President Trump arrived in New York City Monday afternoon, kicking off a busy week. He is set to meet with Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) and French President Emmanuel Macron later Monday, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. In an emailed statement to The Hill, Mamdani’s press office said “the meeting will focus...
Page B1From§Eachthe early evening edition — 21 September 2026
THE BLACKOUT
Trump bans three outlets for negative stories, ribbon-cutting airs with no audio after networks boycott
As it ran on the front
On Friday the President announced, in a Truth Social post, that CNN, MS NOW and Politico were banned from the White House, effective immediately, over what he called their constant reporting of "FAKE NEWS." We called it a housekeeping decision. It was not a housekeeping decision. It was, in his own words, a punishment for coverage he didn't like, and there's no version of this where we pretend otherwise for very long.
By Saturday morning, the three outlets said their journalists had been denied access to the White House grounds — which we described at the time as a routine credentialing matter. It was not a routine credentialing matter. It was three outlets, denied access, one day after the President said on social media that he was banning them.…
…(cont) On Monday, the outlets sued, calling the ban a "blatant violation" of the First Amendment, and the administration answered by pointing to Barack Obama's attempts, years ago, to limit Fox News's coverage of his presidency. We are standing on that comparison. The receipts say Obama tried to limit Fox's coverage; we removed three outlets entirely from the grounds of the White House. Those are two very different policies, and I have been asked to describe them as identical.
The rest of the television pool did not see it our way either. ABC, CBS, NBC and even Fox News declined to staff Monday's pool rotation in solidarity with the outlets we banned, and no replacement pool was arranged. The result was a ribbon-cutting for the President's new White House helipad that aired with no audio at all — not because we removed anyone from the grounds that day, but because the networks who normally carry the President's voice chose not to.
The President has already moved past the merits. Told the case had been assigned to a judge he called "great, for them," he made clear Monday he expects to lose at the district court and may be forced to let the three outlets' reporters back in. In August, before any of this started, he'd already told NBC he'd refer Kristen Welker to the FCC over an election segment he didn't like. This has been the shape of it for a month now: the complaint, the punishment, the citation to a smaller precedent, and eventually, we're told, the retreat. We remain confident in our legal position. I am told to remain confident.
“They banned three networks for stories they didn't like, then turned around and pointed at the one time Obama tried to limit one network's access, like that makes banning three of them fair. Now the guy can't even hear himself cut the ribbon on his own helipad because the rest of the press corps saw where this goes and walked. That's not a media feud, that's what it looks like right before there's no press left to walk out.”
“Look, previous presidents limited press access too — Obama tried to limit Fox's coverage of his own presidency, that's on the record. So when people call this unprecedented, I'd point out — well, Obama restricted one network's access, we removed three networks completely from the grounds, which is — that's actually not the same thing at all, is it. I'm not sure why that's the example we keep using.”
The receipts
The Trump administration on Monday reached back to former President Barack Obama's attempts to limit Fox News coverage of his presidency to justify President Trump's decision to ban CNN, Politico and MS NOW from the White House grounds. CBS News senior White House and political correspondent Ed O'Keefe has more.
CNN, MS NOW and Politico on Monday announced a lawsuit over President Trump's White House ban against them, calling it a "blatant violation" of the first amendment. CBS News' Ed O'Keefe has more.
An all-out confrontation between President Trump and the media escalated Monday, as three banned outlets launched a legal fight, Trump compared some reporting to “cancer,” and five major TV networks came together to announce a de facto boycott of White House pool coverage. It’s a remarkable sequence of events that began with Trump’s…
President Trump’s abrupt move to withdraw White House press credentials for three news organizations triggered a rare moment of unity among television networks, with several media outlets announcing Monday they would not cover the president’s daily activities while the ban on the trio remains in place. Both Trump and the White House have…
It turns out that President Donald Trump may not have thought through all the consequences before he banned some of his most hated news outlets from the White House. After Trump declared CNN, MS NOW, and Politico "fake news" and exiled them from the White House grounds on Friday, the other networks that make up the White House press…
The White House denied CNN, MS NOW and Politico journalists access to its grounds Saturday, the networks announced, a day after President Trump said he was banning them from the premises after accusing them of producing "purposefully negative stories." “Earlier this morning MS NOW journalists were denied access to the White House…
Former White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) president Weijia Jiang on Sunday said President Trump's ban on CNN, Politico and MS NOW reporters from covering the White House was an "attack" on all other news outlets. "This is not a tantrum by three media outlets who are upset because they can't get into the White House...
President Trump railed against the judge who has been assigned to a case seeking to challenge his ban on three media outlets from covering the White House and telegraphed he might be forced to let the journalists working for the trio back in the building. "They have drawn a great Judge, for them," Trump said...
President Donald Trump said Monday that he plans to fight the lawsuit filed against the administration by three news organizations earlier in the day. CNN, MS Now, and Politico filed the joint suit Monday in Washington, D.C., after the president banned the organizations from the White House grounds late last week. “As expected, Fake News…
By barring CNN, the White House has thrown a staple of TV news coverage into disarray.
In one of his most direct assaults on the First Amendment, President Donald Trump announced in a Friday afternoon tirade that he would ban CNN, MSNOW (formerly MSNBC), and Politico from the White House. "I am proud to announce that, effective immediately, I am banning Fake News CNN, MSNOW... and Politico from the White House as a result…
President Trump on Friday said he was banning CNN, MSNOW and Politico from the White House, a move sure to draw fierce pushback from DC's press corps. Trump said in a Truth Social post that the ban would be “effective immediately” for those outlets, “as a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!”
· Trump's attacks on NBC's Welker raise pressure on FCC from the morgue, 31 Aug 2026
· Trump promises NBC's Welker will be reported to FCC 'for rebuke or punishment' from the morgue, 30 Aug 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.