JUDGE TIMOTHY KELLY / CNN / THE TRAVEL POOL
"ORDERED that Defendants (except for President Trump)... shall immediately return, reinstate, and restore the White House "hard pass" press credentials... It is further ORDERED that this Temporary Restraining Order shall remain in effect for 14 days."
"The White House is persisting in unpredictably and inconsistently implementing the President's unconstitutional "ban on the free press" by barring CNN from fulfilling its role as a designated television network pooler." — — Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., October 1
September 18, Truth Social: CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO are "banned" from the White House, effective immediately. September 24: Judge Timothy Kelly — a Trump appointee — grants a TRO, finds them likely to win on due process, and writes that he is "skeptical" national security is the real motive. Badges back. Then read what the order actually covers. Hard passes, on the grounds, for 14 days, binding everyone "except for President Trump" — the one person who announced the ban. Not a word about the aircraft, the travel pool, or pooler rotation. On September 26 CNN was scheduled as TV pooler to Tennessee and was pulled off the plane. A rotation document published Sunday the 27th listed CNN as pooler for Thursday's Denton, Texas and Durant, Oklahoma trip; Wednesday's guidance dropped it. No other network took the slot. That last detail is the one the networks skipped in their own coverage: a pooler shoots for everybody, so when CNN was cut and nobody replaced it, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox lost the footage too, and all four reported it as a CNN story. Meanwhile the government's stated ground quietly migrated from national security — which the judge said in writing he doubted — to "standards of professionalism and decorum," a phrase in no statute that asks a federal judge to grade news judgment. Thursday, October 8, 11:00 a.m.: the preliminary-injunction hearing and the TRO's expiration land on the same day. Nothing anyone did required disobeying a court. That is the finding.