CNN, MS NOW, Politico ask court for longer-term White House access - USA Today
The three media outlets banned by President Donald Trump from the White House earlier this month are asking for longer-term protection of their press passes, after a judge restored the passes for just 14 days.
CNN, MS NOW and Politico filed the request for a preliminary injunction – a temporary court order that stays in place until the court makes a final decision in a case – to maintain access to the White House complex. Trump yanked that access in mid-September, saying he was frustrated by "cumulative stories over the last few years" from what he called the “fake news.”
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee who has been assigned to the case, ruled Sept. 24 that the ban likely violated the Constitution because the impacted reporters weren't notified and given a chance to defend themselves before they lost White House access. Kelly said that probably was a violation of their constitutional right to due process and reinstated the passes for two weeks.
While the White House has complied with Kelly's order by reinstating the passes, it is still blocking CNN from traveling on Air Force One. Trump also appeared to float replacing the main press briefing room within the White House complex with a swimming pool in "Before" and "After" pictures he posted on Truth Social Sept. 28.
"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 news organizations said in their Sept. 28 request for Kelly to keep their press passes active until he issues a final decision in the case.
The news outlets described the ban as an "unlawful assault on the most fundamental First Amendment freedoms," saying it amounts to retaliation against them for engaging in the type of newsgathering and speech that the First Amendment protects.
In a separate statement shared with USA TODAY, Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a lawyer for the news outlets, argued that the only purpose of Trump's ban is "to punish reporting he doesn’t like," and said "it is critical" for a court to continue blocking it.
The Justice Department referred USA TODAY to the White House, which didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
In an earlier court filing, Justice Department lawyers argued that Trump's ban was motivated by national security concerns. However, Kelly said in his order pausing the ban for 14 days that none of the evidence from before the news outlets sued suggested that was the true motivation.
The American Civil Liberties Union, a nonprofit that has a long history of defending First Amendment free speech protections, asked for court permission Sept. 29 to file a brief supporting the news outlets' White House access.
The brief points to foreign countries that grew more authoritarian as protections for free speech and a free press weakened, including the Philippines, Hungary, Turkey and Russia. In Russia, for instance, the government's media regulator has censored popular independent news sources, and hundreds of journalists have been arrested or killed since Russian President Vladimir Putin's rise, the ACLU noted.
"Obviously, the United States is not Russia, nor any of these other countries. At least not yet," the ACLU wrote.
However, the ACLU argued those examples "underscore the stakes of permitting the government to deny access to media outlets whose reporting this Administration finds inconvenient."
