Photo: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg/Getty Images

With hours to go before the polls close, the Trump campaign is punishing reporters for critical stories they or their media have written in recent days.

Politico had three reporters and a photographer assigned to the campaign observation party in Palm Beach, Florida. But according to a source, Politico learned on Tuesday that they had been banned from the event because of a story that Political magazine had been published a day earlier by a freelancer about a white nationalist who had worked on the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania. The Republican Party in Pennsylvania fired the staffer after learning of the views he expressed under an online alias.

On Saturday, Axios reporter Sophia Cai was told she would not be allowed into the campaign’s election night watch party, another source familiar said. (Cai had been qualified to cover campaign events in October.) This news came hours after she published a story about Trump’s concerns in the final stretch.

The campaign also blew up Tara Palmeri’s plans. The Puck reporter had planned to broadcast live from the campaign’s Florida headquarters for an Amazon special, but campaign co-manager Chris LaCivita had other ideas, writing in a post on X last Thursday that her ” credentials were denied to enter Mar-a-lago to cover election night because of her ‘tendency’ to write nonsense. Palmeri was previously denied access to Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden, but had “received assurances from the Trump campaign” that she “would be allowed to broadcast from the campaign’s election night party,” Status’ Oliver Darcy reported.

The Trump campaign has taken similar punitive action against reporters this cycle, largely by cutting off their media access to campaign events. The team also won praise for being a more sophisticated top-level operation than in 2016, when the Trump campaign denied entire news organizations press credentials for events. Politico’s ban from tonight’s event suggests that, if Trump wins, the next four years may not be so different.