MS NOW, CNN and Politico are set to sue President Donald Trump on Monday morning and to ask a federal judge to reverse his total ban on those three media outlets from the White House.
Journalists from the outlets were prevented from entering the White House on Saturday, a day after Trump announced he would bar them from working there.
I have an idea – let’s bar him from working there.
“This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles,” the lawsuit says.
“Presidents from the earliest days of the Republic have disagreed with and complained about the tenor and content of press coverage of their administrations,” the complaint, set to be filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, notes.
But “the Constitution protects the liberty and property interests that news organizations and White House reporters have in their press credentials and the access those credentials afford them to cover the White House for the benefit of the public,” the suit says. “No official can deprive Plaintiffs of those interests on a whim — with no notice, no process, and no warning—as the President did here.”
He can, but he’s not allowed to. The trick is getting the “not allowed to” to result in not being able to. Trump just wholesale ignores rules and laws that say he’s not allowed to do X; it’s only force that can stop him.
Trump in announcing the ban on Friday accused the outlets of writing fiction and lies about him, and warned, “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow,” in a Truth Social post announcing the ban. The president cited what he called “cumulative stories” by the three news organizations, adding, “You get sick of it.”
Yes but you don’t get to shut down the press because you get sick of it, dumboy. You’re doing it, but you’re not allowed to. There may come a time when you will be forced to stop. I’m not holding my breath.
In a joint statement on Monday, the three outlets said, “This morning, we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes.”
This lawsuit needs to win. We need it to win. If Trump gets to ban journalists…well, you do the math.
The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, in a statement after Trump’s announcement, suggested he would lose a legal challenge to the ban because of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections for the media.
“The First Amendment prohibits the president from punishing journalists because he doesn’t like their coverage, just as it prohibits him from punishing universities because he doesn’t like the courses they offer, or from punishing law firms because he doesn’t like the clients they represent,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the institute.
“With so many courts having ruled against him on exactly this point, you’d think President Trump would have learned this lesson by now,” Jaffer said.
Well, no, you wouldn’t, because it’s Trump. We’ve learned by now that Trump never learns anything.
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