WASHINGTON — CNN, MS NOW and Politico said Monday they’ve notified U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration that they’re filing a lawsuit over being denied White House access. Reporters from the three major news organizations were blocked from the White House on Saturday, a day after Trump said he was barring them because of reporting he found to be “fake news.” The actions were a clear escalation of Trump’s long-running efforts — in the courts and through administrative action — to restrict news coverage by journalists he finds objectionable and were the latest test of First Amendment protections in the United States. Trump had said Friday he would ban all three outlets because of coverage he disliked. White House reporters from the two cable networks — Betsy Klein of CNN and Akayla Gardner of MS NOW — went live to report they’d been turned away, their press badges deactivated, when arriving for their jobs at the White House. Soon after, Politico said its White House reporter Cheyenne Haslett was also denied entry and had her badge confiscated. All three news outlets had hinted at legal action, saying they would vigorously defend their First Amendment rights. “Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting,” the outlets said in a joint statement posted on X. “Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.” In his second term, Trump and his Republican administration have upped the ante and punished certain media outlets, both in the courtroom and through regulatory action. Trump has also lashed out at individual reporters in person or over social media, sometimes in strikingly personal terms — insulting them in briefings or in his recent speech at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. The WHCA’s president, Jacqui Heinrich, called on the Trump administration to immediately restore the three outlets’ access. “The implications extend beyond these organizations: a standard used to exclude one news outlet because of its coverage could be applied to any outlet in the future,” Heinrich 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.”
