A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order Thursday that removes President Trump’s ban on three news outlets from White House grounds, a rebuke of the administraton’s most severe attack yet on the Washington press corps.
Journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico were still denied access to the White House early Thursday, as the restraining order was handed down overnight. After the news outlets filed a request with the court for an immediate hearing asking the White House to address the non-response to the judge’s order, their access was restored.
The news organizations were bracing for another legal showdown, but the White House indicated there was no plan to defy the court order. According to a sworn deposition from the director of White House Press Operations, the badges for the barred journalists were reactivated shortly after 9 a.m. Eastern and that previously confiscated badges were available for pick up at the press entry gate less than an hour later.
The press ban is the latest saga in Trump’s long-running battle with media outlets whose press coverage makes him unhappy. He has used his Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr to intimidate the broadcast networks with threats to pull their TV station licenses. Trump has sued ABC and CBS over their coverage and extracted multimillion-dollar settlements from each and tried to ban the Associated Press for refusing to recognize the president’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico by executive order.
The courts once again put the brakes on his latest media crackdown as U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly said in his ruling issued overnight that the administration’s ban is likely unconstitutional and that the outlets affected — CNN, MS NOW and Politico — were not given due process before the action was taken. Kelly also rejected the White House’s court argument that the ban was motivated by national security concerns. The restraining order will be in effect for 14 days as the litigation proceeds.
Kelly set out the schedule for briefs to be filed on whether he should issue a preliminary injunction in the case, according to CNN.
The media plaintiffs must file a motion for a preliminary injunction by next Monday, Sept. 28. The administration must reply by Oct. 2, and the plaintiffs can respond by Oct. 5.
Kelly, appointed by Trump during his first term, made a similar ruling in 2018 after the White House tried to ban journalist Jim Acosta, then working for CNN. Acosta’s credentials were restored.
The three outlets jointly filed a lawsuit Monday alleging that the ban violates the 1st Amendment by retaliating against protected newsgathering as punishment for unfavorable coverage, amounting to viewpoint discrimination.
Trump announced the ban Friday in a Truth Social post, describing CNN, MS NOW and Politico as “fake news.” He claimed the outlets have long been unfair to him and that their negative coverage was a danger to the country.
Journalists from the three organizations were barred from White House grounds on Saturday.
In a emergency court hearing Wednesday, the White House shifted away from Trump’s initial stated reasons for the ban and argued that the three outlets engaged in reporting that threatened national security.
The administration went on to detail letters sent to each outlet that provided examples of such reporting. One was a background briefing set up by the White House, where an official briefed reporters on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House itself.
In response to the ban, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News suspended pool coverage of Trump this week as he traveled to New York for the General Assembly at the United Nations. The suspension continued into Thursday as the pool declined to cover Chinese President Xi Jinping‘s arrival at the White House for a summit.
The four networks along with CNN rotate the coverage that is shared with other news organizations. While the networks that weren’t banned have sent reporters to cover Trump’s activities, they were not shooting video.
Some right-wing outlets sympathetic to Trump such as One America News have been providing video coverage, but they lacked the technical capabilities of the larger networks. Another outlet, Real America’s Voice, posted video that showed Trump’s detail traveling through New York City.
Keven Tripp, the Los Angeles correspondent for NBC News Radio posted on X that the “Press is NEVER supposed to reveal operational aspects of security detail,” calling the move by Real America’s Voice “stupid and unprofessional.”
Times staff writer Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.
