Our country will not survive if we don’t stop this
At 6:05 in the morning on January 14th, FBI agents arrived at the door of a home in Alexandria, Virginia. The woman inside was 29 years old. And what happened next was a defining moment in the United States of America. The woman was not accused of a crime, and agents explicitly told her she was not even a target of an investigation. And yet they still raided her house. The agents had a warrant, and they used it. And when they left, they took with them her phone, her Garmin watch, two laptops, one personal and one issued by her employer, a recorder, and a portable hard drive. And that matters because she was a reporter for The Washington Post, and on those devices was her journalistic work. There were communications with confidential sources and stories she was working on.
But there were also personal communications. Medical information and the wedding plans she had been making with her fiancé. Her entire life, professional and deeply private, walked out the door in federal agents’ hands. And the raid did not come out of nowhere, at least not as far as the FBI was concerned. Court documents later revealed that in the days before agents knocked on her door, a federal investigator had followed her from her home to a nearby train station, documenting where she went and the technology she carried with her. They knew an extraordinary amount of information about someone they supposedly were not investigating.
The human behind all of this is Hannah Natanson, and inside The Washington Post newsroom, she had become known as the federal government whisperer. Over the previous year, she had published more than 200 stories documenting the Trump administration’s dismantling of the federal workforce. She had built relationships with 1,169 current and former government employees.
And after what had to be one of the most terrifying days of Natanson’s life, she walked into the newsroom shaken and violated in every sense of the word. Not just personally violated, but constitutionally violated. Her home had been raided, her devices seized, and the private details of her life placed into the hands of the federal government, despite the fact that she was not even accused of a crime. And yet, in that moment, she showed exactly what journalism is supposed to look like under pressure. She looked at her colleagues and told them, The best thing you can do for me is keep reporting.
I’ve thought about what she said every day since. Because that is what you would expect someone to say who is facing this kind of treatment in a place like Putin’s Russia, North Korea, or some other authoritarian state where journalists are treated as enemies of the state and the press exists only to protect the powerful. It is not what we expect to hear from a journalist in the United States of America. But this is Trump’s America now.
The official justification for the raid was a leak investigation connected to Venezuela. Days before the search, Natanson and five Post colleagues had published an exclusive story based on classified government documents concerning U.S. military operations there. A government contractor and Navy veteran was accused of improperly accessing classified databases connected to the case.
And hours after the raid, Trump walked into the Oval Office and announced to reporters that “the leaker on Venezuela” had been found and was “in jail right now.” He was referring to Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a 61-year-old Navy veteran and Pentagon contractor with top-secret clearance who had been arrested six days earlier. He had been caught the old-fashioned way, through federal investigative work, not through anything taken from Hannah Natanson or her reporting.
But the way Trump announced it, standing in the Oval Office hours after agents had raided a journalist’s home, was deliberate. He wanted the two things to sound like one thing. The contractor in jail. The reporter’s house raided. Said in the same breath, on the same day, to make the public hear it as a single story. It wasn’t. What Trump did not mention is that American law gives the press strong First Amendment protection to publish truthful information on matters of public concern, even when a source may have broken the law to obtain it, so long as the journalist did not participate in the illegal act. That protection is not unlimited, but it is one of the core safeguards of a free press. Courts have reaffirmed that protection again and again. The contractor may have broken the law. Hannah Natanson did not.
The prosecution said in court that Perez-Lugones had thrown everything away, his job, his clearance, his career of more than two decades. A Navy veteran who had served his country for more than 20 years, now facing federal charges, his life completely upended. Prosecutors said he did it “to get back at the administration.” And maybe he did. Or maybe he just couldn’t stay quiet anymore. Maybe he sat inside that secure facility, watching what was being planned and executed in Venezuela, watching what was being done to this country, and decided that someone needed to know. Maybe that was enough. He knew exactly what he was risking. So did every one of the 1,169 federal employees on Hannah Natanson’s phone. The real target was never the Venezuela documents. It was them.
