UPDATED, with additional comment: A federal judge prohibited the Trump administration from banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House grounds, granting the three outlets a preliminary injunction that ensures access for the foreseeable future.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, wrote in his opinion that the news outlets “are likely to succeed not only on their due process claim, but also on their two First Amendment claims.”
Kelly did caution that “no one should interpret the court’s decision to suggest that President Trump’s concerns about accuracy and fairness in the media’s reporting are unfounded, or that the government is powerless when its true aim is to protect national security when classified information is unlawfully disclosed.” But when it came to the blanket ban on the three outlets, the judge was unpersuaded by the government’s justifications.
Trump announced on Sept. 18 that he was barring CNN, MS NOW and Politico from access to White House grounds, complaining that they were “‘reporting’ fake news.” A day later, the outlets’ reporters who tried to enter the security checkpoint found their hard passes deactivated.
The news organizations sued, and Kelly issued a temporary restraining order halting Trump’s ban, something that forced the White House to restore the hard passes to dozens of reporters and other staffers. That TRO expired on Tuesday; the preliminary injunction means that the White House cannot enforce Trump’s ban in the long term, either until a trial or an appeal. The news outlets had warned that the White House was likely to reimpose the ban absent further court intervention.
In defending the ban, the government cited national security reasons, although DOJ attorneys also argued that the news organizations did not meet “minimum requirements of professionalism.” While the DOJ pointed to stories published or aired that had to do with national security, they also cited as an example an MS NOW report that Trump aides considered an option of adding the president’s name to Ford’s Theatre. Trump angrily denied it in a Truth Social post.
In his 26-page opinion, Kelly cited D.C. Circuit precedents in that reporters had a right to due process before their hard passes were revoked.
“To put it mildly, [the news outlets] likely did not receive notice either of the conduct that would subject them to revocation of their hard passes, or of the magnitude of the revocation sanction itself,” the judge wrote.
The judge noted that some of the stories flagged by the White House were published earlier this year and written by reporters who later had their hard passes renewed. Then came Trump’s ban, and those credentials were revoked. They included a CNN report from January 2026 on the top secret bunker being built beneath the East Wing, and an MS NOW story that quoted an anonymous White House official who said the president underestimated Iran’s willingness to resume the war.
The White House press office sent letters to the news organizations on September 22, informing them of the reasons and their ability to contest the action but, as the judge noted, that was four days after the ban was implemented.
The judge also sided with the news outlets’ in their claims that Trump was engaging in retaliation and viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment.
He wrote, “President Trump’s own comments suggest that he intended the revocation of plaintiffs’ 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. After explaining that he excluded plaintiffs from the White House because they ‘purposely write negative news . . . to try and diminish the Republicans and a Republican administration,’ President Trump remarked that he is prepared to take ‘the ban . . . as far as you can,’ but that he would ‘love it’ if they ‘could straighten themselves out.’”
The judge added, “The record is clear that President Trump made the decision at issue. And his announcement of the ban and later remarks explaining the reason for it make this a straightforward conclusion: President Trump likely banned plaintiffs from the White House because he believes that their reporting is generally inaccurate and biased against him.”
He also dismissed the government’s national security argument. He noted that there was “no evidence in the record” that Trump made the decision to revoke the passes for those reasons “from the get go. ” He added that Trump has not at any time “directly stated that national security was the reason for his decision.”
The judge explained that because the D.C. Circuit has held that the White House press area is a “non public forum,” the government cannot limit access based on someone’s viewpoint.
The judge wrote that “it is likely that plaintiffs were selected by President Trump for revocation of their access to the White House press area because he believes their coverage of him and his administration is generally inaccurate and biased—in other words, it was ‘an effort to suppress the speaker’s activity due to disagreement with the speaker’s view.’”
The judge also ruled that the news outlets should put up a nominal bond of $1.00 as the case moves forward.
Theodore Boutrous Jr., the lead attorney representing the news outlets, said in a statement, “When the president issued his ‘ban on the free press,’ 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’t like and to try to force journalists to cover him in ways he prefers.”
Boutrous added, “The harm this ban did to our clients, the First Amendment, and the public as a whole is profound. The court was right to enjoin the White House from enforcing this ‘unconstitutional ban on the free press’ for the foreseeable future.”
Mark Thompson, chairman and editor in chief of CNN, appeared on the network on Wednesday, calling the ruling “a vote of confidence in free speech and our right, not really so much for ourselves, but on behalf of the public, everywhere.” He vowed not to back down, saying, “We will fight this one to the end.”
The network also unveiled a new spot featuring network personalities and the line, “Freedom of the press is not optional.”
A White House official said that the administration intends to appeal.
The official said, “The Fake News has no place demanding a spot in the President’s Oval Office. The lies they smear are a disservice to the American public and tear at the very fabric of our Democracy. They’re completely capable of reporting from directly outside. We intend to appeal this misguided decision.”
The judge’s order restricts the White House from revoking hard pass credentials, but does not specifically address whether the president can bar members of the media from participation in the pool, which routinely gets access to the Oval Office.
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