President Donald Trump’s ban on CNN, Politico and MS NOW from the White House is headed to court, raising new questions about how far a president can go in restricting press access.
Days after Trump announced the prohibition of the news organizations, the outlets sued, arguing that the revocation of their press passes violated due process and First Amendment protections against retaliation and viewpoint discrimination.
The escalating battle marks the president’s latest attempt to impose constraints on journalists who Trump claims have treated him unfairly. The administration also has limited the media’s longstanding access to the Pentagon and barred some reporters from covering the G-20 summit. And Trump has sued the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the BBC for defamation, claims the news organizations have said are without merit.
Here’s what to know about Trump’s efforts to restrict journalists and how news outlets are responding.
What did Trump do? How did the media outlets respond?
In a Truth Social post on Sept. 18, Trump said the three outlets would be barred from the White House, citing what he called years of “fake news” and negative coverage. Their reporters were denied entry when they sought to enter the White House grounds the next day, and their credentials were disabled or confiscated.
In response, the organizations sued Trump, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Communications Director Steven Cheung and Secret Service Director Sean Curran in federal court in Washington, DC. The organizations alleged the US government illegally retaliated against the news outlets over speech protected by the First Amendment. They also claim the government violated the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees the right to due process, by withdrawing access without notice or a chance to respond.
The lawsuit stated that Trump’s ban was based on “one simple reason: He dislikes the content of their coverage of him and his administration.”
The three organizations are seeking emergency relief from the US District Court for the District of Columbia to restore their credentials while the case proceeds.
How have other news organizations responded?
The broader press corps has rallied behind the three outlets. ABC News, CBS News, NBC News and Fox News suspended rotating television pool coverage of presidential events after the White House prevented CNN, the fifth member of the pool, from carrying out an assigned pool shift. The networks said in a rare joint statement that no administration should restrict a news organization over objections to the outlet’s reporting.
Other publications said they would hold off on distributing photos taken on Sept. 21 as part of the White House pool.
The New York Times, in a statement on X, said it would “not publish or distribute any images taken as part of the White House still photography pool today,” calling it “a show of support for the news organizations being unfairly targeted by the president’s barring of journalists from the White House.”
A spokesperson for the Washington Post said it wouldn’t publish any photos of Trump events on Sept. 21, “until midnight Eastern Time.”
Can the White House bar a news outlet?
The US Constitution doesn’t give every journalist an unrestricted right to enter the White House, but outright bans are highly unusual and generally at odds with the First Amendment.
The White House can restrict press access for reasons such as security or space. Administration officials also can choose whose questions to answer and, in some circumstances, which reporters receive close access at limited-space events such as Oval Office meetings or travel aboard Air Force One.
But courts have held that once the government creates a system for press credentials, it can’t administer the system arbitrarily.
The lawsuit filed by the three media outlets cites a 1977 case, Sherrill v. Knight, in which the DC circuit court held that the White House isn’t required to open its doors to reporters. However, once media facilities are made available, access can’t be denied only to certain members of the media, the court ruled. In their lawsuit, CNN, Politico and MS Now say they were singled out when their existing passes were revoked because of their reporting.
What is “viewpoint discrimination”?
In their lawsuit, the news organizations say Trump retaliated against them for protected speech. They allege the government engaged in viewpoint discrimination by punishing them over what Trump deemed unfavorable coverage.
The Supreme Court has held that it is unconstitutional for the government to restrict speech based on content or viewpoints. That means that the government is prohibited from suppressing speech about a specific topic or a particular point of view.
What have courts said about White House press passes?
Courts have repeatedly required due process before journalists’ White House credentials can be withdrawn. A federal judge temporarily restored CNN correspondent Jim Acosta’s White House pass during Trump’s first term in 2018 after finding CNN was likely to succeed on its Fifth Amendment claim. The judge didn’t rule on the merits of CNN’s First Amendment claim.
In 2020, the DC Circuit reinforced those protections in another case, Karem v. Trump, when it affirmed that a reporter from Playboy whose White House pass was suspended wasn’t given fair notice. The case reinforced the requirement that credential sanctions should rest on meaningful, known standards, not ad hoc decisions.
The law does allow different categories of speakers, for example wire services but not television outlets, to be treated differently. That’s why the Trump administration was able in 2025 to bar three wire services — Bloomberg, the Associated Press and Reuters — from the press pool rotation that assigns a small number of outlets to cover presidential events on behalf of the broader press corps. That came after a court rejected the White House’s attempt to bar only the AP for refusing to adopt the president’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”
Could the AP case help Trump’s new effort to restrict media?
Potentially. The divided DC Circuit panel last year allowed Trump to continue limiting the AP’s access to places including the Oval Office and Air Force One. The court said restricted presidential spaces such as the Oval Office aren’t First Amendment forums accessible to the general public and that the White House has broad discretion over who enters them.
This report is auto generated from the Bloomberg news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.
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