TOI correspondent from Washington: In a surreal drama that was played out on the sidelines of Chinese President Xi Jinping visit – covered by a phalanx of not-so-free press from China – the Trump administration on Thursday was forced to allow reporters from CNN, MS NOW and Politico into the White House after initially defying a court order asking it to revoke President Trump’s ban on them.US District Judge Timothy Kelly — a Trump appointee — ruled Thursday morning that the three organizations’ access should be immediately restored for 14 days while their lawsuit against the White House proceeds. In doing so, the judge noted an inconvenient fact for the President: when Trump announced the ban, he himself had emphasized the supposedly false and negative nature of the outlets’ coverage, rather than national security issues the administration later invoked to make its case for the ban.And so ended, for the moment, one of the more bizarre mornings in the modern history of the White House press corps: the president banned the reporters, the reporters sued, a judge ordered them back, the White House kept them out anyway, the reporters went back to court — and then the reporters were let in. For now.The sequence began last Friday when Trump announced that CNN, MS NOW and Politico would no longer have access to the White House, accusing them of producing “FAKE NEWS” and saying their reporting was false and negative. The three organizations promptly sued, arguing that the ban violated their First Amendment and Fifth Amendment rights.The dispute has already produced another extraordinary development: major television networks had suspended their normal White House video pool in solidarity with the excluded outlets. ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and even Fox News — a pro-Trump echo chamber — jointly argued that the public has a right to independent information about its government and access should not depend on whether a news organization pleases the president.Trump, naturally, was not impressed with the press ganging up — supported by the judiciary for now. Between preparing to welcome President Xi, he raged about reporters, calling them sleazebags, lunatics, sick, demented, treasonous etc and even unloaded on the judge he himself had appointed, calling him “totally disloyal.” At one point, he even posted an AI-generated image depicting the banned news organizations as trash bags outside the White House and another reporter as a homeless hobo.The legal fight is not over. Judge Kelly’s order lasts 14 days while the underlying case proceeds, and the administration can continue to argue that it has authority to control access to the White House complex. The news organizations maintain that they were singled out because of their coverage (by Trump’s own admission) and were denied the notice and opportunity to challenge the decision required by due process.It is, in other words, back to business in Washington — where the president wants the last word, the press wants the next story, and the courts occasionally insist on having both.
