Trump Bars CNN, MS NOW and Politico From the White House Grounds
Secret Service officers confiscated three reporters' badges at the gates within hours of Trump's Friday announcement. First Amendment lawyers say the administration already lost this exact fight once, in 2025, over the Associated Press.
By Jonah Reyes, Politics & Policy
· 3 min read · Updated
Key Takeaways
- •Trump barred CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House starting September 19, 2026, and Secret Service confiscated three reporters' badges at the gates within hours.
- •CNN's Betsy Klein, MS NOW's Akayla Gardner and Politico's Cheyenne Haslett all had their press credentials disabled or confiscated on site.
- •Knight First Amendment Institute director Jameel Jaffer and Freedom of the Press Foundation's Seth Stern both call the ban unconstitutional.
- •A federal judge and an appeals panel already ruled against a nearly identical White House press restriction in 2025, when the administration barred the Associated Press over the 'Gulf of America' naming dispute.
- •CNN, MS NOW and Politico all say they plan to challenge the ban legally, though none had filed suit as of Saturday evening.
President Donald Trump barred CNN, MS NOW and Politico from White House grounds starting Saturday. Secret Service officers enforced the ban within hours, disabling and confiscating the press badges of three reporters at the gates.
CNN's senior White House reporter, Betsy Klein, had her credential deactivated and taken from her. MS NOW's Akayla Gardner was stopped at the same gate; officers disabled her badge too and turned away a photographer traveling with her, though they let her producer onto the grounds. Politico's Cheyenne Haslett was denied entry and had her pass confiscated by Secret Service, according to NBC News.
Trump laid out his reasoning in a Friday social media post, accusing the three outlets of 'constant "reporting" FAKE NEWS' and writing that news organizations 'shouldn't be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES' about his administration. He also claimed, without documentation, that Politico had received 'an illegal and ridiculous $8 Million Dollar subscription,' and warned that other outlets 'will follow.'
The short answer
Trump ordered CNN, MS NOW and Politico's White House credentials pulled on September 19, and Secret Service enforced it that day by confiscating three reporters' badges at the gates. A senior White House official defended the move as a response to what it called 'Fake News' coverage. First Amendment lawyers call it unconstitutional, pointing to a nearly identical case the administration already lost twice in 2025 over the Associated Press.
Why legal scholars call it unconstitutional
Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, called the ban 'pretty clearly unconstitutional' and predicted a legal challenge would succeed, according to NBC News. The Knight Institute has covered this ground before: it previously won a ruling that Trump's practice of blocking critics on Twitter violated the First Amendment.
“It's difficult to imagine a more blatant violation of the First Amendment than Trump banning news outlets from the People's House for criticizing the government.”
Gabe Rottman of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and Jacqui Heinrich, president of the White House Correspondents' Association, made the same argument. New York Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander pointed to the closest precedent: a federal judge and then an appeals panel both ruled against the administration in 2025 after it barred the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One over its refusal to rename the Gulf of Mexico the 'Gulf of America.' The AP won both rounds, according to Al Jazeera.
2-0
The administration's record in court on this exact fact pattern
A federal judge and an appeals panel both ruled against the White House in 2025 after it barred the Associated Press over the 'Gulf of America' naming dispute.
What the White House is saying
A senior White House official told NBC News the ban was justified because 'Fake News outlets have been peddling lies about him and his Administration' and that this 'tears at the fabric of our Democracy.' A second official acknowledged that several Trump aides, including some in the press office, did not know the ban was coming before Trump posted it.
What happens next
All three outlets say they intend to challenge the ban. MS NOW said it 'intends to take any and all steps necessary to defend our First Amendment rights.' CNN called the move 'an illegal assault' on its constitutional rights, and Politico said it would 'vigorously defend' its reporters' access. None had filed suit as of Saturday evening.
If the AP case is any guide, that filing could come within days, and the two rulings already on the books give the banned outlets a running start in court, even as the White House press pool operates without them in the meantime.
- White House press access
- First Amendment
- Donald Trump
- CNN
- Politico
- MS NOW
Sources
- 01White House faces mounting legal backlash after barring journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico, NBC Newsnbcnews.com
- 02A 'ban on the free press': White House bars journalists from three outlets, Al Jazeeraaljazeera.com
- 03CNN, MS NOW, Politico reporters denied access to White House following Trump ban, NPRnpr.org
Corrections
No corrections have been made to this article.
About the reporter
Politics & Policy Reporter, Trestlewire
I cut my teeth covering a state legislature, which is a slower education than it sounds. Most of what actually changes people's lives happens in a committee markup at eleven at night, or in an agency rulemaking docket that nobody reads except the people it will affect — not in the thirty-second clip that makes the evening news. I spent years in statehouse press rooms learning to read a bill the way a lawyer does, line by line, because that is the only way to know what it actually does.
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