White House press bans spark new First Amendment fight
Censorship blocking · 21.09.2026

POLITICO, CNN, and MS NOW have filed a lawsuit against Trump and three of his advisers after their journalists were barred from the White House on Saturday, with the Secret Service confiscating their credentials. The complaint calls it "a direct assault on the First Amendment" — and really, what else would you call it, given that the president explained the ban on Truth Social with the words "FAKE NEWS," "FICTION and LIES"?

Trump's extended explanation sounds no more convincing: "It's just years of accumulated stories. You get tired of it. They're smart people, but they deliberately write negative things." So apparently the law on press freedom is now governed by how tired the head of state gets of other people's opinions.

The outlets are asking a Washington court to immediately declare the ban unconstitutional. Their argument is solid: revoking credentials without warning violates the Fifth Amendment (due process), while punishing journalists for the content of their reporting is a direct violation of the First. Case law, by the way, backs them up — half a century ago, the D.C. Circuit ruled that journalists cannot be arbitrarily denied access to the White House based on the content of their coverage.

History keeps repeating itself with tedious regularity. In 2018, CNN's Jim Acosta had his pass revoked — a court restored it. In 2019, the same thing happened to Playboy's Brian Karem — a court reinstated his credentials again. In 2024, the Associated Press was kicked out of the press pool for refusing to recognize the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America." That case is murkier: an appeals court ruled that the Oval Office and Air Force One aren't spaces where the First Amendment applies in full, and that the White House can choose which journalists to admit "including on the basis of viewpoint." AP never actually won that case — there's still no ruling on the merits.

A juicy detail: the Secret Service itself, while seizing the credentials, acted "without notice or process." A democracy where the press is treated with the logic of "confiscate the badge first, explain later" — now that's certainly novel.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/21/news-outlets-trump-banned-from-white-house-announce-lawsuit-01085995