At 3:04 p.m. on September 18, 2026, Trump posted on Truth Social: “I am proud to announce that, effective immediately, I am banning Fake News CNN, MSNOW... and Politico... from the White House as a result of their constant 'reporting' FAKE NEWS! Media Outlets shouldn't be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they're covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America. Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”
The next morning it was carried out. Hard passes were deactivated in the system and physically confiscated at the security kiosk. MS NOW correspondent Akayla Gardner described it in a live report from outside the perimeter: “officer asked me to hand over my badge. He said that it was disabled. I asked why I was not able to get inside. He said it was above him.” CNN's Betsy Klein, who has covered the White House since 2018 according to the outlets' court complaint, said, “I asked him if he could provide an explanation as to why it had been deactivated. He said he had no further information.” Politico's Cheyenne Haslett was stopped by the Secret Service and had her pass taken. CBS News witnessed part of it: “CBS News observed an MS NOW correspondent and cameraman being turned away from the White House around 8 a.m. Saturday. Both had their hard passes revoked.”
Enforcement was not uniform. An MS NOW producer “scanned her badge, and it actually worked,” and got in.
Trump described the scope himself, in the Oval Office minutes after the post. Asked what the ban would look like, he said, per the Roll Call Factbase transcript: “Oh, the ban on the free press, right? Uh, a very simple ban. I don't want them in my office. I don't want them here. I would say the ban would go as far as you can.” Asked how he squared it with his oath, he said, “Uh, because they're fake news. Uh, you get so tired of reading and seeing fake news.” He added, “Something is wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories. If they want to write them, that's fine. I don't have to let them into the people's house.” Asked whether he was trying to intimidate the press, he told a Bloomberg reporter, “No, no, no, no. I dislike dishonest press, like you. I think you're terrible.”
He cited no specific article. CNN reported that he did not “identify any specific reporting that prompted his social media declaration,” and he said the ban could be lifted if the outlets “could straighten themselves out” and published more favorable coverage. Asked whether it would survive a court challenge, he said, “I don't think that a court should allow fake news to be written day after day after day.”
He named two more targets without banning them: “Well, you know, The New York Times is fake news, The Washington Post is fake news.”
The legal problem is procedural as much as substantive. Under Sherrill v. Knight, the 1977 D.C. Circuit case that governs White House press credentials, once the White House opens press facilities it cannot deny access based on the content of coverage, and any denial requires notice, a chance to respond, and a decision in writing. None of that happened here: the reporters got no written notice and no explanation, and Secret Service officers referred them to a press office that has issued no statement of its own. In the ongoing Associated Press litigation, an appeals court said in a footnote that the White House cannot deny hard passes “arbitrarily or based on the content of a journalist's speech.” CNN reported that the White House press shop itself was caught off guard by the announcement.
The objection was cross-spectrum. The White House Correspondents' Association, whose president Jacqui Heinrich is Fox News's senior White House correspondent, said, “The WHCA stands in defense of our colleagues at CNN, MSNOW, and POLITICO who are being singled out for doing their jobs.” Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush's press secretary, granted the premise and rejected the remedy. He wrote on X that he agreed with Trump that several outlets were biased and unfair, then: “Banning them from the WH is not the solution. Open the pool and the briefing room to conservatives. Challenge liberal reporters. Argue and defeat them. Don't ban them. Or one day they'll ban us.” Fox's Brit Hume agreed with conservative law professor Jonathan Turley, who called it “terrible precedent and practice.” Bruce Brown of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press said, “A ban like this would be flatly unconstitutional.”
Barack Obama, speaking at Colgate University: “I'm trying to think what would have happened if I had said, 'You know what? Fox News, you're out of here.' It's unimaginable.”
Two things in the announcement should not be repeated as fact. Trump's claim that Politico received “an illegal and ridiculous $8 Million Dollar subscription” from the Biden government is disputed: Politico says the claim is “false and have been thoroughly debunked,” and the money is described in reporting as ordinary agency subscription revenue. And the phrase “ban on the free press” needs care. An earlier version of this entry said it appeared in no transcript of his remarks; that was wrong (see the correction below). He said the words, after reporter crosstalk, and appears to have been repeating a phrase put to him rather than choosing it as his own description.
As of September 19 all three outlets had signaled legal action and none had filed. It is also unresolved whether CNN, one of five networks in the rotating television pool, will keep that role; it was scheduled to lead pool coverage of Trump's trip to the United Nations on Monday.
Update (September 21, 2026): the three outlets are going to court, CNN has lost its turn in the pool, and Trump has a new rationale. On Monday morning CNN, MS NOW and Politico said in a joint statement, “This morning, we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes.” The complaint they released, prepared for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, names Trump, communications director Steven Cheung, Secret Service Director Sean Curran and chief of staff Susie Wiles in their official capacities, and pleads three counts: Fifth Amendment due process, First Amendment retaliation and First Amendment viewpoint discrimination. It opens, “This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles.” It says “40 CNN journalists held valid White House hard passes” and 22 at MS NOW did. It was filed that day as Cable News Network, Inc. v. Trump, No. 1:26-cv-03287, together with a motion for a temporary restraining order to restore the hard passes, and assigned to Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a 2017 Trump appointee. In 2018 Kelly heard CNN's suit over Jim Acosta's revoked pass; ABC reports he “ruled in Acosta's favor after finding that the Trump White House did not afford him proper due process.” Kelly ordered the government to respond by September 22 and set a hearing for 3:30 p.m. on September 23 by videoconference. A Justice Department lawyer has entered an appearance for the defendants. Asked about the suit, the White House press office pointed reporters to Trump's Truth Social post.
