Category: News

UPDATED, with White House comment: CNN, MS NOW and Politico are warning that the Trump administration will reimpose a “complete ban” on their access to the White House without a judge issuing a preliminary injunction.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly granted a temporary restraining order, forcing the White House to restore access to the White House to the outlets as he more fully considers the legal arguments. The TRO lasts for 14 days.

In a filing in federal court on Monday, attorneys for the three news outlets argued that the Trump White House actions since then “leave little doubt that it will immediately reinstitute a complete ban of CNN, MS NOW, and Politico if allowed the opportunity.”

The outlets’ legal team, led by Theodore Boutrous Jr., pointed to the White House’s restriction on CNN from access to State Dinner arrivals on Thursday evening. The network then was barred from serving as TV pooler on Air Force One on Trump’s trip to Tennessee on Saturday, with no replacement stepping in, and leaving a dearth of TV images from the trip.

“Because the ban is an unlawful assault on the most fundamental First Amendment freedoms and will inflict irreparable harm on Plaintiffs and the public if not restrained, this Court should preliminarily enjoin its enforcement pending the resolution of this case,” the news outlets’ attorneys wrote.

Kelly cited a lack of due process by the White House when it pulled dozens of credentials of reporters from the three outlets. While the Trump DOJ has cited standards of “professionalism and decorum” and national security concerns, the media outlets’ legal team called that reasoning that “pretextual” and “post hoc,” as well as vague.

In the latest brief, CNN, MS NOW and Politico also again cited violations of the First Amendment. They noted that Trump has explained the ban by blaming their coverage as “Purposely … negative,” among other things.

“His statements also make clear he implemented the ban to coerce more favorable coverage from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, and to deter other journalists and news organizations from newsgathering and reporting that the President might view as negative,” the news outlets’ legal team wrote. “And his administration has continued to retaliate against Plaintiffs even after the temporary restraining order, only underscoring that Defendants’ motive is to punish and chill journalism they dislike.”

The outlets are asking the judge to prohibit the Trump team from pulling hard pass credentials, or to ensure the reporters of the White House access they had before Sept. 18. In contrast to a TRO, a preliminary injunction would sideline Trump’s ban until a trial is held, or if an appeals court rules otherwise.

Trump initially banned the three outlets on Sept. 18. When the judge granted a TRO last early Thursday, it meant that the White House had to restore hard passes, with reporters not gaining reentry until around noon that day.

The issue of whether the White House can also restrict CNN from the pool is a slightly different, but related issue. It’s also one at the center of another case, involving the Associated Press after it was banned from the pool and other White House events. That case is currently on appeal.

That said, in the latest brief, the three outlets cited the White House’s continued prohibitions on CNN as an example of White House retaliation over protected speech.

For much of last week, there was no TV network pool, meaning that there was little video coverage of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the White House. The four other networks in the pool — CBS News, ABC News, Fox News and NBC News — initially suspended their participation in protest of the exclusion of CNN. The networks resumed the TV pool coverage this week, but it will be put to the test again on Thursday, when CNN is assigned to that duty.

“Every day, critically important news is breaking at the White House, and the ban will substantially interfere with Plaintiffs’ ability to cover it,” the outlets brief stated. “The ban also inflicts an injury on all news media organizations—which now risk a similar fate if they engage in fact-based, independent reporting the President deems insufficiently favorable.”

The DOJ’s brief in response is due by Friday. A White House official said in a statement, “President Trump is the most accessible President in history — holding open press events, regular gaggles and interviews, taking questions nearly every day, and speaking directly to the American people through social media. But if a reporter walks into an interview with their headline and narrative already decided, why do they need to be in the room? They can write their garbage from anywhere. Even after outlets were given access to the White House, they declined to cover various events proving this isn’t about access. It’s performative and dishonest.”

Boutrous said in a statement, “The president and his administration have continued to make clear that this ban has only one purpose: to punish reporting he doesn’t like. That’s retaliation and viewpoint discrimination, pure and simple.” He said that with the pending expiration of the TRO, “it is critical to ensure that the White House continues to be prevented from implementing this unconstitutional ban on the free press.”

The White House has been hit with a cease-and-desist letter from a musician whose song was featured in a promotional ad featuring Donald Trump that was paid for using tax dollars rather than campaign funds.

An attorney for JMSN, whose real name is Christian Berishaj, fired off a cease-and-desist letter to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles on Monday, objecting to the use of his song “Love Me” in the ad, known as “The Country He Loves.” The ad was one of a series of spots that have run on TV in the past week, with the White House claiming they are public service announcements yet Democrats and even some Republicans contending that they are campaign propaganda.

