Trump sued by MS NOW, CNN, Politico over White House media ban

MS NOW, CNN and Politico sued President Donald Trump on Monday morning, seeking to reverse his total ban on those three media outlets from the White House.

Journalists from the outlets were prevented from entering the White House on Saturday, a day after Trump announced he would bar them from working there.

"This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles," the lawsuit says, arguing that the ban has already "severely impeded the ability of" the three outlets to cover Trump and his administration.

"Presidents from the earliest days of the Republic have disagreed with and complained about the tenor and content of press coverage of their administrations," notes the civil complaint in U.S. District Court in Washington.

But "the Constitution protects the liberty and property interests that news organizations and White House reporters have in their press credentials and the access those credentials afford them to cover the White House for the benefit of the public," the suit says.

"No official can deprive Plaintiffs of those interests on a whim — with no notice, no process, and no warning — as the President did here."

Trump, in announcing the ban in a Truth Social post Friday, accused the outlets of writing fiction and lies about him, and warned, "Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow." The president cited what he called "cumulative stories" by the three news organizations, adding, "You get sick of it."

On Monday morning, after the lawsuit was announced, Trump in a Truth Social post said, "The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish."

"It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America," Trump wrote. "It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control."

"It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!" he said. Trump had not previously cited national security in justifying the ban. The president gave no examples to back up his claim.

The suit alleges the ban violates the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution by failing to give the outlets advance notice and an opportunity to challenge it, without establishing clear standards for Trump's decision.

The complaint also says the ban violates the Constitution's First Amendment by retaliating "against protected newsgathering and speech."

And it says the ban violates the First Amendment for a separate reason: It bars the three media outlets "from a nonpublic forum for unlawful reasons." Those reasons include so-called viewpoint discrimination, or targeting the outlets for their perceived "motivating ideology or the opinion or perspective."

In a joint statement on Monday, the three outlets said, "This morning, we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes."

"Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists' credentials because it objected to our reporting," the statement said. "Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public's right to independent journalism free from government interference."

Theodore Boutrous Jr., the attorney for the three outlets, said in a statement, "The law is on our side across the board, and we look forward to presenting our arguments to the court as soon as possible."

The White House and the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment from CNBC about the lawsuit.

The suit has been assigned to Judge Timothy Kelly, whom Trump nominated for the federal bench in 2017.

The three outlets filed a joint motion asking Kelly to issue a temporary restraining order barring Trump and other defendants from taking further action to enforce the ban and requiring them to immediately restore so-called hard pass press credentials to the plaintiffs, which give their reporters access to the White House.

In addition to Trump, the defendants named in the complaint include Steven Cheung, his assistant for communications, White House Chief of Staff Susan Wiles, and Sean Curran, director of the U.S. Secret Service.

The named plaintiffs are the three outlets and three White House reporters: Akayla Gardner of MS NOW, Betsy Klein of CNN, and Politico's Cheyenne Haslett. The three journalists were denied entry to the White House on Saturday and their hard passes were taken away by a Secret Service officer there, the suit says.

On Sunday night, the White House removed CNN from its scheduled rotation as the pool television network for the White House travel pool. The pool is set to travel Monday with Trump for his visit to New York for the United Nations General Assembly.

The lawsuit cites the White House's removal of CNN from Monday's pool schedule as an example of the ban "causing irreparable harm to" the outlets.

After the suit was announced Monday, members of the White House television press pool decided to stop covering Trump's events because of the action targeting CNN.

The suit is being filed in the same court where The Associated Press has a pending lawsuit against the White House for a ban on that wire service's journalists working in certain restricted spaces in the White House, including the Oval Office and on Air Force One. The White House's partial ban on the AP came in February 2025 after the wire service refused to reflect Trump's renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America" in how it routinely refers to that international body of water.

Trump told reporters Friday that the latest ban is worth implementing, even if it is overturned by a judge.

"I think it's good to point it out, whether it survives or doesn't," he said.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, during an interview Monday morning in New York with CNBC's "Squawk Box," said, "I don't know much about it," when asked his opinion of the ban.

But Bessent also suggested the ban was justified, saying "legacy media" is unpopular with the public "because of the perceived bias."

Asked by CNBC's Joe Kernen about a possible "off-ramp" from the ban, Bessent said, "We'll see. Maybe it's a change in coverage at the White House."

Bessent also said, "The one thing I'm sure of: the press cares more about the press than anything else," claiming news media focused more on the personal experiences of journalists at the aborted White House Correspondents' Dinner in April than a gunman's would-be assassination of Trump.

"One thing I'm sure is that this [ban] will be covered by the press," Bessent said. "And, you know, I think we could get back to something that is a little more, I can't even remember which network it is, fair and balanced."

Fox News, a media outlet that is often criticized as being biased toward Trump and his administration, previously used the slogan "Fair and Balanced," before discontinuing its use about a decade ago.

Jameel Jaffer, executive director of The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, in a statement Monday, "We're glad to see that these news organizations are suing."

"The president's decision to bar them from the White House for the content of their reporting is a flagrant violation of the First Amendment," Jaffer said. "It's an attack both on press freedom and the public's right to independent information about the government. We will support these news organizations in court."

White House Correspondents' Association President Jacqui Heinrich, in a statement Saturday, said, "The American people, through a free and independent press, must be able to scrutinize those elected to power, regardless of whether government officials view it favorably."

"That's why courts have repeatedly held that once the White House provides access to journalists, it cannot deny that access arbitrarily or based on the content of their reporting," said Heinrich, a Fox News correspondent.

In the AP's lawsuit, Judge Trevor McFadden ruled in April 2025 that Trump's partial ban of the agency's journalists violated the First Amendment and ordered that the AP be given the same access as other members of the presidential press pool to the Oval Office, other restricted areas of the White House and Air Force One.

"The Court simply holds that under the First Amendment, if the Government opens its doors to some journalists — be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere — it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints," wrote McFadden, who was appointed to the federal bench by Trump.

"The Constitution requires no less," the judge said.

Rather than allowing the AP access to places the White House press pool goes to cover the president, the White House said it would abolish the so-called wire pool, which included the AP, Bloomberg and Reuters. The wire pool for decades had traveled with presidents to bring news coverage to news consumers around the world. It has not been reinstated.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in a 2-1 vote in June 2025, blocked McFadden's ruling from taking effect while Trump appealed it.

The panel heard oral arguments in the appeal in November but has not issued a decision.

Disclosure: CNBC and MS NOW are divisions of Versant Media.