In a Supremely Righteous Decision, a Trump-Appointed Judge Smacked Down the President’s Ban on Media Outlets’ Access to the White House

2 min readThe president got slapped around by one of his own appointed judges—again—and, after a morning of tough talk, went the full Appomattox in front of CNN, MSNow, Politico, and, by proxy, every broadcast outlet and publication up to an including the History Channel. He should be giving up the evidence of ancient aliens any day now. From The New York Times:The reporters are back, but the television coverage isn’t. Journalists from CNN, MSNow and Politico were allowed back into the White House around noon on Thursday. Their return came after a chaotic morning in which the Trump administration had blocked them from entering, despite an overnight order from a federal judge that required the immediate restoration of their access....The Trump administration just told the federal judge in a filing that the White House operations team was instructed to restore reporters’ access at 7:10 a.m. on Thursday, and that confiscated press passes were made available for reporters to pick up at 9:55 a.m. But reporters from the barred outlets said they were unable to access the White House grounds well into the 11 a.m. hour.Thus did this extended farce come to its very predictable end. The administration had no case whatsoever; the best indication of that was its 11th-hour assertion that this particular fit of pique was based on a concern for "national security," perhaps the same "national security" that requires a garish ballroom looming over the White House and a 250-foot high ammo dump looming over Arlington National Cemetery.In ordering the reinstatement of the press credentials early Thursday morning, Judge Kelly cited a 2009 appeals court decision for a bedrock principle: “the loss of constitutional freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.” He might have added that the Supreme Court said the same thing in 1976, in the specific context of the First Amendment and citing the Pentagon Papers case, in which the justices in 1971 refused to block publication of a secret history of the Vietnam War.Nice to have a judge who appreciates the classics.As for my brethren and sistren—thanks, Molly I.—it’s a nice win, although the reward seems to be the right to be lied to from a podium several times a week as well as some really neat backdrops for groovy stand ups. In Timothy Crouse's The Boys on the Bus, a seminal book on political journalism, the White House beat was described as an enervating bore. (The late Russell Baker told Crouse that he much preferred covering the House of Representatives, where there were 435 people who loved to talk.) Covering the White House qua the White House hasn't changed much. But the principle was important, and the sudden outburst of solidarnosc from the corporate overlords was certainly a curiosity. As for lasting improvement in covering the assembled charlatans, we'll have to see what happens.