The White House said it will take control over which news organizations and reporters are allowed into the presidential press pool covering Donald Trump.
“The White House press team in this administration will determine who gets to enjoy the very privileged and limited access in spaces such as Air Force One and the Oval Office,” the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing on Tuesday.
The announcement came a day after the Trump administration won a temporary ruling allowing it to bar the Associated Press (AP) in retaliation for the outlet’s decision to resist Trump’s demand to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”.
The White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), an independent association made up of members of the media, traditionally coordinates rotating pool coverage of more than a dozen journalists allowed access to the president in smaller settings.
Leavitt asserted that the WHCA “should no longer have a monopoly” of press access at the White House and that “legacy media outlets who have been here for years will still participate in the pool, but new voices are going to be welcomed in as well”.
After Trump signed an executive order last month directing the US interior department to change the Gulf of Mexico’s name, the AP said it would continue to use the gulf’s long-established name in stories while also acknowledging Trump’s efforts to change it.
In response, the White House banned AP journalists from accessing the Oval Office and Air Force One, accusing the news agency of “irresponsible and dishonest reporting”.
The US district judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, denied a request by the AP on Monday to restore its access to the Oval Office, Air Force One and events held at the White House.
The news agency had argued that the decision to block its reporters violates the US constitution’s first amendment protections against government abridgment of speech by trying to dictate the language they use in reporting the news.
Leavitt celebrated the judge’s ruling and said the White House wants “more outlets and new outlets to cover the press pool”. “It’s beyond time the White House press pool reflects the media habits of the American people in 2025,” she added.
In a statement, the WHCA said the decision “tears at the independence of a free press in the United States”.
“It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president. In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps,” the organization’s president, Eugene Daniels, said.
“For generations, the working journalists elected to lead the White House Correspondents’ Association board have consistently expanded the WHCA’s membership and its pool rotations to facilitate the inclusion of new and emerging outlets.”
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press called it “a drastic change in how the public obtains information about its government.
“The White House press pool exists to serve the public, not the presidency,” the group’s president, Bruce Brown, said in a statement.
