Media TV Pool Won’t Cover Trump As CNN, MS NOW, Politico To Sue Over White House Ban

CNN, MS NOW and Politico notified the federal government on Monday that they intend to sue the Trump administration to get their White House credentials back, three days after the president announced from Truth Social that he was barring all three from the building.

The outlets have retained First Amendment lawyer Ted Boutrous, who beat the administration on this exact question in 2018, and are seeking emergency relief in federal district court in Washington.

The Ban

Trump announced the ban on Friday, writing that outlets “shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President.” He later added that “there’s something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stuff.”

The order was enforced at the White House gates the next morning. On Saturday, journalists arriving to cover the administration were stopped by the Secret Service at the West Wing security checkpoints. CNN’s Betsy Klein, MS NOW’s Akayla Gardner and Politico’s Cheyenne Haslett were turned away; an agent told Gardner her press pass had been deactivated.

By Monday, CNN was removed from pooled coverage duties – the rotating assignment under which one network’s crew feeds video to every other outlet – and CNN and MS NOW were blocked from using their television equipment and camera positions on the grounds. 

On the pool itself: Fox News Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton, who chairs the TV pool (ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, Fox rotate), emailed pool subscribers that there would be “no replacement pool put in place” after the White House blocked CNN from its assigned duties. The other major networks declined to fill in. Essentially collective action by the networks, including Fox.

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— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) September 18, 2026

Jacqui Heinrich, Fox News senior White House correspondent and current White House Correspondents’ Association president, issued the WHCA statement standing “in defense of our colleagues at CNN, MS NOW, and Politico who are being singled out for doing their jobs.” She said the action violates the First Amendment, that protections “do not depend on whether the president likes a news organization’s coverage,” and called for immediate restoration of access. She also discussed it on Fox News Sunday.

The Filing

In a joint statement, the three outlets said: “Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting.” They called the ban “a more direct assault on the First Amendment” than anything that preceded it, and “a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles.”

All three said they would keep covering the administration either way. Politico global editor-in-chief Jonathan Greenberger told staff in a memo that the outlet would “vigorously defend our First Amendment rights.”

What The Courts Have Already Said

The administration has lost this argument twice before.

In 2018 the White House pulled the hard pass of CNN’s Jim Acosta after a hostile press conference. Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, ordered it restored within days, finding the network likely to win on Fifth Amendment due process – the White House had given Acosta no notice and no chance to respond.

In 2025 the administration barred the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One after the wire service declined to adopt “Gulf of America.” A district judge ordered full access restored. An appeals court then let the administration keep the AP out of small, restricted spaces, ruling only that it could not bar reporters from areas “generally open to the press,” such as the briefing room.

Neither case went as far as this one. Acosta was one reporter and the AP kept its briefing-room seat. Three outlets barred from the entire complex is a larger question than any court has answered.