The ban also reached the press pool. According to the complaint, the White House sent its daily guidance at 10:55 p.m. on September 20 “removing CNN from the day's schedule”; CNN had been the assigned television pool network for Monday and Tuesday, including Trump's trip to New York and his address to the U.N. General Assembly, according to a sworn declaration by CNN's head of legal. CNN reports that the guidance listed no primary network at all. The complaint says the pool material CNN gathers goes to the other four networks and to “the more than 1,000 local affiliate television stations across the United States that receive the pool feed through CNN.”
At 7:53 a.m. Monday, Trump posted: “The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish. It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS... It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!” CNBC noted that he had not cited national security before. Shortly before 1 a.m. the same day he had shared a Just the News article headlined “Trump bans CNN, MSNOW, and Politico from White House.” He posted nothing further about the press or the suit through mid-afternoon. Vice President JD Vance told reporters, “He's not banning media outlets. What he's doing is saying we're not going to give you special access to the White House if you engage in what is effectively propaganda.” Trump's own post had said “I am banning.” Asked on Friday whether the ban would survive in court, he had said, “I think it's good to point it out whether it survives or doesn't.” NBC News reported, citing a senior White House official, that many of Trump's own aides, including some in the press office, “did not know that he was planning to enact this ban.”
The administration's defenders took different lines on the Sunday shows. U.N. Ambassador Mike Waltz told CNN, “the president is absolutely within his rights to limit journalists to government facilities,” citing “Zemel v. Rusk off the top of my head, and I'm not a lawyer”; that 1965 case concerned passports for travel to Cuba. Asked on NBC's Meet the Press, “Do you believe he is violating the constitution with this ban, Senator?” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) answered, “No. I believe the press has an obligation to report fairly.” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told ABC, “Well, I don't know why he did it. I don't know what the background is,” and claimed Joe Biden had pulled hundreds of credentials; host Jonathan Karl corrected him on air, saying those reporters had not reapplied and “There was only one that was actually denied a credential.” On Steve Bannon's War Room, trade adviser Peter Navarro said of the outlets' Iran war coverage, “these people are treasonous.” Alan Dershowitz told Newsweek the ban did not seem to him to rise to a constitutional violation.
Conservative objections widened. On ABC's roundtable Erick Erickson said, “beat him with the arguments. Don't throw him out of the White House,” and Conor Fitzpatrick of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression called it “a flagrant violation of the First Amendment.” As of September 20, no sitting Republican member of Congress had been found on the record criticizing the ban; on September 21 Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho became the first (see the update below).
Update (September 28, 2026): a day after Trump praised the “fair coverage,” the White House kept CNN off Air Force One. Guidance issued on the night of Friday, September 25 left CNN, the scheduled television pool network, off the plane for Trump's Saturday trip to Knoxville for the Tennessee–Texas football game. The seat “has long been saved for a member of the U.S. network video pool,” the Associated Press reported, and the guidance “included Real America's Voice,” which “is not a part of that group.” CNN reported that “No outlet was listed as replacing CNN”; Real America's Voice and LindellTV were listed as secondary pool outlets. The written pool report said there was “no TV pool” for the trip. Real America's Voice correspondent Taylor Mitchell, aboard, said, “CNN is not here; we have taken over that responsibility.” The restraining order “said nothing directly about Air Force One,” the AP noted.
The networks went back to work anyway. The New York Times, citing four people briefed on the decision, reported that they were “set to resume their collective television coverage” on Sunday even though the White House blocked CNN, and that “Each time that CNN came up in the pool rotation, the group of networks would decide whether to provide a substitute crew. Otherwise, CNN's slot would be left unfilled.”
Trump posted three times that Saturday. “Why should perpetrators of FAKE NEWS, like CNN and MSDNC, be allowed access to a very sacred place, the White House?” Then: “FAKE NEWS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED IN THE WHITE HOUSE!!! IT HAS GONE ON FAR TOO LONG, AT A TREMENDOUS COST TO OUR COUNTRY.” A third post, about reporting on his endorsement of Byron Donalds, named CNN, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Newsweek, the New York Times, ABC, NBC and Forbes and said the “Fake News Media” “should not be allowed to enter the White House premises, or Press Room, because they are CORRUPT and DISHONEST!” and, “The Courts must allow us to stop this totally dishonest form of Politics.”
That morning, leaving the White House, he was asked by MS NOW's Akayla Gardner, “Do you only want outlets that support you to be a part of the press pool?” He answered, “No, no, no. I want real news, not fake news — like you,” and, “I love an open, free press. What I don't like is the fake press.” When she asked whether he did not want tough questions, he cut her off. In the transcript Gardner published: “Wait, wait. Quiet.”
Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the ban on ABC's “This Week” on September 27. “Well, the president hasn't denied access. That's not the right way to describe it,” he said, and, “The president has every right to decide who gets to fly on his plane, and it is national security, especially on Air Force One, and especially at the White House.” Of the White House: “It is a privilege and not a right to be there.” Asked by Martha Raddatz for an example of CNN reporting inaccurately, he said, “You cannot be asking me that.” He argued that “the one-sided news out of certain organizations does become a national security issue.” Raddatz: “The president said nothing about national security when he announced this ban.”
Two voices from outside the fight. Pope Leo XIV, asked about the ban by CNN's Vatican correspondent aboard the papal plane, did not mention Trump; he told reporters “you are all welcome” and, “With coverage, I think it's very important that we have it all the way around for everyone.” Former President Bill Clinton, at the Clinton Global Initiative: “There were lots of times when I wanted to ban the White House press corps,” and, “But I'm glad I never did, and I'm glad I couldn't. And these people shouldn't. The law should be what it is.”
