The White House is ending the privileged press access that left-leaning news wires like the Associated Press have traditionally received.
The AP, Reuters, and Bloomberg will no longer get a guaranteed slot in the daily press pool that covers White House business, the New York Post reported. The wire services now have to compete with print publications for access on a rotating basis.
The press pool travels with the president and covers events where space is limited, such the Oval Office and Air Force One. Trump is known to engage with pool reporters in long, discursive Q&A sessions.
The makeup of the press pool has traditionally been dictated by the White House Correspondents' Association, which represents journalists, but the Trump administration has been taking that over, with press Secretary Karoline Leavitt deciding which organizations get pool access each day.
Wire services like the AP and Reuters provide syndicated news copy to news outlets around the globe. Their widely disseminated coverage often comes with a liberal spin.
For example, the AP has described the illegal immigrant at the center of a current international controversy, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, as a "Maryland man" despite the fact that he entered the United States illegally from his native El Salvador.
The AP, Reuters, and Bloomberg have traditionally had guaranteed access to White House events, but the Trump administration is changing that. In lieu of a reserved space for the three wire services, the White House is adding a second slot for print journalists, and the wire services will be treated like other print media.
The move is an apparent workaround to a court ruling that ordered the White House to unblock the AP, which has been barred from the pool since February for refusing to change its style guide to reflect Trump's executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
US District Judge Trevor McFadden's ruling that the AP "cannot be treated worse than its peer wire services” gave the White House some flexibility.
The administration's moves have been condemned by legacy media as an attack on press freedom, but the White House has said the shakeup will make the White House more accessible to a wider variety of sources.
“The makeup of the pool is far more reflective of the media habits of the American people in 2025,” a senior White House official told The New York Post.
“The White House press policy continues to be grounded in fairness for all outlets that wish to cover the White House.”
The White House Correspondents' Association cried foul, saying the latest changes are meant to "retaliate against news organizations for coverage the White House doesn’t like.”
The AP said, "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.”
