The White House is making changes to which outlets are included in the press pool covering President Trump, and doing away with the spot normally reserved for wire services covering his daily activities.
A source in the West Wing confirmed the changes to The Hill on Tuesday evening and said moving forward, the press pool will be made up of the following group: one print journalist who will serve as the “print pooler” each day, one additional print journalist, a crew from one of the major television networks, a crew from a secondary television network or streaming service, one radio journalist, one “new media” or independent journalist and four photojournalists.
The White House official said eligible outlets will be chosen for the pool on a rotating basis, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will retain day-to-day discretion to determine composition of the pool.
Wire-based outlets will be eligible for selection as part of the pool’s daily print-journalist rotation as part of the shake-up, but they will no longer have a permanent slot in the group.
The official said outlets will be eligible for participation in the pool, “irrespective of the substantive viewpoint expressed by an outlet.”
The press pool had traditionally been determined by the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), a responsibility Trump’s West Wing took over earlier this spring.
The changes come just days after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore The Associated Press’s access to key White House spaces after it banned AP reporters over the outlet’s refusal to use “Gulf of America” in its widely cited stylebook.
The AP was not included in Monday or Tuesday’s press pool, the first day the judge’s order went into effect.
Other outlets such as Bloomberg and Reuters typically served in the dedicated wire service slot and will now be only eligible to serve in the pool by being selected as a “print pooler” on a given day.
The AP sued the White House over the ban last month, arguing access to the press pool is essential to its journalism. Two of the outlet’s top journalists in Washington testified in court about what they said was the damage caused to the outlet over the exclusion.
“As far as journalism goes, it’s 360,” AP photographer Evan Vucci said. “You’ve got to be there.”
Some prominent D.C.-based journalists voiced solidarity with the wire services as news of the changes broke, including NBC News correspondent and former WHCA Chair Kelly O’Donnell.
“Wire reporters are among the most knowledgeable and dedicated to the White House beat,” O’Donnell wrote in a post on the social platform X. “They are on duty every day of the year and anywhere in the world needed to cover a president. Their work is a key building block for other media’s work. Wires fill a critical role in the public’s understanding of government and important events.”
Eugene Daniels, an MSNBC host and the WHCA’s current president, wrote to members late Tuesday saying the Trump administration was “using a new means to do the same thing: retaliate against news organizations for coverage the White House doesn’t like.”
Daniels said the WHCA was “working to find out what this means in practice” but said such a restriction “only hurt the American people who rely on unfiltered journalism to stay informed and make decisions critical to their lives.”
In a statement to The Hill, the AP echoed Daniels’s displeasure, saying, “The administration’s actions continue to disregard the fundamental American freedom to speak without government control or retaliation. This is a grave disservice to the American people.”
Updated at 10:20 p.m. EDT
