Trump White House Press Ban: The President Can't Pick the Press

The Trump White House press ban lasted six days. That is how long it took for a federal judge to read it, call it probably unconstitutional, and order the passes handed back.

On Friday, Sept. 18, President Donald Trump announced the Trump White House press ban, barring CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, effective immediately. The post accused the three outlets of constantly reporting "FICTION and LIES" and warned that "other Fake News Media Outlets" would follow. There was no single story that triggered the decision. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office later that day, Trump said it was "really just cumulative stories over the last few years. You get sick of it." Then he put the rationale in his own words, according to USA Today: "There's something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories. Now, if they want to write them, that's fine, but I don't have to let them into my, into the people's house."

On Saturday morning, Sept. 19, reporters from all three outlets were turned away at the White House gates and had their press passes confiscated, as reported by Reuters. MS NOW correspondent Akayla Gardner said her badge failed at the magnetometers and a security officer ordered her to hand it over. CNN's Betsy Klein said a Secret Service agent told her the pass had been deactivated and referred her to the White House press office. A Politico spokesperson confirmed that one of its reporters, Cheyenne Haslett, was denied entry as well.

The outlets sued, and the judge moved fast

On Monday, Sept. 21, all three outlets sued Trump and other administration officials in federal court in Washington, arguing the ban violated the First Amendment's protections for free speech and a free press, plus their due process rights. They asked for a temporary restraining order to get their reporters back inside while the case plays out.

They got it in the early hours of Thursday, Sept. 24. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, who was appointed by Trump, ordered the administration to immediately return the outlets' press passes and blocked officials from enforcing the ban for 14 days. According to Reuters, Kelly rejected the government's claim that the ban was motivated by national security, writing that the record lacked factual support for that claim. The judge pointed instead to what Trump had said himself: the ban was about the "alleged lack of truthfulness and negativity" of the outlets' reporting. In his ruling on the Trump White House press ban, reported by CNN, Kelly also found the passes were revoked without "constitutionally adequate due process."

There was a farcical coda. Even after the order, reporters caught up in the Trump White House press ban were turned away at the gates again on Thursday morning, and their lawyers asked the court for an immediate hearing, saying officials had "repeatedly violated" the order. Then, just after noon, they were let in. CNN's Betsy Klein walked back onto the North Lawn with a photojournalist. According to USA Today, Micah Stopperich, the White House's director of press operations, told the court the credentials were restored Thursday morning and available for pickup before 10 a.m., though the timing of the actual readmissions said otherwise. Trump said he expected the ruling to go against him and that his administration would appeal.

On Thursday afternoon he criticized CNN and MS NOW's coverage in a Truth Social post, without mentioning the order that had just forced his White House to open its gates to them.

The White House press room is not a fan club

Nobody has to like these outlets. You can think CNN is sloppy, that cable news is theatrical, that Politico's newsletter tone makes your skin crawl. None of that matters here. The question is whether the president of the United States gets to decide which journalists are allowed to stand in the briefing room and ask questions, based on whether he likes the coverage. The answer, under the First Amendment, is no.

National Press Club president Mark Schoeff Jr. said it as plainly as it can be said: "The First Amendment does not permit the government to pick and choose which journalists are allowed to do their jobs." Courts have been consistent on the principle behind it. Once the White House opens its doors to some reporters, it cannot shut them on others because of the viewpoints in their reporting. That is what legal scholars call viewpoint discrimination, and it is exactly what this looks like. Trump has been explicit about his reasons. He did not cite a security problem or a conduct violation. He cited "cumulative stories" he grew sick of. In his own words, it was "a ban on the free press," which is one of those moments where the label fits because the person applied it himself.

The Trump White House press ban failed as politics, too

Set the law aside and look at the politics. The point of the ban was to punish coverage the president dislikes and, presumably, to scare the rest of the press corps. Instead, every outlet learned the same lesson: the ban lasted less than a week, the president's own appointee on the bench blocked it, and the whole country learned exactly which three newsrooms were being targeted and why. Reporters from CNN, MS NOW and Politico kept covering the administration the entire time, and now they are back in the room. The ban did not stop the coverage or quiet it down; it put the coverage at the center of the story instead.

A USA Today column this week also noted that in Gallup's monthly poll of Americans' "Most Important Problem," the media registers at 1 percent, against 30 percent for government and poor leadership and 13 percent for the high cost of living. A fight over press passes is a fight over something almost nobody in the country asked for, and recent polling suggests the public is focused elsewhere. The legal fight is not over, since Kelly's order only runs 14 days and an appeal is coming, but the political verdict is already in.

Why it matters to you

You might be tempted to file this one under politics-as-usual, something that happens in Washington and stays in Washington. But the White House press corps exists for a reason that touches your life directly. Those reporters are the people standing at the podium asking the questions that end up in your feed. They ask the president about the economy, about jobs, about the things his administration would rather not discuss. When the Trump White House press ban was announced, officials warned more outlets could follow. Every story you read about what the government did this week started, somewhere, with a person in a room being allowed to ask.

Take the questions out of the room and the coverage changes. The Trump White House press ban did not stop the outlets from reporting on Trump. All three said they will keep covering the administration. What it did was remove their reporters from the rooms where officials can be pressed in real time, on the record, in front of other journalists. That is the part the ban was really aimed at, and it is the part that should worry anyone who gets their news from a screen.

There is also the matter of where this goes next. Announcing the Trump White House press ban, Trump said more outlets would follow and named the New York Times and the Washington Post as examples of "fake news" in his remarks Friday, though he did not formally ban them. The Times called the ban "yet another retaliatory and unconstitutional threat." The direction behind the Trump White House press ban is clear. Once a president can remove the outlets he dislikes from the building, the remaining press corps is the one he chose, and a chosen press corps is not a press corps at all. It is an audience.

A free press is free only when the government cannot punish the coverage it dislikes, and that is what the Trump White House press ban tried to do, no matter how negative that coverage feels to the person being covered. That principle held when it was inconvenient for other presidents, and it has to hold now. The outlets being targeted are not saints, and their reporting deserves the same scrutiny any news gets. But scrutiny of the press is the public's job and the press's own job, not a permission the president revokes from the Oval Office.