Chris Coons
Role at the time: United States senator from Delaware, posting on his official Bluesky account
Statement summary
In a Bluesky post quoting an Aaron Rupar post that relays Trump’s announcement, Sen. Chris Coons wrote that Trump was “once again trying to use the power of the presidency to punish a free press, now banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House.” He called that “the behavior of an authoritarian” and wrote that “we must defend the press' right to hold those in power accountable.”
“Trump is once again trying to use the power of the presidency to punish a free press, now banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House. That is the behavior of an authoritarian, and we must defend the press' right to hold those in power accountable.”
Read through the public Bluesky API (com.atproto.identity.resolveHandle, then app.bsky.feed.getPostThread for rkey 3mvsxrmpkwc25) on 2026-09-19 about 9:09 AM EDT; bsky.app itself was not opened. The post is a quote-post of Aaron Rupar's Bluesky post at://did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/app.bsky.feed.post/3mvsulb7yc225 (created 2026-09-18T19:09:07Z), which carries Trump's announcement as text and an image. The same words also appear on Coons's Facebook page and Threads account (seen in search results only, not opened).
Why we used this label
The case’s fixed reference point is President Trump’s announcement, by Truth Social post at 3:04 PM EDT on Sept. 18, 2026 and reaffirmed in the Oval Office that afternoon, that CNN, MS NOW and Politico are banned from the White House because of their coverage. Coons’s post says Trump is “trying to use the power of the presidency to punish a free press, now banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House” and calls that “the behavior of an authoritarian,” which rejects the act itself. The closest competing label is challenges_characterization, because he recasts the announcement as punishment of a free press rather than a response to coverage. That loses because he goes on to condemn the conduct in plain terms and to call for defending the press’s right to hold power accountable.