Judge Timothy Kelly ordered the White House on Thursday to immediately restore the passes of, Politico and MS NOW, putting back into place access that Trump had taken away. The ruling was an early-morning reset of a fight over who gets inside the White House and who does not.
Jimmy Kimmel had already turned the clash into a joke the night before, using a Daily Beast report about Trump TV to mock a new media push tied to Trump. He told viewers the channel peaked at about 8,500 people on Monday night and had fallen to fewer than 500 by Wednesday morning, then added that the only channel doing worse was the Strait of Hormuz.
The immediate effect of Kelly’s order was simple: the outlets’ passes had to be restored. That mattered because the ban had been challenged as a direct attack on the First Amendment, and the news organizations that sued said the move could not be a more blatant violation of constitutional principles. The case was filed jointly after Trump announced the ban, and the judge’s order gave the White House no room to keep the exclusions in place.
There is one wrinkle that keeps the story from being neat. The access ban had already been described as overturned, yet Kelly still issued a Thursday order telling the White House to restore the passes. In practice, that means the legal fight was still alive enough to require a fresh directive, even as the administration was trying to treat the issue as settled.
Trump responded by saying, “We’ll go for appeal,” arguing on Truth Social that Fake News outlets that write negatively and violate National Security with false and defamatory stories should not be allowed near the most important office anywhere in the world. Fox also joined a press boycott of Trump in solidarity with fellow media colleagues, underscoring how the dispute has spread beyond one courtroom order and into a wider fight over access, loyalty and the rules of coverage. For now, Kelly’s ruling answers the immediate question:, Politico and MS NOW are back in the White House, and the next move belongs to the appeal process.
