A federal judge nominated by President Trump during his first term ordered the White House to immediately return press passes to CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, but reporters were still turned away at the gate for hours before regaining access.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly issued an eight-page temporary restraining order after midnight on Thursday, September 24, directing senior administration officials to restore credentials the White House had confiscated days earlier. The order blocks enforcement of the ban for 14 days while Kelly considers longer-lasting relief. By noon, reporters from all three outlets had walked back onto the White House grounds, but not before their lawyers accused top officials of "repeatedly violated" the judge's order by continuing to deny entry that morning.
Kelly, who sits on the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., found the three outlets are likely to succeed in showing their due process rights were violated. He wrote that the administration "offer little to back up their asserted national security interest to justify revocation of Plaintiffs' hard passes" and called one of the White House's cited standards of conduct "so vague it hardly does the trick."
President Trump announced the ban the previous Friday, declaring it "effective immediately" and citing the outlets' "constant 'reporting' FAKE NEWS." The Secret Service confiscated press credentials the next morning when reporters tried to enter the complex.
The Justice Department then mounted a different defense in court, arguing that "access to the White House is a privilege, not a right" and pointing to national security concerns and a lack of "professionalism and decorum." But Kelly drew a sharp line between what the president actually said and what government lawyers later argued.
In his ruling, Kelly wrote that nothing "in the record that predates this suit suggests that the revocation of Plaintiffs' hard passes was motivated by national security concerns."
"Certainly, that is not what President Trump said when he announced that he was 'banning' Plaintiffs from the White House, instead, he focused on the alleged lack of truthfulness and negativity of Plaintiffs' reporting."
Kelly also noted that the White House's own post-lawsuit letters to the outlets were "ambiguous about the true purpose of the revocations." Those letters mentioned reporting that "threatened national security and/or spread falsehoods," but Kelly observed that the phrasing left "open the possibility that all the stories fall into the latter bucket, rather than the former."
That gap between the president's public rationale and the government's courtroom rationale gave Kelly the opening he needed. During a Wednesday hearing, the judge said plainly that the due process framework established by two prior appellate court rulings "wasn't followed here."
Even after Kelly's ruling landed, the White House did not move quickly. A sworn declaration from Micah Stopperich, the director of White House press operations, laid out a minute-by-minute timeline that showed the bureaucratic gears grinding slowly on a day when the administration was also preparing a state visit from Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Stopperich said his office received notification at 7:10 a.m. to restore access and started the process fifteen minutes later. The Secret Service did not reactivate press badges until 9:07 a.m. Confiscated credentials reached White House Operations staff at 9:45 a.m. and were left at the designated entry gate just before 10 a.m. Reporters did not begin trickling back in until around noon, roughly twelve hours after the judge's order.
In the gap between the ruling and actual access, lawyers for the three outlets filed a motion requesting an "immediate" hearing. They told the court that top White House officials had "repeatedly violated" Kelly's order by continuing to turn journalists away. Kelly ultimately said a hearing was not needed once the passes were restored.
The New York Post reported that all three outlets had regained access to the White House campus by noon, after initial resistance at the Secret Service checkpoint.
Kelly's appointment by Trump during his first term gave the ruling additional weight. This is not the first time Kelly has sided against the administration on press access. In 2018, Kelly granted a temporary restraining order restoring CNN reporter Jim Acosta's press pass after the White House revoked it, ruling on similar Fifth Amendment due process grounds. The Washington Free Beacon reported at the time that Kelly found the ban violated Acosta's due process rights, and the White House confirmed it would comply.
That precedent matters. Kelly pointed to two appellate court cases establishing that Fifth Amendment protections apply when the White House tries to revoke a journalist's access. The administration gave CNN, MS NOW, and Politico no prior notice of the bans and no opportunity to challenge them, the same procedural failure Kelly flagged in the Acosta case.
National Review noted in 2018 that Kelly's Acosta ruling was a principled constitutional decision, not a partisan one, and that the White House's decision-making process was "so shrouded in mystery that the government could not tell me... who made the decision." The same due process deficiencies appear to have resurfaced in this case.
The pattern is worth noting. Federal courts have repeatedly intervened when the administration moved fast and skipped procedural steps, whether on demolition plans for the Kennedy Center or on press access at the White House. Speed is not the same as lawlessness, but judges keep finding that the administration confused the two.
The ban's consequences rippled beyond the three targeted outlets. CNN is one of five networks, alongside CBS News, ABC News, NBC News, and Fox News, that make up the White House television pool, the rotating arrangement that provides shared camera coverage of presidential events.
When the White House removed CNN from the press pool trip to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, the four remaining networks suspended the television pool altogether. That solidarity move meant major U.S. television networks did not broadcast ceremonies for Xi Jinping's state visit on Thursday.
Fox News joined the suspension despite its generally favorable coverage of the administration. In the Acosta case, Fox News stated that "Secret Service passes for working White House journalists should never be weaponized." Kelly's ruling in the current case found that the outlets' hard passes were revoked "without constitutionally adequate due process", language that echoed the same institutional concern.
CBS News and dozens of other news organizations filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that the administration's reasons for the bans "are transparently viewpoint discriminatory."
On Tuesday, four days after the ban and one day after the lawsuit was filed, the White House Press Office sent letters to CNN, MS NOW, and Politico formally notifying them of their credential revocations. The letters accused the outlets of having "exhibited behavior in violation of the standards of professionalism and decorum expected of those given access to the White House Complex, including by trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security and other issues, and publishing sensitive or classified information."
The letters gave each outlet until 5 p.m. Friday to respond. Kelly was not persuaded. He described some of the stories cited by the White House as justification as "routine" and, in certain cases, months old. The Washington Examiner reported that Kelly's order required the White House to "immediately return, reinstate, and restore" press credentials, language that left no room for delay.
Lawyers for the three outlets argued in their filing that "the President's statements make clear he implemented the ban to coerce more favorable coverage of the administration from CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO, and to deter other journalists and news organizations from reporting that the President might view as unfavorable."
Attorney Theodore Boutrous, representing all three outlets, called the ruling "a strong ruling vindicating freedom of the press, due process and the rule of law."
The Justice Department is expected to appeal Kelly's decision. Trump himself signaled as much earlier in the week, posting on Truth Social that his administration would turn to the appeals court if Kelly ruled against them. The temporary restraining order holds for 14 days, during which Kelly will weigh whether to grant longer-lasting relief.
On Thursday morning, even as his administration was complying with the court order, Trump posted on Truth Social criticizing CNN and MS NOW. "The Dumocrats make up lie after lie," he wrote. "It is FAKE NEWS started by MSDNC AND CNN." The post did not address the court ruling directly.
The administration has faced a string of legal battles over executive authority this year, winning some and losing others. This loss stings in part because it came from a judge the president himself put on the bench, and because the core problem was procedural, not substantive.
The White House has every right to set standards for press conduct. It does not have the right to skip the process the Constitution requires before yanking someone's credentials. Kelly did not say the administration can never revoke a press pass. He said it has to follow the rules when it does, and that this time, it didn't come close.
If the administration wants to win this fight on appeal, it will need more than a Truth Social post and a set of vague letters mailed four days late. It will need an actual process, the one the courts have been asking for since 2018.