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CNN, MS NOW and Politico File Request for Emergency Hearing After Being Refused White House Access Despite Court Order; Trump Welcomes China's Xi to White House for Summit; Judge Says, DOJ Must Respond by 12:30 P.M. ET to CNN, MS NOW and Politico Request for Emergency Hearing on White House Access. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired September 24, 2026 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:00]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer with Pamela Brown, and you're in The Situation Room.

We're watching three major breaking stories at this hour, a new development in the press ban. We're still not able to access the White House even after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to immediately reinstate access to CNN, MS NOW, and Politico. An emergency hearing has just been filed by all three news outlets. We're going to bring you all the latest developments.

Also, Pamela?

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump is about to welcome Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and this is a critical meeting. The two are expected to address artificial intelligence, the ongoing wars, and trade, among other important items.

BLITZER: And we're also watching what's going on in New York City right now, where we expect the prime minister of Israel and the Palestinian leader to address the United Nations. And new this morning, the city police and the Secret Service are looking into three people seen exiting the sewer near Benjamin Netanyahu's hotel in New York. The latest reporting straight ahead.

BROWN: And we are covering these major breaking stories with our team of reporters and analysts stationed in key locations where the news is being made. We are live near the White House here in Washington and New York all morning.

And breaking news still outside the White House, this morning, some CNN, MS NOW and Politico staff have not been able to access White House grounds even after multiple attempts. This is despite an overnight ruling overturning the Trump administration's ban on the media organizations and reinstating their passes. Wolf?

BLITZER: For more on all these breaking news stories, I want to bring in CNN Senior White House Reporter Betsy Klein, CNN Crime and Justice Correspondent Katelyn Polantz, CNN Senior Legal Analyst and former Federal Prosecutor Elie Honig, and CNN Media Analyst and Media Correspondent over at Axios Sara Fischer.

CNN, MS NOW and Politico have just filed an emergency request for a formal hearing this morning. Katelyn, what more can you tell us?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: -- set yet, and Judge Kelly hasn't yet responded. But what's on the books for him right now is that there is not compliance yet from the White House letting the press -- well, letting the journalists from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, whose press credentials had to be restored under that court order late last night, about nine hours ago, they are not yet able to get into the building.

They also say -- the media lawyers representing these three news outlets say that they reached out to the Justice Department this morning, wanting to call the court together because there had not been access given when people like Betsy, Betsy Klein, our own Betsy Klein over at the White House, was unable to get there, when she was refused access this morning.

They also note that the Secret Service has confiscated the hard passes of some journalists who had hard passes from CNN, MS NOW, or Politico, showed up at the door front of the White House to get in. They don't have those passes, at least at this time, as we know.

This would be a major moment in what happens next. We just don't know how this may play out. The judge's order was unequivocal, and it was immediate that those passes, those press credentials for all three news organizations, access to the White House needed to be restored. That means today. And I did just get a statement from a First Amendment group that's well-known out there, and it's been watching the situation closely, putting it into a little perspective.

This is a statement from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, known as FIRE. They say, refusing to abide by Judge Kelly's clear order would be a dangerous escalation and a clear affront to the rule of law. That's where we are now, but let's see how this plays out, what the judge may do, and also what the Trump administration might do in what has apparently become quite a standoff.

BROWN: Betsy, you were one of the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Walk us through what your experience has been like today.

BETSY KLEIN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, for all the reasons that Katelyn just laid out, it's really an open question at this stage whether the Trump administration is in open defiance of this court order or if this is more of a clerical bureaucratic issue.

[10:05:05]

But let me just take you through the sequence of events. President Trump on Friday issuing that post to social media announcing that he would be banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House. Then on Saturday morning, I was one of the reporters who attempted to access the White House. My badge, my White House hard pass credential that I use to get in every day, was seized by the U.S. Secret Service in compliance with the president's ban. Then around 12:58 this morning, that judge issued that temporary restraining order saying that the White House must immediately reinstate our credentials.

So, we first attempted to get in just after 6:00 this morning. Around 6:10, I went to the U.S. Secret Service checkpoint that's just across the street behind me, and presented them with my driver's license as well as my CNN I.D. They said I was not in the system. So, I sent an email to the White House press wranglers and to the White House Press Office seeking comment, trying to get in, in the way that we would get in if we had lost or misplaced our hard passes, and did not receive a response.

