The Latest: MS NOW, CNN and Politico file lawsuit against Trump to restore White House access
CNN, MS NOW and Politico on Monday sued President Donald Trump’s administration after they were barred from covering the White House, saying the selective ban was “a blatant violation” of the First Amendment.
Meanwhile, Trump will meet with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani when Trump travels to the city for the upcoming U.N. General Assembly. The meeting is scheduled for Monday and at Gracie Mansion, the official mayoral residence. The two will discuss issues affecting the city and New Yorkers. The White House confirmed the meeting will take place but did not offer more details.
Here's the latest:
Illinois governor says he's lost 80 pounds with GLP-1 medication
Gov. JB Pritzker disclosed his regimen in a series of interviews this weekend. The Democrat has long struggled with his weight and turned to the new medications after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
Pritzker’s girth has led him to be regularly mocked by President Trump. He now says he’s lost 80 pounds (36 kilograms) on the medication.
A possible 2028 presidential candidate, Pritzker said his health has always been on his mind since his father died of a heart attack at age 39. He’s stepped up his exercise routine after the diabetes diagnosis as well.
Trump has been more aggressive toward the media in his second term
The president and his Republican administration have upped the ante and punished certain media outlets. Trump has also lashed out at individual reporters in person or over social media, sometimes in strikingly personal terms — insulting them in briefings or in his recent speech at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Melania Trump and China’s first lady to visit the Smithsonian
Melania Trump’s office says she and Peng Liyuan, the wife of Chinese President Xi Jinping, will visit the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art on Thursday.
The visit will take place while President Trump and Xi meet at the White House.
The museum holds one of North America’s largest and most comprehensive collections of Asian art, according to its website.
Xi will be in Washington later this week on a state visit to the United States.
A grand arrival ceremony for him at the White House on Thursday will end with a military flyover featuring a B-2 Spirit and four F-22 Raptors, according to a detailed rundown from the first lady’s office of White House plans for Xi’s visit.
CNN, MS NOW and Politico sue over denied White House access, citing the First Amendment
CNN, MS NOW and Politico on Monday sued President Donald Trump’s administration after they were barred from covering the White House, saying the selective ban was “a blatant violation” of the First Amendment.
The administration’s announcement of the bans Friday and the White House’s subsequent actions over the weekend represented a clear escalation of Trump’s long-running efforts — in the courts and through administrative action — to restrict news coverage he finds objectionable. They were also the latest test of First Amendment protections in the United States, where the government is constitutionally forbidden from restricting the press.
The Constitution, the banned news outlets said in their lawsuit, “does not allow a president or any other government official to deprive the press of their First Amendment rights and liberty and property interests with no notice or process based solely on his dislike of the content of their reporting.”
In a social media post, Trump says he’s attacking ‘FAKE NEWS’
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the news outlets’ lawsuit, which was expected to be filed later in the morning. But on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote Monday morning that he cherished what he called a free press.
“The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish,” the president said in his post. “It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America. It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control. It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!”
On Monday morning, the banned news outlets were reporting from outside the White House
They were at an intersection just outside the White House complex.
Also Monday, CNN was removed from its pool duties, which are shared by the major networks. It had been scheduled to cover the president’s trip to New York. In an email, the TV pool, which consists of the five major networks, wrote that there would be no replacement coverage following the White House actions.
Trump shattered Canada’s old US relationship. Carney is building a new one in Europe
For nearly four decades, Canada built its economy around closer integration with the United States. President Trump has turned that dependence into leverage, imposing tariffs, threatening Canada’s sovereignty and openly seeking to pull Canadian industrial production south.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has moved on. Rather than return to trade talks or wait for the next U.S. president to restore the old relationship, he’s urgently building a future in which Canada is less dependent on America.
Last week, Carney embraced the prospect of Canada becoming the European Union’s first associate member, not as a step toward full membership, but as a way to reduce Canada’s dependence on any single country without ceding control over its own decisions.
White House Correspondents’ Association president calls for news outlets’ access to be restored
“The implications extend beyond these organizations: a standard used to exclude one news outlet because of its coverage could be applied to any outlet in the future,” Jacqui Heinrich said. “The American people, through a free and independent press, must be able to scrutinize those elected to power, regardless of whether government officials view it favorably.”
US futures climb as oil prices drop and investors await expected Trump-Xi meeting
The meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping this week in Washington could cover trade, artificial intelligence and geopolitics.
Futures for the S&P 500 gained 0.7% on Monday, while those for the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.8%. Nasdaq futures climbed 1.1%.
Oil prices fell more than 3% Monday as vessel traffic and energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz picked up, although the Strait has remained largely closed and uncertainty persisted over U.S.-Iran tensions. Saudi Arabia on Saturday confirmed that Yemen’s Houthi rebels tried to attack its capital with a ballistic missile, the first targeting of Riyadh since the escalation in fighting with the Tehran-backed rebels that’s opened a new front in the Iran war.
Trump decries Democrats as ‘communists,’ even as he looks to impress China’s communist leader
Communism, President Donald Trump says, is the greatest threat the U.S. has ever faced.
This summer, citing similarly grave concerns, he took the rare step of delivering a primetime address to the nation, accusing China of “sinister election meddling” in 2020 and reviving his yearslong push to dispute his loss in that year’s election.
Even as Trump seeks to decry Democrats as communists ahead of November’s midterm elections, he's rolling out the red carpet this week for Chinese President Xi Jinping, the leader of the world’s most powerful communist country.
The state visit comes as the president himself has increasingly directed his administration to take large stakes in private companies to try to stimulate the economy — something even some Republicans decry as corporate socialism.
The contradictions between Trump’s words and actions risk muddying Republican attack lines on Democrats.
Trump and Mamdani plan to meet in New York during the president’s upcoming UN visit
Trump will meet with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani when Trump travels to the city for the upcoming U.N. General Assembly.
The meeting is scheduled for Monday and at Gracie Mansion, the official mayoral residence, according to Anna Bahr, Mamdani’s communications director.
Bahr said the two will discuss issues affecting the city and New Yorkers. The White House confirmed the meeting will take place but did not offer more details.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist who upset former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary before winning the general election in November, has been a favorite and frequent political foil for Republicans.
But Trump has often been warm to Mamdani and seemed charmed by the young mayor. Their first meeting after Mamdani’s election was quite cordial, with Trump saying at the White House that the then-mayor-elect would “surprise some conservative people.” The Republican president had called Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic” during the 2025 campaign.
CNN, MS NOW, Politico say they’ve notified Trump they’re suing over denied White House access
CNN, MS NOW and Politico said Monday they’ve notified President Donald Trump’s administration that they’re filing a lawsuit over being denied White House access.
Reporters from the three major news organizations were blocked from the White House on Saturday, a day after Trump said he was barring them because of reporting he found to be “fake news.”
The actions were a clear escalation of Trump’s long-running efforts — in the courts and through administrative action — to restrict news coverage by journalists he finds objectionable and were the latest test of First Amendment protections in the United States. Trump had said Friday he would ban all three outlets because of coverage he disliked.