Three news organizations that President Donald Trump banned from White House grounds have asked a federal court to block the enforcement of the ban until their case is resolved. The outlets — CNN, MS NOW, and Politico — argue that the administration has continued to implement the ban unpredictably, even barring CNN from fulfilling its role as the designated television pooler on Sept. 26.
"The White House’s words and actions leave little doubt that it will immediately reinstitute a complete ban of CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO if allowed the opportunity," lawyers for the news organizations stated in a filing late Monday. "Because the ban is an unlawful assault on the most fundamental First Amendment freedoms and will inflict irreparable harm on Plaintiffs and the public if not restrained, this Court should preliminarily enjoin its enforcement pending the resolution of this case."
A temporary restraining order issued by U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly last week restored the outlets' access but is set to expire Oct. 8. The preliminary injunction requested would extend this access until the case is fully resolved.
Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., lead attorney for the three outlets, called the ban "a blatant violation of the First Amendment and due process." He added, "The president and his administration have continued to make clear that this ban has only one purpose: to punish reporting he doesn’t like. That’s retaliation and viewpoint discrimination, pure and simple."
The White House, however, maintains that access to the grounds is a privilege, not a right. "When it comes to the White House, it is the people’s house," Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sunday. "It is a privilege, and not a right, to be there."
Blanche also defended the administration's decision to ban CNN from Air Force One on Sept. 29, after the network was allowed to cover Trump's meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the National Archives. He stated that Trump was "sick and tired of certain media outlets just refusing to report accurate news," calling such coverage a national security issue due to misinformation.
Judge Kelly's ruling last week on the temporary restraining order expressed skepticism regarding the national security justification for the ban. "The court is skeptical… that defendants’ interest in safeguarding national security is the actual motivation" for removing access, Kelly wrote.
The broadcast pool, which rotates among the five major networks (CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News), has become a point of contention. When CNN was initially banned, other networks suspended pool coverage in solidarity. While CNN has been allowed back into the rotation for some events, its exclusion from Air Force One led to the pool not covering the trip. The networks are now making coverage decisions on a case-by-case basis, balancing press freedom principles with the practicalities of reporting.
"There are not a lot of good options," said David A. Schulz, director of the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School. "Capitulation might be perceived as abandonment of core components of press freedom," noted RonNell Andersen Jones, a law professor at the University of Utah, but "the practicalities of lengthy White House news blackouts are also complicated, and refusing to cover major news at the highest levels of government might itself feel like a failure to serve the goals of democracy."