On September 25, 2026, The Atlantic published Quinta Jurecic’s article, “The Two-Year Temper Tantrum to Come,” about President Donald Trump’s recent fight with the White House press. Just one day earlier, a federal judge had ordered the White House to restore access to journalists from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico after they were banned from the White House for what Trump called “constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!” At first, this sounds like a pretty straightforward story: the president tried to restrict the press, the press went to court, the court temporarily blocked the ban, problem solved, right? I do not think it’s that simple. When a president repeatedly pushes against democratic rules and norms, the attempts themselves can become a form of democratic erosion because they test whether those boundaries will actually hold. The fact that they have to be defended again and again is exactly what makes the pattern concerning.

Jurecic’s description of what happened after the ban shows why this was not just a disagreement between Trump and a few reporters. She writes that “the whole kerfuffle was a display of both Trump’s power and his impotence: damaging to democracy yet also undermining his own authority.” The Trump administration had removed CNN, MS NOW, and Politico journalists from the White House, but using that power also disrupted the normal way the White House communicates with the public. When the television press pool stopped providing coverage, Trump’s own remarks at the helipad became inaudible because the cameras no longer had the equipment normally used to capture his voice. Later, the press pool’s refusal to resume coverage meant that Xi Jinping’s visit to the White House happened without American live television coverage. So the attempt to control the press did not simply affect the journalists Trump wanted to punish. It interfered with the government’s own ability to communicate with the public.

Jurecic also makes clear that this was not the first time Trump’s administration had fought over White House press access. Judge Timothy Kelly had previously ruled in 2018 that the White House could not bar CNN reporter Jim Acosta, and a 2020 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit also established that journalists who had been granted access to the president could not have that access taken away without due process. So even though the court temporarily blocked this particular attempt, it was not the first time this boundary had been challenged.

This is where Robert Dahl’s idea of democracy helps explain why press access matters. Dahl argues that democracy requires more than elections. Citizens need freedom of expression and access to information from sources outside the government so that they can actually make informed decisions about their government. That seems pretty obvious, but this situation makes the idea feel a lot less abstract. Trump can post whatever he wants on social media and tell millions of people what he thinks about a story, but that does not replace an independent press. A journalist can ask the president a question he does not want to answer, investigate a decision he would rather defend, or report something that makes him look bad. That is part of their job. The point is not for the press to agree with the president. The point is for the public to have access to information that does not come directly from the person in power.

If the government controls which reporters can ask questions or get information based on whether it likes their coverage, then it becomes harder for the public to hear criticism of the government from independent sources. So when a president repeatedly tries to control who gets access to him, it is not just a fight over reporters being allowed into a building. It is a fight over who gets to question political power and what information the public gets to hear.

This also gets at what Levitsky and Ziblatt mean when they argue that democracy depends on norms that are not always written into law. A court can tell a president that a specific action is not allowed, but democracy also depends on political leaders choosing not to constantly test every limit of their power. But the question here is not whether Trump is legally allowed to criticize the press. Of course he is. The bigger issue is what happens when that criticism turns into an attempt to use presidential power against them. When the same kinds of boundaries are repeatedly tested, it can make behavior that once seemed unacceptable start to feel normal. That is where I see the connection to democratic erosion most clearly. The danger is not just one president crossing one line. It is the possibility that the line becomes less meaningful every time someone tries to cross it.

At the same time, I do not think this story shows that American democracy has simply failed. The journalists challenged the ban, other news organizations supported them, and the court intervened. Those responses are important because they show that the boundaries Trump tested have not disappeared. The court’s intervention shows that the institutions involved in this dispute were still capable of imposing a legal limit on the administration’s action. But I also do not think we should only look at the ending and say everything is fine because the courts won this particular fight. Democratic erosion can happen through the process of repeatedly testing institutions, even when those institutions are still able to push back. The question is whether democratic institutions can keep defending the same boundaries without those boundaries slowly becoming easier to cross.