Donald Trump keeps picking courtroom battles with major news organizations, and the pattern is becoming difficult to miss. The president and his allies repeatedly launch sweeping legal attacks, only to watch judges reject their claims.

The latest setback followed Trump’s decision to ban journalists from MS NOW, CNN and Politico from the White House. Trump quite literally described the policy as “the ban on the free press,” handing critics an unusually blunt description of the move.

Three days after the announcement, the three news organizations filed a federal lawsuit against Trump and several senior administration officials. The suit challenged the White House restrictions and sought the restoration of access for their journalists.

Hours after the case was filed, Trump posted a related message on his social media platform that effectively predicted defeat. Unlike many of his other predictions, this one proved accurate.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ordered the administration to restore White House access to reporters from MS NOW, CNN and Politico for at least 14 days. Kelly granted the organizations’ motion on due process grounds and refused to stay the ruling, allowing it to take effect immediately.

Kelly did not yet rule on the organizations’ First Amendment claims. He was also still considering whether to impose a longer block on Trump’s ban.

Even after Kelly’s order, some journalists from the three outlets were barred from the White House. The order had required their access to be restored, but how and when that conflict will be resolved remained unclear.

Trump suffered another legal defeat only hours earlier in Iowa. Iowa District Judge Scott Beattie dismissed the president’s lawsuit against The Des Moines Register and its former pollster, Ann Selzer.

Trump sued after the newspaper published a poll he disliked, accusing the Register of violating Iowa’s consumer fraud law. Beattie characterized the case as extraordinary and warned that allowing its “faulty” claims to continue could have a chilling effect that could “discourage others from reporting on and debating public affairs.”

Those decisions fit a much broader pattern of Trump and his team initiating legal confrontations with independent media organizations and failing to prevail. The losses stretch across cases brought by Trump, his campaign and his media company.

A few months ago, Trump Media and Technology Group sued The Washington Post for $3.8 billion in damages. The company accused the newspaper of conducting a “years-long crusade” and participating in a “conspiracy” to harm it, but a federal judge dismissed the case after concluding that Trump Media had failed to produce credible evidence.

The Trump campaign’s 2020 lawsuit against CNN failed, as did Trump’s 2021 case against The New York Times. His 2023 lawsuit against journalist Bob Woodward also failed, along with the Trump campaign’s case against the Post and Trump’s class action lawsuit against social media companies.

Last year, Trump filed a $15 billion civil lawsuit against The New York Times. A federal judge tossed it four days later, not because the court had ruled on its merit, but because the filing submitted by Trump’s lawyers was deemed simply too ridiculous.

Two months later, Trump’s media company lost a defamation lawsuit against The Guardian. In April, Trump’s $10 billion defamation case against The Wall Street Journal was also dismissed, although Trump and his lawyers filed it again a month later.

The contrast with media companies that chose settlement is striking. ABC News and its corporate parent agreed to a $16 million settlement after Trump brought a dubious case, while Paramount struck its own $16 million deal after he filed an even weaker case against CBS News.

Trump later cited those controversial settlements as evidence that his targets were guilty, despite the networks’ denials of wrongdoing. By contrast, news organizations that resisted his attempts at intimidation have repeatedly prevailed in court.

The lesson extends beyond Trump’s clashes with the press to his fights involving law firms and higher education. The record described here points toward a straightforward conclusion: “Resistance is far more successful than appeasement.”