A little while later, our colleague, a producer, was able to get into the White House with her hard pass around 6:30. Ten minutes after that, around 6:40, our photojournalist colleague was also attempted to get into the White House. He was turned away and his badge was seized. Then I tried again at 8:00 A.M. and then once more at 9:00 A.M. after the course of normal business hours.

But right now, we are still unable to get into the White House, and this is notable particularly because right behind me you may see President Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, is arriving here at the White House for a state visit. And this is a very high-stakes moment for President Trump. He is going to welcome him with all of the pomp and circumstance.

And we actually just heard from the print pool reporter. It's a reporter from the Washington Times. They said that the press was assembling to go cover China's leader's arrival, and she said in that note, quote, on a side note, although a court decision restored media access to CNN, Politico, and MS NOW earlier this morning, we are currently without a network pool camera.

And what that means is that there will not be televised coverage from these five networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Fox News, of this arrival ceremony that the president has been looking forward to for so many months now. Pamela?

BROWN: Wow. That -- I mean, I don't remember a time, Betsy, where you wouldn't have that kind of coverage for a big visit like this with the leader of another superpower like China. Wolf?

BLITZER: You know, it is unprecedented. I spent seven years as a White House correspondent, never even dawned on me that something like this could happen.

So, Sara, give us a little perspective now. What's really going on?

SARA FISCHER, CNN MEDIA ANALYST: Well, broadly speaking, this is embarrassing for the United States, especially when we are meeting with the leader of a communist country.

We're supposed to be representing democracy and freedom of the press. But what this means for press freedoms, the judge's injunction basically said that they feel as though the plaintiffs are likely to win on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment on due process, Wolf. But it has yet to be litigated whether or not the plaintiffs' claims around the First Amendment violations are going to hold up, and that will be a key milestone historically in press freedoms.

If this case moves on after the 14-day restraining order ends and we start to litigate the First Amendment and the plaintiffs are found -- or the defendants are found guilty, it reinforces the power and the precedent that have set, has been set already, that the First Amendment protects the press in situations like this, that you cannot unilaterally ban certain outlets or reporters from the White House once you've opened up access for all of them.

So, the silver lining here, Wolf, is that this whole kerfuffle may actually end up strengthening the press freedom precedents that the law has long protected.

BLITZER: Well, that would be good if that happened.

FISCHER: Yes. But so far it's not happening. Pamela?

BROWN: Yes. I want to bring in Elie Honig just for that legal perspective.

I mean, is the White House breaking the law right now? I mean, what happens next here?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, they're absolutely in defiance of the judge's order. The big question is, is that the result of something that's just sloppy and unintentional, or is that intentional? And every minute that passes, it's now 10:08 A.M., makes the latter more likely, make it more likely that it's intentional. And we just heard Betsy Klein say that she's tried numerous times throughout the morning and been denied, including after 9:00 A.M.

Now, it is the exact right move to do what the lawyers for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico have done to request an emergency hearing, and I expect the judge will grant that. And, by the way, they don't even have to take the time of physically getting everyone into the courtroom. The judge can convene a hearing like this by phone or by Zoom.

And let me just try to anticipate a couple things that may come up. Number one, if one of the positions that the administration takes is, well, we disagree with the judge's ruling and we intend to appeal, fine. You can appeal. And if you win, if you can get the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to undo what the judge did last night, then you can deny the pass.

[10:10:05]

But the status quo right now is unequivocal. The judge last night night ordered the administration to immediately restore the press credentials to the three media outlets. That is the state of the law right now.

So, we'll see what the administration says when they go in there. And, by the way, just a quick word to the wise here, anyone who's going to go into that court or attend that hearing on behalf of the Justice Department and the government needs to be really careful, because if you lie to a court, mislead a court, or are part of defiance of a court, you're putting your own professional future at jeopardy. You're not only risking the potential contempt finding, but that could lead to bar consequences down the line.

So, I think if you're a lawyer in the position of having to represent the government here, you need to show up for this hearing, you need to be candid, and you cannot be any part of willfully defying a court's order.

