White House satisfies judge's order to restore CNN by removing CNN a second time

…(cont) Two days before that CBS piece ran — the 21st — the rest of the pool wouldn't cover for the ban. ABC, CBS, NBC, even Fox, sat out their own pool duty that Monday, solidarity, and the event they skipped covering went out with no audio because nobody on hand wanted the job. I hang onto that one because it tells you the other networks understood the assignment and said no to it. Once.

Then a judge reads the ban and rules — I've got this written down too, let me find it — the ban on those three outlets is "likely unconstitutional." Access ordered restored. That's not a statement from a podium. That's a federal judge, on the record.

So walk me through what happens after that, because this is the part I need slowed down. September 26th: CNN gets pulled from the pool again, this time for the Tennessee trip. The story I'm reading uses one word for it — "despite." Despite the order. That's not my word. That's the word in the piece.

That's once.

Now it's October. There's another trip on the calendar, and somewhere a pool list gets printed again, and CNN's name is off it again. The Hill has a source confirming it on a Wednesday — the administration intends to keep CNN from its scheduled coverage Thursday, the same order sitting there, unrepealed, the whole time.

That's twice. Inside of two weeks. I wrote the number down and then went back and checked it, because I don't usually trust myself with a number that lines up that clean.

You know the gate arm at a toll plaza — the kind on the older lanes? Light goes green, the arm lifts, you go through. And every so often, on the older machines, the arm comes back down anyway, right after you've cleared it, like the lifting and the coming-down were never wired to talk to each other, like two different offices are running two different motors off the same pole. I think about that arm more than I should. I'm not saying it's the same mechanism. I'm saying I think about it.

Here's the only question I've got, and it's one you can check: if the order says restored, and the list, for the second time now, says removed — which one is the press pool actually operating under?

Oh — before you go, one more thing. I almost let it go by. Those four networks who sat out the pool on the 21st, in solidarity? They were back working the pool by the 25th. Friday. Four days. Everybody but CNN went back to the job.

I know, I keep circling this number, I'm sorry. But four days of solidarity, and an order that's been sitting there, active, since before the 26th. The list printed this week looks exactly like the one printed for Tennessee — same outlet, same word, despite. So if solidarity only had to last four days, and the order's lasted longer than that already, why has it come up the same way twice?