The White House barred Politico from Air Force One despite a court order restoring its press access. A hearing is set for Thursday.
The White House blocked Politico from traveling aboard Air Force One on Monday for President Donald Trump’s trip to Nebraska, the latest escalation in an ongoing legal battle over press access that has also ensnared CNN and MS NOW. A Politico spokesperson confirmed the outlet was excluded from the out-of-town travel pool, the small rotating group of reporters who cover the president’s movements; The Washington Post stepped in as secondary print pooler, but the White House did not name a replacement for Politico.
Trump announced on Sept. 18 that he was banning Politico, CNN and MS NOW from the White House entirely, a move legal experts have called unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly sided with the outlets and issued a temporary restraining order requiring the administration to reinstate their press badges; that order expires later this week, and the three outlets are seeking a preliminary injunction to block the ban longer-term at a hearing scheduled for Thursday. Since the ruling, the White House has repeatedly barred CNN from Air Force One on days it was due to serve as pool representative, and has now extended the same approach to Politico.
White House officials argue that access to Air Force One is legally distinct from access to the White House grounds more broadly. Communications director Steven Cheung told Time magazine last week, “The judge basically ordered them to renew their access back to the White House, but that’s different than allowing the pool into the events in the Oval Office or on Air Force One.” A White House spokesperson told CNN that “traveling with the President of the United States aboard Air Force One is a privilege not a right.” The administration’s position echoes an earlier, related case involving the Associated Press, barred from the Oval Office and Air Force One since February over its refusal to adopt the term “Gulf of America,” in which a federal appeals court allowed the AP’s exclusion from those spaces to continue while litigation proceeds, even as it ordered AP’s broader White House access restored.
This report is based on information from Deadline, CNN, The Washington Post, Forbes and MS NOW.