Reporters from three news outlets that President Donald Trump banned from the White House have said they’ve regained access, hours after a judge ordered the government to restore press passes to the journalists.
MS NOW reporter Laura Barrón-López was among the journalists who had been denied access but who was allowed back in on Sept. 24.
“I arrived at the northwest gate, showed my government ID again, and was returned my badge—I have it now with me—that was confiscated earlier this morning,” Barrón-López said during a broadcast. “And I just immediately came straight to the camera to inform everyone that we have been restored.”
The restoration came after Judge Timothy Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia early on Sept. 24 ordered White House officials to reverse a ban announced by Trump on Sept. 18 because of what the president described as repeated publication of fake news. Officials later said that the outlets were endangering national security.
“Defendants offer little to back up their asserted national security interest to justify revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes,” Kelly wrote in his order.
He also said the White House erred in not providing “fair notice” to CNN, MS NOW, and Politico.
The outlets said several hours later that journalists were turned away from the White House despite the order, and that a Secret Service agent confiscated passes from the journalists. They asked Kelly to hold a hearing on the matter.
Micah Stopperich, the White House director for press operations, told Kelly in a declaration in response to the notice from the outlets that White House operations personnel were notified at 7:10 a.m. that they needed to restore access to the affected reporters, and that the personnel soon began reinstating the revoked press passes.
The U.S. Secret Service indicated that the badges were turned back on at 9:07 a.m., he said, and the passes were then delivered to the White House entry gate for pickup by the reporters. They were available starting at about 9:55 a.m., he said.
