BREAKING: Judge Orders Trump White House to “IMMEDIATELY” Restore Reporters’ Access — Hours Later, They’re Still Locked Out!

Donald Trump’s ban on CNN, Politico and MS NOW just suffered a major setback in federal court.

But what happened only hours later at the White House gates may have opened an entirely new chapter in the fight.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly issued a temporary restraining order early Thursday blocking the administration’s ban on the three news organizations.

His instruction was remarkably direct.

The White House was ordered to “immediately return, reinstate, and restore” the hard-pass press credentials held by employees of CNN, Politico and MS NOW.

The order lasts for 14 days while the broader legal fight continues.

Kelly — who was appointed to the federal bench by Trump himself — concluded that the news organizations were likely to succeed in showing that the administration violated their constitutional due-process rights when it revoked their access.

“This is a high bar, but Plaintiffs have met it,” Kelly wrote.

The judge was particularly unimpressed with the administration’s national-security justification.

He noted that the record before the court did not show that national security was the reason the passes were originally revoked and expressed skepticism that removing the journalists actually advanced that interest.

That should have meant CNN, Politico and MS NOW journalists could return to work at the White House Thursday morning.

Except that’s not what happened.

Reporters from all three organizations encountered problems getting back inside just hours after Kelly’s order.

MS NOW White House correspondent Laura Barrón-López described exactly what happened when she arrived.

She initially made it through the first Secret Service security perimeter using her White House hard pass.

Then she reached the security hut.

Barrón-López tapped her badge on the reader and entered her PIN as usual.

The reader flashed red.

She tried again.

Red again.

A Secret Service officer took the credential and checked it himself.

According to Barrón-López, the officer told her that the pass was “still coming up as disabled.”

Her badge was then confiscated, and she left the White House grounds.

And she wasn’t alone.

Politico said one of its reporters also had a credential confiscated by the Secret Service Thursday morning and was denied entry.

CNN reported that some of its staff members were also unable to access the White House grounds.

Reuters independently reported that journalists from all three organizations remained barred Thursday morning despite Kelly’s order that their access be immediately restored.

That creates an obvious question:

Was the Trump administration defying a federal court order?

For now, there isn’t enough evidence to say that.

And Barrón-López herself was careful not to make that accusation.

She said she could not determine from her interaction whether what happened represented defiance of Kelly’s order or simply an administrative or technical delay in reactivating the credentials.

That distinction matters.

There has not yet been a finding from Kelly that the administration violated his order, and the available reporting does not establish that the passes were intentionally kept disabled after the ruling.

But the sequence of events is extraordinary on its own.

Trump announced that CNN, Politico and MS NOW were banned from the White House on September 18, accusing the organizations of reporting “FAKE NEWS.”

The organizations sued.

Kelly held an emergency hearing Wednesday.

Hours later, he sided with the outlets on their request for temporary relief and ordered their credentials restored.

Then reporters returned to the White House Thursday morning — and discovered that their credentials still weren’t getting them inside.

Kelly’s ruling also dealt a serious blow to the administration’s attempt to justify the original ban on national-security grounds.

The judge wrote that nothing in the record predating the lawsuit suggested that national-security concerns motivated the revocation.

He also noted that Trump himself had publicly linked the ban to what the president characterized as dishonest and negative coverage.

That matters because CNN, Politico and MS NOW argue that they were punished for their journalism and denied the process required before their existing White House credentials could be taken away.

Kelly did not resolve the entire First Amendment dispute Thursday.

This is temporary relief while the case proceeds.

But on the due-process issue, his conclusion was clear enough to produce an immediate order:

Give the journalists their access back.

Instead, hours later, reporters arrived at the White House and found badges that still wouldn’t let them through the door.

Whether that was deliberate defiance, bureaucratic delay or something else remains to be established.

But after a federal judge ordered the White House to “immediately” restore their access, one thing was undeniable Thursday morning:

They were still standing outside.