Trump sued for banning MS NOW, CNN and Politico from White House

MS NOW, CNN and Politico are expected to sue President Donald Trump on Monday morning and ask a federal judge to overturn the White House’s blanket ban on the three media outlets.

News reporters were blocked from entering the White House on Saturday, a day after President Trump announced he would be barred from working there.

“This ban is yet another direct attack on the First Amendment and no more blatant violation of the Constitution’s most fundamental principles,” the lawsuit says, alleging that the ban has already “severely impeded the ability” of three news organizations to cover President Trump and his administration.

“Since the earliest days of our republic, presidents have disagreed and complained about the tenor and content of their administration’s reporting,” the civil complaint, which will be filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, says.

But “the Constitution protects the freedoms and property rights that news organizations and White House reporters have in their journalistic capacities and the access that capacity affords them to cover the White House for the benefit of the public,” the complaint says.

“The authorities cannot capriciously deprive plaintiffs of these benefits, without any notice, process, or warning, as the president has done here.”

President Trump announced the ban in a post on Truth Social on Friday, accusing the news outlet of writing fiction and lies about him and warning that “other fake news outlets will follow suit.” The president added, “It would be disgusting,” citing what he called “accumulated articles” by three news organizations.

“The White House is not launching an attack on freedom of the press, and I value that,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social Monday morning after the lawsuit was announced.

“We are launching an attack on the fake news that has grown like a cancer in our beloved America,” President Trump wrote. “It’s corrupt, it’s purposeful, it’s pervasive, it’s completely orchestrated, and it’s completely out of control.”

“This is a threat to national security and must be stopped now!” he said. President Trump has not previously cited national security when justifying the ban. The president gave no examples to support his claim.

The lawsuit alleges that the ban violates the U.S. Constitution’s Due Process Clause by not setting clear standards and giving broadcasters advance notice and an opportunity to challenge Trump’s decisions.

The complaint also says the ban violates the First Amendment as retaliation “for protected reporting and speech.”

And it says the ban violates the First Amendment for other reasons. It says it has banned three media companies “from private forums for illegal reasons.” Those reasons include so-called viewpoint discrimination, or targeting outlets for what they perceive to be “motivating ideologies, opinions and viewpoints.”

“This morning, we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and the principle that the government does not decide what news organizations report or publish,” the three companies said in a joint statement Monday.

“The White House has disqualified journalists without notice or process because they objected to our reporting,” the statement said.

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

The three news organizations have filed a joint motion asking a judge to issue a temporary restraining order barring Trump and the other defendants from further action to enforce the ban and requiring the plaintiffs to immediately restore the so-called hard-pass press status that allows reporters access to the White House.

In addition to Trump, the defendants include his communications aide Stephen Chan, White House chief of staff Susan Wiles, and U.S. Secret Service Director Sean Curran.

Named as plaintiffs are three news organizations and three White House reporters. Akyle Gardner of MS NOW. CNN’s Betsy Klein. and Politico’s Cheyenne Haslett. All three journalists were denied entry to the White House on Saturday, where their hard passes were confiscated by Secret Service agents, according to the complaint.

On Sunday night, the White House removed CNN from its scheduled rotation as a pool network in the White House travel pool. Poole is scheduled to accompany President Trump on Monday when he visits New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly.

The complaint cites the White House’s removal of CNN from its Monday pool broadcast schedule as an example of a ban that “inflicted irreparable harm” on the network.

The lawsuit is being filed in the same court as the Associated Press’ ongoing lawsuit against the White House, seeking to bar its journalists from working in certain restricted spaces within the White House, including the Oval Office and Air Force One. The White House’s partial ban on the Associated Press occurred in February 2025 after the news agency refused to reflect President Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of the United States in the daily designation of international waters.

President Trump told reporters Friday that the latest ban would be worth enacting even if it is overturned by a judge.

“I think it’s a good thing to point out, whether it survives or not,” he said.

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

But Bessent also suggested the ban was justified, saying “legacy media” is unpopular with the public “because it is perceived as biased.”

Asked by CNBC’s Joe Kernen about a possible “departure” from the ban, Bessent said: “We’ll see. Maybe it’s a change in coverage at the White House.”

“One thing I’m sure of is that the press cares about the press above all else,” Bessent said, arguing that the news media was more focused on reporters’ personal experiences at the canceled White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April than on the gunman’s assassination attempt on Trump.

“What I’m sure of is that this (ban) will get some press coverage,” Bessent said. “And I think we can go back to a network that’s a little bit more fair and balanced. I can’t even remember which one.”

Fox News, a media outlet often criticized for being biased toward President Trump and his administration, used to use the slogan “fair and balanced,” but stopped using it about a decade ago.

In a statement after Trump announced the ban, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University suggested that Trump would lose a legal challenge to the ban, citing First Amendment protections for the media.

“The First Amendment prohibits a president from punishing a journalist because he doesn’t like the reporting, just as it prohibits a president from punishing a university because he doesn’t like the courses it offers or a law firm because he doesn’t like the clients it represents,” said Jameel Jaffer, the institute’s executive director.

“You would think President Trump would have learned this lesson by now, since so many courts have ruled against him on this very point,” Jaffer said.

“Americans must be able to scrutinize those elected to power through a free and independent press, whether or not government officials view them favorably,” White House Correspondents Association President Jackie Heinrich said in a statement Saturday.

“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 the report,” said Fox News correspondent Heinrich.

In the Associated Press case, Judge Trevor McFadden ruled in April 2025 that President Trump’s partial ban on the station’s journalists violated the First Amendment, and ordered that the AP be given the same access as other members of the presidential press corps to the Oval Office, other restricted areas of the White House, and Air Force One.

“The court has simply held that under the First Amendment, if the government opens the door to some journalists, it cannot close it to others, whether in the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere,” wrote McFadden, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Trump.

“The Constitution requires more than that,” the judge said.

The White House announced it would eliminate the so-called wire pool that included the Associated Press, Bloomberg News Agency and Reuters News Agency, rather than granting the Associated Press access to locations where the White House press corps goes to cover the president. For decades, Wirepool has traveled with presidents and delivered news coverage to news consumers around the world. Not restored.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voted 2-1 in June 2025 to block the McFadden decision from taking effect pending President Trump’s appeal.

The panel heard oral arguments in the appeal in November but did not issue a decision.

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