3.4.4 – Protection of Civil Liberties and Rights
On Friday 18 September, President Trump used a post on Truth Social to announce that CNN, MS NOW and Politico were banned from the White House with immediate effect. He accused the three outlets of persistently publishing false stories about him. The following morning, reporters from all three organisations were turned away at the gates by the Secret Service and had their hard passes, the permanent credentials that allow journalists to work inside the White House complex, confiscated. Within days, the outlets had filed a joint lawsuit arguing that the ban breached the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from abridging the freedom of the press, and the due process protections of the Fifth Amendment. Their central claim was simple: a president may dislike critical coverage, but he cannot punish journalists for it by removing their access.
3.3.2 Limitations on Presidential Power
The case was assigned to Judge Timothy Kelly of the federal district court in Washington, DC, a 2017 Trump appointee who had also restored CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s credentials in 2018. The Department of Justice defended the ban on national security grounds, arguing that the outlets had spread falsehoods and published sensitive information. Kelly was unpersuaded. In the early hours of Thursday 24 September, he granted a temporary restraining order requiring the administration to reinstate the passes for at least 14 days. He found that the government had produced no evidence that the cited reporting had harmed national security, noted that the journalists responsible did not even hold hard passes, and concluded that the revocations ignored established appeals court precedent requiring notice and a chance to respond. The episode is a clear illustration of judicial review operating as a check on executive action, and the fact that the check came from a judge Trump himself appointed weakens the claim that such rulings are simply partisan.
3.3.4 Interpretations and Debates
Perhaps more striking than the lawsuit was the reaction of rival news organisations. When the White House also removed CNN from its scheduled slot in the television pool, the rotating arrangement through which five networks share footage of the president, the other four, including Fox News, refused to replace it and suspended pool coverage altogether. The consequences were immediate. No pool cameras recorded Trump’s address to the United Nations General Assembly on 22 September, although most networks still broadcast the speech using the UN’s own feed, while CNN declined to air it at all. The following day, none of the major networks carried Trump’s rare personal welcome of President Xi Jinping at Joint Base Andrews, and the boycott continued through the state visit. Nearly 50 news organisations also signed a legal brief supporting the banned outlets, and the White House Correspondents’ Association, currently led by a Fox News correspondent, backed its colleagues. Supporters of the president argue that legacy media are unfairly hostile and that the public now has plenty of alternative sources. Critics reply that when competitors unite on access, it reveals a shared belief that scrutiny of the presidency is a public good rather than a favour granted by the White House.
3.2 Informal Sources of Presidential Power
The dispute also exposes the fragility of the bully pulpit, Theodore Roosevelt’s term for the president’s unique platform to shape public opinion. Richard Neustadt argued that presidential power is ultimately the power to persuade, yet persuasion requires an audience, and Trump’s decision to shut out major outlets during a week of high-profile diplomacy meant that his summit with Xi received far less television coverage than it otherwise would have. This matters because his political capital is already depleted. A Strength in Numbers/Verasight poll published this week put his approval at 33%, while Reuters/Ipsos recorded 32%, the lowest of his career, with support among Republicans falling sharply. With the midterm elections on 3 November, a growing number of Republican candidates in competitive races are distancing themselves from the president on issues such as immigration and the war with Iran. Because the Twenty-Second Amendment prevents him from seeking a third term, some commentators argue that Trump is entering an early lame duck period, in which colleagues increasingly calculate that their own futures matter more than his.
Taken together, the episode illustrates the limits of presidential power in two directions. Formally, the courts and the Constitution constrained a president attempting to control who reports on him. Informally, a president whose authority depends so heavily on commanding attention found that confrontation with the press, combined with weak polling, reduced rather than enhanced his capacity to lead. The imperial presidency thesis assumes a president who dominates the political stage; this week suggested one struggling to keep the stage lit.