White House defies order to restore banned reporters, is ordered to restore them again, for longer

…(cont) Two weeks later, at a hearing on whether to extend that order, the lawyer for the media coalition told Judge Kelly something closer to a closing argument than a complaint: the president, the lawyer said, had made "clear" that the ban followed the outlets' coverage, not any neutral rule about who gets a badge. The Guardian reported the lawyer called Trump "the strongest witness" for the journalists' own case, said aloud in that courtroom. All together now — the government did not need to build a defense, because the man who signed the ban had already supplied the plaintiffs' best evidence against it, in public, before the suit was even filed.

That is three separate findings now, from the same judge, each one further into the record than the last: a likely constitutional violation in September, a violation of his own order that same week, and a second, longer-running finding of a likely constitutional violation in October.

None of it resolves the access problems entirely. The Times notes the ruling lets the outlets back on the grounds without settling every remaining dispute between them and the building they cover. The lawsuit goes on. The passes, for the moment, are the passes. And in three rounds of filings described in these reports, the administration has yet to offer the court a reason for the ban other than the one its own target already gave away for free.