Updated September 24, 2026 at 9:09 AM AKDT
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White House reporters for MS NOW, CNN and Politico are back in the White House as of midday Thursday, after days of being barred entry because President Trump said the news outlets "purposely write negative news."
In a ruling issued shortly after midnight, U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly for the District of Columbia granted a 14-day temporary restraining order to CNN, MS NOW and Politico, which had press credentials of their journalists covering the White House revoked on Saturday.
Yet early on Thursday, the news outlets said some of their journalists were denied entry to the White House. They asked the court for an immediate hearing. Kelly gave the Trump administration until 12:30 p.m. ET to respond.
In a declaration filed shortly before that deadline, Micah Stopperich, the director of White House press operations, says his team began to work on restoring access after receiving word at 7:10 a.m. The job took just under three hours to complete.
CNN, MS NOW and Politico filed a joint lawsuit against Trump on Monday, on the grounds that revoking their journalists' permanent access to the White House violated their constitutional rights. They sought a temporary restraining order on the ban that would allow them to report from the White House as the proceedings in the case continue.
Kelly, a Trump appointee, wrote that news outlets were "likely to succeed in showing that their hard passes were revoked without constitutionally adequate due process," and on the grounds that "'individuals must receive notice and an opportunity to be heard before the Government deprives them' of a constitutionally protected interest."
Judge appeared inclined to order the White House to restore access
At an emergency hearing on Wednesday afternoon, Kelly said right off the bat that it appeared the White House had violated the news outlets' constitutional right of due process — which was set out in previous court decisions — when it abruptly blocked the access of journalists who held permanent credentials to work in the building.
Theodore J. Boutrous, a lawyer representing the three news outlets, said the White House ban was a form of retaliation for their coverage of the president, adding that it was "probably the clearest case in history" of viewpoint discrimination.
Justice Department lawyer Michael Velchik, on the other hand, argued that access to the White House was a "privilege," not a right. He also cited national security concerns as a reason for the continued ban. In its legal filings, the department had included White House letters to the three news organizations taking issue with stories on a variety of topics, including construction of a "top secret" bunker under the White House ballroom, talks with Iran and whether there were "very bad" vibes at the recent Republican convention in Dallas.
Boutrous pushed back on the claim, asserting that the first mention of national security came only days after the ban was imposed.
" I guess the light bulb went off and they all decided 'Start talking about national security,'" Boutrous said.
Court ruling questions Trump's "actual motivation"
In his Thursday ruling, Kelly said "the 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," in reference to White House press credentials.
In its court filing, in response to the lawsuit filed by the three media organizations, the Department of Justice included White House letters, dated Sept. 22, where it accuses the barred media outlets of "trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security and other issues, and publishing sensitive or classified information."
Judge Kelly argued that the defendants offered no evidence to explain how "any of the reporting they identified in their letters to Plaintiffs damaged national security." He added that the reporters who wrote the stories that the government lawyers identified in their letters to the three media "did not even hold hard passes."
Kelly also wrote that "the record is bereft of any relevant 'formally articulated standards' in place before any of the conduct" for which the reporters had their credentials revoked. He dismissed the examples provided by the White House in the letters to the three outlets as a standard "so vague it hardly does the trick."
Kelly also ruled out the urgency of the case as to deviate from due process.
"Nothing in the record suggests the need for such urgency here," adding that some of the news stories identified in the DOJ notices to the media "stretches back months or years."
"The sorts of stories Defendants identify in the letters to Plaintiffs are routine," he added.
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