September 25: Judge Orders White House Passes for Three Outlets Reinstated
Hours after a judge ordered White House passes for three outlets reinstated, reporters for all three said they were still denied entry.
An extraordinary writ by which a superior court commands an official to perform a duty required by law.1
The name comes from Latin mandāmus, “we order,” a form of mandāre, “to order.” It can name either the writ or the proceeding used to seek one: a petition for mandamus asks the court to issue the command.2
Judge Temporarily Restores Three Outlets’ White House Passes
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ordered officials to restore the White House hard passes of CNN, MS NOW, and Politico immediately. His 14-day temporary restraining order found that the outlets were likely to show a Fifth Amendment due-process violation because the passes had been revoked without established standards, notice, or a chance to respond. The order is temporary and does not finally decide the outlets’ First Amendment claim or liability in the case.3
Several hours after the ruling, reporters for all three outlets told the Associated Press that they were still being denied entry and that their credentials had been taken. The White House did not answer AP’s questions about compliance, leaving the cause and duration of that gap unresolved while the court moves to expedited preliminary-injunction briefing.4
California Court Orders 650,000 Ballots Returned
The California Supreme Court unanimously ordered Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco to return approximately 650,000 seized ballots to the county registrar and stop handling them. The court held that state law’s command that voted ballots may “in no event” leave the elections official’s custody applies during criminal investigations, even when officers have search warrants.5
The opinion did not decide competing claims about the November 2025 Proposition 50 count. A citizens group alleged a 45,896-vote discrepancy, while Registrar Art Tinoco put the final-count difference at about 103 votes, or 0.016%; the court noted that even the larger figure could not have changed the result. AP reports that the decision governs custody of the ballots, while a related dispute over the attorney general’s authority remains separate.65
Trump and Xi Announce an Arrangement Without Publishing Its Terms
Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met at the White House on September 24. China’s official account says their economic teams reached a new joint arrangement and that the leaders discussed trade, artificial intelligence, Taiwan, Ukraine, the Middle East, and the Korean Peninsula. It does not publish tariff changes, enforcement provisions, or a duration for the arrangement.7
Yonhap separately reports that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the two countries extended their trade truce by two months, until January 10. That date comes from Bessent’s reported remarks, not from terms visible in the Chinese readout; the public documents do not establish a broader trade settlement.8
CXMT Says Its Denser G5 Memory Is in Mass Production
ChangXin Memory Technologies says its fifth-generation DRAM platform, G5, and two 24-gigabit LPDDR5X products have entered mass production. DRAM is the short-term working memory used in phones and computers; LPDDR5X is a low-power version for portable devices. CXMT reports an 11.95-nanometer active-area half-pitch made with repeated patterning steps that create finer features.9
The company says G5 produces at least 50% more gross dies per wafer than its fourth-generation platform when both are normalized to an 8-gigabit baseline. Reuters notes that gross dies are counted before defective parts are excluded. Neither source supplies tested yield, shipment volume, customer qualification, or an independent performance comparison.109
Dassault Flight-Tests Two Undisclosed AI Functions on a Rafale
Dassault Aviation says it flight-tested two human-supervised AI algorithms aboard a Rafale fighter, one developed internally and one with Thales’ cortAIx team. The company says the software has matured enough to be considered for future Rafale upgrades and describes onboard constraints such as limited computing resources and the quality of operational data.11
Dassault has not disclosed what either algorithm does, the test conditions, evaluation results, cockpit authority, or number of flights, Reuters reports. The record establishes an onboard test, not autonomous flight, combat performance, operational deployment, or approval for a Rafale upgrade.12
Sources
- Merriam-Webster · mandamus
- The American Heritage Dictionary · mandamus
- U.S. District Court for D.C. · CNN et al. v. Trump temporary restraining order
- Associated Press · Judge orders White House access restored
- California Supreme Court · Cervantes v. Bianco opinion
- Associated Press · California court orders seized ballots returned
- Chinese government · Account of the Trump–Xi meeting
- Yonhap · Trump and Xi discuss trade and security
- CXMT · G5 DRAM platform announcement
- Reuters · CXMT says new memory platform entered mass production
- Dassault Aviation · AI flight tests on the Rafale
- Reuters · Dassault tests AI algorithms on Rafale fighter jet