BROWN: All right. That sums it up. Elie Honig, Sara Fisher, Katelyn Polantz, and Betsy Klein, thank you all so much.

BLITZER: Over at the White House the president and the first lady are about to welcome the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, and his wife. In just minutes from now, the two leaders are set to deliver remarks as the world's top economic superpowers hold a critical meeting in a rapidly changing world.

CNN White House Correspondent Alayna Treene and National Security Correspondent Kylie Atwood are here with me in the situation room.

Alayna, first to you what are the issues that these leaders are likely to focus on most closely today?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, the thing I want to start with before we get into the issues, Wolf, is just that red carpet welcome we saw yesterday with the president.

I mean, when was the last time you remember a president going all the way to Joint Base Andrews to welcome a foreign leader, let alone --

BLITZER: On the tarmac.

TREENE: Exactly, let alone an adversary. And when we did hear from the president this morning, this is what he posted about that meeting. He said that, that Xi, President Xi, looks strong, vibrant, and fit, better than ever.

So, just give you a little context of how successful this White House wants this meeting between the two of them, the state visit, to be. But as for the topics, to your point of what are they going to discuss, there's a myriad of issues. You know, you have Taiwan and U.S. arm sales to Taiwan.

You have trade which I'll get into a moment, because there was an announcement on that. You have you know, critical minerals that they're likely to discuss, the war with Iran, which the president yesterday, President Trump, said he does plan to discuss with Xi Jinping. And then, of course, you have this huge issue, which has really been garnering a lot of attention in recent days, is this A.I. race, and both the U.S. and China trying to outpace each other in this.

Now, as for where the president is, he did post about this, this morning. Well, President Trump wrote this morning, quote, a big day with President Xi of China, super intelligence, that's essentially his new word to try to make artificial intelligence sound less threatening, will be a big topic of discussion, but I want to leave it exactly where it is. That is China's position also. Our guardrail is the DOJ.

Now, I want to give you a little context. We had new CNN polling this morning, Wolf, that showed 71 percent of Americans say that the federal government is not doing enough to regulate A.I. So, this is a fascinating time because we know that Xi, of course, also doesn't want these regulations. He knows that China's fighting or kind of trying to outpace the U.S. when it comes to artificial intelligence, and this is going to be a huge focus.

I remind people as well, you're going to have a lot of tech leaders and tech CEOs at the state dinner tonight. There could potentially be a conversation about the futures and risks and dangers of A.I., so that's a big topic.

And then just to get back to the trade thing, because there was an announcement on this, which I think is important. We heard the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, say yesterday that they've extended the Busan agreement. That's essentially an agreement that was signed between the U.S. and China in October of 2025 in South Korea. Essentially, it's an economic detente in tariffs.

We know that the U.S. reduced certain tariffs while China resumed purchases of U.S. soybeans and other things. So, already they're setting the ground to have this be, again, a good meeting, a positive meeting, one that would push this -- the trade war kind of down the line.

And I know as well that the president really, as you could see this morning, talking up Xi. And as well, one other thing I just need to mention is he said he wished he could have had all of this in the Presidential Ballroom, which, of course, won't be finished for a couple years.

BLITZER: Won't be finished. So, where is that state dinner tonight going to take place?

TREENE: I have to look. Hold on. Actually, I have it here. The state dinner will be just looking at their very lengthy schedule, will be in the East Room tonight. That's where they're expected to have it.

BLITZER: It's a lot smaller.

TREENE: So a lot smaller than what this ballroom could potentially have for seating.

BLITZER: All right. Thanks very much for the update.

Kylie, China, of course, plays a critical role in the Iran war by providing a lot of economic assistance to Iran for that matter, as a top trade partner with Iran. How much will these two leaders focus in on the war in Iran? KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: I've been hearing from U.S. officials and from experts that this is really one of the primary focuses of this visit today, and here's why. The administration is effectively stuck when it comes to the cards that they can play to try and drive an end to this conflict. We saw the conversations between U.S. and officials resume on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly this week, but we haven't seen any really productive follow through after that meeting. We know there'll be more, but then we've been here before.

