Judge blocked Trump's White House ban on CNN, MS NOW, and Politico

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ruled Tuesday night that the Trump administration must continue allowing reporters from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico into the White House while a lawsuit challenging the ban proceeds through the courts.

Kelly granted a preliminary injunction replacing his earlier temporary restraining order, which had been set to expire Tuesday without further court action, according to The Wall Street Journal. The new injunction carries no set expiration date.

Kelly, a Trump appointee, found that the three outlets had a strong likelihood of prevailing on their argument that credentials were pulled in violation of Fifth Amendment due process protections, and that the White House had both punished them for First Amendment-protected newsgathering and targeted them because of their editorial viewpoints. "President Trump's own comments suggest that he intended the revocation of Plaintiffs' hard passes to alter their reporting on him," Kelly wrote in his opinion.

Kelly was unconvinced by the Justice Department's national security rationale. "There is no evidence in the record that President Trump made the decision to revoke Plaintiffs' hard passes on national security grounds from the get-go," Kelly wrote, characterizing the argument as an after-the-fact legal theory invented once the outlets went to court, according to CNBC. He added that the administration's evidentiary record in support of that position was "strikingly" thin.

Kelly did note limits to his ruling. "No one should interpret the Court's decision to suggest that President Trump's concerns about accuracy and fairness in the media's reporting are unfounded, or that the government is powerless when its true aim is to protect national security when classified information is unlawfully disclosed," he wrote, according to CNBC.

Theodore Boutrous Jr., the attorney representing the three outlets, said the president had "blatantly and explicitly violated due process and the First Amendment" when he issued the ban. "The harm this ban did to our clients, the First Amendment, and the public as a whole is profound," Boutrous said in a statement.

A White House spokesperson had not returned requests for comment as of publication, according to CNBC.

President Donald Trump announced the ban on Sept. 18, citing what he described as cumulative negative coverage. Journalists from all three organizations were blocked from entering the White House complex the next day and had their credentials confiscated. The outlets filed suit on Sept. 21, and Kelly issued a temporary restraining order on Sept. 23 that restored access beginning Sept. 24. Kelly had cited the administration's failure to provide proper notice or an opportunity to object before revoking the credentials.

Tuesday's preliminary injunction leaves the underlying case unresolved and stops short of ordering the White House to grant entry to venues like the Oval Office or Air Force One, according to CNBC. The administration has on several occasions excluded CNN from pool rotations covering the president in those settings since reporters regained White House access.