Judge Orders Trump White House to Restore Access to CNN, MS NOW, Politico Immediately

A federal judge has ordered the White House to immediate reinstate access to CNN, MS NOW and Politico journalists, after President Donald Trump summarily banned them last Friday.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly of the D.C. Circuit, a Trump appointee, granted the news orgs’ motion for a temporary restraining order in the lawsuit they filed against Trump and three White House officials, alleging the ban violated the First Amendment. The TRO will remain in effect for 14 days.

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The White House must “immediately return, reinstate, and restore the White House ‘hard pass’ press credentials held by employees of CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO that were revoked on or about September 18, 2026, until further Order of the Court or the expiration of this Temporary Restraining Order,” Kelly wrote in the ruling issued a little after midnight Thursday.

Theodore Boutrous, a lawyer representing the news organizations, said in a statement: “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 White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A copy of the judge’s ruling is available at this link.

Despite the judge’s order, the Secret Service on Thursday morning refused to admit a Politico reporter to the White House and confiscated the reporter’s press pass, the news outlet reported. CNN and MS NOW staffers were denied access to the White House grounds early Thursday morning, according to the networks.

After the White House continued to block the journalists, attorneys for CNN, MS NOW and Politico filed a motion with the court seeking an emergency hearing over the Trump administration’s “non-compliance” with the temporary restraining order.

In issuing the TRO, Kelly found that CNN, MS NOW and Politico demonstrated they were likely to succeed in proving their claims, “at least on their Fifth Amendment procedural due process claim.” Kelly noted that the White House does not dispute that the news outlets “did not receive notice and an opportunity to be heard before their hard passes were revoked.” He also said the outlets “have shown that they are likely to suffer irreparable harm absent a temporary restraining order.”

Kelly did not address the question of whether the White House’s yanking of press access to CNN, MS NOW and Politico infringed their First Amendment rights. In their lawsuit, the trio said Trump’s ban “brazenly discriminates based on editorial viewpoint.”

In its response to the lawsuit, the White House had claimed in court filings that the ban was necessary to prevent the disclosure of “classified and sensitive national security information.” As an example of CNN’s alleged infractions, the White House cited a Jan. 16, 2026, report that “disclosed ‘top-secret’ construction details related to the East Wing bunker, which is designed to protect the President in times of crisis or national security emergency”; the White House did not dispute the accuracy of the CNN report.

”[T]he 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,” Kelly wrote in his order.

“No doubt, protection of the national security is a weighty interest on the [White House’s] part,” Kelly wrote. However, he continued, “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.”

Trump announced last Friday (Sept. 18) that he was banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico “effective immediately” from the White House because, as he has claimed hundreds of times before about media outlets he doesn’t like, they are “fake news.”

On Monday, CNN, MS NOW and Politico sued Trump and three White House officials over his ban, alleging it violates the First Amendment and “brazenly discriminates based on editorial viewpoint.”

Trump, anticipating that the White House would be defeated in the case, has already suggested he would seek an appeal of an unfavorable ruling. “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,” Trump wrote on Monday on his Truth Social platform.

In protest of Trump’s ban of the news outlets, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News and Fox News — which alongside CNN provide the White House TV pool coverage — announced they were suspending coverage of the president at events because of his ban on the news outlets. The TV pool blackout continued to remain in effect through Thursday.