By Nathaniel "Beltway" Steele
CNN, MS NOW and Politico filed suit Monday against President Trump over his decision to revoke their access to White House events, calling the ban a "blatant violation" of the First Amendment, according to CBS News. The president has said he barred the three outlets because he objected to their coverage of his administration.
The fallout has reshaped how the White House is covered day to day. Major broadcast networks in the White House press pool responded by refusing to cover the president's public events altogether while the ban is litigated, a boycott The New York Times' chief White House correspondent Peter Baker described as unprecedented. CBS News reported Monday that there was no network television coverage of the president's meeting with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani at Gracie Mansion, nor of his preparations for Tuesday's address to the United Nations General Assembly.
The dispute marks a sharp break from decades of practice in which the press pool — rotating print, radio and television journalists — covered the president's movements regardless of which outlets he favored. The three suing organizations argue the administration cannot selectively exclude outlets based on the content of their coverage without running afoul of press-freedom protections; the White House has not, per available reporting, offered a detailed legal defense of the ban.
How the courts resolve the suit — and how long networks sustain their boycott — will shape the terms of White House access for whoever holds the office next. For now, a sitting president is getting less unscripted airtime than at almost any point in the modern television era, by his own administration's design.
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— Compiled from reporting by CBS News, NBC News and The New York Times.
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