A federal judge ordered the Trump administration early Thursday to temporarily restore White House press credentials for CNN, MS Now, and Politico, ruling that the president’s ban on the three outlets was likely unconstitutional.
President Trump revoked the credentials on Saturday. The three organizations filed a joint lawsuit in federal court in Washington on Monday, arguing the ban violated the First Amendment’s protections for free speech and a free press as well as their due process rights.
The decision from U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee nominated to the bench in 2017, grants a 14-day temporary restraining order requiring the White House to immediately return and reinstate the hard passes revoked from journalists at the three organizations. Kelly found the outlets were likely to succeed on their claim.
In his ruling, issued shortly after midnight, Kelly wrote that the outlets were “likely to succeed in showing that their hard passes were revoked without constitutionally adequate due process.” He cited the principle that individuals must receive notice and an opportunity to be heard before the government deprives them of a constitutionally protected interest.
Media organizations and legal experts say the case will further test First Amendment protections under the Trump administration. A coalition of press freedom groups, including the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Reuters, the Washington Post, and Fox News, filed a legal brief on Wednesday supporting the three outlets. They asserted that stripping journalists and news outlets of their rights because of perceived editorial viewpoint violates decades of Supreme Court jurisprudence.
The ban and the justification
Trump announced the ban on Sept. 18. In a Truth Social post, the president said the three outlets “shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES,” and warned that other “Fake News Media Outlets” could follow. He cited what he called “cumulative stories” and told reporters, “You get sick of it.” On Friday, Trump told reporters the decision was not sparked by any specific reporting but by the accumulation of what he called “two years of unfair and negative coverage.”
The Justice Department offered a different rationale. In court filings, DOJ lawyers argued the three organizations were barred because their reporting jeopardized national security and spread falsehoods. They included White House letters dated Sept. 22 accusing the outlets of “trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security and other issues, and publishing sensitive or classified information.” The Justice Department also argued that access to the White House is a privilege, not an entitlement, and that the president has the authority to suspend access by news organizations.
The judge’s skepticism
Kelly was not persuaded. He wrote that the court was skeptical “that Defendants’ interest in safeguarding national security is the actual motivation for, or is even advanced by, the revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes.” He noted that the defendants offered no evidence to explain how any of the reporting they identified had damaged national security. The reporters who authored the stories the DOJ identified did not even hold hard passes, Kelly observed.
He also found the record bereft of any formally articulated standards in place before the conduct that led to the revocations, dismissing the examples in the White House letters as a standard “so vague it hardly does the trick.” Kelly rejected the urgency claim. “Nothing in the record suggests the need for such urgency here,” he wrote. He noted that some of the news stories identified in the DOJ notices stretched back months or years, and added that “the sorts of stories Defendants identify in the letters to Plaintiffs are routine.”
Kelly also noted that the DOJ letters were sent after the revocation occurred and the lawsuit was filed. Earlier on Wednesday, Kelly had cited past case law that laid out the need for a distinct process involving advance notice of an infraction and the opportunity to plead one’s case. He rejected a DOJ request to stay the temporary restraining order for at least two days. He wrote that doing so “runs against the purpose of such an order, which is to immediately—but temporarily—preserve the last uncontested status quo while the litigation proceeds,” and noted that such orders are generally unappealable.
The ruling came hours after an emergency session by the federal court in Washington on Wednesday afternoon. It also came as Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping for a high-stakes meeting. CNBC and MS Now are divisions of Versant Media.