US District Judge Timothy Kelly in the early hours of Thursday morning granted a request by CNN, MS NOW and Politico for temporarily relief following the Trump administration’s attempt to revoke their access to the White House. Kelly’s issuance of relief takes the form of a 14-day temporary restraining order (TRO) that mandates the news outlets press credentials be restored while their legal challenge of the ban proceeds.
However, despite Kelly’s order blocking the ban, Politico reported that, mere hours after the decision, one of their reporters, along with reporters from MS NOW and CNN, were denied access to the White House and had his press credentials confiscated by the Secret Service.
The three news outlets promptly responded by filing a request for an immediate hearing, stating that the defendants, the Trump administration, have already repeatedly violated the court’s order and that their counsel remains unresponsive.
Their request for relief stems from Trump’s announcement last week that he was revoking the press credentials of “fake news” organizations, proclaimed via social media. The targeted organizations subsequently brought the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the ban. CNN, MS NOW and Politico alleged that the ban violated the First Amendment because it amounted to discrimination based on viewpoint, and that it violated their Fifth Amendment due process rights, because the outlets were not given notice prior to the revocation or an opportunity to contest it.
In order to obtain a TRO, the plaintiff must show that they are likely to succeed on the merits, likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief, that the balance of equities tips in their favor, and that the injunction is in the public interest. Kelly stressed that this is a high bar, but the news outlets met it.
Kelly also emphasized in his order that although the Trump administration claimed that CNN, MS NOW, and Politico’s reporting endangered national security, he remains skeptical that their interest in safeguarding national security is a motivation for, or even advanced by, the revocation of the outlets’ press credentials.
“Nothing in the record that predates this suit suggests that the revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes was motivated by national security concerns. Certainly, that is not what President Trump said when he announced that he was “banning” Plaintiffs from the White House- instead, he focused on the alleged lack of truthfulness and negativity of plaintiffs’ reporting,” he wrote.
Trump is expected to take this issue to the appeals court, as indicated by a social media post stating, “we’ll go for the appeal because Fake News people and publications that only write negatively, and who violate our National Security by writing false and defamatory stories with unknown “sources,” shouldn’t be allowed access to the most important Office anywhere in the World. It is called the Oval Office, and it should be treated with Decorum, Respect, and Dignity, not defiled by Third Rate Clowns, who purposefully distort, twist, and degrade with everything they write or publish.”
During the 14 days that the TRO remains in effect, the court will set a schedule for expedited briefing on a motion for a preliminary injunction. The Freedom of the Press Foundation criticized Trump’s revocation of media access as part of a larger movement by his administration to restrict unfavorable press and chill free speech.
