalist because he knew that the implications of that could be devastating. But here Trump is doing something that is unprecedented. And I know that we just talked about this last week on the program, but I want to play the clip from Joe Rogan's podcast where Tulsi Gabbard talked about this because I think that she does a phenomenal job breaking down what's at stake here and why Trump is doing this. What happened with his arrest and all this stuff that just went down, I think poses a great threat to our freedom of the press and to our freedom of speech. Look at what happened under the previous administration under Obama. They were trying to find ways to go after Assange and WikiLeaks, but ultimately they chose not to seek to extradite him or charge him because they recognized what a slippery slope that begins when you have a government in a position to levy criminal charges and consequences against someone who's publishing information or saying things that the government doesn't want you to say, sharing information the government doesn't want you to share. And so the fact that the Trump administration has chosen to ignore that fact, to ignore how important it is that we uphold our freedoms, freedom of the press and freedom of speech and go after him, it has a very chilling effect on both journalists and publishers and you can look to both those in the traditional media but also those in new media and also on every one of us as American. It was kind of a warning call saying, look what happened to this guy, it could happen to you, it could happen to any one of us. Now everything that she said is absolutely crucial and really important and really I commend her for being a leader here, but what she said at the end there was especially important. So this is what Donald Trump's administration is doing. They're communicating a very specific message, quote, it was kind of a warning call saying, look what happened to this guy, it could happen to you, it could happen to any one of us. So what Donald Trump is doing here is using Julian Assange as an example. So that way if another journalist publishes some sort of leak, they worry that Donald Trump will aggressively prosecute them in the way that he's prosecuting Julian Assange. So this is to Donald Trump, I'm assuming not just about Julian Assange, this is about sending a message to other journalists, hey, if you're going to publish these leaks, you may be personally culpable. You yourself. So watch out. That's the message that he's trying to send. And we all know that he's been trying to desperately stop the leaks that have been coming out of his administration. So he's very much anti-leaker, right? That's obvious. But what he's trying to do is cover his own ass and protect himself so that way no other journalist gets classified information that potentially exposes Donald Trump. So this is absolutely one morally reprehensible and two, the case against him, it's incredibly dubious, but really the biggest takeaway is the implications. This poses a threat to the First Amendment and press freedom. So I don't know how this will play out, but I would encourage everyone to pay very close attention. Even if you're one of these liberals who hates Julian Assange, please understand this is not about Julian Assange. This goes beyond Julian Assange. This goes beyond his personality. This goes beyond Donald Trump. This is about protecting journalists and their ability under the First Amendment to remain protected to publish this information that was leaked to them that was classified or whatnot. So pay attention because this is incredibly important and this could have absolutely devastating implications, not just for press freedom, but democracy as a whole. Because if we're not able to publish this information that we need to publish so people are aware of what our government is doing so they can hold them accountable, then that could spell disaster for democracy or certainly put us on this trajectory where democracy will be continuously eroded. It's already being eroded, right? But if we go down this path, it's another slide into authoritarianism and it's just disturbing. So please pay attention and educate yourself about this if you haven't already learned because this is really important.