WASHINGTON — A day after President Trump barred CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House grounds, the three outlets sued the administration Monday, arguing the ban violates the First and Fifth Amendments — hours before the president's own remarks at a White House event were drowned out because the television pool refused to cover him without the banned network's crew.
The joint federal lawsuit, filed in Washington, D.C., calls the ban "a direct assault on the First Amendment" and argues it amounts to viewpoint discrimination that denies the outlets due process, according to reporting on the filing. Journalists from all three organizations, who hold permanent White House press credentials, were turned away from the grounds over the weekend after Trump announced the ban Friday.
A Boycott, Then Dead Air
Trump was candid about his reasoning, telling reporters he did not have to let outlets into "the people's house" if they wrote what he called "purposefully negative things." But the fallout arrived almost immediately. CNN had been scheduled to run camera duties for the White House press pool Monday, and when it was blocked from doing so, ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC all declined to step in. Fox News Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton, acting chair of the pool consortium, notified members that coverage would simply stop:
Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President. This follows the White House's position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties. There will be no replacement pool put in place.
Bryan Boughton, Fox News Washington bureau chief, in a note to TV pool members
The result was a ribbon-cutting for a newly built White House helipad in which Trump's remarks were largely inaudible, drowned out on the White House's own video feed by a Marine One flyover — clips that quickly spread online as commentators across the political spectrum noted the irony of a press ban producing, within days, an unusable recording of the president's own words.
A Court Date This Week
A federal judge has ordered the Justice Department to respond by Wednesday to the outlets' request for a temporary restraining order that would restore their access while the case proceeds, setting up an early test of how far a president's control over White House access can extend. Press freedom advocates say the law is largely on the outlets' side: courts have repeatedly held, in cases dating back to earlier administrations, that the government cannot exclude credentialed journalists based on the content of their coverage.
The dispute is already reshaping how the White House is covered day to day, with competing networks weighing whether to keep declining pool duty in solidarity even as it leaves gaps in the public record of a sitting president's public appearances. The White House has not said whether it will comply with a restraining order if one is granted, and both sides are expected back in court within days.
