CNN, MS NOW and Politico are suing the Trump administration after the White House revoked their press credentials, effectively banning them from the White House complex and making it a challenge to cover the President and his staff.
“This morning, we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes,” the three news outlets said in a statement early Monday morning. “Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting. Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.”
In fact, CNN had been slated to be the primary TV press pool Monday, a day in which President Trump is slated to fly to New York for meetings with Mayor Zohran Mamdani and French President Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
In their lawsuit (led by famed First Amendment litigator Ted Boutros), the news outlets argue that Trump’s decision was in profound conflict with the law.
“This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles,” the suit states. “Presidents from the earliest days of the Republic have disagreed with and complained about the tenor and content of press coverage of their administrations. But as the Supreme Court has recognized, the First Amendment, including its guarantee of a free press, reflects “a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” The suit states quoting a passage from the landmark case, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 270 (1964).
“And the Constitution protects the liberty and property interests that news organizations and White House reporters have in their press credentials and the access those credentials afford them to cover the White House for the benefit of the public,” it continues. “No official can deprive Plaintiffs of those interests on a whim—with no notice, no process, and no warning—as the President did here.”
Trump announced his ban in a post Friday, causing some confusion in the White House as crews from the outelts remained onsite. However, on Saturday morning journalists from all three outlets trying to enter the White House complex found that their credentials had been revoked.
In an Oval Office appearance, Trump said that the decision followed cumulative coverage over the past few years, and wasn’t driven by any story in particular.
“The President repeated his straightforward rationale for targeting these three news organizations, calling it ‘wrong’ to ‘allow people to write purposely negative stories,’” the lawsuit recounts. “The President complained about coverage he considers ‘one-sided’ and ‘never good,’ and at one point even referred to his own unprecedented act as the ‘ban on the free press.’”
He also suggested that he knew his move would end up being litigated, suggesting that the outcome would depend on the judge that gets the cse.
In his first term the White House banned CNN correspondent Jim Acosta from the White House, but a judge ordered his pass returned, citing First Amendment protections. The AP had also sued after it was barred from covering certain events after its style guide declined to refer to the body of water as the Gulf of America.
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