President Donald Trump said Friday that he had banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House over what he called their “constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS.”
In a Truth Social post Friday afternoon, Trump said media outlets “shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States.”
Trump also warned “other outlets” would “follow” but did not specify which.
A statement from MS NOW said that its journalists “were denied access to the White House grounds” on Saturday morning, the day after the announcement.
It added: “MS NOW intends to take any and all steps necessary to defend our First Amendment rights and the essential role of independent journalism in our democracy.”
The First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press, and the outlets are likely to challenge any ban in court.
“CNN stands fully behind our White House team and their fair and accurate reporting,” the network said Friday, saying at the time that its journalists remained at the White House.
Politico Press, the publication’s communications team, said in a post on X that Trump’s claims that Politico “received government subsidies are false and have been thoroughly debunked.”
“POLITICO will continue to fairly report on this White House and future ones. We will vigorously defend our First Amendment rights against any attempt to restrict them,” the post said.
In his post announcing the bans, Trump claimed that the U.S. government paid “an illegal and ridiculous $8 Million Dollar subscription” to Politico. The claims stem from the Trump administration’s assertion in early 2025 that DOGE had found the subscriptions.
Trump, responding to a reporter in the Oval Office shortly after announcing the ban, said the new policy was the result of “cumulative stories over the last few years.” He did not specify a particular news report, and a White House spokesperson referred NBC News to the president’s spoken comments.
The move is the latest in Trump’s ongoing efforts to punish news organizations and broadcasters for their coverage. Shortly after taking office, Trump banned The Associated Press from the Oval Office, Air Force One and some events after it declined to acknowledge his call to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
The AP filed suit, and the case is ongoing.
Trump has also sued outlets including the BBC, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal for defamation. The suits against the Times and the Journal were subsequently dismissed, but have since been refiled. The BBC has filed to get Trump’s suit against it tossed.
Jacqui Heinrich, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, said in a statement that the organization “stands in defense of our colleagues at CNN, MSNOW, and Politico who are being singled out for doing their jobs.”
“The president said it plainly in the Oval Office, describing his own planned action as a ‘ban on the free press,’” Heinrich said. “The Constitution protects the freedom of the press from government interference. That protection does not depend on whether the president likes a news organization’s coverage, agrees with its reporting, or approves of the questions its journalists ask.”
Heinrich added that Trump’s ban “is about more than the rights of journalists. It is about the right of the American people to receive a full and independent account of the activities, policies and decisions of whoever occupies the nation’s highest office.”
Democrats denounced Friday’s move.
“This is yet another attack on the First Amendment from a president who knows he and his party of bootlickers are deeply unpopular,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker wrote on X. “Donald Trump can’t hide from his failing record, so he’s banning journalists he doesn’t like to keep you from hearing about it.”
The Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit founded in the wake of the WikiLeaks scandal in 2012, also criticized Trump’s announcement.
“It’s difficult to imagine a more blatant violation of the First Amendment than Trump banning news outlets from the People’s House for criticizing the government,” a spokesperson said. “It’s also hard to imagine a dumber move. The historically unpopular president has been retaliating against the press for years, but it hasn’t helped him.”
Legal scholar Jonathan Turley, who argued against Trump’s impeachments during his first presidential term, called Trump’s announcement “an assault on long-honored principles of a free press.”
“I have often joined in the criticism over the bias of these outlets, but barring disfavored media from the White House is a terrible precedent and practice,” he wrote on X.
In a statement, Reporters Without Borders said Trump was “once again spewing lies about ‘fake news’ to try to control who covers him and where.”
During his first administration, Trump banned CNN’s then-chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta from the executive mansion. CNN sued, and the White House subsequently restored Acosta’s credentials.
Friday’s bans come as Trump’s approval ratings have sagged and with Democrats gaining a polling edge in many pivotal midterm races that could see Republicans lose control of Congress. He has at times taken particular issue with reporting on the Iran war, writing on Truth Social earlier in September that coverage of ammunition shortages was “actually treasonous.”
