A Trump Appointee Blocks the President's Banishment of Disfavored News Outlets

This morning, a federal judge in the District of Columbia temporarily blocked President Donald Trump's attempt to ban CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House, ordering restoration of the "hard passes" held by employees of those news outlets. U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee, said the sudden banishment of CNN et al., which the president announced last Friday, seemed inconsistent with the due process required by D.C. Circuit precedents, and he expressed appropriate skepticism about the post-hoc national security rationale for that precipitous decision. In addition to their due process claims, CNN et al. argued that their exclusion unconstitutionally discriminated against them based on viewpoint and retaliated against them for protected speech. Today's decision does not address those First Amendment issues, but it does not bode well for Trump's attempt to punish disfavored journalists. In the 1977 case Sherill v. Knight , Kelly notes in his temporary restraining order , the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that "the interest of a bona fide Washington correspondent in obtaining a White House press pass…undoubtedly qualifies as liberty which may not be denied without due process of law under the fifth amendment." And six years ago in Karem v. Trump , the D.C.

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