Update (September 29, 2026): CNN, MS NOW and Politico asked Judge Kelly on the night of September 28 for a preliminary injunction that would keep their access in place until the case is decided; the restraining order expires October 8. “The White House's words and actions leave little doubt that it will immediately reinstitute a complete ban of CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO if allowed the opportunity,” the filing says. It adds a claim not made before in this detail: that after the order the administration “continued to confiscate passes and deny access to journalists” on September 24, “before finally coming into compliance roughly 11 hours after this Court's order.” It also puts the September 26 Air Force One exclusion before the court. Lead counsel Theodore Boutrous told the AP, “That's retaliation and viewpoint discrimination, pure and simple.” The ACLU of D.C. filed a friend-of-the-court brief; its senior counsel Arthur Spitzer wrote, “The White House is the people's house, not the president's private golf club.” The government's response is due October 2 and the reply October 5; no hearing is set. Meanwhile the television networks are deciding pool coverage case by case, and CNN's next turn is Thursday, the AP reported, citing a person familiar with the pool.
Correction (September 21, 2026): this entry originally stated that the phrase “ban on the free press” appeared in no transcript of Trump's remarks and belonged to the correspondents' association. The Roll Call Factbase transcript of the September 18 Oval Office session shows Trump saying, “Oh, the ban on the free press, right? Uh, a very simple ban,” and the outlets' complaint cites it. The entry also quoted him as saying “It's a very simple ban”; the transcript reads “Uh, a very simple ban.” And it said Betsy Klein had covered the White House since the Obama administration; the complaint says since 2018. All three have been fixed above.
Update (September 21, afternoon): the other networks would not replace CNN. The White House's guidance listed no primary television pool, only Hearst and the pro-Trump network Real America's Voice as secondary crews. On Monday morning Bryan Boughton, Fox News's Washington bureau chief and the current chair of the television pool, told subscribers that “effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President.” He wrote, “This follows the White House's position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties,” and, “There will be no replacement pool put in place.” The five pool networks, Fox News Media, ABC News, CBS News, CNN and NBC News, said jointly: “The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”
Several headlines called this a boycott. The networks did not use the word, and it overstates what they did. Fox News described it as having “agreed to suspend their pooled coverage” of the president. The print, radio and photo pools continued, and NBC reported that the networks still cover events open to the press with their own crews. No one has said how long the suspension will last. The White House issued no statement on it; it livestreamed Trump's first event of the day, the opening of a new helipad, and CNN reported that the helicopter noise drowned out his remarks. Politico recalled a precedent: in 2009, when the Treasury Department tried to leave Fox News out of pooled interviews, the network bureau chiefs refused to participate without Fox, and “The administration quickly backed down.”
Two outlets have reported what set the ban off, both relying on unnamed sources. The Wall Street Journal, as quoted by Poynter and others, reported that Trump's frustration “reached a fever pitch” on September 18 when aide Natalie Harp “showed him clips of anchors on the cable network MS NOW criticizing his administration,” hours before he announced it. CNN, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that Harp showed him coverage and that “a graphic from Politico was among the material.” The two accounts differ on what he saw, and no denial has been issued. Politico, citing three people close to the White House, reported that “Many senior staff were surprised by the directive, which happened while chief of staff Susie Wiles was out of town.” Communications director Steven Cheung gave the opposite account; Poynter reports he told The New York Times that senior staff were with Trump when he posted, and that “We all fully support his decision.” Trump's own explanation on September 18, per the Factbase transcript: “it's really just cumulative stories over the last two years. You get sick of it.”
Update (September 21, evening, to September 22, 2026): Trump attacked the judge and promised an appeal before any ruling. At 3:39 p.m. on September 21 he posted: “They have drawn a great Judge, for them, a man who ruled in favor of Jim Acosta, who now seems to have disappeared from the Planet. The Judge's name is Tim Kelly, and he was, sadly, appointed by 'TRUMP.' In other words, almost without question and, as usual, we'll go for appeal because Fake News people and publications that only write negatively, and who violate our National Security by writing false and defamatory stories with unknown 'sources,' shouldn't be allowed access to the most important Office anywhere in the World.” He called the reporters “Third Rate Clowns,” asked, “Perhaps Judge Kelly could explain that!” and ended, “FAKE NEWS IS A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY, and I will do whatever is necessary to make sure that the U.S.A. thrives.” Some headlines said he expects to lose; he did not say that. He vowed an appeal before the judge had ruled, and the post repeated the disputed claim about Politico's “8 Million Dollar” subscriptions.
The White House also published a formal defense, titled “White House Access Is a Privilege, Not a Right.” It says, “The First Amendment protects their right to publish; it does not entitle them to a hard pass, briefing room seat, or place in the press pool,” and “No President is required to host a hostile operation on the grounds.” It also declares, “The rule was never 'every outlet gets in.' It was always 'our side stays in.'” The release repeats the claim that the Biden administration “restricted more than 440 reporters,” which ABC's Jonathan Karl disputed on air (see above), and cites a Media Research Center count of negative coverage; the MRC is a conservative media-criticism group.
The press response widened beyond television. The still photographers' pool held its pictures: The Washington Post said it would “not publish any photographs of today's presidential events... until midnight Eastern Time, joining a collective effort with photographers in other newsrooms,” and Mediaite lists The New York Times, the Associated Press, Reuters, Getty Images and AFP among them. The Times said it “will not publish or distribute any images taken as part of the White House still photography pool today... in a show of support for the news organizations being unfairly targeted by the president's barring of journalists from the White House.” On NPR, Scott Horsley said, “NPR announced this evening we will not be using any audio from White House events while this is playing out.” CNN, citing two sources, reported that the White House asked Gray TV, a local-station owner, to fill the television pool, and that “Gray TV declined.” A statement organized by the Committee to Protect Journalists and signed by major news organizations said the ban “sets a dangerous precedent, one in which the President decides what the American people can know and from whom they can know it.” As of Tuesday morning, CNN reported, “it was not immediately clear if the actions would stretch into a second day.”