The letter alleges that the song was used without proper clearances and claims violation of federal copyright law. Norm Eisen of Democracy Defenders Action wrote in the letter that “JMSN does not want to be viewed as directly or indirectly affiliated with the President or his Administration. As he said in his Instagram post denouncing the Advertisement, he ‘would never authorize [his] music to be used for ANY political agenda or campaign.’ Thus, the use of the Song in this context, as part of an overtly partisan, political advertisement, is particularly damaging, as it could cause others to call into question JMSN’s artistic independence and integrity.”

A White House spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment. Yashar Ali first reported on the cease-and-desist letter.

The ads contain messages that they are “paid for by the U.S. government.” Per NBC News, AdImpact estimates that $1.7 million has been spent to run the spots.

Promising he is “very close” to naming a new AI Czar, Donald Trump was full of praise and hyperbole today for the “outstanding” and very well-heeled bosses of OpenAI, Meta, X, Anthropic, Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft, Palantir and Google.

Amid a backlash against data centers, worries of massive job losses and doomsday warnings from the industry itself, Trump stood with top tech CEOs and also pitched a rebrand of sorts. “We’ve changed the name officially to SI,” Trump told reporters gathered just outside the West Wing, referring to the switch from “artificial intelligence” to “superintelligence.”

Within hours, Trump made it official.

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Set to take over from the departing Sriram Krishnan and to run the recently announced AI Force, the new czar will have to remember to call AI by its new Trump given moniker of “superintelligence” — a rebranding POTUS made official Tuesday with an executive order. “The terminology used by the Federal Government should reflect the transformative capabilities of these technologies and the limitless opportunities they create for the American people,” the order read. “Accordingly, the term ‘super intelligence’ more appropriately captures the promise, potential, and rapidly advancing capabilities of these technologies.”

Speaking outside the executive mansion after a sit-down snack with Mark Zuckerberg, Alex Karp, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Jensen Huang, the “fantastic” Dario Amodei and others, the former Apprentice host said he could unveil his AI czar choice in the “next three to four days.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wasn’t there at the White House confab because of a company event in San Francisco, Apple’s new CEO was absent, and Bezos skipped the presser, but all the other techlords joined Trump on Tuesday to plot a plan and apparently guardrails for AI growth for America, kinda. Admitting that some of the dangers of AI are not a “hoax,” as he had called it before, Trump pivoted to reveal the CEOs had all signed a self-regulating agreement on AI (or superintelligence as the MAGAman insists on calling it.)

As yet more reports of AI models going rogue emerged and in the shadow of some of the very people at the White House today previously warning of horrific AI outcomes, Trump said “there’s going to be a tremendous self-policing aspect” to the yet-unreleased accord. Attacking Democrats as being anti-growth, Trump typically gave no specifics and skirted any enforcement except to say without irony the “almost like a constitution” would be “morally binding” for the CEOs.

In the absence of more information from Trump, one of those CEOs took a stab at what they had inked.

“The basic idea is that we want to give the American people and our customers confidence that the technology works in the way that we intend, right?” said Meta’s Zuckerberg.

“So we drafted a set of principles and commitments around building robust internal controls and detecting if there are any issues with the technology, coupled with multiple layers of of auditing and controls, starting with internal risk review, external auditors and evaluators, and agreeing that we’re going to have all of our boards of directors independently review the reports that come from the auditors,” the subject of Aaron Sorkin’s upcoming The Social Reckoning added. “I think that these are good steps forward. The idea isn’t that this is the only thing that we will ever do; it is that this is a start.”

Earlier this month, Amodei triggered a new round of consternation over AI when he wrote an essay calling for development to be slowed, warning of a “swarm” of AI agents taking over the internet in six to 12 months. He said that recent incidents had raised alarm over the ability of agents to act on their own.

But Trump has continued to dismiss calls for greater regulation, warning of a race with China to dominate the technology. He’s also expressed continued support for data centers even amid a backlash in local communities, with lawmakers in both parties lending support to calls for greater controls on development.

“The data centers are incredible,” Trump said. “And by the way, I am very good at real estate. Some of those buildings are absolutely beautiful. They are big, strong, powerful buildings, but they are beautiful.”

Back to that AI czar, Trump offered no hint as to who that could be, but he already has taken rumored front-runner Scott Bessent out of consideration. The Treasury Secretary doesn’t want the gig, and “he’s doing such a great job at Treasury,” Trump says. In a post last week, Trump said he was looking at “High I.Q. individuals.”

Trump being Trump, he may have had little to say about any self-regulating plan, but POTUS made sure to post the seating plan for today’s East Room lunch. If you had any doubt who was the center of gravity among the richest men on the planet, Trump wanted everyone to know it was himself.