|
 |
Tonight’s post is long. I bet you knew it would be. Be kind to yourself and consider reading it in “courses” or with an intermission. But please do read the whole thing. It matters.
Justice Scalia once used the phrase “this wolf comes as a wolf” in dissent to describe what he viewed as a naked assault on executive power, the Special Counsel Act. But the phrase is just as apt to describe the challenge Donald Trump poses to the First Amendment. This morning, MS NOW, CNN & POLITICO sued Donald Trump for banning them from the White House. He did that because he doesn’t like their reporting about him; he made that very clear. The plaintiffs argue that Trump has violated the First and Fifth Amendments, and as we discussed Saturday night, there is no doubt that they are correct.
The plaintiffs also sued Presidential Assistant for Communications Steven Cheung, Secret Service Director Sean Curran, and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. At the same time, they asked the court to enter a temporary restraining order against the government and filed a memo of law in support of their position. The case is Cable News Network v. Trump.
The need to file suit was triggered when journalists for the outlets who attempted to enter the White House on Saturday found that their badges did not work. Secret Service employees then confiscated the badges. Those journalists, Akayla Gardner, Cheyenne Haslett, and Betsy Klein, are also plaintiffs in the case.
 |
This isn’t just another squabble between the president and the press; it’s a serious situation that cuts to the core of our First Amendment rights. Put simply, this is a case about whether the press, and by extension the rest of us, can be critical of the president and his administration. It’s about whether journalists can gather information that is essential if they are to do their jobs and keep the rest of us informed.
Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” (I assume that a Supreme Court that protects assault weapons like they’re muskets can manage to protect cable news networks and online media just like newspapers.)
 |
Details on the lawsuit
The plaintiffs are asking the judge to:
Prohibit the administration from taking any other steps to implement Trump’s ban, and
force the administration “to immediately restore to Plaintiffs their ‘hard pass’ press credentials along with the access that Plaintiffs and their reporters had to the White House prior to the September 18, 2026 ban.”
They issued a joint statement in advance of filing the lawsuit: “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. 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.”
The plaintiffs argue that what Trump has done is illegal for at least three reasons:
His ban violates their Fifth Amendment due process rights because the White House failed to create “explicit and meaningful standards” for denying access to the White House grounds before it banned them and didn’t give them an opportunity to be heard before they were banned. The Fifth Amendment requires notice and a hearing.
His ban violates the First Amendment by retaliating against the plaintiffs for what the President considers negative coverage.
His ban violates the First Amendment because it discriminates against the plaintiffs based on their viewpoint.
By now we’re familiar with what plaintiffs must show to receive an injunction: that they are likely to win, that they will suffer irreparable injury in the meantime without an injunction, and that an injunction is in the public interest. The plaintiffs have asked for a temporary restraining order (TRO), but that request will almost certainly morph into one for a longer term preliminary injunction that would stay in place until the case is decided, if the White House doesn’t back down.
There were a number of developments today:
CNN was scheduled to handle pool coverage of Trump’s visit to the United Nations General Assembly, happening in New York this week. But that didn’t happen because of the ban.
The networks that make up the TV pool, Fox News, ABC, CBS, and NBC, along with CNN, stopped covering presidential events this morning. Fox News Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton wrote to pool subscribers that “The nation’s major television networks are declining to participate in White House pool duties in response to the Trump administration’s decision to bar CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO from the White House.” Real journalists rose to the moment, as Boughton put it like this: “The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”
Later in the day, the impact of losing the press pool became clear. According to Aaron Rupar, “Trump is holding an event at the White House right now but there’s no audio because the press pool isn’t there. The Newsmax host notes that this is an example of Trump’s attacks on the press ‘backfiring just a little bit.’” Trump was trying to show off his new taxpayer-funded helipad.
Former White House Correspondents Association president Weijia Jiang of CBS News has been trying to explain how important the pool is all day on Twitter, taking on people who kept trying to mansplain her.