That evening the White House launched its own feed. “The White House launched its own news channel dubbed 'Trump TV' on Monday, days after President Donald Trump banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, but the platform kicked off its first livestream with a two-month-old clip of the president speaking at Mount Rushmore,” NOTUS reported. Kaelan Dorr, the White House's head of digital strategy, called it “a livestream of the Administration's greatest hits, unfiltered,” and said, “The press, in some cases, reported inaccurately or not at all on the Administration's many record breaking accomplishments on behalf of all Americans.” The White House's promotional post said, “Not every big moment has made it on your tv, now it can.” It is a 24-hour stream of past official clips on the White House's existing YouTube channel and app, not a newsroom; California Gov. Gavin Newsom called it “state-run,” per Time. (See Days After Banning Three News Outlets, the White House Launches 'Trump TV,' a 24/7 Stream of Its Own Past Clips.)
Trump, for his part, did not go unseen. In New York, after Mayor Zohran Mamdani asked that the press be brought into their meeting at Gracie Mansion, Trump told reporters, “They never boycott me.” In Congress, Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), a senior appropriator, told reporters, according to Punchbowl News as reported by CBS2 Idaho, “Just because you don't like what the press is reporting or the fact that they wouldn't call it the Gulf of America or something else like that, that's not the reason to ban the press,” and “You should never ban the press. The press is what keeps us honest.” Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, opened an inquiry, calling the ban “one of the most blatant attacks on the First Amendment and free press we've seen.” The government's response to the restraining-order motion was due September 22, ahead of the September 23 hearing.
Update (September 22, 2026): at the United Nations, where CNN was covering him on U.N. credentials rather than White House ones, Trump told correspondent Kaitlan Collins, “You should not be here covering me. You said you weren't going to cover me.” Collins said on air that CNN had never said it would stop covering the president. No U.S. television pool camera covered his General Assembly address; it reached air through the United Nations' own feed (see At the UN, Trump Asks Whether to 'Annihilate the Islamic Republic' and 'Drive Them Into Hell,' and Iran's Delegation Walks Out). Asked later whether he would let the three outlets back in if Judge Kelly ruled against him, Trump said the judge probably would: “Probably will, because he's not a particularly fair judge, so you never know. But I'm talking about national security. I think we have a right to clean out fake news. You know, news is fake.” He added, “It's actually dangerous, I think we're right to clear it out,” and, pressed on how the outlets are dangerous, said, “When they make statements about the war, when they make false statements, false, malicious, and they don't have sources, but they say they do.” NBC noted he gave no evidence. Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the ban on NBC's TODAY: “We're not closing CNN. There aren't a bunch of police officers or soldiers kicking down the doors of MSNBC or MS NOW, whatever it's called, and arresting people and unplugging it from the grid. They're just not allowed to work from the workspace at the White House.”
Update (September 23, 2026): the Justice Department filed its opposition on the night of September 22, and its opening position is that the whole premise is wrong. “After all, access to the White House is a privilege—not a right,” the brief says. On the 1977 case that has governed press credentials for half a century, and on the 2020 appeals-court decision that built on it, the government does not argue it complied. It argues the cases were wrongly decided: “that decision is wrong and should be overruled.” On retaliation, it invokes the rule that the government wins if it would have acted anyway, adding that “the President has not revoked access to other outlets that have equally criticized the President.” On harm, it says “Plaintiffs may continue to publish whatever content or editorials they wish.” It warns that an injunction would set the court on “a collision course” with the president, says “At the very least, no injunction may run against the President,” and asks in advance for any order to be stayed pending appeal.
The night it filed, the White House also sent each outlet a letter, and those letters are the part worth reading closely. They are dated September 22: four days after the ban was announced, three days after the passes were taken, one day after the suit was filed. CNN's arrived at 10:30 p.m. Each says, “This letter is to provide notice that the President has made the determination to revoke hard passes for members of your organization,” accuses the outlet of “trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security and other issues, and publishing sensitive or classified information,” and gives a deadline: “please submit a written response to us in writing via email by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, September 25, 2026.” No individual signed them; they close “White House Press Office,” with no name, title or letterhead. They are addressed to the organizations, not to the three reporters whose passes were taken. The government's brief calls this “sufficient post-deprivation process.” Whether process delivered after the fact, and after a lawsuit, satisfies the Constitution is the question in front of the judge. This entry does not answer it.
The letters list the stories each outlet is accused of. Three of the examples can be checked against the articles themselves, and they do not hold up as described. The letter says that “In September 2026, CNN falsely reported an Iranian school was struck because of 'outdated intelligence, when the United States attacked a neighboring Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval base.'” CNN's article reports that as the government's own preliminary finding: “early evidence suggests the military accidentally hit the school due to outdated intelligence,” attributed to sources briefed on the internal investigation. A second CNN story is faulted for a “top-secret” bunker; the words came from the White House's own director of management and administration, on the record at a public planning-commission meeting: “There are some things regarding this project that are, frankly, of top-secret nature that we are currently working on.” The Politico story concerned a funding document handed to a room of Republican senators at a closed-door lunch, which the article describes as “The document given to Senate Republicans and obtained by POLITICO.” A fourth item, about Politico's coverage of a Republican convention, is answered in the letter with a citation to Breitbart and a claim about livestream views.
