Government Appeals CNN v. Trump Press-Pass Injunction to D.C. Circuit, No. 26-5356; No Stay Motion on District Docket

On October 14, 2026, the government appealed Judge Timothy J. Kelly’s preliminary injunction in Cable News Network, Inc. v. Trump (D.D.C.) to the D.C. Circuit, the day after the injunction issued. The notice of appeal is a single sentence: “Defendants hereby respectfully provide notice of their appeal of this Court’s opinion and order dated October 13, 2026, ECF Nos. 49 & 50.” It is signed for the Civil Division of the Justice Department, and the docket lists the appellants as Donald J. Trump, Sean M. Curran, Susan Wiles and Steven Cheung. The appeal is interlocutory, taken from the order granting the injunction and the memorandum opinion. The D.C. Circuit assigned it No. 26-5356.

The district docket then shows a transmission entry sending the notice, order and docket sheet to the court of appeals, and no stay motion in the district court. The D.C. Circuit’s own docket is not in RECAP, so a stay motion filed there would not appear here. Judge Kelly had already refused a brief stay request in a footnote to the opinion (see 2026-10-13–judge-kelly-grants-preliminary-injunction-cnn-politico-ms-now-hard-passes), so the stay question, if the government pursues one, now belongs to the appeals court.

Pattern context. The injunction protects the hard passes of CNN, Politico and MS NOW against the earlier revocation (see 2026-09-19–white-house-confiscates-press-badges-cnn-politico-msnow). An appeal without an immediate stay motion leaves the injunction in force while the D.C. Circuit takes the case. The administration separates access to the White House complex from access to closed spaces such as Air Force One (see 2026-10-05–white-house-bars-politico-print-pool-air-force-one-nebraska-campaign-stop).

Not Found

The D.C. Circuit docket for the appeal, and any emergency motion there, were not reachable.

Sourcing note: the notice itself was read in RECAP and passes the span check. The docket entries and the appeals-court case number sit on the CourtListener docket page, which loaded by hand but returned a block page to the scripted re-fetch, so those claims are marked unreachable rather than disproved.