District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, granted a 14-day temporary restraining order against Trump’s ban of CNN, MSNOW and Politico from the White House. The decision was based on the Fifth Amendment denial of due process, Trump having neither given the news outlets notice of why he was banning them nor an opportunity to be heard. Judge Kelly emphasized that the order is temporary.

It’s unclear that such notice could have been given, as there is nothing to show that Trump gave any thought to his ban before the words emitted from his mouth or Natalie Harp’s fingers as she typed up Trump’s Truth Social twit, wherein he explicitly based the ban on his displeasure at their negative reporting of him. Trump calls it fake news because it makes him feel bad, and news that isn’t what Trump wants to hear is fake.

When Trump’s personal lawyers, the Department of Justice, went to court, they didn’t argue that the ban was based on Trump’s assertion that they were “fake news,” but that they compromised national security. Like the ballroom and arch before, national security has become the “go to” pretext for Trump’s whims.

While he president’s authority is theoretically constrained by such constitutional prohibitions as the First and Fifth Amendments, the courts have given him far greater deference when it comes to matters of national security. This post hoc rationalization, however, fell flat on Judge Kelly, who noted that it was only raised after the fact and was proffered without any showing that national security was put at risk. In other words, not even a Trump judge was willing to buy the lie.

But due process? Letters were sent after the fact to provide the requisite “notice,” with a sham opportunity to be heard about the claims that certain stories from months ago, completely unrelated to the possession of hard White House passes and irrelevant to national security at the end of the week. As if there was to be a fair opportunity to contest the purported reasons and a fair decision as to whether there was any merit to the claims. The trio of media outlets have about as much chance of a fair hearing as immigrants have before Trump immigration judges.

The more powerful check on Trump’s whimsy is the shutdown of the media pool. Remember watching Trump embrace China’s President Xi Jinping, kissing him on the cheeks and holding his hand as they walked the red carpet? Of course not, because there were no cameras to record the event. There was Trump with one of his two communist besties, and nobody could see it. It sucked the life out of Trump’s glorious moment of triumph, denying him the attention he so desperately craves. Left to this own devices, CNN, MSNOW and Politico don’t stand a chance of getting back in the White House door. With the media pool suspension behind them, however, these outlets stand a chance.

So problem solved? Not if California Attorney General Rob Bonta has anything to say about it.

Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, and his ragtag rebel alliance of unions, concerned celebrities and fellow Democratic state attorneys general were never going to win.

A settlement has been reached in the suit against the Paramount/Warner Brothers Discovery merger, coming on the heels of a threat to move production from California to Tennessee.

We had to endure months of back-and-forth posturing and some glee over the idea that Paramount Skydance might compromise in a serious way — or even fail — to complete its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery before an Oct. 1 late-fee deadline. And then it all ended with a friendly entente, a bunch of warmed-over deal points, a performative editorial oversight board and a paternalistic assurance that Paramount loves California after all and has no plans to leave.

So what does this have to do with Trump’s banning the media outlets from the White House? Paramount owns CBS, the one=time home of Walter Cronkite. Warner Brothers Discovery owns CNN, the current home of Kaitlin Collins and Jack Tapper. Changes have already happened, and no doubt more will come.

It’s also part of a larger shift away from the old Hollywood order. Other tech giants — Netflix, Amazon and Apple Studios among them — wield significant clout. But this particular combination, especially because it will include HBO and CNN, provides ready-made cultural (and thus political) power. Mr. Ellison is backed by his tech titan father, the Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest men. In the end, the combined entity will be 49.5 percent owned by foreign investors, including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the Qatar Investment Authority and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

Currently, our media consumption has proven disastrously divisive, with the MAGA faithful glued to Fox, Newsmax and AM radio, not to mention a handful of influencers like Joe Rogan and Steve Bannon, most of which tell a very different story of the nation and the presidency than the legacy networks and newspapers.

Had Trump not been his usual impetuous self, and merely waited until Ellison and his gulf state princes reimagined American news media into a more Trump-friendly machine, he could have saved himself the humiliation of losing yet again in court and the blowback from his Kaitlin Collins obsession.

For the moment, CNN, MSNOW and Politico won the day, although it remains unclear whether the Trump White House will comply with Judge Kelly’s order and let them back in, and whether the media pool will get back to business broadcasting sound and images of Trump’s fawning on Xi, practicing for his fawning on Putin when he comes to the G20 Conference at Trump’s Doral Golf Resort. But thanks for Bonta and his fellow travelers, it might be a momentary reprieve should the new owners of the media choose to promote the fake news Trump prefers rather than the fake news Trump abhors.