Judge Orders White House to Restore Press Access for CNN, MS NOW and Politico After Trump Ban

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to temporarily restore White House access for journalists at CNN, MS NOW and Politico, ruling that the credentials could not be revoked without "constitutionally adequate due process." The order, signed early Thursday by U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly in Washington, came five days after President Trump announced on social media that he was banning the three outlets over what he called their "FAKE NEWS" coverage.

The case docket shows the ruling is a 14-day temporary restraining order, not a final resolution. It requires the administration to reissue the hard passes that let credentialed reporters move through White House grounds without a fresh security check each visit, while a broader challenge to the ban proceeds.

What the Order Says

Judge Kelly's written order, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, found the outlets were likely to succeed on their claim that the revocations were carried out without notice or a chance to respond. The government had argued the bans were justified by national security concerns, an argument the judge treated with open skepticism.

"The court is skeptical — at least on this record — that Defendants' interest in safeguarding national security is the actual motivation for, or is even advanced by, the revocation of Plaintiffs' hard passes."

The case, Cable News Network, Inc., et al. v. Trump, et al., No. 1:26-cv-03287, names President Trump, chief of staff Susan Wiles, communications director Steven Cheung and Secret Service director Sean Curran as defendants. Plaintiffs include the three news organizations along with individual reporters Betsy Klein of CNN, Akayla Gardner of MS NOW and Cheyenne Haslett of Politico.

How the Dispute Began

Trump announced the ban on Truth Social on the evening of September 19, writing that he was banning the outlets "as a result of their constant 'reporting' FAKE NEWS!" and warning that other outlets could follow. Reporters and photojournalists for the three organizations were turned away from White House grounds the following morning and had their hard passes confiscated, according to declarations filed with the court.

The outlets sued two days later, on September 21, seeking a temporary restraining order alongside their underlying constitutional claims. The Justice Department opposed the request, filing declarations defending the revocations, and the two sides argued the matter before Judge Kelly at a videoconference hearing on September 23 before he ruled the following day.

Government lawyers have leaned on a broader argument: that the 1977 U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in Sherrill v. Knight, which first established that White House press credentials cannot be denied without due process, should be overturned. A Justice Department attorney told the court the decades-old precedent "is wrong and should be overruled," a position outlined in the Office of Legal Counsel's own long-standing guidance on revoking press passes, which has treated the case as governing law for nearly five decades.

Part of a Larger Pattern

The dispute is the second major White House credentials fight to reach federal court this term. The Associated Press sued in February 2025 after it was barred from the Oval Office, Air Force One and other limited spaces for declining to adopt the administration's preferred name for the Gulf of Mexico. A district judge initially ordered AP's access restored, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit later ruled 2-1 that the White House could still exclude the wire service from those specific spaces, reasoning that restricted presidential spaces are not public forums and that the administration retains discretion over which journalists are admitted to them.

Lawyers for CNN, MS NOW and Politico argue their case differs in kind, not degree. The AP ruling concerned a narrower category of spaces reserved for a rotating press pool, while the hard passes at issue here govern basic access to the White House grounds and briefing room that hundreds of credentialed journalists rely on daily. That distinction is likely to shape how much weight the AP precedent carries as Judge Kelly moves toward a final ruling.

Who Is Affected

The order covers hard-pass holders at the three organizations, but the fight has not fully ended the disruption. Plaintiffs' lawyers notified the court that some journalists were still being blocked from entering the complex hours after the order took effect, including from a state dinner held that evening, and filed a formal notice of the administration's noncompliance. A White House spokesperson said reporters retain other ways to cover the president even without hard-pass access.

Press freedom organizations argue the stakes reach beyond three newsrooms. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, joined by more than 50 news organizations and media groups in a friend-of-the-court filing, told the judge that a standard allowing the White House to exclude outlets over their coverage "is flatly unconstitutional" and could be turned against any news organization in the future. The White House Correspondents' Association made a similar argument in its own public statement, framing the credentials fight as a question of whether the public receives independent reporting on the presidency, not simply a dispute between the administration and three newsrooms.

What Happens Next

Judge Kelly's order is temporary and expires October 8. In the meantime, the court has set an expedited schedule for the outlets to seek a longer-lasting preliminary injunction, with their motion due September 28, the government's response due October 2 and a final reply due October 5. Kelly has said he intends to rule on that motion before the temporary order lapses, though he has not yet scheduled a hearing.

Any appeal is unlikely to move quickly. Because Kelly has not yet ruled on the preliminary injunction, the Trump administration cannot yet take the underlying due-process question to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the same appellate court that decided Sherrill v. Knight in 1977. Legal analysts who have tracked the case say the administration's request to overturn that precedent would more plausibly find a receptive audience at the Supreme Court than at the circuit level, where the 1977 ruling remains binding law. For now, the credentials fight leaves CNN, MS NOW and Politico with restored but legally provisional access, and a court calendar that will determine within two weeks whether that access outlasts the temporary order that created it.