The White House on Friday night removed CNN from joining President Donald Trump on his trip to Tennessee on Saturday, where it was supposed to cover the president on behalf of major TV networks.
Page A3From§Eachthe noon edition — 26 September 2026
PRESS ACCESS, REVOKED
White House loses press-access ruling in court, wins it back by grounding CNN Friday night.
As it ran on the front
Let me be the guy who explains why "a privilege, not a right" is not the alarming sentence it sounds like, because someone in this administration has to, and today that's me. On Tuesday, government lawyers filed exactly that phrase with a federal court: press access to the White House is a privilege, not a right. Read plainly, that is a legal position about scheduling, not — and I want to be careful here — not a claim that the executive branch can hand out or take away the public's information at will, which is, actually, precisely what it is a claim of. I said that wrong. Let me say it the way it was written: access is theirs to give, so it's theirs to take back, and the filing says so in writing.
A judge appointed by this president heard that argument Wednesday afternoon at an emergency hearing, because CNN, MS NOW, and Politico had already been shut out of the building on the strength of it. By Thursday, the court had ordered their access restored. That's the system working: a White House overreaches, a court reins it in, everybody moves on. Except by Friday night, the same White House had pulled CNN off the trip to Tennessee — the same outlet, the same week, the same order barely a day old.…
…(cont) I can defend that. Watch me try. The Tennessee trip is a discretionary pool assignment, not covered by the court's order, a scheduling call any White House gets to make about any outlet on any given— no. It's the same fight. There isn't a scheduling explanation for that. There's just the sentence, doing what it says it does.
The New York Times calls it a seven-day standoff that explains everything about how this White House treats the press. I'd call it something shorter: a filing that told on itself twice in one week, in front of the one branch of government positioned to notice. The court noticed Thursday. The White House noticed the court, and flew to Tennessee anyway.
“They put it in writing to a federal judge — access to the president is a privilege, not a right, like it's a country club membership they hand out and pull whenever somebody talks back. A judge ordered CNN's badge reactivated Thursday, and the very next flight manifest had the seat empty again, same rule, new excuse. Read the filing and the flight list back to back and tell me it isn't the same office signing both — that's not a legal dispute, that's a White House deciding out loud that the badge is theirs and the judge is a suggestion.”
“Look, the filing says "privilege, not a right" because that's the accurate legal term for a discretionary pool credential, it's not some — okay, it is some kind of statement about who controls the microphone, fine, but a judge already restored access, so the White House complied, which is more than— did I just call Friday night compliance? That doesn't sound like me. The Tennessee trip is a separate logistical call and I will be saying that until someone tells me to stop.”
Earlier in this story
- White House calls press access 'a privilege, not a right,' then bans CNN days after judge restored it. By Chip · the coffee break edition, 26 September 2026
The receipts
At an emergency hearing scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, a federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump is set to hear three media outlets' request for a temporary restraining order blocking the administration's denial of press access to the White House—and is likely to hear from government lawyers the " dangerous " argument…
CNN won’t be able to join President Trump on a Saturday trip to Tennessee. He had banned CNN and two other news outlets from the White House, but a court order on Thursday restored their access.
An abrupt decree, a network boycott, a legal intervention and an uneasy détente: This was no typical battle between a president and his press corps.
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.