The Trump administration was furious that 1,169 federal employees had trusted her with what was happening inside their agencies. Sharing details about every DOGE cut, every illegal order, every moment of chaos, intimidation, corruption, and cruelty the administration did not want the public to see. That is what they were really after. And Hannah Natanson understood exactly what those people were risking. On Christmas Eve, weeks before the raid, she published an essay about what this reporting had cost her emotionally. In it, she described one message she could never forget. A woman had written to her on Signal and asked her not to respond. The woman said she lived alone and planned to die that weekend. But before she did, she wanted at least one person to understand what had happened to her life. Trump had unraveled the government, she wrote, and with it, her future. That is what Hannah Natanson was protecting. That is what was on her phone.
And then came the detail that made the whole raid make sense. An entire section of the FBI warrant affidavit cited that Christmas Eve essay, and about her reporting methods and source relationships, as justification for the search. Her transparency about how she worked, communicated, and protected sources became part of the government’s rationale for raiding her home. She told the truth about how she found the truth, and they used it against her. The administration wasn’t just angry about one article about Venezuela or an essay about the human toll of what was happening. They were angry that a journalist had built a trusted pipeline to more than a thousand people inside the federal government who were still willing to tell the public the truth about what was happening to their country, and they wanted that pipeline shut down. The raid was not just an investigation. It was a warning. A warning to anyone willing to share what was really happening, and a warning to any journalist willing to share about it.
What happened to Hannah Natanson in January was just the next move in this administration’s larger plan to silence dissent. This week, we learned that the FBI has opened a criminal leak investigation targeting Atlantic journalist Sarah Fitzpatrick over her sources for a story reporting that FBI Director Kash Patel had been allegedly engaging in heavy drinking and unexplained absences. Patel denied it and filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic. The FBI has denied the probe exists. But here is what makes this one different as they escalate their attacks on the First Amendment. The Natanson raid, as unprecedented as it was, was at least framed around classified information and national security. This new investigation wasn’t. It is an investigation into who told a reporter about a government official. That is the new line they are drawing. You don’t have to leak classified documents anymore to become a target. You just have to share about someone they want protected.
This is how it works. This is the manipulation that makes this administration so dangerous. They don’t even have to accuse anyone of formal wrongdoing anymore. They are not even charging people with crimes. They just have to make the question loud enough. Is this a national security threat? Are the people talking to journalists endangering the country? They are trying to turn our First Amendment rights alone into the threats. To make sources afraid to speak, reporters afraid to publish, and readers afraid to trust what they read. You don’t have to silence the press directly if you can make the press silence itself.
But the courts are not playing along. Not yet, at least. Two federal judges have now blocked the Justice Department from accessing Hannah Natanson’s devices. U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga, appointed by President George W. Bush, rejected the government’s appeal and ruled that the prolonged seizure of a journalist’s tools was preventing her from doing her job. The magistrate judge below him had already criticized the DOJ for failing to even mention to the court the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, a federal law that restricts the government from raiding journalists for their unpublished work. They didn’t mention it because doing so would have made the warrant harder to obtain. Two judges have now seen through it. The government may still appeal. But for now, the line is holding.
And it’s important for us to remember how many people have been part of the resistance in these moments. There are still people inside our government sharing the truth at great risk to their livelihoods and freedom, judges holding the line, and politicians calling all of this out while risking their safety and careers to defend what is left of our democracy. I needed to hear this today. I’ve found myself needing to hear as much hope as I can lately. Maybe you need to hear it too.
Because as we all expected, this administration has been ramping up its intimidation tactics ahead of the midterms. The outlook for our country looks dark in so many ways, and I myself have been facing what I call cruelty and chaos burnout. Being in Washington, D.C. during the shooting made me realize how truly upside down our government is in so many ways. I was never a political obsessive. I never had aspirations to talk about politics every night of my life. But I am a human being, and I’ve noticed my own ability to process the destruction unfolding is starting to follow a path where I have highs and lows. I’m walking a fine line between being a present mother to my children and also spending enough time each day trying to fully understand as much of what is happening as I can. It is a fine line. And some days it catches up to me.
I’m getting better about compartmentalizing it all so that I don’t go numb, because I am here for the long haul. I will never stop, no matter how tired I get. And I know so many of you feel the exact same way.
Today was one of those days where I struggled, though. I got an email this afternoon that I should not have opened. It was a tirade from someone telling me I should end my own life. And it took me down a path of realizing just how deep this rot has gone. Where people now see cruelty as courage. Where sending something like that feels like patriotism. And I worry every single day about how far this goes before we reach the point where things finally begin to turn around.
