FactCheck.org is reporting that President Donald Trump announced last Friday that CNN, Politico and MS NOW were banned from the White House "effective immediately," saying it was "because they're fake news" and that they "purposely write negative news" against Republicans. It said the outlets sued, and a federal judge ordered on Sept. 24 that the journalists' access be restored while the case proceeds.
FactCheck.org said the White House defended the ban by arguing it was similar to actions taken by Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, saying in a press release that "[a]ccess changes are nothing new" and that "Democrat Administrations have restricted, punished, and locked out the press" for "years." FactCheck.org said it examined the examples the White House cited and asked First Amendment experts about them, and found that Trump's ban goes beyond what Obama and Biden did.
It quoted Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, saying, "There's no basis to suggest that Biden and Obama 'did it too.'" It also quoted Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, saying past presidents have limited outlets' White House access based on hostility toward their reporting, but that he did not know of any past example of a president indefinitely banning a media outlet from the White House.
FactCheck.org said the White House highlighted a 2009 feud between the Obama administration and Fox News, in which the Treasury Department tried to leave Fox News out of a pool TV interview of an administration official. It said the White House called it a miscommunication, but Fox and other networks reported the administration backed down after the other networks protested.
It said that under Biden, the administration set stricter rules for obtaining a "hard pass" allowing routine access to White House press areas without an escort, and that the number of hard pass holders dropped by hundreds, with Politico reporting most of the drop was attributed to journalists who simply didn't reapply. It quoted Amy Kristin Sanders, a professor of First Amendment studies at Penn State University, saying the Trump ban is different from excluding members of the White House Correspondents' Association from pool coverage based on the viewpoints they express in their journalism.
Separately, FactCheck.org is reporting that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave a keynote for Children's Health Defense, the nonprofit he previously led that regularly spreads vaccine misinformation, on Sept. 17. It said Kennedy misleadingly cited package insert documents to suggest vaccines are behind an increase in certain childhood conditions, despite a lack of evidence or evidence to the contrary.
FactCheck.org also is reporting that a Republican TV ad cherry-picked parts of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to distort Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff's record. It said the ad claims Ossoff voted "to gut your child tax credit," while the law, which Ossoff opposed, increased the maximum tax credit from $2,000 to $2,200 per child, and that Ossoff has a history of supporting the child tax credit, including a 2021 vote to raise the maximum to $3,600. It said the ad comes from One Nation, a "dark money" nonprofit that does not have to publicly disclose its donors.