A US federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from barring CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, ordering officials to immediately restore the organisations’ press credentials while their legal challenge proceeds.

US District Judge Timothy Kelly issued a temporary restraining order early Thursday that prevents officials from enforcing the ban for 14 days. He found that the three organisations had met the legal requirements for emergency relief and were likely to succeed in showing that their credentials had been revoked without adequate due process.

“This is a high bar, but Plaintiffs have met it,” Kelly wrote, according to the Associated Press.

President Donald Trump announced on 18 September that he was banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, accusing them of reporting what he called “FAKE NEWS”. Journalists from the three organisations were subsequently denied entry, with some credentials deactivated or confiscated.

CNN, MS NOW and Politico sued the administration on 21 September, arguing that the government had targeted them because of the content of their reporting and had violated protections for freedom of speech and the press under the First Amendment, as well as their due-process rights.

The Justice Department argued that access to the White House was a privilege rather than an entitlement and that the president had authority to restrict it. Administration lawyers also cited national-security concerns in defending the decision.

Kelly rejected the national-security justification at this stage of the case, saying the record did not provide factual support for the argument that revoking the outlets’ passes would protect national security. He noted that Trump himself had publicly linked the ban to what the president described as untruthful and negative reporting.

The judge also said the White House needed clear standards governing conduct that could result in the loss of a press pass. According to AP, he described the administration’s standard for objectionable reporting, outlined in letters sent to the outlets after the ban, as “so vague it hardly does the trick”.

The administration said the letters identified examples of reporting it considered problematic, including stories involving sensitive or classified information. Lawyers for the outlets argued that the explanations were supplied only after their credentials had already been withdrawn and after the lawsuit was filed.

Kelly was nominated to the federal bench by Trump in 2017. In 2018, he ordered the administration to temporarily restore the White House credential of then-CNN correspondent Jim Acosta after finding that CNN was likely to succeed on a due-process claim.

The latest ban also disrupted the White House television pool. CNN is one of five networks that normally rotate responsibility for supplying shared television coverage of presidential events. After CNN was prevented from carrying out a scheduled pool assignment, the five-network pool suspended its coverage rather than substitute another network.

Trump said on Tuesday that he would “probably” allow the organisations back into the White House if a court ruled against his decision.

The temporary order does not resolve the underlying constitutional lawsuit. It requires the administration to restore the outlets’ hard-pass credentials while the case continues and remains in force for 14 days unless the court orders otherwise.