MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
First, President Trump banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House over coverage that he did not like. Then those news outlets took him to court and convinced a judge to issue a two-week restraining order. Well, that restraining order expired today. So they were all back in that federal courtroom here in Washington, D.C., to argue over whether the Trump administration is violating the news organizations' constitutional rights. NPR's David Folkenflik is covering the case. Hey there, David.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Mary Louise.
KELLY: Hey. So this has been going on for a couple of weeks. We've seen all kinds of twists and turns. How did the news outlets make their case today?
FOLKENFLIK: So you had Ted Boutrous - he's perhaps one of the most distinguished First Amendment litigators in the country - in front of the judge. He argued that the government action suppressing speech, I'm basically quoting him here, comes directly from the top, from the president of the United States, due to reporting that he felt was negative, false, bad, not positive enough. He called the complaints amorphous. But as you listen to Boutrous, it was clear he was saying the repercussions and intentions are not. It's almost as though he was listening to him describe the whim of an emperor. That is, that he is trying to prevent reporters from the access they might need to do reporting that he doesn't like. And Boutrous is arguing that's a violation of the First Amendment, free speech rights there, but also the Fifth Amendment because the president didn't say, hey, I'm about to do this, and here's a process you can appeal it. It just got announced on Truth Social one Friday and then happened, you know, a day or two later.
KELLY: Yeah, so a violation of their due process rights is what the news organizations are arguing. The government obviously sees this differently. What'd they say?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, the government, in the form of the Justice Department attorney, was arguing that this is a matter of national security and that, in fact, that it doesn't really matter what arguments the press makes once that's invoked. They talked about essentially stories disclosing a secure bunker below the ballroom and the East Wing renovations, talked about revelations, that there was a leak investigation into who dished to reporters about a story that proved somewhat embarrassing for FBI Director Kash Patel. And they said, look, we gave a due process. Sure, it was after the initial ban was in effect, and after 78 reporters were denied entry to the White House from these three outlets. But we said to them, these are the things we're upset about, and they didn't respond.
And the Justice Department also made very clear it rejects legal precedent, that is earlier rulings by appeals courts, that if a constitutional right is violated, whether it's free speech or due process, that that constitutes the kind of irreparable harm that allows the judge to get in there and make some decisions. They say, you know, White House concerns outweigh others and that national security outweighs even the involvement of a federal judge.
KELLY: Speaking of federal judges, the man presiding over all this is federal judge Timothy Kelly - no relation. He is, though, a Trump appointee. Do we have any sense from how - the questions he's asking, where he may be headed?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, I got to say he is a Trump appointee, and yet, during Trump's first term, he ordered the White House to restore the pass in a very closely related case of former or at least then CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta. He said, you can't do it on these grounds. It was very much on the due process grounds as well. He sounded not insensitive to the questions of national security, but it did seem to me that he was a little unclear how that could be invoked only after Trump had publicly announced he was stripping the news organizations of passes because he thought their coverage was negative. Trump initially, in making his announcement, didn't mention national security at all.
I got to say we should have this ruling by end of day Tuesday. The judge had also issued this restraining order you mentioned that temporarily said, you can't do this ban, but he pushed that out to next Tuesday to give him time to make a decision. The judge seems to believe there needs to be a process and a reason to ban these journalists, so seemed doubtful of Justice Department's case. But let's remember the president doesn't honor processes, doesn't tend to think he needs to give a reason for his actions at all. He's just the president.
KELLY: All right. Sounds like we may have a ruling by Tuesday. We will watch and wait and see what it is. NPR's David Folkenflik, thank you.
FOLKENFLIK: You bet.
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