At roughly 1 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026, an emergency order came down from a federal judge whom President Donald Trump had appointed during his first term, directing the president to hand back the White House press credentials he stripped from three news organizations.
CNN, MS NOW and Politico won a 14-day temporary restraining order from U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, who found the outlets were likely to prove that their hard passes had been revoked without due process. Kelly directed the administration to “immediately return, reinstate, and restore” the outlets’ hard passes, and wrote that the purpose was to “preserve the latest uncontested status quo while the litigation proceeds.”
How the Ban Began
A Truth Social post from Trump, 80, on Friday, Sept. 18, shut the three outlets out of the White House, accusing news organizations of routinely publishing falsehoods in their coverage of the presidency, his administration and the country. In the same post, he signaled that other outlets he regards as fake news would be next.
The three outlets sued the president, arguing the ban violated the First Amendment.
After the ban took effect, the president and his lawyers offered a different rationale — that the credentials were revoked because of earlier reporting that flagged national security concerns. Kelly rejected that explanation.
“For one thing, nothing in the record that predates this suit suggests that the revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes was motivated by national security concerns,” Kelly wrote. He also wrote that “the court is skeptical—at least on this record—that Defendants’ interest in safeguarding national security is the actual motivation.”
The order notes that the White House renewed CNN reporter Betsy Klein’s hard pass “several months after she published some of the identified reporting,” undercutting the stated timing of the ban.
Representing CNN, MS NOW and Politico is First Amendment attorney Ted Boutrous, who said on the morning of Thursday, Sept. 24: “This is a strong ruling vindicating freedom of the press, due process, and rule of law. We greatly appreciate the court’s decision.”
Reporters from the three outlets were back at the White House later on Sept. 24. The restraining order runs only 14 days, the underlying lawsuit is unresolved, and the credentials of the three newsrooms depend on what the court does next.
Trump preempted the outcome, saying he would appeal. Access to the presidency, he argued, should be denied to the outlets he considers fake news — publications that, in his telling, write only negatively and endanger national security with false and defamatory stories built on unknown sources. Trump also used Truth Social, in the hours before the decision came down, to describe the judge hearing the case as disloyal.
Trump Questions the Order’s Reach
Trump said he was unaware of Kelly’s order, telling Time magazine that he was not defying the court.
“I’m not ignoring his order. I’m just saying that when I don’t have to go out of my way, these people write only bad stories. When they say orders, what order? I’m not even aware,” Trump told Time reporter Eric Cortellessa.
A White House aide, identified in some accounts as White House spokesperson Steven Cheung and in others as White House communications director Stephen Cheung, was present for the interview and said: “the judge basically ordered them to renew their access back to the White House, but that’s different than allowing the pool into events in the Oval Office or on Air Force One.” Trump then asked: “he actually said to the premises of the White House?”
Trump told Time that Kelly’s ruling went to process rather than the merits of the ban. “Well, the court actually said that, if you look at the judge’s decision, he’s been a very anti-Trump judge, which is very interesting. But if you look at his decision, he really said process. He talked about—come back to us with process,” he said.
When Cortellessa noted that Kelly was a Trump appointee, Trump said: “Yeah, he was. He was. It’s one of those things.”
Networks Skip the Xi Arrival
Rival networks refused to staff the president’s events, backing the three newsrooms that had been shut out. A sign posted outside the Associated Press booth on the White House grounds carried the names of CNN, MS NOW and Politico.
Trump welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping at Joint Base Andrews. A 100-foot red carpet and a military flyover marked the arrival. None of the five major networks covered it.
A spectacle engineered for television that almost nobody watched was how CNN host Kaitlan Collins characterized it, noting that none of the five major networks — whose audiences run to millions of people a day — recorded the moment. The pictures and ceremonial trappings matter enormously to Trump, CNN media analyst Brian Stelter said, and he called the rival networks’ blackout unprecedented.
Stelter, speaking on CNN at 1:30 a.m., suspected the banned journalists would have to be let back onto the White House grounds later that day, and he expected coverage to resume in part. Boutrous, he added, had cautioned that new restrictions or retaliation against news organizations could still come from the White House after the ruling.
Lawmakers Target Arch and Ad
On Sept. 22, Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, led colleagues in a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum demanding the administration halt work on the president’s proposed 250-foot Triumphal Arch.
Thirty-seven historic sites in and around the capital could be adversely affected by the structure, the National Park Service (NPS) concluded. The heaviest damage would fall on three of them: the Arlington National Cemetery Historic District, the Arlington Memorial Bridge and the cultural landscape of the Memorial Avenue Corridor. Also among the landmarks at risk, according to the senators, are the Lincoln Memorial, the National Mall, the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument.
A government-sponsored political advertisement that aired on Fox News drew a Sept. 24 letter from four senior appropriators to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. The signers were Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee; Rep. Steny H. Hoyer; Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee; and Sen. Jack Reed. They copied Office of Management and Budget Director Russell T. Vought on the demand.
The spot was labeled “Paid for by the U.S. Government” and set a montage of photographs of Trump and the American flag to singers repeating the words “love me” from JMSN’s song “Love Me.” In the lawmakers’ reading, the ad breaches Section 718 of Division E of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026, a provision that bars federal money from funding publicity or propaganda inside the United States. The Hatch Act and other federal ethics laws also appear to have been violated, they say. Their demands: pull the ad, discipline the employees who worked on it and account fully for every dollar spent.
“If President Trump wants people to love him, he can pay for it himself,” the lawmakers wrote in the Sept. 24 letter.
