Judge Orders White House to Restore CNN, MS NOW, POLITICO Passes

A federal judge in Washington ordered White House officials on September 24, 2026 to restore the press credentials of CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO reporters, finding the news organizations likely to win their Fifth Amendment due process claim. The order runs 14 days.

Information last verified on September 25, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Status: A temporary restraining order entered September 24, 2026 and effective for 14 days. No preliminary injunction has been decided and no final judgment has been entered.

Jurisdiction scope: This is one federal case in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, governed by federal constitutional law and by binding precedent of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. It is not a state-law ruling, it does not bind any state court, and it decides nothing about recording or access laws outside the White House credentialing context.

What Happened

On the afternoon of September 18, 2026, President Trump announced in a social media post that, "effective immediately," he was "banning" the news organizations CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO "from the White House." The order records that the three organizations allege their reporters were then denied access to the White House over the weekend and had their "hard pass" press credentials deactivated.

The three news organizations and three individual reporters sued the President and several White House officials and moved for a temporary restraining order asking the court to order the immediate reinstatement of their hard passes pending further proceedings. Judge Kelly granted the motion in an eight-page order docketed as ECF No. 24 and filed September 24, 2026.

The court framed the case narrowly. Its resolution, the order says, "is dictated by the application of well-known D.C. Circuit precedent that this Court must faithfully apply."

Two features of the order carry practical weight. First, the court decided the motion on the Fifth Amendment procedural due process claim alone, writing that plaintiffs had shown a likelihood of success "at least on" that claim. It did not resolve the First Amendment theories.

Second, paragraph 2 of the order expressly excludes President Trump from the parties it binds. The restraint runs to "Defendants (except for President Trump) and their agents, representatives, and all persons or entities acting in concert with them." That exclusion tracks the D.C. Circuit's disposition in Karem, where the court of appeals affirmed a preliminary injunction restoring a reporter's hard pass but limited its scope "to run only to the Press Secretary" after the government argued the President was not a proper defendant and the reporter did not contest the point.

On the government's stated justification, the court wrote that nothing in the record predating the suit suggested a national security motive, and that the September 22 letters identified reporting that "threatened national security and/or spread falsehoods," which the court read as "leaving open the possibility that all the stories fall into the later bucket, rather than the former."

The court also declined the government's request to stay the order's entry or effective date, citing Pippenger v. U.S. DOGE Service, 2025 WL 1148345, at *2 (D.D.C. Apr. 17, 2025), and noting that temporary restraining orders "are generally unappealable."

What the Law Actually Says

A White House "hard pass" is a physical access credential. It lets a correspondent enter the White House complex on a standing basis rather than clearing in for a single event. It is not a license to publish, and nothing in this case suggests the government tried to stop any story from running. The legal question was about the process owed before that access is taken away.

The liberty interest. In Sherrill v. Knight, 569 F.2d 124, 130-31 (D.C. Cir. 1977), the D.C. Circuit held that "the interest of a bona fide Washington correspondent in obtaining a White House press pass . . . undoubtedly qualifies as [a] liberty [interest] which may not be denied without due process of law under the fifth amendment." The D.C. Circuit reaffirmed the point in Karem v. Trump, 960 F.3d 656, 665 (D.C. Cir. 2020), holding that "a duly issued hard pass may not be suspended without due process."

The two-step test. The court applied the standard framework from Kentucky Department of Corrections v. Thompson, 490 U.S. 454, 460 (1989): first, whether a liberty or property interest has been interfered with; second, whether the procedures attending that deprivation were constitutionally sufficient.

What process is due. The general rule, quoted in the order from UDC Chairs Chapter v. Board of Trustees of the University of D.C., 56 F.3d 1469, 1472 (D.C. Cir. 1995), is that individuals must receive notice and an opportunity to be heard before the government deprives them of a protected interest. Karem adds two specific requirements in this setting: the government must promulgate rules or standards governing the conduct that would lead to revocation, and the reporter must "receive fair notice not only of the conduct that would subject him to punishment, but also of the magnitude of the sanction that the White House might impose" (as the order quotes Karem, cleaned up).

Applying that, the court found the record "bereft of any relevant 'formally articulated standards'" in place before the conduct at issue, and it pointed to the fact that the government renewed plaintiff Betsy Klein's hard pass several months after she published some of the reporting later identified as objectionable, which the court said undercut "any argument that she or her employer, for example, had the requisite notice that the conduct at issue violated a relevant standard."