China, however, has cards that they could play if they chose to play those cards and if President Trump is successful in pressuring President Xi to do so. The first front, of course, is the Iranian exports of oil. China is the number one importer of Iranians oil. Those numbers have gone down since the war began, but the recipient still hasn't changed. It's still China. So, there is a tremendous amount of room for the United States to put pressure on China there.

The other area to watch is dual use imports that Iran is getting from China. A lot of things that Iran imports are viewed as things that are just going towards technology or going towards good -- building goods in Iran that aren't for military use. But when you look at what the use for those goods could actually be, they also have military applications such as drones. And so there could be some pressure from the Trump administration to try and drive down China's exports of those goods into Iran.

So, those are two major buckets for us to be watching as we watch and see what the follow through from the summit actually is.

BLITZER: Interesting. Pamela?

BROWN: I want to go over to Mike Valerio in Beijing now to better understand what President Xi is looking for in this summit. Mike?

MIKE VALERIO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, Pamela, besides everything talked about at the table over the past couple minutes, I think that we have to talk about Taiwan, and that inevitably will be brought to the conversation inside the White House, and Beijing and President Xi Jinping's want to control Taiwan, the self-governing democracy, by force if necessary.

So, that has been put into sharper focus by the President of the United States delaying a $14 billion arms package to Taiwan, calling it, when he came to this town in May aboard Air Force One, quote, a very good negotiating chip. So, there is reporting, Pamela and Wolf, and everybody at the table, from Reuters, that seems to suggest that Chinese leader Xi Jinping will bring up this 1982 communique between the United States and China, which says for the sake of our friendly conversation here, that the United States will eventually, eventually reduce arms sales to Taiwan.

But no time given, undetermined time. But there is an amendment, an addendum to that, a memo written by President Reagan saying that, well, hold on. The United States could wind down arm sales, but it has to be when there are peaceful solutions of Taiwan differences. So, bottom line, that will be raised. I think it will be very unlikely to change the American position about Taiwan because there is such strong support from the Republican Party, the president's own party, in both chambers of Congress, the House and Senate. And also we talked about it a little bit with Alayna, when you have the President of the United States saying that if you win at A.I., you win the whole ballgame, you know, the most advanced A.I. chips are designed by America. But where are they made? Where are these chips made? They are manufactured in Taiwan.

So, there is very little possibility, according to analysts we speak with and certainly people here in Beijing, who think that the United States president would want to cede any ground, would want Beijing to take Taiwan by force because that could be another choke point that China would have if it controlled this epicenter of A.I. chip production. Wolf and Pamela?

BROWN: All right, Mike Valerio, Kylie Atwood, and Alayna Treene, thank you all.

And still ahead here in The Situation Room, CNN has learned that eight sailors assigned to an aircraft carrier strike group tried to take their own lives while fighting in the Iran war.

You're in The Situation Room, and we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:20:00]

BROWN: All right. We have some breaking news on the emergency hearing just filed on the White House press ban.

CNN Crime and Justice Correspondent Katelyn Polantz is back with another update. Katelyn?

POLANTZ: Pamela, the Justice Department is now on the hook to explain what is going on to Judge Timothy Kelly, who ordered the White House restore the hard passes, the press credentials, to MS NOW, CNN, and Politico as of last night at 1:00 A.M.

About nine hours later at 10:00, the lawyers for these three media organizations went to Judge Kelly and said, these press passes have not been restored, also that they were trying to contact the Justice Department this morning, and there has been no response. There has been no movement on the White House side.

This is clearly a situation that Judge Kelly is taking seriously. He issued that order last night at 1:00 A.M. He's responding very quickly to tell the Justice Department they need to respond. But, Pamela, we're going to have to wait and see what happens in the next couple of hours. 12:30 P.M., that's the deadline for the White House to explain what is happening here with those White House hard passes.

BROWN: All right, a little over two hours. We'll see what happens. Thank you so much, Katelyn. Wolf? BLITZER: All right, Pamela. Amidst all of this, President Trump and the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, are delivering remarks right now over at the White House, and this comes after President Trump rolled out the red carpet welcoming the leader at Joint Base Andrews last night. The last time a U.S. president did that was back in 1962, underscoring the significance of these current talks.

And joining us now is staff writer for The New Yorker, Evan Osnos.

[10:25:02]

Evan was the former Beijing bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune. Evan, thanks so much for joining us.

