CNN, MS NOW, Politico back in court to fight White House ban

Washington — The Justice Department and lawyers for CNN, MS NOW and Politico were back in court Thursday in the legal battle over President Trump's decision to ban reporters from the three news outlets from the White House over what he said is their negative coverage of his administration.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly is considering whether to grant the news outlets longer-term relief after issuing an order last month that temporarily blocked Mr. Trump's bans and required the White House to reinstate the reporters' access to the complex.

During the hearing, Kelly expressed skepticism about the Trump administration's justification for banning the reporters, repeatedly questioning why the government's arguments in court appeared to differ from Mr. Trump's public statements centered on negative news coverage.

Kelly's temporary restraining order was set to expire Thursday, but will remain in place through Tuesday. As a result, reporters for the three news outlets will continue to have access to the White House into early next week. The judge said he will issue his decision on the journalists' request for a preliminary injunction no later than Tuesday.

During the hearing, Ted Boutrous, who argued on behalf of the trio of news organizations, urged Kelly to impose a preliminary injunction preventing the White House from depriving the news outlets and their reporters of White House access while the case proceeds. The president's ban impacts 78 credentialed journalists across the three media organizations, he said.

Mr. Trump, Boutrous said, has been making "nasty" comments about the press for many years and has made clear that his ban against CNN, MS NOW and Politico was a result of reporting that he dislikes. It appears the president "got up on the wrong side of the bed" and declared a ban on the three news organizations, he said.

But Michael Velchik, senior counsel of the Justice Department's Civil Division, said the president determined that reporters for the outlets failed to meet minimum professional journalistic standards and published articles that put national security at risk.

Still, Kelly, who Mr. Trump appointed, said the president "seems to have said publicly and on several occasions" that he was taking action "because of X and Y, and now the government is coming to court saying no, it was actually Z."

That fact pattern, he said, "is a hard one to find." Kelly said it will be an "uphill climb" for the government to identify cases where the decisionmaker says on-the-record he is taking specific action for reasons that differ from what is then laid out in court.

Kelly also pointed to a case decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2020. In that case, the D.C.