MS NOW White House correspondent Vaughn Hillyard reports from a street corner just outside the White House after US President Donald Trump banned three major news outlets (CNN, MS NOW and Politico) from the White House, in Washington, D.C., US, September 21, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Reporters for Politico, CNN and MS NOW were still barred from the White House hours after a federal judge ordered their access restored.
Journalists from all three outlets were turned away at Secret Service checkpoints Thursday morning, according to Politico and live reports on CNN and MS NOW.
Early Thursday, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly issued a temporary restraining order, a short-term emergency ruling, requiring the White House to restore the outlets' access for at least two weeks while the case continues, according to Politico.
Politico reported that the Secret Service denied one of its reporters entry and confiscated his credentials, even though Kelly had found hours earlier that the ban appeared to violate the outlets' constitutional right to due process, or fair procedures before the government takes something away.
CNN White House reporter Betsy Klein, whose badge the Secret Service seized Saturday, tried to return Thursday, she told CNN anchor John Berman on air.
"So around 6:10 this morning, I arrived at this intersection. I went to the Secret Service checkpoint, provided my information, my photo ID and press credential, and was told that I was not in the system," Klein said.
"A few moments later, one of our producers was able to access the White House. She is now on campus. However, our photojournalist went a few moments after that, and his badge was then seized by the White House," she continued.
"Now, this is all very fluid, and that is because this ruling came in overnight, around 12:58 this morning. So it is not yet normal business hours. This may take a little bit of time to process," Klein added.
Later that morning, MS NOW reporter Laura Barron-Lopez said on the network that she cleared the outer Secret Service perimeter with her hard pass, the badge that gives reporters regular access to the White House.
"It's still being disabled. It's still coming up as disabled," the officer told her. "There was no other White House official nearby that I could speak to. There were only just three Secret Service officers inside of the hut. And then he confiscated my badge, and I had to leave the premises."
"But it's not clear, based on the interaction that I had, whether or not this is a defiance… of the court order, or it's some kind of incompetence or lag in the system," she added.
President Donald Trump banned the outlets last week, and their reporters were barred from the complex and had their passes seized. The administration later defended the ban on national security grounds, an argument Kelly rejected.
"The court is skeptical, at least on this record, that defendants' interest in safeguarding national security is the actual motivation for, or is even advanced by, the revocation of plaintiffs' hard passes," Kelly wrote.
The lockouts came on a busy day for the White House press corps, Klein said, as Trump welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping for a rare state visit with an arrival ceremony, meetings and a state dinner.
Before the ruling, Spectrum News asked Deputy White House Press Secretary Taylor Rogers what Trump's press ban symbolized, and she said there is no comparison between the U.S. and China on press freedom, Klein said.
"Holding the fake news accountable" is how Rogers described what the president is doing.