CNN, MS NOW and Politico drag Trump to court, and the whole press pool walks out with them

WASHINGTON DC: Trump picked a fight with the press. The press just called in reinforcements.

CNN, MS NOW and Politico filed a federal lawsuit on Monday to force their way back into the White House, after Trump banned all three over the weekend for coverage he didn’t fancy. The case lands before a judge in the DC District Court, and hearings could start as soon as this week.

The outlets aren’t mincing words. “This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles,” they said in the lawsuit, asking the court to step in immediately and switch the journalists’ access back on.

Their joint statement on Monday laid it out plainly. “Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting. Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.”

Trump, unsurprisingly, sees it differently. “The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish. It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America,” he posted on Monday morning, adding it was “corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control” and a threat to national security.

On the ground, the ban has real teeth. Reporters from all three outlets can’t get into their White House workspaces. CNN and MS NOW have also lost access to their TV kit and camera positions on the grounds. CNN was yanked off pool duty on Monday, the day it was meant to travel with the president to New York.

And that’s where things got interesting. The rest of the TV pool didn’t sit this one out quietly. ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News joined CNN in pulling their cameras entirely, meaning no broadcast pool feed at all for Trump’s UN trip to New York on Monday. Fox’s DC bureau chief Bryan Boughton, who chairs the pool, put it bluntly in an email to members: “This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties. There will be no replacement pool put in place.”

Translate that from diplomat-speak: the competition just told the White House where to shove it, on CNN’s behalf.

Back at the Secret Service checkpoint, this saga began Saturday when MS NOW’s Akayla Gardner, CNN’s Betsy Klein and Politico’s Cheyenne Haslett all tried to walk onto White House grounds and got turned away, passes seized on the spot.

The legal fight hinges on a concept called viewpoint discrimination, and history isn’t kind to the White House here. Courts have slapped down similar bans before, going all the way back to 1977, when the DC Circuit ruled a press pass can’t be pulled just because the government doesn’t like what a journalist writes. That precedent has held through Jim Acosta’s suspension in Trump’s first term, Brian Karem’s case, and the Associated Press being frozen out of the Oval Office and Air Force One more recently. The journalists won every time.

There’s a neat twist in who’s hearing this one too. Judge Timothy J Kelly, a Trump appointee, has been assigned the case, and he’s the same judge who ordered Acosta’s badge restored back in 2018.

CNN has brought back Ted Boutrous, the First Amendment lawyer who fought the Acosta case, for round two. “The President has been explicit that this ban is intended to punish reporting he doesn’t like and to intimidate journalists and news organizations covering him and his administration,” Boutrous said. “The law is on our side across the board, and we look forward to presenting our arguments to the court as soon as possible.”

Trump did warn on Friday he might add more outlets to the blacklist. Given how the rest of the pool just responded, he may want to check who’s still willing to carry his camera before he does.