Lawsuit over Trump media ban to test limits of White House power

President Donald Trump’s ban on three news outlets from the White House will test the First Amendment legal precedent that has long given journalists access and challenge the limits on executive power, experts say.

Trump announced on Sept. 18 that CNN, MS NOW and Politico – which he dubbed "fake news" – would be banned from the White House. Reporters from each news outlet were denied entry to the complex the next day.

The news outlets responded by filing a lawsuit on Sept. 21 that accused the administration of a "direct assault on the First Amendment" and a "blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles."

The new legal fight is the latest clash between the Trump administration and journalists that is putting the First Amendment's free press guarantee into the spotlight. It also echoes one that emerged last year after Trump imposed a similar ban on the Associated Press over the news outlet’s refusal to adopt his preferred title of the "Gulf of America" instead of the "Gulf of Mexico."

That ban, however, was a "much more precise target," Clay Calvert, a nonresident senior fellow at the public policy think tank American Enterprise Institute, told USA TODAY on Sept.

Original source: https://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/