{"id":881880,"date":"2026-10-14T10:18:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T10:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/881880\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T10:18:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T10:18:13","slug":"judge-extends-white-house-access-to-banned-media-outlets-cnn-ms-now-and-politico-trump-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/881880\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge extends White House access to banned media outlets CNN, MS Now and Politico | Trump administration"},"content":{"rendered":"

A federal judge ordered the White House on Tuesday to continue allowing journalists from CNN, MS Now and Politico to access the building as the media coalition\u2019s lawsuit against the Trump administration<\/a> plays out.<\/p>\n

Timothy Kelly, a district court judge, had on 24 September granted a 14-day reprieve<\/a> for the news organizations, which six days earlier had been banned<\/a> by the president in an extraordinary move from entering the White House grounds \u201cas a result of their constant \u2018reporting\u2019 FAKE NEWS\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cDefendants (except for President Trump) and their agents, representatives, and all persons or entities acting in concert with them, shall not execute, implement, or enforce the September 18, 2026, decision to revoke the White House \u2018hard pass\u2019 press credentials held by employees of CNN<\/a>, MS NOW, and POLITICO, thereby maintaining the status quo since the Court\u2019s entry of a temporary restraining order on September 24, 2026,\u201d the judge wrote in granting a preliminary injunction requested by the plaintiffs.<\/p>\n

The organizations filed a lawsuit on 21 September seeking to overturn the ban as a violation of their rights under the US constitution. But that temporary restraining order expired on Tuesday, bringing the media companies into court late last week to ask for a preliminary injunction that would lift the ban during the duration of the lawsuit, which could take months.<\/p>\n

During arguments at the E Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington, Kelly seemed inclined to lift the ban indefinitely<\/a>, telling a lawyer for the federal government that his side had \u201ca notice problem\u201d that was \u201cprobably the biggest hurdle\u201d they had to overcome.<\/p>\n

The Trump White House gave no advance notice to the media companies affected to say that they were at risk of losing their press badges, which the news organizations have said are essential to their ability to cover the administration. While the White House sent letters to the media companies informing them of the ban, they did so post-hoc, after building access had already been cut off, in violation of binding court precedent.<\/p>\n

In his ruling on Tuesday, Judge Kelly wrote that the plaintiffs \u201care likely to succeed not only on their due process claim, but also on their two First Amendment claims\u201d. While access to the White House is not guaranteed, court precedent dictates that once it is provided to journalists, it cannot be taken away for editorial or viewpoint-based reasons.<\/p>\n

During arguments for a preliminary injunction on 8 October, media lawyer Theodore J Boutrous told the judge that Trump had offered a \u201cconfession\u201d \u2013 in a Time magazine interview last week \u2013 that he was banning the media companies explicitly because of the content of their reporting, not because of any other considerations, such as national security.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe case has gotten stronger for the plaintiffs thanks to President Trump,\u201d Boutrous told the judge.<\/p>\n

The judge seemed to agree. \u201cPresident Trump\u2019s own comments suggest that he intended the revocation of Plaintiffs\u2019 hard passes to alter their reporting on him, bolstering the case that his action here is sufficient to deter a reporter of ordinary firmness from reporting in the same way she had before,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Although the White House has largely adhered to the judge\u2019s prior ruling restoring access on a temporary basis, journalists for CNN and Politico have on occasion been prevented from performing \u201cpool duty\u201d \u2013 covering the daily activities of the president \u2013 because the administration has interpreted the judge\u2019s temporary restraining order to solely require access to the White House complex, not smaller spaces like Air Force One or the Oval Office.<\/p>\n

The judge required the media plaintiffs to post a bond of $1.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Boutrous said of the judge\u2019s ruling: \u201cWhen the President issued his \u2018ban on the free press,\u2019 he blatantly and explicitly violated due process and the First Amendment. Since then, the President has repeatedly, candidly, and consistently admitted in public that he banned our clients from the White House to punish reporting he doesn\u2019t like and to try to force journalists to cover him in ways he prefers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The court, he added, \u201cwas right to enjoin the White House from enforcing this \u2018unconstitutional ban on the free press\u2019 for the foreseeable future\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge ordered the White House on Tuesday to continue allowing journalists from CNN, MS Now and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":881881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-881880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=881880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/881881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=881880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=881880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=881880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}