Two sworn declarations accompany the brief, and both are from Pentagon officials rather than anyone at the White House. Neither says that any story by these outlets contained classified information. One, from a career intelligence official, sets out the government's theory in a sentence worth quoting: “The release or publication of purported national security information - whether accurate, incorrect, or misleading - can cause risk to the national security of the United States.” The other, the Pentagon press secretary, reasons by analogy: “Based upon the similarities between the Pentagon and the White House complex,” she writes, the same problems likely occur. She also concedes that reporters contacting a press office before publishing are not doing anything improper, and that the department does not know the sources involved. No one who made the decision filed a declaration.
One fact in the plaintiffs' filings sits awkwardly with the letters. CNN's Betsy Klein swore that her hard pass was renewed this year: “My submission for renewal was made and accepted in June 2026,” with an expiration date of August 31, 2027. The bunker story the letter cites ran in January.
The plaintiffs also handed the judge a decision issued that same day. In Mahoney v. United States Capitol Police Board, the D.C. Circuit held that the Capitol's east steps are a nonpublic forum but that the rules governing protests there were still unreasonable, because “an individual's right to demonstrate outside the Capitol cannot turn on the discretion of a member of Congress.” The opinion was written by Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, and it cites the court's own White House precedent for the proposition that “it would be unreasonable to control access to White House press facilities through standardless discretion.” It also says, “It is fundamental to our free speech rights that the government cannot pick and choose between speakers.” The case is about protesters, not the press, and parts of it help the government: the panel said a nonpublic forum may be closed to demonstrations altogether, and the dissent distinguishes the White House press area because it “is within the interior of the official residence” of the president. What the plaintiffs take from it is narrower and harder to dismiss: even in a space the government controls, it cannot hand officials unbounded discretion over who gets in.
The two appellate decisions the government leans on are both interlocutory. The Associated Press ruling it cites repeatedly as a “decision” was an order staying an injunction in part, decided 2 to 1 with a dissent, and its majority said the opposite of what the brief needs on the central point: “When the White House opens its facilities to the press generally, as it does in the Brady Briefing Room, it cannot exclude journalists based on viewpoint.” That appeal was argued in November 2025 and has never been decided. The Pentagon case the brief describes as “upholding a government policy” is also a stay order, and it is narrow on its face, staying the lower court's ruling only “to the extent that it entitles journalists to access the Pentagon unescorted.” The district judge in that case had struck the policy down.
While his lawyers were telling the court this was about national security and decorum, the president was telling everyone else something else. At the United Nations on September 22 he was asked, “If the district court decides against you, will you let the three media outlets back in?” He answered, “It probably will, because this is a judge who is not a particularly fair judge,” then added, “I think we have a right to clean out fake news.” The Washington Examiner read that as a yes; The Hill reported that he had declined to say whether he would comply. He did not say. Earlier the same day he told CNN's Kaitlan Collins in the press area, “You should not be here covering me. You said you weren't going to cover me.” Collins answered on air that CNN had never said that. At 11:53 p.m., after the filing went in, he posted that the outlets are “sick, treasonous, and demented” and that the plaintiffs have “a great, for them, and totally disloyal Judge.” Judge Kelly is a Trump appointee.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the ban on NBC that day in terms that concede its scope: “We're not closing CNN. There aren't a bunch of police officers or soldiers kicking down the doors of MSNBC or MS NOW, whatever it's called, and arresting people and unplugging it from the grid. They're just not allowed to work from the workspace at the White House.” The White House also sent House Republicans talking points, which MS NOW published: “Fabricating facts or reporting verifiable falsehoods from inside the White House complex is an intentional breach of professional decorum, and it is severely disruptive to the mission and purpose of the White House.” White House communications director Steven Cheung responded to the leak by saying, “Thanks for taking the bait we purposefully put out there and publishing our talking points for the world to see.”
The blackout the ban produced has not lifted. No network took CNN's place in the television pool, NPR is still declining to broadcast pool audio of the president, and the White House has been releasing its own video instead, including a helipad ribbon-cutting in which a running helicopter drowned out what the president was saying. The administration also launched a YouTube channel called Trump TV.
The hearing on the restraining order is set for 3:30 p.m. today, by videoconference, with a public call-in line. As of late morning the docket showed no ruling and no change to the schedule. Nothing here says how Judge Kelly will rule.
The hearing happened. Judge Timothy Kelly heard argument by videoconference on the afternoon of September 23, did not rule from the bench, and took the motion under advisement. He said he would decide “as soon as I can.” In the Acosta case in 2018, his ruling came two days after the hearing.
He opened by telling both sides that he is bound by the cases above him. The Justice Department's brief had argued that the 1977 and 2020 decisions were wrongly decided, and Kelly's answer was that this is not his call to make: “Maybe they were, maybe they weren't, but currently as a district judge I have to apply them.” He added that when he looked into it, “I was as surprised as anyone when I dug in to look at the law that in Sherrill back in the 70s, that the DC Circuit held there was a due process interest in the White House hard pass for the media.” On the record in front of him he was blunter still: due process “wasn't followed here.”
The letters sent at 10:30 the previous night got the sharpest question. The government had called them sufficient post-deprivation process. Kelly: “I don't know [that] a letter they got after the pass was revoked could provide them with the kind of standards that they'd have to conform their conduct to.” None of that is a ruling, and this entry does not treat it as one.
For the government, Michael Velchik repeated the brief's opening line, “access to the White House is a privilege, not a right,” and pushed it further in the room: “at the very least, the president may exclude anyone he wants from the Oval Office,” and “The president should be able to take immediate action to protect national security.” For the outlets, Theodore Boutrous called the ban an “unprecedented, unreasonable punishment” with “not a semblance of due process,” said it came “completely out of the blue,” described the stories listed in the letters as “garden-variety reporting,” and said treating national security as a “magic word” does not hold up. On urgency: “These are urgent matters. We're at war. World leaders are coming to Washington.” Of the president's stated motive he said only, “He wears his heart on his sleeve.”
