CNN, MS NOW and Politico ask court to block Trump from enforcing his White House media ban

Three news organizations banned from the White House grounds asked a court late Monday to block enforcement of the action until the case is resolved, saying the Trump administration has “persisted in enforcing its ban in an unpredictable and inconsistent manner” despite a judge’s restraining order — including barring CNN from fulfilling its role on White House television. pool during the weekend.

“The White House’s words and actions leave little doubt that it will immediately reinstate a comprehensive ban on CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO if given the opportunity,” lawyers for CNN, MS NOW and Politico wrote.

“Because the ban constitutes an unlawful encroachment on the most fundamental liberties of the First Amendment and will inflict irreparable harm on Plaintiffs and the public if left unchecked, this Court should preliminarily enjoin its enforcement pending resolution of this case,” the filing states.

In a statement, the plaintiffs reiterated that Trump’s ban on the three media outlets was “a blatant violation of the First Amendment and due process.”

“The president and his administration have continued to make clear that this ban has only one purpose: to punish reporting he does not like,” said Theodore J. Boutrous, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs.

“This is retaliation and viewpoint discrimination, pure and simple,” Boutrous said in an emailed statement to The Associated Press. “As the district court’s temporary restraining order expires this week, it is critical to ensure that the White House continues to be prevented from implementing this unconstitutional ban on press freedoms. »

The complaint comes a day after the Trump administration made clear it was not backing down from its assertion that the sudden ban, announced by Trump on September 18, was justified.

“When it comes to the White House, it’s the people’s house,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said in an ABC interview, returning to an argument the administration has made all along. “It’s a privilege, not a right, to be here.”

The new 42-page filing released Monday reiterated many of the arguments made by the media. in their initial trial against Trump and the White House, filed two days after the journalists’ ban. He also mentioned the turnover in the White House broadcast pool, which has become the battleground in recent days in the standoff between Trump and the media.

When the ban was implemented, CNN was removed from its broadcast pool, which includes the five major networks: CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News. In solidarity, the other networks decided to suspend the pool until CNN was allowed to return.

On Friday, CNN was cleared to cover the president with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the National Archives. But on Saturday, the White House banned the channel from Air Force One, preventing it from covering Trump’s trip to a college football game in Tennessee.

THIS IS A LATEST UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

Is the standoff between the White House and the nation’s major broadcast networks over? Not exactly.

Are we back to square one? Not exactly either.

A week after three media outlets filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump and his brutal ban on journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the confines of the White House, the extraordinary First Amendment showdown turned into a waiting game. For now, the players are the White House and, collectively, the five major networks that make up the TV pool: CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News.

And things got murky.

Over the weekend, Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the decision keep CNN off Air Force One on Saturday as the president headed to a college football game in Tennessee, despite the fact that it was CNN’s turn to provide bundled coverage of Trump. The rest of the pool refused to provide a replacement, in solidarity with CNN.

“The president has every right to decide who gets to fly,” Blanche said in an interview with ABC on Sunday. He said Trump was “fed up with some media outlets simply refusing to report accurate information.” And he said media coverage he called “misinformation” was a national security concern.

“That’s what constitutes a national security problem, when completely erroneous information comes from the White House,” he said.

Federal judge throws cold water on national security argument in his decision last week grant a temporary restraining order against the White House ban. “The Court is skeptical … that Defendants’ interest in safeguarding national security is the true motivation” for removing access, Justice Timothy Kelly wrote.

But the ruling does not directly address television pool rotation, although the media’s lead attorney, Theodore Boutrous Jr., said he believed the ruling applied to access to the pools.

And now access to the swimming pool has become the battlefield, with networks facing tough choices as gridlock persists with a president who, in his second term, is increasingly willing to go to any lengths — in the courts, in the regulatory system and in his public statements — to quash news stories he doesn’t like.

For now, a decision to act on a case-by-case basis

At one point on Friday, it seemed like everything was more or less settled. CNN, which had been prevented from playing its pool role due to Trump’s ban — prompting other networks to refrain from their own pool coverage in solidarity — was back. The network fulfilled its pool duty during a visit by Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to the National Archives. For the first time in days, CNN broadcast live footage of the president.

But then came CNN’s Air Force One setback on Saturday.

For now, the pool’s networks have decided to approach the ongoing dispute on a case-by-case basis, according to a person familiar with the pool’s operations, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide details of the ongoing discussions.

On Sunday, Fox covered a pool event; On Monday, NBC covered the president in the Oval Office. CNN is not in the rotation until at least Thursday. If CNN is again excluded from a pool event, the networks will decide together, likely based on the media interest of the situation, whether to offer a replacement or refrain from coverage as they have done before.

Networks are “between a rock and a hard place”

The issues are difficult. On the one hand, the networks want to take a stand in favor of press freedom and against attempts to intimidate the press. On the other hand, the media has the obvious goal of providing information to its audience.

“There aren’t a lot of good options,” said David A. Schulz, director of the Clinic for Media Freedom and Access to Information at Yale Law School.

If the White House continues to ban CNN, Schulz said, the networks could choose to sue or “exercise their market power and say, ‘We’re not going to play the game with you.’

The question, Schulz adds, is: “Who will back down first?” »

The networks “may well feel like they’re between a rock and a hard place,” noted RonNell Andersen Jones, a law professor at the University of Utah.

“The capitulation could be seen as an abandonment of essential elements of press freedom,” Andersen Jones said. “But the practicalities of lengthy news blackouts at the White House are also complicated, and refusing to cover major news at the highest levels of government could itself appear to fail to serve the purposes of democracy. »

Based on Blanche’s comments over the weekend, it doesn’t seem likely that the White House will soften its stance.

“When it comes to the White House, it’s the people’s house,” Blanche said, returning to an argument the administration has made all along.

“It’s a privilege, not a right, to be here.”