Federal judge orders White House to reinstate CNN, MSNOW and Politico licenses after Trump ban

The conflict between US President Donald Trump and the media entered a new turn on September 24, 2026, when a federal judge ordered the White House to return the passes of journalists from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, just days after Trump decided to prevent the three organizations from accessing the White House.

Federal Judge Timothy Kelly issued a temporary restraining order for 14 days, ordering the department to immediately reinstate the permits. He believed that the institutions had a strong possibility of success, at least in their claim that permits were withdrawn without due process. He was also not convinced by the administration's argument that allowing journalists entry represents a threat to national security, noting that the evidence presented does not sufficiently support this. The irony is that Kelly was appointed as a federal judge by Trump himself in 2017.

But the crisis did not end with the ruling. Reporters from the media organizations MS Now, CNN, and Politico were prevented from entering the White House, just a few hours after a US judge issued a decision deeming the ban imposed by President Donald Trump on these three media outlets likely unconstitutional, and ordering their immediate re-entry. White House representatives have not yet responded to a request for comment.

From "fake news" to ban

The escalation began on September 18, when Trump announced the ban of the three media outlets from the White House, accusing them of spreading “fake news,” and hinting at the possibility of expanding the list.

Trump said that media organizations should not be able to spread what he described as "fiction and lies" while covering news about the president and the United States. A day later, the threat turned into action, when journalists from the three institutions were denied entry and their permits were suspended or confiscated.

On September 21, the three institutions filed a joint lawsuit against Trump and officials in his administration, considering that their exclusion due to the content of their coverage represents a violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution. As for the administration, it maintained its position that access to the White House is a “privilege, not a right,” and that the president has broad powers to regulate access to restricted presidential areas.

Later, the administration pushed a more sensitive argument, namely national security. But the judge pointed out that Trump, when announcing the decision, did not talk about a security risk, but rather about coverage that he considered false or negative.

Solidarity with press institutions

Trump's decision led to remarkable solidarity between media organizations that usually compete with each other. Forty-nine media organizations submitted a memorandum of support to the lawsuit of the three organizations, “CNN,” “MS Now,” and “Politico.” Major television networks also suspended their participation in joint video coverage of the president, as reported by “US Today.”

Even Fox News, which is politically closer to Trump, joined other networks in suspending coverage of White House events, and the New York Times also stopped publishing photos from there in solidarity with the excluded institutions.

In Germany, the international German network "Deutsche Welle DW" expressed its solidarity with the media outlets that Trump banned from entering the White House, and said that it would stop "until further notice" from using photos or video materials produced by the White House and published through its official communication channels, on its platforms in German and English.

The foundation said in a statement that excluding media outlets on the basis of their reporting is a “worrying signal for press freedom,” stressing that “free and equal access for journalists to government institutions is a basic condition for independent reporting, the public’s right to diverse sources of information, and ultimately, for a functioning democracy.”

Why is the presence of journalists in the White House “joint reporting” department important?

The issue goes beyond a journalist's right to enter a building. The intended place that they were prevented from entering in the White House is a place designated for a small group of journalists and photographers who cover the president’s work in places that cannot accommodate all the media, and then transmit what they saw and heard to the rest of the journalists. Therefore, controlling the formation of this group means having significant influence over who can ask questions, monitor the president, and document events from a close distance.

A confrontation that began before the current crisis

But it must be noted that the recent dispute is part of a process that began at the beginning of Trump's second term. In February 2025, the White House clashed with the Associated Press over the agency’s refusal to abandon the name “Gulf of Mexico” in favor of “America’s Gulf,” and the administration banned the agency’s journalists from some Oval Office events and from Air Force One.

The Trump administration also reconfigured the “joint press coverage” system and gave itself a greater role in selecting institutions close to the president. On one occasion, representatives from the Huffington Post and Reuters were excluded, while more pro-Trump organizations entered.

The tension reached outside the White House as well. On September 22, Trump met at the United Nations headquarters with journalist Kaitlan Collins of CNN, and told her: “You should not be here.” CNN was banned from the White House, but entered the United Nations headquarters with the accreditation of an independent journalist.

The courts are another front

Confrontation with the press is not limited to denying access. Trump also uses lawsuits in his disputes with media organizations.

The president is fighting a defamation lawsuit worth $15 billion against the New York Times, a number of its journalists, and Penguin Random House, against the backdrop of reports and a book that dealt with his business history. In July 2026, the judge allowed a new amendment to the lawsuit instead of dropping it directly.

In other disputes, media companies chose to settle. In 2024, ABC News agreed to a settlement that included $15 million for Trump's future presidential foundation, in addition to $1 million in legal fees, while Paramount agreed in 2025 to pay $16 million to end a dispute related to the "60 Minutes" program, without admitting liability, according to the Forbes website.

A battle that goes beyond Trump and CNN

The confrontation takes on added significance because it comes before the midterm elections on November 3, 2026, at a time when Republicans are seeking to retain control of Congress. But the issue goes beyond electoral calculations. Attacking the media is nothing new for Trump. What is new is that the conflict has increasingly moved from rhetoric to the use of the tools of the executive authority and the courts.

Here the fundamental question arises: Who decides which journalist deserves access to the president?

Trump says he is not fighting the free press, but rather "fake news." Media organizations say that allowing the government to determine which press deserves access based on the content of its coverage threatens one of the fundamental principles of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

The final ruling is not the end of the battle, as it is temporary and does not constitutionally resolve all of Trump’s media policies. But he has clearly redrawn the line of confrontation: Trump wants more space to determine who enters the president's circle. The media sees this as a threat to its independence. Between the two parties, the American judiciary has become the arena that will determine the extent to which the White House can close its doors to journalists whose coverage it does not like.