Three news organizations stripped of their White House press credentials will get them back under an emergency order issued at roughly 1 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026, by a federal judge whom President Donald Trump himself appointed during his first term.
CNN, MS NOW and Politico won a 14-day temporary restraining order from U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, who found the outlets were likely to prove their hard passes had been revoked without due process and directed that the passes be returned immediately. A First Amendment violation was the core of the claim the three brought in suing the president over the ban.
What the Judge Ordered
Kelly’s order directed the administration to “immediately return, reinstate, and restore” the hard passes — the White House press credentials at issue. The stated purpose was to “preserve the latest uncontested status quo while the litigation proceeds.”
A Truth Social post from Trump, 80, on Friday, Sept. 18, shut the three outlets out of the White House, with the president accusing news organizations of routinely publishing falsehoods. His complaint reached their reporting on the presidency, his administration and the country alike. Other outlets he regards as fake news would be next, he warned in that same post.
After the ban took effect, the president and his lawyers offered a different rationale — that the credentials were revoked because of earlier reporting that flagged national security concerns. Kelly rejected that explanation.
“For one thing, nothing in the record that predates this suit suggests that the revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes was motivated by national security concerns,” Kelly wrote in his ruling.
He also wrote: “the court is skeptical—at least on this record—that Defendants’ interest in safeguarding national security is the actual motivation.” Kelly noted that the White House had renewed CNN reporter Betsy Klein’s hard pass several months after she published some of the identified reporting.
CNN, MS NOW and Politico are represented by First Amendment attorney Ted Boutrous, who spoke on the morning of Thursday, Sept. 24: “This is a strong ruling vindicating freedom of the press, due process, and rule of law. We greatly appreciate the court’s decision.”
Networks Black Out Xi Arrival
Rival networks skipped the president’s events altogether, standing with the three newsrooms shut out of the building. A sign posted outside the Associated Press booth on the White House grounds listed CNN, MS NOW and Politico by name.
Trump welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping at Joint Base Andrews, where a 100-foot red carpet and a military flyover marked the arrival. None of the five major networks covered it.
A spectacle engineered for television that almost nobody watched is how CNN host Kaitlan Collins characterized the event, noting that none of the five major networks — whose audiences run to millions of people a day — recorded the moment. The pictures and ceremonial trappings matter enormously to Trump, CNN media analyst Brian Stelter said, and he called the rival networks’ blackout unprecedented.
A 14-Day Window and a Threatened Appeal
Stelter, speaking on CNN at 1:30 a.m., said he suspected the banned journalists would have to be let back onto the White House grounds later that day, and he predicted a partial restoration of coverage.
Boutrous had cautioned that the administration might still find ways to impose new restrictions or retaliate against news organizations after the ruling, Stelter added. Trump preempted the outcome with a promise to appeal, arguing that outlets he considers fake news should not be allowed access to the presidency — publications, he says, that write only negatively and endanger national security with false and defamatory stories built on unknown sources. A Truth Social post from the president, published before the decision came down, described the judge hearing the case as disloyal. Later on Sept. 24, reporters from the three outlets were back at the White House.
The White House dropped CNN from the press pool covering Trump’s trip to Texas and Oklahoma on Oct. 1. Updated guidance released Wednesday night, Sept. 30, removed the network from the Air Force One slot without explanation, and no pool camera traveled with Trump. It was the second time in under a week that the administration cut CNN out of a trip. The network was also barred from flying with Trump to Tennessee over the preceding weekend. CNN confirmed its removal to NBC News.
As of Oct. 1, the three outlets have asked Kelly to extend his order while the lawsuit proceeds. CNN separately asked him to address the administration’s exclusion of the network from pool assignments. The original order covered access to White House grounds and did not specifically address travel with the president or TV pool assignments.
Trump Questions the Order
In an interview with Time magazine published Monday, Sept. 28, Trump questioned Kelly’s order. “I’m not ignoring his order. I’m just saying that when I don’t have to go out of my way, these people write only bad stories. When they say orders, what order? I’m not even aware,” he said.
White House spokesperson Steven Cheung, who was present for the interview, said “the judge basically ordered them to renew their access back to the White House, but that’s different than allowing the pool into events in the Oval Office or on Air Force One.” Trump then asked, “he actually said to the premises of the White House?”
Lawmakers Press Other Fronts
On Sept. 22, Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico brought colleagues along on a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, in his capacity as ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The senators demanded a halt to work on the president’s proposed 250-foot Triumphal Arch.
The structure could adversely affect 37 historic sites in and around the capital, the National Park Service (NPS) concluded. Three of them would bear the brunt of the damage: the Arlington National Cemetery Historic District, the Arlington Memorial Bridge, and the cultural landscape of the Memorial Avenue Corridor. Also among the landmarks at risk, according to the senators, are the Lincoln Memorial, the National Mall, the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument.
A government-sponsored political advertisement that aired on Fox News prompted four senior appropriators to write to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles on Sept. 24. The signers were Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee; Rep. Steny H. Hoyer; Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee; and Sen. Jack Reed. They copied Office of Management and Budget Director Russell T. Vought on the demand.
The ad was labeled “Paid for by the U.S. Government” and set a montage of photographs of Trump and the American flag to singers repeating the words “love me” from JMSN’s song “Love Me.” Section 718 of Division E of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026, bars federal money from funding publicity or propaganda inside the United States, and the lawmakers say the spot breaches it. They say it also appears to violate the Hatch Act and other federal ethics laws.
They demanded that the White House pull the ad, discipline the employees who worked on it and provide a full accounting of every dollar spent. “If President Trump wants people to love him, he can pay for it himself,” the lawmakers wrote.