There's certainly a lot of focus right now on artificial intelligence, the A.I. race, as it's being called, but China apparently has already pulled ahead of the U.S. in production of electric vehicles, lithium ion batteries, and pharmaceutical trials. Is the U.S. losing the tech war with China?

EVAN OSNOS, STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: Well, look, it's clear that China has problems, Wolf. We don't need to gloss over them. We know that they have a big property bubble, for instance, they're still trying to climb out of. They have youth unemployment. And yet it is remarkable to take stock of their technological progress. I think it surprises many Americans.

And it's important, you have to separate out what's hype from what's reality, but it is simply a fact that they have been investing, particularly in scientific research over the course of the last generation, steadily building up their capacity. As you mentioned they've now surpassed the United States in conducting clinical trials. The Chinese electric vehicle maker, BYD, surpassed Tesla as the world's largest electric car maker. It's astonishing to put that in context to where they were, for instance, the last time that Xi Jinping came to the United States to meet with Donald Trump in 2017. They have made huge gains.

And that's what makes this a really important moment, because the question before us is, can these two countries, which are galloping ahead in terms of artificial intelligence, can they come up with some rules of the road to make sure that this technology is safe? That's at the coin of the realm here.

BROWN: But, Evan, you have the president posting on his social media platform, Truth Social, just this morning that super intelligence will be a topic of conversation between him and President Xi, but also that he wants to leave it exactly where it is. So, what does that tell you?

OSNOS: Yes. This -- the problem there, Pamela, is exactly as you mentioned, it is -- he's already told us that he is not inclined to take the kind of steps that frankly the innovators of this technology are calling for. Just yesterday at the U.N. General Assembly, you heard Sam Altman coming forward saying, we are prepared to pause the development of this technology because we're concerned about how fast it is growing beyond our capacity to understand it and control it. The problem at the heart of this is China does not fundamentally trust that the United States is calling for a pause because it wants to make this safer. They believe that we're doing it because we're trying to hold them back.

This gets to the core of Xi Jinping's perception of the United States, that for all of the deference that Trump is showing, you know, all of these gestures of friendliness, rolling out the red carpet, going to the airport in a way that you haven't seen a U.S. president do in decades, none of that, to be perfectly blunt, matters very much in the core strategic understanding that the Chinese have of the United States.

And right now, as long as the United States is making clear, as Trump said, that it's also trying to own the future, that it believes that the country that owns A.I. will win, as long as that's the language, that's very different than the way that the United States and the Soviet Union, for instance, talked about nuclear detente, which was the idea that, for the good of both of these countries, you have to be able to come up with an agreement.

BROWN: And there's still the question like, what does win exactly look like? Because if you take A.I. to its natural conclusion, it is super intelligent, it is smarter than all the humans, and it may not be aligned with human values, which is why you have these A.I. leaders warning. Just yesterday, right, you had two top A.I. leaders warning the U.N. Security Council about the potential dangers of AI.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAM ALTMAN, CEO, OPENAI: Let's listen to that. No one person or company or country should be able to use the most powerful A.I. models to impose their worldview on everyone else.

DARIO AMODEI, CEO, ANTHROPIC: If managed poorly, I even believe that A.I could be a risk to humanity as a whole.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So, Evan, help us better understand how China views this.

OSNOS: You know what's so interesting is China has thought over the last several years that A.I. is an opportunity for them to finally take the frontier of one of the big technological revolutions. They say we missed out on the Industrial Revolution at the beginning of the 20th century. We missed out essentially on the information revolution. The internet, of course, was created in the United States. They say, look, we want to be at the frontier of the next one. And so they are not inclined to hold back.

But here's where the opportunity is. When you have leaders like -- of the A.I. companies, like Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, saying that this is not an option to do nothing, this is a moment where we have to come up with steps for our own interests, our own national interest, that that can appeal to China's understanding of what will keep their own people safe. Say, look, we understand we're not going to come to a grand bargain here. We don't trust another -- each other enough to do it, but let's come up with the bare minimum. Let's come up with a notification system that allows us to be able to say, if you have an incident that affects national security, let's make sure we have people on the opposite ends of a hotline.

[10:30:05]

Let's make sure we're meeting regularly to talk about what's advancing.