The government argued that Sherrill and Karem were wrongly decided. The court's answer was that it is bound by D.C. Circuit precedent, "full stop." A district judge cannot overrule a court of appeals; that argument is preserved for appeal, not resolved here.

The government also argued that post-deprivation process can suffice in "extraordinary circumstances," citing Zevallos v. Obama, 793 F.3d 106, 116 (D.C. Cir. 2015), where advance notice before blocking the assets of international narcotics traffickers would have risked asset flight. The court found nothing comparable in this record, observing that some of the identified reporting "stretches back months or years" and that "[t]he sorts of stories Defendants identify in the letters to Plaintiffs are routine."

The four TRO factors. A movant must show likelihood of success on the merits, likely irreparable harm without preliminary relief, that the balance of equities tips in its favor, and that an injunction is in the public interest. Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, 555 U.S. 7, 22, 20 (2008). The standard for a TRO and a preliminary injunction is the same. Dellinger v. Bessent, No. 25-5028, 2025 WL 559669, at *3 (D.C. Cir. Feb. 15, 2025). The court described this as "a high bar," then found the plaintiffs had met it. On irreparable harm it relied on Mills v. District of Columbia, 571 F.3d 1304, 1312 (D.C. Cir. 2009), that "the loss of constitutional freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury." On the last two factors, which merge when the government is the opposing party under Pursuing America's Greatness v. FEC, 831 F.3d 500, 511 (D.C. Cir. 2016), it quoted Karem for the proposition that "enforcement of an unconstitutional law is always contrary to the public interest," and Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U.S. 233, 250 (1936), that the free press "stands as one of the great interpreters between the government and the people."

What a TRO is and is not. A temporary restraining order preserves the last uncontested status quo for a short, fixed period while the court takes a fuller look. It rests on a preliminary record and a prediction about likelihood of success. It is not a final judgment, not a merits determination, and not a ruling that the government has violated the Constitution. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c) requires security, but the D.C. Circuit has recognized a district court's "widely recognized discretion" both to set the amount and "to dispense with any security requirement whatsoever." Federal Prescription Service, Inc. v. American Pharmaceutical Ass'n, 636 F.2d 755, 759 (D.C. Cir. 1980). Here the court set the bond at $1.00.

One more limit worth naming: nothing in this order is a general public right of entry to the White House. It is about credentials already issued to working correspondents and the process owed before those credentials are pulled. The public's routine legal levers for getting information out of the federal government are statutory rather than credential-based, and they run through the Freedom of Information Act and its state analogues. If you have never used one, our step-by-step walkthrough of filing a FOIA request covers the mechanics, the fee categories and the appeal path.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The striking thing about this order is how little of it is about the press clause. Judge Kelly resolved the motion on procedural due process and said so expressly, reaching a likelihood of success "at least on" the Fifth Amendment claim and leaving the First Amendment arguments for another day. That is a conventional judicial move, and it narrows what the decision stands for. A reader who treats this as a ruling that the government may never restrict press access is reading something the order does not say.

What the order does say is that the government proceeded without the two things Karem requires: a standard announced in advance, and notice of how severe the penalty could be. The court's treatment of the September 22 letters is the clearest illustration. A rule that a correspondent must observe "the standards of professionalism and decorum expected of those given access to the White House Complex" is, in the court's words, "so vague it hardly does the trick." The Betsy Klein detail does similar work: renewing a credential months after the reporting later cited as the reason for revoking it is hard to square with the claim that she was on notice.

The national security discussion is the part most likely to matter downstream. The court did not hold that national security cannot justify a credential revocation. It applied the deferential Busic standard and then found the evidentiary record thin: declarations from Defense Department officials "who have no direct knowledge of how reporters operate in the White House," and plaintiffs' supplemental declarations showing that in most instances the reporters who wrote the identified stories "did not even hold hard passes." That is a record problem, not a doctrinal ceiling, and a fuller record at the preliminary injunction stage could look different. Footnote 2 is similarly cautious: the court said it was "doubtful" that the classified-information statutes gave the kind of notice Karem demands, "especially given the lack of precedent for applying those laws to reporters," and noted the record lacked factual support that the plaintiffs violated those statutes "at least at this stage."