The most striking filing of the day was not from either party. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the White House Correspondents' Association and 49 news organizations filed an unopposed amicus brief asking the court to restore the three outlets' access. The signatories are, in effect, the White House press corps: the Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg News, ABC, CBS, NBCUniversal, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Dow Jones, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Forbes, Hearst, Scripps, McClatchy, ProPublica, Axios, The Guardian US, the Financial Times, and Fox News Network. Fox News, whose Washington bureau chief chairs the television pool, formally asked a federal court to rule against this White House. The brief says the ban's reasons are “transparently viewpoint discriminatory,” that “the targeted expulsion of news media from White House grounds injures the public interest,” and that “unassailable First Amendment law makes any viewpoint-based decision to bar reporters from a nonpublic forum constitutionally repugnant.” It also notes that many of the signers hold credentials and sit in the pool rotation themselves, and quotes the president's own promise of “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”
Two of the letters' accusations came apart during the day. The Associated Press reported that Politico's letter faults a June item citing a “senior administration official … granted anonymity” on whether a preliminary deal would end the war with Iran, and that this “appeared to reference 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.” Several other outlets reported the same official's remarks. The Washington Post put the same finding in its headline: the White House banned Politico for using anonymous sources, and the White House was the source.
MS NOW's Washington bureau chief, Sudeep Reddy, then filed a sworn declaration about the three MS NOW articles the letter lists. Only one of them was written by a journalist who held a White House hard pass. MS NOW submitted that reporter's name for renewal on June 18, 2026, a week after the June 11 story now cited against the network, and the pass was renewed. The other two articles were written by three journalists who hold no White House pass at all and report from outside the building. The plaintiffs also filed, as an exhibit, the president's Truth Social post of 11:53 p.m. the night before, the one calling the judge “totally disloyal.”
Katie Fallow of the Knight First Amendment Institute told the Associated Press that the proceedings are without precedent: “No president has taken this explicit of a step” to ban whole news organizations over their reporting. “There have been various presidents throughout history who have grumbled about the press or threatened to take more major steps, but really there was nothing at this level before Trump.” The television pool was missing from the White House schedule again on Wednesday, the day the president was to receive Xi Jinping.
Update (September 24, 2026): Judge Kelly granted the restraining order in the early hours of September 24 and ordered the hard passes restored immediately. The opinion turns on the point he had made from the bench. “The Court's resolution of their Motion is dictated by the application of well-known D.C. Circuit precedent that this Court must faithfully apply,” it begins, and to the government's argument that the precedent was wrong: “Defendants say that Sherrill and Karem were wrongly decided,” it notes, citing the government's brief, and then: “Maybe—but this Court is bound by D.C. Circuit precedent, full stop.”
On due process he found the plaintiffs likely to succeed. “Defendants do not dispute that Plaintiffs did not receive notice and an opportunity to be heard before their hard passes were revoked,” and the record is “bereft of any relevant formally articulated standards” that existed before the conduct being punished. Of the only standard the government offered, the line in its letters about “the standards of professionalism and decorum,” he wrote that it “is so vague it hardly does the trick.” He noted that the White House “renewed Plaintiff Betsy Klein's hard pass several months after she published some of the identified reporting, undercutting any argument that she or her employer, for example, had the requisite notice.” And on the letters as after-the-fact process, he found the circumstances here were not so “extraordinary” as to permit deviation from the rule that a deprivation “be preceded by notice and opportunity for hearing,” observing that “some of the reporting identified by Defendants in the letters to Plaintiffs stretches back months or years. The sorts of stories Defendants identify in the letters to Plaintiffs are routine.”
He was blunter about the national-security justification than anything in this entry has been. “[N]othing in the record that predates this suit suggests that the revocation of Plaintiffs' hard passes was motivated by national security concerns. Certainly, that is not what President Trump said when he announced that he was 'banning' Plaintiffs from the White House—instead, he focused on the alleged lack of truthfulness and negativity of Plaintiffs' reporting.” He noted the letters' own hedge, that they identify reporting which “threatened national security and/or spread falsehoods,” which leaves open that every story falls in the second category. And: “the record lacks factual support for Defendants' contention that the revocation of Plaintiffs' hard passes will in fact protect national security.” The two sworn declarations, he wrote, came from Defense Department officials “who have no direct knowledge of how reporters operate in the White House, or about any of the facts at issue here,” while the plaintiffs' supplemental declarations “show that, in most cases, the reporters who authored the stories Defendants identify in their letters did not even hold hard passes.”
The order runs for fourteen days, binds the defendants “except for President Trump,” and sets bond at $1.00. Kelly refused the government's request to stay it, noting that a stay “runs against the purpose of such an order” and that restraining orders are generally unappealable anyway.
Then the morning happened. Journalists from all three outlets went to the White House and were turned away. Betsy Klein, whose pass had been taken on September 19, was denied at 9 a.m. and her request to have it back was refused; one CNN producer had been let in with their pass after 6 a.m., and it was not clear why. Reporters from MS NOW and Politico were barred too. The plaintiffs filed an emergency notice: “Defendants have already repeatedly violated the Court's Order,” it says, adding that their counsel had asked the government's counsel to call the judge together and “Counsel for Defendants has not responded.”
