CNN, MS NOW and Politico expand lawsuit against Trump White House, citing continued ‘viewpoint discrimination’

By Brian Stelter, CNN

(CNN) — CNN, MS NOW and Politico have amended their lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s White House press ban, citing “continued retaliatory and viewpoint-discriminatory deprivation” by the Trump administration.

The three news outlets are once again accusing the administration of violating the First and Fifth Amendments.

The updates to the lawsuit concern the White House’s interference with the press pool, a decades-old tradition that has news outlets take turns covering the president in close quarters, including Air Force One and the Oval Office.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has repeatedly excluded CNN and Politico from Trump’s Air Force One trips, even after a federal judge issued an order halting Trump’s broader original ban.

“To be clear,” the expanded lawsuit states, the news outlets “do not claim an unrestricted right to enter the Oval Office or travel aboard Air Force One. But once the White House opens those spaces to selected journalists for newsgathering and reporting, the White House may not exclude plaintiffs because it dislikes their coverage.”

Last week, the outside counsel for the three news outlets, Ted Boutrous, threatened further legal action if the White House continued to bar reporters from specific areas, such as Air Force One.

Boutrous asked for confirmation that the administration would “abandon any policy of excluding CNN from the Oval Office and Air Force One” and stop preventing assigned pool reporters from doing their duties. The administration did not respond.

So Wednesday afternoon’s court filing is the next step.

The amended complaint asks the court for another ruling in favor of the news outlets: “The court should declare unlawful the President’s ban of plaintiffs and the White House’s further unconstitutional actions, including its continued exclusions of plaintiffs from specific White House press areas for retaliatory and viewpoint-discriminatory reasons, and enter permanent injunctive relief in favor of CNN, MS NOW, and Politico.”

The amended complaint comes two weeks after US District Judge Timothy P. Kelly granted a preliminary injunction restoring the outlets’ White House access, finding that Trump’s ban likely violated the First Amendment by discriminating against journalists based on their coverage of his administration.

Kelly had previously issued a temporary restraining order on Fifth Amendment grounds. The administration is appealing Kelly’s ruling.

When a CNN reporter asked the White House for comment about the amended lawsuit on Wednesday, a White House official said, “the Fake News has no place demanding a spot in the President’s Oval Office.”

The White House complied with Kelly’s court’s order and reinstated journalists’ press credentials late last month, but CNN, MS NOW and Politico say the administration has continued to retaliate against them by disrupting the press pool.

CNN has been barred from traveling aboard Air Force One on all six occasions when it was scheduled to serve as the designated TV network pooler since Trump announced the ban on September 18.

The TV pool role is one that “CNN has fulfilled for more than four decades,” the revised lawsuit points out. The five major US TV networks have a well-established pool rotation, and the other networks have shown support for CNN amid the dispute.

Politico has also been barred twice from its scheduled out-of-town pool assignments in recent weeks.

And MS NOW “has not participated in the secondary television pool since September 18,” the day Trump announced the ban, the revised lawsuit states. The secondary pool spot is selected by the White House.

When blocking the news outlets from fulfilling pool duties, the administration appears to be relying on an ongoing court case involving The Associated Press, which filed suit last year when Trump blocked AP reporters from areas with limited space for the press pool.

Trump took action against The AP because the news wire didn’t immediately start using his new name for the Gulf of Mexico like he wanted.

In June 2025, an appeals court panel partially lifted the stay obtained by The AP and stated that the news wire was not likely to succeed on the merits “because these restricted presidential spaces” like Air Force One and the Oval Office “are not First Amendment fora opened for private speech and discussion.”

But the ruling was “non-binding and non-precedential,” as Boutrous pointed out in his letter last week, so it is not binding on other cases.

The revised lawsuit asserts that the Oval Office and Air Force One have been “two of the primary spaces for journalists to interact with, gather news about, and publish reporting on President Trump and other officials.”

“While the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room remains a critical forum for reporters to gather and report the news, of the nearly 5,000 questions the President has entertained from reporters in these traditional areas, 97% were either in the Oval Office or in connection with his travel aboard Air Force One,” the lawsuit states.

Boutrous said in a statement on Wednesday that by excluding the banned news outlets from spaces like Air Force One, the administration is continuing “to violate the First Amendment and due process.”

“These exclusions, intended to punish and chill coverage of the administration that the President doesn’t like, make it harder for the press to cover some of the most important events in the world for the benefit of the American people,” Boutrous said. “CNN, MS NOW and Politico will continue to fight to vindicate their rights to report the news.”

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