For anyone tracking access law generally, the procedural posture is the lesson. Due process claims about government benefits and credentials tend to turn on paperwork: what standard existed, when it was published, what the person was told, and when. Those are documentary questions, which is why this fight will be decided on declarations and letters rather than rhetoric.

How This Affects You

This case is about credentials held by professional correspondents who work at a specific federal facility. It is general legal information, not advice about anyone's individual situation, and it does not change the rules that govern an ordinary member of the public.

What it does not do: it does not create a right for members of the public to enter the White House complex, it does not address whether or when you may record police officers or other government officials in public places, and it does not alter any state recording-consent statute. Those questions are governed by separate bodies of law and by other courts.

What it reflects: when the federal government takes away something a court treats as a protected liberty or property interest, the Constitution generally requires notice and a chance to respond first, measured against a standard that existed before the conduct in question. That principle is not limited to journalists, though the specific hard-pass rules in Sherrill and Karem are.

If your interest is in getting information out of government rather than getting physical access to it, the usual route is a records request under the public records statutes that apply in each state or the federal FOIA. Court filings are a separate system again: the papers in this case sit on a federal docket, and our overview of how to search court records and what is public explains the general structure. Note that this case is federal, so it is not in the District of Columbia's local system; the District's own trial and appellate courts run a separate eAccess portal, described in our guide to the District of Columbia's two court systems.

What Happens Next

The 14-day clock. The order states that it "shall remain in effect for 14 days" from its September 24, 2026 entry, which runs to on or about October 8, 2026 unless the court extends or supersedes it.

Expedited preliminary injunction briefing. The court wrote that it "will set a schedule for expedited briefing on a motion for a preliminary injunction" during that period, so that it can consider the question "with additional time and on a fuller record." It set that schedule the same day. A minute order signed September 24, 2026 directs that "Plaintiffs shall file any motion for a preliminary injunction by September 28, 2026, Defendants shall file their response by October 2, 2026, and Plaintiffs shall file any reply by October 5, 2026," and states that the court "will set a hearing at a later date but intends to rule expeditiously on the motion for a preliminary injunction." No hearing date appeared on the docket as of September 25, 2026. We take no position on how the motion should or will be resolved.

The bond. Plaintiffs must post the $1.00 bond under Rule 65(c) by October 1, 2026.

Appealability. The court noted that temporary restraining orders "are generally unappealable," citing Dellinger. A preliminary injunction, by contrast, is ordinarily appealable under 28 U.S.C. 1292(a)(1), so the D.C. Circuit is more likely to see this case after the preliminary injunction stage than before it.

Compliance. Later on September 24, 2026 the plaintiffs filed a request for an immediate hearing and a corrected notice of non-compliance (ECF Nos. 25 and 26), asserting that reporters from all three organizations were turned away from the White House that morning, that a Secret Service agent confiscated hard passes, and that Betsy Klein's request for the return of her pass was denied. The filings state that counsel for plaintiffs asked opposing counsel to call the court together and had not received a response. Those are the plaintiffs' allegations in their own filings, not findings by the court. The court ordered the defendants to respond by 12:30 p.m. the same day. The defendants then filed a declaration of Micah Stopperich (ECF No. 28, refiling ECF No. 27, which the clerk marked entered in error for a missing case caption). In a minute order signed September 24, 2026, the court ruled that "[i]n light of Defendants' 28 Supplemental Declaration," and "to the extent Plaintiffs request an emergency hearing in their 25 Notice, their request is DENIED," while allowing plaintiffs to "file any supplemental notice informing the Court of any relevant factual developments no earlier than 6:00 p.m. today, September 24, 2026." The court made no finding that the defendants violated the order. The body of the Stopperich declaration is a scanned image without a readable text layer in the copy we retrieved, so we are not characterizing its contents. As of September 25, 2026 the docket showed no filings after ECF No. 28. We will update this article as the docket develops.

Disclaimer: This article is general legal information about a pending federal case, not legal advice. Nothing here creates an attorney-client relationship. Court records and deadlines change, and a temporary restraining order can be modified, extended or superseded. If you need advice about your own circumstances, consult a licensed attorney in the relevant jurisdiction.

Related articles

• Public Records Laws by State: a FOIA guide covering all 50 states
• How to file a FOIA request, step by step
• Court records by state: how to search them, what is public, how to seal
• DC court records: eAccess and the District's two separate court systems

Last updated: 2026-09-25. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-09-25.