Kelly ordered the government to answer by 12:30 p.m. Its answer was a declaration from White House press operations director Micah Stopperich, who gave a timeline: her team was told shortly after 7 a.m. to restore access by turning the hard badges back on and began doing so; the Secret Service indicated shortly after 9 a.m. that the passes were “back on”; and they were left at the entry gate for collection within the hour. At noon, Klein and a CNN photojournalist were let in. An MS NOW reporter was admitted. Politico said its access was granted later that afternoon.
In light of that declaration the judge denied the request for an emergency hearing, while allowing the plaintiffs to file a supplemental notice of any further developments after 6 p.m. He also set the next stage: a motion for a preliminary injunction by September 28, the government's response by October 2, a reply by October 5, and a hearing to follow, with the court stating it “intends to rule expeditiously.” Ted Boutrous, for the outlets: “This is a strong ruling vindicating freedom of the press, due process and the rule of law. We greatly appreciate the court's swift action.”
The ban lasted six days. It was announced on a Friday afternoon by social media post, executed the next morning at a security kiosk, defended in court on the theory that a half-century of precedent was wrongly decided, and undone by a judge the president appointed. Whether it stays undone is what the next two weeks decide.
The anonymous-source accusation is now documented rather than inferred. The Washington Post reviewed the invitation to, and a recording of, the June 2026 White House background call behind the Politico story the letter cites. A White House aide opened it by setting the terms: “The contents of this call are on background, attributable to a senior administration official. By remaining on the line, you agree to those terms,” and repeated the instruction six minutes in for latecomers. The official on the call put the odds of an Iran deal at “probably more like 80, 85 percent.” The White House letter to Politico faults the outlet for citing a “senior administration official … granted anonymity” on exactly that point. As the Post puts it, the source “was not speaking against the White House's wishes, but spoke in an authorized call during which reporters were instructed to attribute information to a 'senior administration official.'” The detail that settles it: “The Associated Press, Bloomberg and CNBC were among several outlets who reported on the call, citing a senior administration official, but were not banned from the White House.” One outlet has since named the official; that report is single-sourced and the Post, which had the recording, did not name anyone, so no name appears here.
There was one more scene on September 24. Trump's Oval Office meeting with Xi Jinping had been scheduled as closed press. At the last minute the White House let in still photographers only and, according to the Associated Press, “denied requests from the rest of the pool, including reporters who would be asking questions, to join.” In front of the photographers, on the same morning his administration was turning American reporters away from the gate despite a court order, Trump remarked that Xi has the friendliest press corps in the world and joked that the Chinese press ask Xi for permission to speak. The AP added its own line: “China is one of the most oppressive environments for journalists in the world.” The absence of American television coverage that day was not the White House's doing; the networks have been declining pool duty since September 21 in protest at the ban.
Update (September 25, 2026): hours after the three outlets got back in, two of them were kept out of an event. Xi's evening arrival for the state dinner was open to pre-credentialed media, a wider group than the pool. CNN had submitted a reporter, a producer and a camera crew, its usual team. About an hour before Xi was due, CNN reported, the White House said it could cover the arrival with a photojournalist and an audio technician only, while other networks were permitted reporters and producers. When CNN's reporter and producer tried to go in, a press wrangler told them to “talk to” communications director Steven Cheung. MS NOW's Laura Barrón-López said she was told she could not be let in and was directed to the communications director as well.
The White House's rapid-response account called it a “pre-credentialed event” and wrote, “contrary to what the Fake News wants you to believe, they don't just get to have free rein into every part of the White House, every event, and every press call.” Whether the restraining order reaches event credentials is unsettled. It ordered the hard passes restored, and Deadline noted that the evening exclusion “does not appear to be addressed in Kelly's order.”
Earlier that afternoon Trump had posted that CNN and “MSDNC” “refused to cover one of the Biggest and Most Beautiful Events to take place in many years,” Xi's morning arrival, adding, “they didn't want credit to be given to 'TRUMP,' they refused to be there. That's why they have such poor Ratings.” CNN called the claim false. Xi arrived at about 10 a.m.; CNN's Betsy Klein was not let back onto the grounds until around noon, and both networks covered the arrival on their digital platforms. The television pool, CNN included, did not film it because the networks were still waiting for the White House to confirm that CNN could take its turn.
The pool came back the next morning. On September 25 CBS had the White House duty and CNN the in-town pool at the National Archives, where the networks carried its feed of Trump and Xi. CNN anchor Pamela Brown: “CNN's access to the White House has been restored, and the TV pool appears to be functioning as normal.” The outlets' lawyer, Ted Boutrous, said they believe pool access “is covered by the temporary restraining order.” At a tea meeting with Xi and the two first ladies that day, Trump said, “And we appreciate the fair coverage. It's been very fair.”
Correction (September 24, 2026): earlier versions of this entry described Karem v. Trump, the second precedent the government asked the court to discard, as a 2019 decision. The government's brief and the restraining order both cite the D.C. Circuit's opinion at 960 F.3d 656, decided in 2020; the 2019 ruling in that case was the district court's. This entry also said reporters were turned away on September 24 “in defiance of a court order.” The plaintiffs alleged non-compliance; the White House filed a sworn timeline saying its staff were told shortly after 7 a.m. to restore access, and the judge accepted that explanation and denied an emergency hearing. The record establishes that reporters were turned away despite the order, not that the order was defied, and the text now says so.
Correction (September 24, 2026, later): three quotations in this entry have been checked against their original sources and fixed. The restraining order's line on Sherrill and Karem was quoted as one passage, but a citation to the government's brief sits between its two sentences; the entry now quotes them separately. Trump's answer about his oath was quoted as “Because they're fake news, and you get so tired of reading and seeing fake news”; the Roll Call Factbase transcript reads “Uh, because they're fake news. Uh, you get so tired of reading and seeing fake news,” with no “and.” Ari Fleischer's post was quoted from its first sentence, which we could verify only as read aloud on ABC, where “WH” was expanded; the entry now quotes the post from “Banning them” onward, as Newsweek published it, and paraphrases the opening. None of the corrections changes the meaning.
