Three news organizations that had been barred from the White House for days returned on Thursday, after a judge granted CNN, MS NOW and Politico a reprieve in an extraordinary showdown pitting President Donald Trump against outlets whose coverage he disfavors.

Yet media coverage of Trump's White House was scarcely what one could deem normal.

On a high-profile day when Chinese leader Xi Jinping was visiting Washington and planning to attend a state dinner, no major American network was airing live coverage.

After the White House barred CNN from a rotation of five major U.S. broadcast outlets that take turns shooting and sharing video, the remaining four — in a display of solidarity — continued to withhold their participation in the so-called video pool.

It constituted but one facet of a day marked by turmoil, both within the White House and in the courtroom.

Initially, in the morning, journalists representing CNN, MS NOW and Politico were refused entry.

A Secret Service agent had confiscated their credentials as part of the ban.

Following the ruling in favor of the outlets in the early hours of Thursday, White House operations officials were notified to reinstate access for the affected reporters, yet they maintained that time was required to locate, reactivate and deliver their entry badges.

The process consumed over two hours, according to an administration court filing.

In provisionally lifting the ban, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly directed the White House to “immediately return, reinstate, and restore” the three outlets’ access, finding that they had satisfied the legal thresholds for a temporary restraining order and were likely to prevail in demonstrating that their press passes had been revoked absent due process.

The ruling was conspicuously silent on CNN's expulsion from the White House video pool.

The White House did not respond to an email soliciting comment.

Kelly — whom Trump nominated in 2017 and who, in a comparable case in 2018, ordered that a CNN journalist’s access be reinstated — asserted that the government must establish unequivocal standards of conduct warranting the revocation of a press pass.

He characterized the criterion of objectionable reporting set forth in the letters the White House dispatched to the outlets as “so vague it hardly does the trick.”

The judge further evinced considerable scepticism toward the administration's contention that the news outlets' reporting had imperilled national security, observing moreover that Trump himself had not initially advanced that argument, having focused exclusively on what he characterised as negative coverage.

Theodore Boutrous Jr., counsel for the news outlets, averred that the judge’s expeditious ruling had vindicated freedom of the press, due process and the rule of law.

“I surmise we shall emerge the stronger for this, and this stratagem of simply assailing the press, assailing individual journalists, is destined to be discredited,” Boutrous said in an interview on MS NOW Thursday afternoon.

“The law is plainly on our side here,” he said.

The temporary restraining order — conventionally devised to maintain the status quo pending a more searching judicial examination of the case — lapses in a fortnight.

The judge afforded both parties until Oct. 5 to submit their arguments as to whether he ought to contemplate issuing a more enduring ruling, designated a preliminary injunction.

Kelly averred that he “intends to rule expeditiously” upon the preliminary injunction request.

Boutrous contended at the hearing that renewed access was a matter of exigency, asserting that the ban inflicted irreparable harm upon the outlets at a juncture of momentous news events.

“We’re at war,” he told the judge.

“We have world leaders coming to Washington.”

Justice Department attorney Michael Velchik, in his argument, reaffirmed the administration’s contention that the president possesses the prerogative to determine who is granted entry into the White House.

“Access to the White House is a privilege, not a right,” Velchik said.

In contending that Trump was not perpetrating viewpoint discrimination — the government's singling out of particular media outlets on account of the content of what they say or publish — Velchik maintained that the president had censured other news organizations without, however, banning them.

He observed, by way of illustration, that Trump had pronounced ABC “the worst.”

On Wednesday, following the hearing, the major networks declined to broadcast any footage of Trump absent assurances that CNN would be reinstated to the video pool.

At Joint Base Andrews, where the president formally welcomed Xi, correspondents from Fox News, CBS and NBC were in attendance, yet refrained from capturing video footage.

Among the television outlets whose crews were on site—as evinced by the insignia affixed to their tripods and cameras—were NewsNation, Newsmax, Right Side Broadcasting Network, One America News and LindellTV.

Reporters said it furnished its clientele with video coverage of Trump greeting Xi, thereby enabling them to determine whether to broadcast it.

“We did not stream the coverage on our own platforms, including APNews.com or our YouTube channel,” said an AP spokesman, Patrick Maks.

In an advisory disseminated to its clientele, AP conveyed that it would not furnish independent video coverage of the meetings between Trump and Xi, noting that a live feed provided by the U.S. government could be accessed via the White House website.

Reporters was among some 50 groups that filed an amicus brief ahead of Wednesday’s hearing, exhorting the court to reinstate forthwith the three outlets’ White House access.