Bryan Boughton, the Fox News Washington bureau chief who chairs the White House television pool, told the member networks on Monday morning that nobody would take CNN's place behind the camera. "This follows the White House's position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties," he wrote. "There will be no replacement pool put in place."
CNN was due to serve as primary television pool on Monday 21 September and to travel with President Donald Trump to the United Nations General Assembly in New York later in the week. A White House daily guidance email sent on Sunday evening listed no primary television network for Monday. Hearst was listed as the secondary crew in Washington and Real America's Voice, a small pro-Trump channel, as the secondary crew for the New York trip.
ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News have rotated the television pool assignment for decades, each supplying a camera operator, an audio technician and a producer during its turn and sharing the footage with broadcasters worldwide. No network camera was assigned to Trump's designated pool events on Monday or to the United Nations trip, leaving outlets that rely on the shared feed with nothing.
Trump said on Friday 18 September, in a post on Truth Social, that the three outlets were barred from the White House effective immediately. "Media Outlets shouldn't be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they're covering the President," he wrote. Asked at a press conference that day whether he was trying to intimidate reporters, Trump said: "No, no, no, no. I dislike dishonest press, like you. I think you're terrible." He said no single story had prompted the decision, calling it "really just cumulative stories over the last two years".
Betsy Klein, CNN's senior White House reporter, had her credential deactivated and taken by the Secret Service on Saturday 19 September. Akayla Gardner of MS NOW was stopped after clearing two security gates and asked to surrender her badge, and her photographer's badge was disabled as well. Cheyenne Haslett of Politico was turned away at the gate outside the West Wing.
CNN said it has "a right under the U.S. Constitution to do our reporting without hindrance or interference from the government and this ban is an illegal assault on this fundamental right". MS NOW said the White House "belongs to the American people and the decisions made inside are funded by our tax dollars" and that it intends "to take any and all steps necessary to defend our First Amendment rights". Jonathan Greenberger, Politico's editor-in-chief, said: "We will vigorously defend our First Amendment rights."
Jacqui Heinrich, president of the White House Correspondents' Association, said "the constitution protects the freedom of the press from government interference" and that the protection does not depend on whether the president likes an outlet's coverage. A standard used to exclude one outlet, she said, could be applied to any outlet in the future.
The three outlets filed suit on Monday 21 September in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, naming Trump and senior White House officials. The complaint alleges viewpoint discrimination under the First Amendment and a denial of due process under the Fifth, on the grounds that the credentials were pulled with no notice and no route to appeal. "Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists' credentials because it objected to our reporting," the three said in a joint statement. The suit asks the court to restore the reporters' access and to reinstate the television pool.
Theodore J. Boutrous, lead counsel for the outlets, said the ban was designed to "punish reporting he doesn't like and to intimidate journalists". The complaint calls the ban an action that "could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles". Emergency hearings could come this week, according to CNN.
Trump answered at 8.42am on Monday with another Truth Social post. "The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish," he wrote. "It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America. It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control."
Trump also repeated a claim that Politico collected $8 million in federal subscription payments under President Joe Biden. Federal spending records show the figure covers purchases by every federal department and agency in the 2024 fiscal year rather than payments from one source and that the money bought subscriptions to Politico Pro and E&E News. USAID, the agency named when the claim first circulated, paid about $44,000 across the 2023 and 2024 fiscal years. FactCheck.org and Snopes both examined the claim in February 2025 and found it misleading.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, took control of pool selection away from the White House Correspondents' Association on 25 February 2025, saying the association had "dictated which journalists get to ask questions of the President of the United States. Not anymore." Wire services lost their standing places in the 13-member pool, and Newsmax and Blaze Media were added to the rotation.
The Associated Press was barred from the Oval Office and Air Force One on 11 February 2025 after it declined to adopt "Gulf of America" in its style guidance. Judge Trevor N. McFadden granted a preliminary injunction on 8 April 2025 ordering that access be restored. A three-judge panel of the DC Circuit stayed part of that order on 6 June 2025, Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao in the majority and Judge Cornelia Pillard dissenting, holding that the Oval Office and Air Force One are restricted spaces where access sits at the president's discretion while the East Room is not. The full court declined to rehear the case on 22 July 2025.
