By Jim Geraghty
Monday, September 21, 2026
When you see that the Trump White House has revoked the press passes for correspondents of MS NOW, CNN, and
Politico, it is understandable if you feel like the news is in
reruns. Back in 2018, the Trump White House revoked the press pass of then–CNN
employee Jim Acosta. CNN went to court to challenge the decision, and Judge
Timothy J. Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled:
[The 1977 case Sherrill v. Knight ] explicitly recognizes
the President’s right to engage with whomever he pleases. Certainly, he need
not ever call on Mr. Acosta again. But under Sherrill, as I read it, the
government must provide Mr. Acosta due process if it is to revoke his hard
pass. Accordingly, the likelihood that the plaintiffs succeed on the First — on
the Fifth Amendment claim hinges on whether the government provided adequate due
process to Mr. Acosta. The court in Sherrill held that this process must
include notice, an opportunity to rebut the government’s reasons and a written
decision.
…
The Government also made the
point that there is case law for the proposition that the public doesn’t have a
general First Amendment right to enter the White House grounds. I have no
quarrel with that at all, but Sherrill holds that once the White House opens a
portion of it up to reporters for their use, some kind of First Amendment
liberty interest protected by a due process right is created, and I simply have
no choice but to apply that precedent here.
The judge also noted, “whatever process occurred within
the government is still so shrouded in mystery that the government could not
tell me at oral argument who made the initial decision to revoke Mr. Acosta’s
press pass.”
Later that month, the White House fully restored Acosta’s press pass, and CNN
dropped its lawsuit.
This is going to end up in a court again, and perhaps this time the White
House has provided notice, provided an opportunity to rebut the government’s
reasons, and a written decision. But considering how reporters said the U.S. Secret Service revoked their passes without warning
when they showed up at the White House gate, that does not appear to be the
case.
Trump has not helped the government’s argument by making
statements that suggest he does not recognize First Amendment rights, such as Friday’s statement, “I don’t think somebody should
be allowed to come in and write fake stories, they’re fake news, and that’s why
they have no credibility. That’s why — so, I had 96 percent negative coverage
during the election, and I won because they have no credibility. . . . I mean,
there’s something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely
negative stories.”
The first thing a president does is pledge, so help him
God, to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
If you do not believe that the First Amendment protects an American’s right to
write purposely negative stories, you are not preserving, protecting, or
defending the Constitution.
In the meantime, the networks have banded together and
decided that there will not be any video coverage of the president today:
“Effective today, the TV pool
will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” Fox
News’ Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton, acting chair of the TV pool
consortium, said in a note to TV pool members on Monday.
“This follows the White House’s
position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties,” Boughton
wrote. “There will be no replacement pool put in place.”
CNN was scheduled to provide TV
coverage of Trump this week for the White House pool, including his address to
the United Nations General Assembly, but the Trump administration removed the
network as its primary pooler after the president banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the
White House.
This is another stupid fight that the White House is
going to lose, and another time-wasting
vendetta, which has become the specialty of Trump’s second term.
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