CNN, MS NOW and Politico ask court to make White House access order permanent in press pool fight
CNN, MS NOW and Politico have expanded their lawsuit against the Trump White House, asking a federal court to permanently bar the administration from excluding their reporters from the presidential press pool.
Three American news organisations — CNN, MS NOW and Politico — have escalated their legal fight with the White House, filing an amended complaint that accuses President Donald Trump's administration of "continued retaliatory and viewpoint-discriminatory deprivation" and asks a federal court to make its protection of their access permanent.
The filing, made on Wednesday afternoon, asks the court to declare the president's ban of the three outlets unlawful and to enter permanent injunctive relief in their favour. It argues that the administration has kept violating the First and Fifth Amendments even after a judge ordered it to restore the outlets' access.
At the heart of the dispute is the White House press pool, a decades-old arrangement under which news organisations take turns covering the president in places where space is severely limited, such as the Oval Office and Air Force One, and then share their reporting with everyone else. Whoever is shut out of the pool loses the closest vantage point in American political journalism.
The fight began about a month ago, when the Trump White House banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico. The three sued, and US District Judge Timothy Kelly first issued a temporary restraining order on Fifth Amendment grounds and then, about two weeks ago, a preliminary injunction restoring their access after finding that the ban likely violated the First Amendment because it discriminated against journalists based on their coverage. The administration is appealing that ruling.
The outlets say compliance has been partial at best. The White House reinstated their press credentials late last month, but the amended complaint says the administration has continued to single them out in the pool itself: in recent weeks CNN and Politico have repeatedly been excluded from the president's Air Force One trips, and CNN says it has been barred from the aircraft on all six occasions when it was scheduled to serve as the designated television network pooler.
Their legal argument is carefully limited. "To be clear," the lawsuit states, the outlets "do not claim an unrestricted right to enter the Oval Office or travel aboard Air Force One. But once the White House opens those spaces to selected journalists for newsgathering and reporting, the White House may not exclude plaintiffs because it dislikes their coverage."
The White House had not responded to the amended lawsuit as of Thursday morning. It has previously brushed off the outlets' complaints, saying at one point that "the Fake News has no place demanding a spot in the President's Oval Office," and the Justice Department continues to defend the administration's position in court.
The filing followed a warning shot from the outlets' outside counsel, Ted Boutrous, who wrote to the Justice Department demanding written confirmation that the administration would abandon any policy of excluding CNN from the Oval Office and Air Force One, with a deadline of Thursday at 5pm Eastern. When that assurance did not settle the matter, Wednesday's expanded complaint followed.
Hovering over the case is a separate battle involving The Associated Press, which sued last year after being blocked from the same restricted spaces. In June 2025, an appeals court panel partially lifted a stay the AP had obtained, reasoning that such presidential spaces are not First Amendment forums — but Boutrous has pointed out that the ruling was non-binding and non-precedential, meaning it does not decide this case.
The court must now decide whether to convert the temporary protection into a permanent order, while the administration's appeal runs in parallel. The outcome could set the terms for how this White House — and future ones — may treat news organisations whose coverage it dislikes, though for now the pool rotations, and the fight over them, continue day by day.
