A federal judge has temporarily halted President Donald Trumps effort to bar CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, ordering the administration to restore the outlets access while a constitutional challenge proceeds.
According to Fox News, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly issued a temporary restraining order on Thursday directing officials to immediately return, reinstate, and restore the outlets hard-pass press credentials for at least 14 days. The ruling represents an early legal setback for the administrations attempt to rein in media organizations that the President has repeatedly accused of spreading misinformation.
Kelly concluded that the outlets had demonstrated a strong likelihood of success on their claim that their White House hard passes were revoked without constitutionally adequate due process. This is a high bar, but Plaintiffs have met it, Kelly wrote, signaling that the court views the procedural concerns raised by the plaintiffs as serious.
The judge also brushed aside, for now, the administrations national security rationale, stating that the record lacks factual support for the argument that revoking the passes protected national security or that restoring them would endanger it. That finding underscores a recurring concern among conservatives that national security is too often invoked as a catch-all justification for restricting individual liberties without clear evidence.
President Trump had announced the ban last week, declaring on social media that the three outlets shouldnt be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES. Reporters from all three organizations were then denied entry to the White House, with their credentials deactivated or confiscated in what supporters of the President viewed as a long-overdue pushback against partisan media.
The outlets and three individual reporters responded with a lawsuit, alleging that the revocation of their credentials violated their First Amendment free speech rights and Fifth Amendment due process rights. Lawyers for the Justice Department countered that White House press access is a privilege, not a right, and defended the Presidents authority to decide who is granted that privilege in order to maintain order and integrity in the briefing room.
Following Trumps ban, White House television pool members FOX News Media, ABC News, CBS News, CNN and NBC News announced Monday that they had agreed to suspend their pooled coverage of the President. The dispute now moves into a critical phase, testing how far a President may go in challenging media outlets he believes constantly write or report FICTION and LIES, and whether courts will continue to prioritize procedural protections even when the press itself has often abandoned neutrality.
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