Update (October 1, 2026): the White House again dropped CNN from the television pool, this time for Trump's October 1 trip to Texas and Oklahoma, though a rotation document released September 27 had assigned CNN the slot; no other network replaced it, Deadline reported. Judge Kelly's restraining order covers access to the White House grounds, not pool travel, so the exclusion does not itself defy it, despite some headlines. A White House official told Deadline: “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.” Theodore Boutrous, representing the outlets, said the White House is “persisting in unpredictably and inconsistently implementing the President's unconstitutional 'ban on the free press.'”
Update (October 6, 2026): On October 5, Politico's turn as the print pool reporter, the White House kept it off Air Force One for Trump's trip to Nebraska. “Many outlets including Politico are granted access to attend and cover presidential events unilaterally, but traveling with the President of the United States aboard Air Force One is a privilege not a right,” a White House official said. Other outlets declined to take the seat: “Neither news organization is replacing Politico,” CBS News wrote in an internal email, CNN reported. In a filing on October 2, the Justice Department asked the court to let the ban be reinstated, arguing that “Restricting access to the White House removes one avenue for these outlets to obtain such harmful information”; CNN reported the filing “did not offer any new evidence” that the outlets had threatened national security. The restraining order runs to October 8.
Update (October 14, 2026): on October 13, U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee, granted a preliminary injunction in CNN v. Trump barring enforcement of the hard-pass revocations while the case proceeds. “The record is clear that President Trump made the decision at issue,” he wrote, and, “Freed from such a naiveté, it is not hard to conclude that President Trump likely banned Plaintiffs from the White House because he believes that their reporting is generally inaccurate and biased against him.” He concluded, “Simply put, that is unlawful viewpoint discrimination,” and found “practically nothing national security-related in the record connected to the President's decision.” Kelly added 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.” A White House spokesperson said, “The Fake News has no place demanding a spot in the President's Oval Office,” and the Justice Department filed a notice of appeal to the D.C. Circuit on October 14. The ruling does not address the press pool.
Update (October 20, 2026): the White House has been excluding CNN from Air Force One, breaking the rotation by which the five TV networks share pooled coverage of the president's trips, CNN reported. On October 19, CNN's lawyer Ted Boutrous wrote to the Justice Department, “These efforts to retaliate and discriminate against CNN based on the content of its news coverage are mistaken, counterproductive, and unlawful,” and said that without a fix by Thursday, “CNN will have no choice but to return to the court,” Deadline also reported.
Update (October 21, 2026): Trump has discussed moving the White House press corps to another building, two people close to him told CBS News, and outside allies including Steve Bannon have pushed the idea; “No final decisions have been made.” The New York Times first reported the discussions. Communications director Steven Cheung said, “All options remain on the table.”
Update (October 22, 2026): the New York Times reported, citing people familiar with the talks, that Trump has repeatedly told aides he wants reporters out of the Brady briefing room so it can be returned to the swimming pool Franklin Roosevelt used, told Karoline Leavitt it would be her “last legacy,” and that the Eisenhower Executive Office Building is the likely new home for the press corps, according to accounts in TheWrap and Raw Story; those details are single-sourced. Communications director Steven Cheung said, “All options remain on the table.” The White House also sent Politico a 48-hour retraction demand (see White House Counsel Gives Politico 48 Hours to Retract or Correct Three Susie Wiles Stories and Apologize to Trump).
Update (October 27, 2026): Six readers of White House news, not news outlets, sued on October 26 in Roth v. Trump, No. 1:26-cv-09327 (S.D.N.Y.), represented by the Knight First Amendment Institute and Yale Law School's Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic. Naming Trump, Cheung, Secret Service Director Sean Curran and Wiles, they claim the policy “imposes viewpoint-based and unreasonable restrictions on newsgathering and reporting in a limited public forum,” burdening their right to receive information. They seek a declaration and an injunction against the policy as a whole, and no damages; a same-day motion asks the court to enjoin Cheung, Curran and Wiles while the case proceeds. A White House official told the AP, “No person may demand access to the Oval Office.”
Update (October 29, 2026): on October 28 CNN, MS NOW and Politico amended their complaint before Judge Timothy Kelly to challenge their continued exclusion from press-pool duties in the Oval Office and aboard Air Force One, which Kelly's earlier orders did not cover, CNBC reported. The amended complaint adds a Fifth Amendment due process claim to the First Amendment claims and asks the court to “declare unlawful the President's ban of plaintiffs and the White House's further unconstitutional actions, including its continued exclusions of plaintiffs from specific White House press areas for retaliatory and viewpoint-discriminatory reasons,” and to enter permanent injunctive relief, CNN reported. It says that “once the White House opens those spaces to selected journalists for newsgathering and reporting, the White House may not exclude plaintiffs because it dislikes their coverage.”
The complaint alleges that since January 2025 Trump has held 121 press events aboard Air Force One or on the tarmac and 138 in the Oval Office, “during which he fielded no fewer than 4,700 questions from reporters”; that CNN has repeatedly been kept from serving as designated television pooler aboard Air Force One, a role it has filled for more than four decades; that MS NOW has not been in the secondary television pool since September 18; and that Politico was barred from two out-of-town print pool assignments. “Defendants have offered no official explanation for any of these exclusions,” it says. A White House official told MS NOW, “No person and no journalist has a constitutional right to access to the President's Oval Office, Air Force One, or other sensitive and private facilities.” The administration is appealing Kelly's preliminary injunction.