Judge Grants CNN’s Motion to Restore Jim Acosta’s White House Press Pass

WASHINGTON—A federal judge granted an emergency motion to restore the White House press credential of CNN correspondent Jim Acosta—a victory for the network in a closely watched press-freedom case.

The lawsuit could determine whether the government can ban individual reporters from public buildings.

District Judge Timothy Kelly, who was appointed to the bench by President Trump, granted CNN’s request for a restraining order temporarily restoring Mr. Acosta’s press access to the White House while the case proceeds.

Lawyers for Mr. Acosta, the network’s chief White House correspondent, argued that the unusual revocation of a reporter’s press pass by the White House last week necessitated emergency action.

Trump should just let Acosta be Acosta for the entire press conference. And the next press conference. And the next press conference.

If Acosta wants to monopolize the mic, the other reporters get no questions. If he’s not asking Trump any questions, Trump could sit down, take a bathroom break, have a granola bar, catch up on his emails, whatever.

Repeat until the other reporters DEMAND Acosta be thrown out.

We can play divide and conquer too.

You've been challenged rather strongly on the 1st part of your post, and I don't consider my self an expert in that area, so I'll just follow the discussion.

However, I DO agree with this:

This ruling is in no way a victory for CNN; rather it's a major loss for the MSM. Because know Trump can revoke *everyone's* pass, establish a firm set of guidelines, rules and procedures governing codes of conduct, and then re-issue passes under those stipulated terms and conditions. Furthermore, there is nothing stopping Trump from setting up an application process where any citizen can petition for a pass.

If that comes to fruition, and if seating is limited to 50 people or so, guess what happens when there are 10,000 requests? Lottery time. CNN/Acosta totally and completely screwed a cozy insider game for everyone in the MSM. The 5A ruling is a disaster for them.

This would be terrific if security could be absolute, and if some sort of reasonable process to screen out looney tune questions, without appearing to be "biased", could be devised. Assuming 50 seats, maybe 100 potential questioners would be chosen by lottery, and then that group itself would vote on the 50 best questions, with the top 50 getting in. The top 10 vote getters get to be in the front row. (This probably needs to be a little more sophisticated than each participant getting one vote, to preclude 20 participants getting all the votes.) Some method of preventing all the questions being on the same topic would be useful, too. Maybe limit any one subject to 10 questions out of the 100?

Other details and potential problems would have to be addressed too: How to keep any organization from overwhelming the application process; How to source questioners from around the country (maybe 1/2 the questions can be by internet-based video, but then that might makes the question "selection" process too cumbersome), and so on.

I am not exactly suggesting a "virtual townhall" to replace press conferences, but, perhaps incorporating some elements of the former might be useful.

This whole idea would require a lot more thought, and "design" than my hasty post here: The main idea is to get more direct interaction going between the President and the people, and largely bypass the MSM.

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