But instead of breaking me, it made me stronger. It helped remind me what we are actually fighting for. Better days where we can all agree again that what we are living through is not normal and that we all deserve better than this. A country with competent leadership that governs from a place of real patriotism and public service, not this performative red hat extremism that feeds on outrage, cruelty, and division while calling itself “American greatness.”
So if you are feeling burned out tonight, I see you. I get it. It would be easy for us to check out for a while, but we can’t do it. We have too much work to do. We just need to remember that at some point, this will be over, and we can rest then knowing that we pushed through the hard days and never gave up on building a future for our children and grandchildren where the United States stood for freedom and democracy and not the authoritarian nightmare Trump is trying to turn it into.
As I’ve promised so many times before, whenever this administration goes after a journalist, every time they raid a home, or file a lawsuit, or open an investigation designed to make someone afraid to exercise their First Amendment rights, we respond by making sure the voices they are targeting are not silenced. We vote with our dollars and support the writers, media, journalists, and social media creators who are not backing down to Trump’s authoritarian demands. We support our favorite voices who are still telling the truth, not just me, but the ones protecting sources, too.
Because we recognize just how important that work is. Protecting confidentiality and classified information is how these investigative reports even see the light. And without this information, so much of what I write would not be possible. I depend on the bravery of journalists like Hannah Natanson to do the investigative work so I can bring it to you every night. I cannot imagine what it costs her, the fear on top of the exhaustion on top of the weight of protecting more than a thousand people who trusted her with their lives. I live with concern about what I write, but not anywhere near the level she carries. I am so grateful for her. And for every reporter still doing this work and not backing down. Because that is exactly what we are going to need to get through this.
And I want to thank you all for your paid memberships, especially on heavy nights like this. You have made this work possible and free for all, never behind a paywall. And beyond supporting me, please support investigative reporters, independent content creators, and every voice on the right side of history that you can. We will never be able to match the other side dollar for dollar. But we can make sure that when one of us is feeling the weight of the world, the others can carry the work forward. That is how movements survive. That is how the truth stays alive.
And it’s not just us recognizing the important work these journalists are doing under these harsh conditions. On Monday, something remarkable happened. The very reporting that this administration tried to intimidate and suppress was honored on the highest level. The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, journalism’s highest honor, for piercing the veil of secrecy around the Trump administration’s dismantling of the federal government and documenting in rich detail what it has cost the people inside it. Hannah Natanson’s reporting was at the center of that work. The same reporting that they raided her home to stop.
And in her remarks after learning of the award, she said: “To every government worker who risked so much to confide in me, I want you to know your trust is the highest honor I will ever receive.”
That line stayed with me because it captures something I think so many of us have been trying to hold onto lately. There are still people in this country willing to risk their comfort, their careers, their reputations, and sometimes even their safety to do the right thing. There are still journalists willing to tell the truth when powerful people try to intimidate them into silence. There are still government workers choosing conscience over obedience. And there are still millions of Americans refusing to surrender to cruelty and fear, no matter how exhausted they become. And that is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
PS. You can make a significant difference right now by subscribing to my Substack. Your support helps me cover more ground and keep telling the truth about the lies and destruction unfolding in this country.
This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.
Picture of the day: On the hard days I step outside and remember how beautiful our country is and that someday we won't be in survival mode and we can live in it fully again.
Sources:
https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/washington-post-request-natanson.pdf
https://www.rcfp.org/fbi-raid-washington-post-explainer/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/05/04/post-pulitzer-prize-public-service/
https://www.supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/403/713/
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/05/kash-patel-investigation-atlantic/687072/
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/patel-responds-atlantic-report-intoxicated-job/story?id=132254781
Norway here. Thank you for your work. I need to read your blog to be reassured that there still are sane people in your country, it matters to the whole world in my opinion.
Heather, I had never heard about the raid on the Washington Post journalist's home. This is appalling and an attack on a free press. Shades of Hitler's Germany.
I am older than Trump and it's my dearest wish that the orange buffoon is either impeached, disgraced and removed because of his dementia. I can't stand seeing him on TV, hate that voice, his orange make-up and the absolute rubbish he spouts. And I'm not even American. His maternal grandparents would be ashamed of his behaviour. They were good hardworking people.