Vice President JD Vance on Monday pushed back at criticism of President Donald Trump’s move to pull White House access from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico. Speaking with reporters at Joint Base Andrews as he headed to North Carolina, Vance described the step as “totally appropriate” and rejected the idea that the administration was going after press freedom.
Vance said journalists were not being silenced. He said the White House was instead reviewing who gets privileged entry to executive facilities. “He’s not banning media outlets,” Vance said, according to The Independent. “What he’s doing is saying ‘we’re not going to give you special access to the White House if you engage in what is effectively propaganda.’ If you’re going to engage in what is effectively far-left propaganda, why would a Republican White House give you special access?”
Asked how taking away credentials squares with First Amendment protections, Vance argued the three outlets can still cover the executive branch from outside the grounds. “They can still get the public reports. They can still, of course, talk to people inside the administration and outside of the administration,” Vance said. He told reporters the companies “could still report on the Trump White House.”
Outlets sue after White House passes are pulled without notice
Those remarks came the same day the affected organizations filed a federal lawsuit against the administration. In a joint statement announcing the case, the outlets objected to the sudden loss of their journalists’ credentials and said there had been no prior notice or administrative process.
“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,” a joint statement from the news outlets said.
“Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting,” the statement continued. “Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference,” it also said.
The complaint names Trump along with Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Communications Director Steven Cheung, and Secret Service Director Sean Curran. Lawyers for the news groups argued the sudden exclusion violates First Amendment protections and Fifth Amendment due process rights. They said no president can strip credentials “on a whim – with no notice, no process, and no warning.”
The fight grew after Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be “banning Fake News CNN, MSNOW … and Politico … from the White House as a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS.” This move follows Trump’s earlier announcement on Truth Social about banning outlets like CNN and Politico from the White House, as detailed in our coverage of the fake news controversy.
He later wrote that the White House was not mounting an assault on a free press, but rather “an assault on the FAKE NEWS,” which he termed a “threat to our National Security.” By Saturday morning, correspondents who tried to enter the grounds had their physical badges taken by Secret Service personnel, according to the source account.
Vance compared Politico’s current coverage to Breitbart News’s coverage of former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. He alleged Politico is as “anti-Trump as Breitbart was anti-Obama or anti-Biden.”
“Why on God’s green earth would Donald Trump be expected to give Politico special access when nobody in the media expected the Biden administration or the Obama administration to give Breitbart special access?” Vance said. “It’s about basic fairness. They can still report,” he added.
“They still have the access to free speech. They’re just not going to get an office in the White House anymore, and I think it’s totally appropriate, unless of course, they start to behave like real news organizations,” Vance said.
Despite that comparison, Breitbart was not kept off White House grounds during the Obama or Biden years. The outlet had earlier complained about its rotation in the press pool run by the White House Correspondents’ Association.
Television networks then changed their usual coverage on Monday. The major network pool said it would stop shared broadcast coverage of presidential events, as reported by The New York Times.
Fox News Washington Bureau Chief Bryan Boughton told participating networks in a memo that the television pool would not cover designated events. “This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties,” Boughton wrote. “There will be no replacement pool put in place,” he added.
Legal experts and press freedom advocates have questioned whether the administration’s actions hold up under the Constitution. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals set a precedent in the 1977 case Sherrill v. Knight that credentialed journalists cannot be arbitrarily denied White House press access without a clear physical security threat.
Similar efforts to pull passes in Trump’s first term were blocked by federal judges. CNN and Politico rejected the president’s description of their work. Politico called claims about government subsidies “false and thoroughly debunked.” CNN said it would defend its reporting rights “without hindrance or interference from the government.”
Published: Sep 22, 2026 09:30 am