The Trump administration has decided to take over determining the press pool that covers the White House, shutting out the White House Correspondents’ Association.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Tuesday that the White House’s press team would take over the press pool, effectively determining which journalists get to travel with Donald Trump for their news coverage.
“We want more outlets and new outlets to have a chance to take part in the press pool to cover this administration’s unprecedented achievements up close, front and center,” Leavitt said. “We are going to give the power back to the people who read your papers, who watch your television shows and who listen to your radio stations.”
Leavitt: I’m proud to announce that we are going to give the power back to the people.. The White House press pool will be determined by the White House press team pic.twitter.com/DqV1fFrNhh
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 25, 2025
On Monday, a federal court ruled against restoring the Associated Press’s access to White House press events, causing Leavitt to declare victory and insist that “covering the American presidency in the most intimate and limited spaces in this White House … is a privilege, it is not a legal right.” The AP has been barred ever since Trump signed an executive order to change the Gulf of Mexico’s name to the Gulf of America, a change the wire service has not adopted.
The WHCA issued a statement criticizing the Trump administration’s move, claiming that the White House gave no notice of the change and saying that it “tears at the independence of a free press in the United States.”
“Since its founding in 1914, the WHCA has sought to ensure that the reporters, photographers, producers and technicians who actually do the work—365 days of every year—decide amongst themselves how these rotations are operated, so as to ensure consistent professional standards and fairness in access on behalf of all readers, viewers and listeners,” WHCA President Eugene Daniels, a correspondent for Politico, said.
It’s an unprecedented move for a president to determine the journalists that travel with him. In the past, presidents usually ignored the media outlets or journalists that they did not like, instead of barring them from the White House or Air Force One. The famously thin-skinned Trump has already filed lawsuits against media organizations he doesn’t like and is using the FCC to go after broadcast outlets who irk him. Now, he’s trying to dictate news coverage of his administration.
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